And then there was the wild, busily dangerous life with Old Joe's Brigade, with that brigade of Missouri's young firebrands. Once, stretched on the prairie, where he had dropped from exhaustion and hunger and loss of blood, the Storm Centre awoke to find a Pin Indian stooping over him for his scalp. On that occasion, the deft turning of the wrist from the waist outward, with the stripping of the pistol's hammer simultaneously, had enabled him later to restore to relatives certain other scalps already dangling from the savage's girdle. And now here he was in an adobe with walls two feet thick, and numerous saddle-colored Greasers proposing to shoot him first thing in the morning! "I'll be blessedly damned," he drawled querulously, "I object!" It was the warrior who spoke now, and with him the boy joined hands. They became as one and the same person. The common foe was without. They would see this through together, with grim stoicism, with young-blooded daredeviltry. The door opened, and one of the common foe, bearing a tray, came within. "Well, Don Erastus, how goes it?" With a pang of homesickness the Missourian thought of darkies who carried trays. "Juan Bautista, at Y'r Mercy's orders," the Dragoon corrected him. "Don John the Baptist then, como le whack?" "Bien, senor, bien." "Any theory as to what you've got there?" "Y'r Mercy's supper. The Senor Coronel Lopez does not desire that Y'r Mercy should have any complaint." "Oh, none whatever, Johnny, except what I'm to die of. Set it down, here on the feather bed." There were a few native dishes, with a botellon of water and a jar of wine. Driscoll tipped the botellon to his lips. His whiskey flask had contained poison, though the poison of ink, and as he drank, he pondered on why water should not be an antidote for the poisons that lurk in whiskey flasks. Then he wondered why such foolish conceits at such times persist in shouldering death itself out of a man's thoughts. And meanwhile, there stood the precursor of his end, in the emblematic person of a very brown John the Baptist. The fellow's gorgeous red jacket was unbuttoned, revealing a sordid dirty shirt. He was officer of the guard, and had a curiosity as to how a Gringo about to be shot would act. He waited clumsily, lantern in hand. But he was disappointed. There seemed to be nothing out of the commonplace. Some condemned Mexican, though a monotonously familiar spectacle, would yet have been more entertaining. Driscoll looked at him over the botellon. That earthen bottle had not left the prisoner's lips. It had stopped there, poised aloft by an idea. "See here," Driscoll complained, "where's the rest of the water I'm to have?" "Of what water, senor?" "For my bath, of course. Don't I die to-morrow?" "Yes, but----" "Here, this wine is too new for me. Drink it yourself, if you want." "Many thanks, senor, with pleasure. But a bath? I don't understand." "No? Don't you Mexicans ever bathe before you die?"