Zampeto must have been a plumb fool. I saw him afterward--a fat, pompous man with a rolling, glaring eye. If Belknap had been able to step in, in person, we shouldn't have had a walk over; but while Zampeto was agreeable to advice in the beginning, he soon suffered from _cabeza grande_, which swell-headed state Jim's reports of victories raised to a fearful size, and Belknap could do nothing with him. His losses were tremendous for that country, and there he sat at home, serene in the belief of a conqueror! We had a cinch. Not a thing to do but chase them out of their holes! I had my plans concerning Saxton and Mary, so Jim held the final attack on the city until I was able to ride. Then he sent word to Perez and our army started--not in mass, because somebody in the rebel army might have sense enough to scout a little, but by fives and tens, slipping along back ways and short cuts until Belknap and Zampeto were surrounded on the outside by two to one, and faced by an equal force in numbers, and a far superior in courage and ability, from within. I got Oriñez and Perez to help me in the last act. We three wormed our way into the rebel town, early one morning, lying quiet in a cellar until evening came. Strange to say, the night before, Saxton met with an accident. I was handling a revolver and it went off, somehow or other, and burnt him across the back. "Christopher Columbus, Bill!" says he, "what a careless cuss you are! You've put me out of commission!" Gracious, but I was sorry! Yet, being the guilty party, I couldn't see where with decency I might do less than carry the word to Mary. That's one reason why we went into the rebels' camp. The other had to do with Belknap. He was easily capable of explaining things to his own credit, as long as he did all the talking. Now I wanted a hand in the conversation. We hid in the trees back of the fountain. Soldiers came and went. Zampeto himself, looking like a traveling jewelry-store, made a visit, but all hands were so secure in the belief of the wonderful success of the cause that they never suspected the existence of three enemies in the same garden--or even in the same one hundred square miles, for the matter of that. At last we saw Belknap; he came to the door with Zampeto. Behind him we saw the women-folk. One looked like Mary, but I couldn't be sure. Every time she moved somebody stuck his head in the way. At last Zampeto dropped something, and as he stooped to pick it up, I saw Mary plainly. She looked thin and worn, poor girl. Certain that both were in the house, I made a quick sneak across to the kitchen window, up the shutters, and in at a window on the second floor. Mary had told me the room Belknap kept as his private office. It was that window I went in.