The others came, and heard. It was the court en banc, five Missourians and a Kansan. And the culprit was a Caesar. But they hewed forth their Justice as rugged and huge, and as true, as would the outlaw, Michel Angelo. Like him, they were their own law. Nor were they nice gentlemen, these Homeric men who spat tobacco. Finding their goddess pandered to by those who were nice gentlemen, and finding the gift of these a pretty scarf over her eye, they roughly tore it away. For them she was not that kind of a woman. "W'y, this prince is no Christian," Crittenden announced in querulous discovery. "One thousand loyally dying for their sovereign," Daniel mused, his romantic soul wavering. "Sho!" he cried the instant after, "that thing's out-dated!" "And the prince there----" began the Kansan angrily. "May just go--to--the--devil!" All swung round on one of their number. It was the parson himself who had pronounced sentence. Then they set out under the stars to attend to it. CHAPTER XVII UNDER A SPANISH CLOAK "What misadventure is so early up, That calls our person from our morning's rest?" --_Romeo and Juliet_. Just within their own bivouac four Missourians waited with eight horses. Driscoll and Boone, and the small limping shadow of Murguia between them, went on outside the sentry line toward the Alameda. When they returned, a stranger accompanied them, a little distance apart. "It's true," Driscoll whispered to those who had staid. "The trenches are filled with townsmen. _He_ took me." The Americans glanced once the stranger's way, and grunted. He was a large man, hidden to the eyes in a Spanish cloak. For all the charity of darkness, he seemed ill at ease, and held himself from them, a marked figure, alone. A leprosy in himself tainted his every thought. He would not willingly come near any man. He understood English, unhappily now for him, and Boone's warning as they mounted seared like vitriol. "Look out, Harry, don't touch the filthy skut! It'll take the rotting of death to clean your fingers." After that, even Murguia drew involuntarily away from the stranger. They circled the town widely, having only Republican challenges to quiet, and they dismounted under the trees which shade the valley to the northeast, between the Sangremal, or mound of La Cruz, and the besiegers' range of hills. Here, under La Cruz's steep bluff, the Republican general-in-chief had his quarters, and here he kept a hawk's jealous watch on the walls above, where slept his country's invader. Open battle is clear honor, so reckoned; but it takes a brave man to dive for a pearl in slime. Driscoll was the one to conduct Murguia and his gloomy companion into the presence of General Escobedo. When he rejoined the other five outside the tent, he was alone. "Well, come on," he said as he mounted under the trees. "We needn't stay for the rest of it, thank God."