"Only!" The brigand's eyes flashed, and his voice was filled with envy. Throwing bombs among the traitors?--and magnificence like that had grown common! Yet he, whose patriotism was a passion that fed and thrived upon itself, must be barred from such exquisite satiety. Driscoll understood, and thought it droll. First there was that loyal Imperialist, Don Tiburcio, frothing chagrin because he had had to desert. And now here was this rabid Republican, heart broken over being outlawed from the ranks of his country's avengers. Again Rodrigo interrupted, more excitedly yet. "Senor, senor, you don't shoot them that way every day? What does it mean?" Both gazed across the plain to the city of domes under the green hills. Driscoll's chin raised, and he listened intently. What had commenced like indolent target practice against a beleaguered town had suddenly burst into a terrific cannonading chorus. More, there was musketry, vicious and sustained. There were troops deploying over the plain. Something critical was happening. If it were the supreme rally of the famishing Empire! Driscoll stirred uneasily. He glanced at his outlaw. He thought of the coach. To leave her with these ruffians? To miss a fight? Here was a quandary! "You are not going?" Rodrigo cried at him furiously. "Now, now," he raged, "is the hour of triumph for the incarnation of popular sovereignty. Go, I say, go, the Republic needs you!" Until those words Rodrigo had held the situation. With them he lost it, and Driscoll was master. And Driscoll grew serene, and very sweet of manner. He began filling a cob pipe. A nod of his head indicated the coach as a condition of his going. "Look, look!" Rodrigo shouted. "Oh, que viva--they're running! We've smoked them out! We've smoked them out!" Driscoll swept the country with his glasses. Thousands of men were running like frightened rabbits down the Cimatario slope, and spreading as a fan over the grassy plain. Mountain pieces boomed farewell behind them, until in abject panic they cast away carbines and scrambled the faster. But other troops were pushing up the slope opposite the town, and these were ordered ranks of infantry. Up and up they climbed, to trench after trench, and the howitzers one by one stopped short their roar. When Driscoll laid down the glasses, his face was white. Rodrigo's glee turned to uncertainty. "What--what----" "Smoked out, you fool? We're the ones smoked out!" "But those runaways?" "Are our own men, ten thousand of 'em, raw conscripts to support our batteries on the Cimatario." "But the Cimitario?" Rodrigo knew by instinct the crucial importance of the black cone. "The Cimitario is taken by the Imperialists!" Driscoll did not forget, however, the nearer contest, and as the Mexican grew frantic, he was the more coolly indifferent. "Max has everything his own way now," he added soothingly. "He can either evacuate, or go around on the north side and thrash Escobedo."