Their quarry had escaped, but Driscoll was not sorry. More than once he had felt a vague shame for the unsportsmanlike chase after one lone, indomitable old man. Driscoll held a commission, which Michel Ney, happily recovering, had procured for him from the marshal. But as the American's healthy spirits, like cleansing by vigorous blood, swept the gloom from his mind, he began to wonder at the craving for bustle and forgetfulness which had made him snatch at such an offer. The corners of his mouth twisted in whimsical self-scorn. He, one of your drooping, unrequited lovers! "Shucks!" that is what he thought. And he persuaded himself that it was all over. Quite, quite persuaded himself. But as a matter of fact, he hoped that he might never have to see her again.
It was not until October of the same year that Driscoll saw actual battle in his new service. With the Fifth Lancers under Colonel Mendez, the best of the few native regiments in the field, he had been assisting at a manner of pacification. That is, they marched from town to town, and received allegiance. Guerrillas of course punished the towns later, but Maximilian would not be induced to organize a native army, and thirty thousand French could not garrison fifteen thousand leagues. They could only promenade, through sand storms, through cacti. Then the battle took place. It was the last vestige of Liberal resistance to the Empire. A few hundred men near Uruapan in Michoacan flaunted their defiance. Driscoll noticed an expectant and wolfish look in his colonel's eyes. Mendez was a strikingly handsome and gallant Indian, but his expectancy now was not for battle. It was for the battle's sequel. Michel Ney and a squad of Chasseurs had just brought him an Imperial packet from the City, and the packet contained general orders very much to his Indian taste.
The fight was a rousing one, and Driscoll enjoyed himself for the first time in many days. His Mexicans behaved as he could have wished, better than he had hoped. At the start in the familiar uproarious hell, he missed the hard set, exultant faces of his old Jackson county troop, and seeing only tawny visages through the smoke and hearing only foreign yells, he felt a queer twinge of homesickness. But he was at once ashamed, for the humble little chocolate centaurs whom he had been set to train were dying about him with lethargic cynicism, just as they were bidden. Wearing a charm, either the Virgin's picture in a tin frame, or the cross, they might have worn the crescent. They were as effective as Moslems. They were ruthless fatalists.