“Don Rodrigo de Vivar,Rapaz, orgulloso, y vano.”–El Cid.
“Don Rodrigo de Vivar,Rapaz, orgulloso, y vano.”
–El Cid.
Imagine an abnormally virtuous urchin and an abnormally kindly farmer. The urchin resolutely turns his back on the farmer’s melon patch, though there is no end of opportunity. But the farmer catches him, brings him in by the ear, makes him choose a big one, and leaves him there, the sole judge of his own capacity. Driscoll had tried to dodge a fight, but Fate was his kindly farmer.
“Better fall back a little, Murgie,” he said. “You’d only scare ’em, you know.”
He himself passed on ahead. But it was mid-afternoon before anything happened. Jacqueline meantime had shown some pettish ill-humor. Those who had fought to be her escort were now singularly indifferent. Driscoll was idly curious and quietly contemptuous, but he detected no fright in her manner. “Fretting for her silver-braided Greaser,” he said to himself. “A pretty scrape she’s got herself into, too! Now I wonder why a girl can’t have any sense.” But as the answer was going to take too long to find, he swerved back to the simpler matter of a possible fracas.
“Well, well,” he exclaimed at last, rising in his stirrups, “if there isn’t her nickel-plated hero now!”
A quarter of a mile ahead, mounted, waiting stock-still across the trail, was Fra Diavolo. The American put away81his pipe and barely moved his spurred boot, yet the good buckskin’s ears pointed forward and he trotted ahead briskly. From old guerrilla habit, the cavalryman noted all things as he rode. To his left the blue of the mountain line, being nearer now, had deepened to black, and the Sierra seemed to hang over him, ominously. But the dark summits were still without detail, and midway down, where the solid color broke into deep green verdure and was mottled by patches of dry slabs of rock, there was yet that massive blur which told of distance. Foothills had rolled from the towering slide, and mounds had tumbled from the hills, and a tide of giant pebbles had swept down from the mounds. These rugged boulders had turned the trail, so that the American was riding beneath a kind of cliff. To his right, on the east of the trail, the boulders were smaller and scattered, like a handful of great marbles flung across the cactus plain. He may have glanced toward this side especially, at the clumps of spiny growth over the pradera, and caught glimpses behind the strewn rocks, but his look was casual, unstartled. He breathed deeply, though. The old familiar elation set him vaguely quivering and tingling, with nervous, subtle desire. The young animal’s excess of life surged into a pain, almost. Even the buckskin, knowing him, took his mood, and held high his nostrils.
Fra Diavolo’s peaked beaver, his jacket, his breeches, his high pommeled saddle, his great box stirrups, the carabine case strapped behind, all be-scrolled with silver, danced hazily to the magic of rays slanting down from the lofty Sierra line. Like himself, his horse was a thing of spirited flesh, for glorious display. The glossy mane flowed luxuriantly. The tail curved to the ground. A mountain lion’s skin covered his flanks. He was large and sleek and black, with the metal and pride of an English strain. He was a carved war-charger. The man astride was rigid, stately. Man and horse had a heroic statue’s promise of instant, furious life.
82“Oh, la beauté d’un homme!” cried Jacqueline, perceiving the majestic outline silhouetted against the rocks. “Why, why–it’s Fra Diavolo!”
“It–it is!” confessed Murguía. There was dread, not surprise, in his exclamation. The waiting horseman, and a lonely hut there behind him–none other than a brigand “toll-station”–these were but too significant of an old and hated rendezvous. Don Anastasio got to his feet and nervously hurried his caravan back a short distance. Then he ran ahead again and overtook the two Frenchwomen. “Señoritas, wait! Neither of you need go. But I will–I must, but I can go alone, while you––”
“Why, what ails the man?”
“Back, señorita, back, before he sees you!”
Jacqueline looked at the imploring eyes, at the palsied hand on her bridle. “Berthe,” she said, “here’s your little monsieur getting constitutional again.”
“Youwillgo, señorita?”
“Parbleu!” said the girl, and lashed her mustang.
“Dios, Dios,” gasped the little monsieur, hurrying after them, “when Maximiliano hears of this––”
“You should see Maximilian when he is angry,” Jacqueline called over her shoulder. “It is very droll.”
Din Driscoll had vaulted to the ground in the instant of halting. Immediately he led his horse behind the solitary hut, which was ajacalof bamboo and thatch built under the cliff, and left him there. Demijohn was a seasoned campaigner, and he would not move until his trooper came for him. When Driscoll emerged again, his coat was over his left arm, and the pockets were bulging. Fra Diavolo had already saluted him, but gazed down the trail at the two women approaching.
“How are you, captain?” Driscoll began cordially.
Fra Diavolo looked down from his mighty seat. “Ai, mi coronel, I was expecting Your Mercy.”
83“Honest, now? Or weren’t you worrying lest I’d got left back in Tampico?”
One of the ranchero’s hands rose, palm out, deprecatingly.
“But someone might have told you I didn’t get left at all,” Driscoll pursued. “Segundino maybe? Or was it Juan?”
“Or Don Tiburcio?” suggested the captain. He dismounted and doffed his big sombrero. “Good, I see you brought Her Ladyship safely.”
“Or I myself, rather,” said Jacqueline, reining in her pony at the moment, “Ah, the Señor Capitan as an escort knows how to make himself prized by much anticipation.”
“Señorita!” The Mexican bent in heavy ceremony, the sombrero covering his breast. “I am honored, even in Your Mercy’s censure. Those who deserve it could not appreciate it more.”
“Forward then, captain. On with the excuses, I promise to believe them.”
“Those sailors, my lady, who fight with kicks. Ugh!–they attacked some of my men this morning in Tampico. I had to call at the fort for aid.”
“Oh, but Maximilian shall hear of this!”
“I think he will,” and Fra Diavolo bowed again, hiding the gleam of a smile. “But I forget, your compatriot––”
“Monsieur Ney?–Yes?”
“He meant to help the sailors––”
“But he was not hurt?”
“Oh, no, no! But he had to be held in the fort.”
“That poor Michel!”
“So,” the syllable fell weightily, as if to crush Ney out of her thoughts, “here I am at last, to claim the distinguished pleasure of seeing Your Ladyship to the stage at Valles.”
Din Driscoll had been gazing far away at the mountains, his thumbs tucked in his belt. He stood so that the Mexican was between him and the scattered boulders on the right of the84trail. Now he addressed the mountains. “The stage at Valles? There is no stage at Valles–– And, captain,” he dropped Nature abruptly, and turned on the man, “who are you, hombre? Come, tell us!”
If Fra Diavolo were a humbug, he was not nearly so dismayed as one might expect. For that matter, neither was Jacqueline. She inquired of Driscoll how he knew more about stage lines than the natives themselves. Because the natives themselves were not of one mind, he replied. For instance, Murgie’s muleteers had assured him fervidly that there was such a stage, whereas passing wayfarers had told him quite simply that there was not, nor ever had been.
Jacqueline’s gray eyes, wide open and full lashed, turned on Fra Diavolo. “You are,” she exclaimed, noiselessly clapping her hands as at a play, “then you are–Oh,whoare you?”
The Mexican straightened pompously. “Who?” he repeated deep in his chest, “who, but one at Your Mercy’s feet! Who, but–Rodrigo Galán himself!”
“TheterribleRodrigo?” She wanted complete identification.
He looked at her quickly. The first darkening of a frown creased his brow. But still she was not alarmed. Berthe, however, proved more satisfying. “Oh, my dear lady!” she cried, reining in her horse closer to her mistress.
“And who,” drawled the American at a quizzical pitch of inquiry, “may Don Rodrigo be?”
“What, señor,” thundered the robber, “you don’t––” He stopped, catching sight of the timorous Murguía hovering near. “Then, look at that old man, for he at least knows that he is in the presence of Don Rodrigo. He is trembling.”
But Jacqueline was–whistling. The bristling highwayman swung round full of anger. Driscoll stared at her amazed. Then he laughed outright. “Well, well, Honorable Mr. Buccaneer of the Sierras, now maybe–– Yes, that’s what I85mean,” he added approvingly as Fra Diavolo leaped astride his charger and jerked forth two pistols from their holsters, “that’s it, get the game started!”
Jacqueline’s red lips were again pursed to whistle, but she changed and hummed the refrain instead:
“Mironton, mironton, mirontaine!”
Driscoll stared at her harder. The words were strange and meant nothing. But there was a familiarity to the tune. That at least needed no interpreter. The old ballad of troubadours, the French war song of old, the song of raillery, the song of Revolution, this that had been a folk song of the Crusader, a Basque rhyme of fairy lore, the air known in the desert tents of Happy Arabia, known to the Jews coming out of Egypt, known to the tribes in the days without history or fifes–why, if this wasn’t the rollicking, the defiant pæan of Americans! But how came she by it, and by what right?
“‘And we won’t go home till morning,’” he joined in, inquisitively.
The girl paused, as explorers singing it have paused when savages never before seen by white men joined in with barbarian words. But she went on, letting the miracle be as it might.
“‘The news I bear, fair lady––’”
“‘The news I bear, fair lady––’”
she sang, and nodded at the bandit, to indicate that here washisline,
“‘The news I bear, fair lady, Will cause your eyes to weep.’”
“‘The news I bear, fair lady, Will cause your eyes to weep.’”
“’––Till daylight doth appear,’” Driscoll finished it with her. Then both looked up like two children, to the awful presence on horseback.
Don Rodrigo was at some pains to recover himself. A helpless girl and one lone trooper were practising a duet under his very frown. Only a glance toward the boulders and cacti reassured him.
86“Well, what next?” Jacqueline demanded sweetly. “Is it to be the–the ‘game’ at last?”
“One word,” said the Mexican solemnly. Straight in his saddle, he fixed them with keen eyes, keen, black eyes under shaggy brows. The syllables fell portentously. His voice deepened as far away thunder. “One word first,” growled the awakening lion. “You know now that I am Don Rodrigo Galán. Yes, I am he, the capitan of guerrillas, the rebel, the brigand, the hunted fugitive. Such names of ignominy a true patriot must bear because he dares to defy his poor country’s oppressors.” Here Fra Diavolo scowled; he was getting into form. “But to His Majesty in our own Mexican capital, to His Glorious Resplendent Most Christian, Most Catholic, priest-ridden, bloodthirsty, foppish, imbecile decree-making fool of a canting majesty–to this Austrian archduke who drove forth the incarnation of popular sovereignty by the brutal hand of the foreign invader–to him I will yet make it known that the love of liberty, that the loyalty to Liberal Reforms, to the Constitution, to Law and Order, to–uh–are not yet dead in these swamps and mountains of our Patria. And he will know it when he–when he hears my demand for your ransom, Señorita Marquesa. He will know it, too, when he learns that Captain Maurel–a Frenchman, señorita, not a Mexican–now lies stark in death in the brush near Tampico, where he came to take and to hang the steadfast patriot, Rodrigo Galán. But his Tender-Hearted Majesty will grieve less for that than for the loss of you, Señorita–Jacqueline. For is it not known that you, the first lady of honor to the Empress, that you are also His Majesty’s––”
“My faith,” said Jacqueline, “he speaks Spanish well!”
Thus she stopped the insult. Also she stopped an unforeseen champion at her side. Driscoll, with pistol half drawn, was willing to be checked. A shot just then, placed as they were,87would mean a bad ending to the game. That he knew. So he was thankful for Jacqueline’s hand on his wrist.
Forked eloquence was silenced by now. Yet the patriot had been in earnest, under the spell of his own ardor. Don Anastasio, with head bowed, had listened in sullen sympathy. But both Mexicans started as though stung at Jacqueline’s applauding comment. Don Rodrigo purpled with rage. She only looked back at him, so provokingly demure, that something besides the ransom got into his veins. He wet his lips, baring the unpleasant gleam of teeth.
“Come!” he said thickly. “You and your maid go with me.”
Driscoll’s jaw dropped. “Diablos,” he exclaimed, bewildered, “you don’t mean–– Look, Don Roddy, you’re crazy! Such things––”
“Come!”
“But I tell you it’s foolish. Such things do not happen, unless in melodrama.”
For reply the guerrilla chief wheeled his charger and caught the bridles of the two horses that the girls rode. He pulled, so as to leave exposed the troublesome American behind them.
“Grands dieux,” exclaimed Jacqueline, “have the men in this country nothing to do except catch my bridle! But really, sir, this situation is forced. It is not artistic. As–as Monsieur the Chevalier says, it’s quite impossible.”
She looked around for Monsieur the Chevalier to make it so, but to her dismay, to her disgust, he had taken to his heels. He was running away, as fast as he could go. Then her horse reared, for musket firing had suddenly, mysteriously begun on all sides of her. Many fierce pairs of eyes were bobbing up from behind the boulders on the right of the trail; yellow-brown faces, like a many-headed Hydra coiled in the cacti. They were shooting, not at her, but at the fleeing American.88She felt an object in her hand, which Driscoll had thrust there, and she remembered that he had whispered something, though she had forgotten what.
Her captor was straining at the bridle. In his frenzy he leaned over, to lift her from the saddle, and then she struck him across the face with her whip. And then, with what the American had put in her other hand, she struck again. The weapon was Driscoll’s short hunting knife. The blade grazed Rodrigo’s shoulder. He loosed his hold, and before he could prevent, both she and Berthe were in the shack under the cliff. The maid sank to the floor. The mistress stood in the doorway. There was a glint in the gray eyes not lovable in man or woman, but in her it was superb.
Fifty feet back up the trail she saw Driscoll scaling the cliff. That demon yelling, which is the first spasm of Mexican warfare, had not ceased, and each demon was shooting as fast as he could reload. She saw the white dust spurt out from the bullet peppered rock. But either the sun slanting down from the mountain line was in their eyes, or they were disconcerted at the American’s change in their plans; at any rate their laboriously ascending target did not drop. Up he climbed. Jacqueline wondered why he still clung to the jacket over his arm, as people will cling to absurd things in time of panic.
“To go through that peril, and yet a coward!” she murmured. “It’s a waste––”
The runaway gained the top of the embankment, and fell behind a rock. And now a half dozen of the little demons were coming across the trail to the shack–to take her.
“Oh, the frisson, the ecstasy!” she cried. There was a certain poignant sense of enjoyment in it.
“Ah, Captain, here goes for a fine-drawn bead;There’s music around when my barrel’s in tune.”–Song of the Fallen Dragoon.
“Ah, Captain, here goes for a fine-drawn bead;There’s music around when my barrel’s in tune.”
–Song of the Fallen Dragoon.
Din Driscoll tumbled himself over among the rocks. “There, I’m fixed,” he grunted, as he squatted down behind his earthworks. “Plenty of material here”–he meant the cartridges which he poured from his coat pockets into his hat–“and plenty out there too”–indicating the Hydra heads–“and my pipe–I’ll have a nice time.” He got to work busily.
In the door of the shack Jacqueline saw the campaign for her possession begin. Don Rodrigo had fled to the corner of the shack, taking his horse with him. The hut of bamboo and thatch was no protection against Driscoll’s fire, but the two girls, though inside the hut, were between and afforded a better screen. Jacqueline did not, however, hold that against her Fra Diavolo. To save himself behind a woman was quite in keeping with his sinister rôle. And she, as an artist, could not reproach him, and as a woman she did not care. But the American’s running away–now that was out of character, and it disappointed her.
She heard Rodrigo bellowing forth an order, and she saw five or six guerrillas rise out of the cacti and spring toward her. But the constant shadow of self-introspection haunted her even then. In her despair, and worse, in her disgust, feeling already those filthy hands upon her, she yet appraised this jewel among ecstatic shudders, and she knew in her heart that she would not have had it otherwise.
90“Oh, am I ever tolive!” she moaned in startled wonderment at herself. “Always a spectator, always, even of myself!–God, dost thou know? It is a robbery of living!” And the vagabonds were twenty paces away!
Something hurt her hand, she opened her clenched palm; it was the horn handle of Driscoll’s knife. Had she really thought to defend herself with that inadequate thing? “Poof!” She tossed it from her, vexed at her own unconscious heroics. Then two dark arms reached out, nearer and nearer, and ten hooked fingers blurred her vision. But the arms shot upward, the fingers stiffened, and a body splashed across the doorway at her feet with the sound of a board dropped on water.
“Ai, poor man!”
She was on her knees, bending over him. But a second of the vermin lurched against her, and he too lay still. A pistol report from the cliff was simultaneous with each man’s fall. Both were dead. A third sank in the trail with a shattered hip, and another behind knew the agony of a broken leg. The marksman’s mercy was evidently tempered according to distance. For, having the matter now under control, he nonchalantly cracked only shin bones. Fra Diavolo from his shelter roared commands and curses, but not another imp would show himself. Crouched jealously, they chose rather to besiege their lone enemy on the cliff.
“Must have howitzers,” muttered Driscoll. The soft lead, bigger than marbles, went “Splut! Splut!” against the rock on all sides of him, flattening with the windy puff of mud on a wall. But he was well intrenched, and as the guerrillas were also, he lighted his pipe and smoked reflectively. But after awhile he perceived a slight movement, supplemented by a carabine. One of the besiegers was working from boulder to boulder, parallel with the trail. He did it with infinite craft. At first the fellow crawled; then, when out of pistol range, he got to his feet and ran. Still running, he crossed the trail at91a safe distance beyond the hut, and began working back again, this time along the cliff, and toward Driscoll. When about a hundred yards away, he disappeared; which is to say, he lowered himself into a little ravine that thousands of rainy seasons had worn through from the foothills. But almost at once his head and shoulders rose from the nearer bank, and Driscoll promptly fired. The shot fell short. A pistol would not carry so far; which was a tremendously important little fact, since the other fellow was aiming a rifle. The bullet from that rifle neatly clipped a prickly pear over Driscoll’s head. The strategist certainly knew his business. There was a familiar shimmer of silver about his high peaked hat. Yes surely, he was Don Tiburcio, the loyal Imperialist of the baleful eye. No doubt the malignant twinkle gleamed in that eye now, even as the blackmailer bit a cartridge for the next shot. A victim who had only pistols, and at rifle range, and with not a pebble for shelter from the flank bombardment–it was assuredly a situation to tickle Don Tiburcio.
Now Driscoll’s point of view was less amusing. To change his position, he must expose himself to a fusilade from across the way. And if he tried to rush his friend of the gully, the brigands meantime would carry off the two girls. A gentleman’s part, therefore, was to stay where he was and be made a target of. But he varied it a little. At Don Tiburcio’s second shot, he lunged partly to his feet and fell forward as though mortally wounded. He lay quite still, and soon Don Tiburcio came creeping toward him. Don Tiburcio was thinking of his lost toll-moneys that should be on the corpse. Driscoll waited, his nerves alert, his pistols ready. But just beyond range, the blackmailer paused.
“Go for the women, you idiots,” he yelled. “The Gringo’s dead.”
The idiots verified the title straightway, for up they popped from behind their boulders and started for the shack.
92“’Possuming’s no use,” Driscoll muttered, then fired. The guerrillas got back to cover quickly enough, and so did Don Tiburcio, grinning over his stratagem. In his arroyo again, he proposed to make the Gringo as a sieve. Each bullet from his carabine twanged lower and lower. “Ouch!” ejaculated Driscoll. One had furrowed his leg, and it hurt. He looked anxiously, to see if the Mexican were lowering his aim yet more. An inch meant such a great deal just then. But a tremendous surprise met him. For Don Tiburcio had changed his mind. The rascal was firing in another direction entirely, firing rapturously, firing at his very allies, at the little imps themselves among the boulders and nettles. And the little imps were positively leaping up to be shot. They ran frantically, but straight toward the traitor, and on past him up the trail. The Storm Centre could not shoot lunatics any more than he could babies. He only stared at them open mouthed.
“Los Cosacos!–El Tigre! Los Cosacos!” they yelled, scrambling out upon the road, bleeding, falling, praying, and kissing whatever greasy amulet or virgin’s picture they owned.
Then there beat into Driscoll’s ears the furious clatter of hoofs. It deafened him, the familiar, glorious din of it. The blood raged in his veins like fiery needle points. To see them–the cavalry, the cavalry! Then they were gone–a flashing streak of centaurs, a streamer of red in a blur of dust, maniac oaths, and pistol shots, and sweeping sabres. Hacked bodies were sucked beneath the swarm as saplings under an avalanche. Driscoll sprang up and gazed. Through eddying swirls he still could see red sleeved arms reach out, and lightning rays of steel, and half-naked fleeting creatures go down, and never a jot of the curse’s speed abate.
“Lordy, but Old Joe should ’a seen it!” he fairly shouted. He was thinking of Shelby, of the Old Brigade back in Missouri; daredevils, every one of them.
93Don Tiburcio had sighted the vengeful horde from afar, and had recognized them, since he was, in fact, one of their scouts. They were the Contra Guerrillas, the Cossacks, the scourge wielded by the French Intervention and the Empire. And they were Don Tiburcio’s cue to loyalty. For seeing them, he began firing on his late friends, the brigands. Yet he spared their Capitan. At the first alarm Fra Diavolo had vaulted astride his black horse, and Tiburcio darting out, had caught his bridle, and turned him into the dry bed of the arroyo. Others of the fugitives tried to escape by this same route, but Tiburcio fought them off with clubbed rifle, and in such occupation was observed by him who led the Cossacks, who was a terrible old man, and a horseman to give the eye joy. At the gully he swerved to one side, and let the hurricane pass on by.
“Sacred name of thunder,” he cursed roundly, “a minute later and––”
“Si, mi coronel,” the faithful Tiburcio acknowledged gratefully, “Your Excellency came just in time.”
The colonel of Contra Guerrillas frowned a grim approval for his scout’s handiwork of battered skulls. He was a man of frosted visage, a grisly Woden. The hard features were more stern for being ruggedly venerable. His beard was wiry, hoary gray, through whose billowy depth a long black cigar struck from clenched teeth. If eyes are windows of the soul, his were narrow, menacing slits, loopholes spiked by bristling brows. Two deep creases between the eyes furrowed their way up and were lost under an enormously wide sombrero. This sombrero was low crowned, like those worn farther to the south, and ornately flowered in silver. His chest was crossed with braid, cords of gold hung from the right shoulder to the collar, and the sleeves were as glorious as a bugler’s. His brick-red jacket fell open from the neck, exposing the whitest of linen. His boots were yellow, his spurs big Mexican94discs. Altogether the blend in him of the precise military and the easy ranchero was curiously picturesque. But Colonel Dupin, the Tiger of the Tropics, was a curious and picturesque man. His medals were more than he could wear, and each was for splendid daring. But on a time they had been stripped from him. It happened in China. He had made a gallant assault on the Imperial Palace, but he had also satiated his barbarian soul in carnage and loaded his shoulders with buccaneering loot. And though he wondered at his own moderation, a court martial followed. However, Louis Napoleon gave him back his medals, and sent him to Mexico to stamp out savagery by counter savagery.
“There were two accomplices in this business,” the Tiger was saying, “one a trader, Murguía––”
“Killed him my very first shot,” lied Tiburcio. He would save his golden goose of the golden eggs.
“And the other, an American?”
“Got away with the others, señor.” Again Tiburcio’s reason was obvious. The American, if taken, might tell things.
“And”–Dupin gripped his cigar hungrily–“and Rodrigo?”
For answer the scout waved a hand vaguely up the trail.
“None went that way?” and the Colonel jerked his head toward the ravine.
“No, none. Your Mercy saw me driving them back.”
“Quick, then, on your horse! We’re losing time.”
Don Tiburcio was reluctant. He had not yet recovered his money from the American. “But the women, mi coronel? They are there, in that shack. Hadn’t I better stay––?”
“Jacqueline, you mean? Of course the little minx is in trouble, the second she touches land. But you come with me. She shall have another protector.”
Tiburcio knew the Cossack chief. He obeyed, and both men galloped away after the chase.
“COLONEL DUPIN”“The Tiger of the Tropics ... the chief of Contra Guerrillas”
“COLONEL DUPIN”“The Tiger of the Tropics ... the chief of Contra Guerrillas”
95They had not gone far when they passed Michel Ney swiftly returning. He was the protector Dupin had in mind. He had seen Jacqueline in the doorway of the hut as he stormed past with the Contra Guerrillas, but he had been too enthusiastic to stop just then. He was a Chasseur d’Afrique, and to be a Chasseur d’Afrique was to ride in a halo of mighty sabre sweeps. And Michel had fought Arabs too–but the good simplicity of his countenance was woefully ruffled as he turned back from that charge of the Cossacks.
“Michel!” cried Jacqueline, stepping over the forms of men before the hut, and forgetting them. The natty youth was torn, rumpled, grimy. The sky-blue of his uniform was gray with dust. But to see him at all proved that he had escaped Fra Diavolo’s web in Tampico. And the relief! It made her almost gay. “Ah, Michel–le beau sabreur!–and did you enjoy it, mon ami?”
He alighted at her feet, and raised her hand to his lips.
“Monsieur,” she demanded quick as thought, “my trunk?”
“Mon Dieu, mademoiselle, I did well to bring myself.”
“You should have brought my trunk, sir, first of all. Deign to look at this frock! No, no, don’t, please don’t. But tell me everything. What could have happened to you last night? Why did you not meet me this morning?”
His story was brief. Of his contemplated strategy at Tampico, there had been a most lugubrious botching. The night before, when he started to the fort for aid, Fra Diavolo’s little Mexicans had waylaid him, bound him, and dragged him back to the café, where Jacqueline that very moment reposed in slumber. And there, in a back room without a window, he had gritted his teeth until morning. As for the sailors, who were to return to the ship for her trunk; well, more little Mexicans had fired on them from the river bank. The small boat, riddled with shot, had sunk, and the sailors, splashing frantically to keep off the sharks, had gained the shore opposite.96But they could neither get word to the ship, nor cross back to Tampico.
“Yet,” demanded Jacqueline, “how could you know all this, there in your prison room?”
“Am I saying I did, name of a name? Well, those poor sailors wandered about all night in the swamps across the river, and this morning they ran into Colonel Dupin and his Contras, and the colonel was frothing mad. He had only just stumbled on the bodies of Captain Maurel and some of his men, who had been ambushed and murdered. Poor Maurel was dangling from a tree among the vultures. Others were mutilated. Some had even been tortured. And all were stripped, and rotting naked. Mon Dieu, mon dieu, but it’s an inferno, this country!”
“Yes, yes, but how did they find you?”
“Colonel Dupin simply brought the sailors back to Tampico and searched that café, and got me out. The proprietor wasn’t thought to be any too good an Imperialist, anyway. They shot him, and then we came right along here.”
“Very nice of you, I am sure.”
“Not at all. Dupin isn’t thinking of anybody but your Fra Diavolo, who must have killed Captain Maurel.–Was he here?”
“Who? Don Rodrigo?”
“Don Rodrigo?”
“Of course. He’s the same as Fra Diavolo.”
“You mean that bandit,” cried Ney, “that terrible Rodrigue? But he is dead, don’t you remember, Fra Diavolo said so?”
“Stupid! Fra Diavolo is Don Rodrigo himself.”
“Not dead then? And I’ll meet him yet! But,” and his sudden hope as suddenly collapsed, “Dupin will get him first.”
“I think not, because Rodrigo did not take the trail.”
“Then which way did he go? Quick, please, mademoiselle, which way?”
97“He turned off into that arroyo.”
“Oh, what chance, what luck!” But the boy stopped with his foot in the stirrup. “No, mademoiselle, I can’t leave you!”
“Oh yes you can. I daresay there’s another champion about.” She glanced up at the cliff. “And besides, all danger is past. The donkey caravan is still here, and for company, I have Berthe, of course.”
“Really, mademoiselle?”
“Yes, Michel, really.”
“Good, I’m off! But we will meet you at–Dupin just told me–at the next village on this same trail. Now I’m off!” He was indeed. “I say, mademoiselle,” he called back, “I’m glad we left the ship, aren’t you?”
Jacqueline turned hastily her gaze from the cliff. He startled her, expressing her own secret thought.
Chasseur and steed vanished in the ravine, and she smiled. “The God of pleasant fools go with him,” she murmured.
“Il y a des offenses qui indignent les femmes sans les déplaire.”–Emile Augier.
“Il y a des offenses qui indignent les femmes sans les déplaire.”
–Emile Augier.
Like another Black Douglas, Din Driscoll rose among the crags, the dark tufts curling stubbornly on his bared head. He looked a sinewy, toughened Ajax. But he only spoiled it. For, raising his arms, he stretched himself, stretched long and luxuriously. His very animal revelling in the huge elongation of cramped limbs was exasperating. Next he clapped the slouch on his head, and clambered down.
Jacqueline might have been surprised to see him. Her brows lifted. “Not killed?” she exclaimed. “But no, of course not. You gave yourself air, you ran away.”
Driscoll made no answer. He was thinking of what to do next. She knew that he had run because of her, and she was piqued because he would not admit it. “So,” she went on tauntingly, “monsieur counts his enemy by numbers then?”
“Didn’t count them at all,” he murmured absently.
“But,” and she tapped her foot, “a Frenchman, he would have done it–not that way.”
She was talking in English, and the quaintness of it began to create in him a desire for more. “Done what, miss?” he asked.
“He would not have run–a Frenchman.”
“Prob’bly not, ’less he was pretty quick about it.”
She looked up angrily. Of course he must know that he had been splendid, up there behind the rocks. And now to99be unconscious of it! But that was only a pose, she decided. Yet what made him so stupidly commonplace, and so dense? She hated to be robbed of her enthusiasm for an artistic bric-à-brac of emotion; and here he was, like some sordid mechanic who would not talk shop with a girl.
“I wager one thing,” she fretted, “and it is that when you bring men down to earth you have not even at all–how do you say?–the martial rage in your eyes?”
“W’y, uh, not’s I know of. It might spoil good shooting.”
“And your pipe”–her lip curled and smiled at the same time–“the pipe does not, neither?”
His mouth twitched at the corners. “N-o,” he decided soberly, “not in close range.”
She gave him up, he had no pose. Still, she was out of patience with him. “Hélas! monsieur, all may see you are Ameri-can. But there, you have not to feel sorry. I forgive you, yes, because–it wasn’t dull.”
“Hadn’t we better be––”
“Now what,” she persisted, “kept you so long up there, for example?”
Driscoll reddened. He had lingered behind the screen of rock to bandage his furrowed leg. “S’pose you don’t ask,” he said abruptly, “there’s plenty other things to be doing.”
He turned and invited the little Breton maid to come from the shack. She was white, and trembled a little yet. “I knew, I knew you would not leave us, monsieur,” she was trying to tell him. “But if you had–oh, what would madame––”
“Now then,” the practical American interrupted, “where’s Murgie?”
Jacqueline pointed with the toe of her slipper. There were prostrate bodies around them, with teeth bared, insolent, silent, horrible. One couldn’t be sorry they were dead, but one didn’t like to see them. Jacqueline’s boot pointed to a100man lying on his face. A silk hat was near by in the dust. A rusty black wig was loosened from his head. The girl invoked him solemnly. “Arise, Ancient Black Crow, and live another thousand years.”
Driscoll lifted the shrunken bundle of a man, held him at arm’s length, looked him over, and stood him on his feet. The withered face was more than ever like a death’s head, and the eyes were glassy, senseless. But as to hurt or scratch, there was none. The beady orbs started slowly in their sockets, rolling from side to side. The lips opened, and formed words. “Killed? yes, I am killed. But I want–my cotton, my burros, my peons–I want them. I am dead, give them to me.”
“You’re alive, you old maverick.”
The gaze focused slowly on Driscoll, and slowly wakened to a crafty leer. Believe this Gringo?–not he!
With an arm behind his shoulders Driscoll forced him down the trail to his caravan. Most of the animals were lying down, dozing under their packs. Murguía’s eyes grew watery when he saw them, but he was still dazed and his delusion was obstinate. The leer shot exultant gleams. “A rich mancanenter heaven,” he chuckled with unholy glee.
“Oh wake up, and give me two donkeys for the girls. Their horses got hit, you know.”
Then the stunned old miser began to perceive that he was not in heaven. His tyrant’s voice! “You get my horses killed,” he whined, “and now you take my burros.”
Driscoll said no more, but picked out two beasts and bound some cushioned sacking on their backs for saddles. Then with a brisk hearty word, he swept Berthe up on the first one.
“Next,” he said, turning to Jacqueline.
But the marchioness drew back. Next–after her maid! It nettled her that this country boy, or any other, could not101recognize in her that indefinable something which is supposed to distinguish quality.
“What’s the matter, now?” he asked. “Quick, please, I’m in a hurry.”
“It’s too preposterous. I’ll not!”
“You will,” he said quietly.
Her gray eyes deepened to blue with amazement. She stood stock still, haughtily daring him. She even lifted her arms a little, leaving the girlish waist defenseless. Her slender figure was temptation, the pretty ducal fury was only added zest. Up among the rocks Driscoll had found himself whispering, “She’s game, that little girl!” But at the same time he had remembered Rodrigo’s innuendo, the linking of her name with Maximilian’s. She was so brave, and so headstrong, so lovably headstrong, and her beauty was so fresh and soft! Yet he could not but think of that taint in what nature had made so pure. Of a sudden there was a something wrong, something ugly and hideously wrong in life. And the country boy, the trooper, the man of blood-letting, what you will, was filled with helpless rage against it; and next against himself, because the girlish waist could thrill him so. “A silly little butterfly,” he argued inwardly. Before, he had been unaware of his own indifference. But now he angrily tried to summon it back. He set his mind on their situation, on what it exacted. It exacted haste, simple, impersonal haste. And keeping his mind on just that, he caught her up.
“Oh, you boor!” she cried, pushing at him.
His jaw hardened. His will was well nigh superhuman, for he battled against two furious little hands, against the dimple and the patch so near his lips, against the fragrance of her hair, against the subtle warmth of his burden.
“No, no!” she panted. “Monsieur, do you hear me? I am not to be carried!”
“Maybe not,” said he, carrying her.
102A moment later she discovered herself planted squarely on the burro.
“Bonté divine!” she gasped. But she took care not to fall off.
He drew a long breath.
“Now whip ’em up,” he commanded.
The first village beyond, where Dupin had promised to meet Jacqueline, was a squatting group of thatched cones in a dense forest of Cyprus and eucalyptus. Its denizens were Huasteca Indians, living as they had before the Conquest, among themselves still talking their native dialect. The name of the hamlet was Culebra.
The coy twilight waned quickly, and the caravan was still pushing on through the thick darkness of the wood, when a high tensioned yelping made the vast silence insignificant, ugly. But as the travelers filed into the clearing where the village was, the curs slunk away with coyote humility, their yellow points of eyes glowing back on the intruders.
With a forager’s direct method, Driscoll roused the early slumbering village. He would not take alfafa, he declined rastrojo. It was human food, corn, that he bought for his horse. He housed his dumb friend under a human roof too. After which he prepared a habitation for the women. He swept the likeliest hut clean of ashes, brazier, and bits of pots and jars. He carpeted the earth floor in Spanish moss, as King Arthur’s knights once strewed their halls with rushes. It was luxury for a coroneted lass, if one went back a dozen centuries. There were chinks between the sooty saplings that formed the wall, but over these he hung matting, and he drove a stake for a candle.
Supper followed. The trooper chose to change Don Anastasio from host to guest, and he exacted what he needed from the Inditos. They, for their part, were alert before his commands. None of them had been overlooked in his preliminary103largesse of copper tlacos and they made the teaming wilderness contribute to his spread. Kneeling, with sleeves rolled from his hard forearms, he broiled a steak over hickory forks. The torches of gum tree knots lighted his banquet, and the faces of the two girls, rosy in the blaze and mysterious in the shadow, were piquant inspiration. Even the sharp features of Don Anastasio stirred him into a phase of whimsical benevolence. He knocked two chickens from their perch in a tree and baked them in a mould of clay. There was an armadilla too, which a Culebra boy and the dogs had run down during the day. Its dark flesh was rich and luscious, and the Missourian fondly called it ’possum. Crisply toasted tortillas, or corn cakes, served for bread, and for spoons as well. But to Driscoll’s mind the real feast was coffee–actual coffee, which he made black, so very good and black, a riotous orgie of blackness and strength and fragrance. Here was a feast indeed for the poor trooper. He thought of the chickory, of the parched corn, of all those pitiful aggravations that Shelby’s Brigade had tried so hard to imagine into coffee during the late months of privation along the Arkansas line.
And the Marquise d’Aumerle? Learning to eat roasting ears, which somehow just would leave a grain on her cheek with every bite, the dainty Marquise thought how much finer was this than the tedious bumping ship. How much more tempting than the ultra-belabored viands on white china that had to be latticed down! Here was angel’s bread in the wilderness. And the appetite that drove her to ask for more, that was the only sauce–an appetite that was a frisson. A new sensation, in itself!
And later, sleep too became a passion, a passion new and sweet in its incantation out of the lost cravings of childhood. When the nearer freshness of the woods filled her nostrils, there from the live-oak moss in her night’s abode, she smiled on the grave young fellow who had left her at the door. And104both girls laughing together over the masculine notions for their comfort, knew a certain happy tenderness in their gaiety.
“Éh, but it’s deep, madame,” said one.
“It’s the politeness of the heart,” the other explained.
Outside Driscoll spread his blanket across the doorway where his horse was sheltered, and wrapped in his great cape-coat, he stretched himself for a smoke. But Murguía came with cigars, of the Huasteca, gray and musty. Driscoll accepted one, waving aside the old man’s apologies. He puffed and waited. Conviviality in Don Anastasio meant something.
“Ah, amigo,” the thin voice cracked in a spasm of forced heartiness, “ah, it was a banquet! Si, si, a banquet! Only, if there were but a liqueur, a liqueur to give the after-cigar that last added relish, verdad, señor?”
Driscoll tapped his “after-cigar” till the ashes fell. “Well? he asked.
“Ai de mi, caballero, but I am heavy with regrets. I can offer nothing. My poor cognac–no, not after such a feast. But whiskey–ah, whiskey is magnifico. It is American.”
He stopped, with a genial rubbing of his bony hands. But his sad good-fellowship was transparent enough, and in the darkness his eyes were beads of malice. Driscoll half grunted. A long way round for a drink, he thought. “Here,” he said, getting out his flask, “have a pull at this.”
Murguía took it greedily. He had seen the flask before. The covering of leather was battered and peeled. “Perhaps a little–water?” he faltered. Driscoll nodded, and off the old Mexican ambled with the flask. When he returned, he had a glass, into which he had poured some of the liquor. The canteen he handed back to the trooper, who without a word replaced it in his pocket. Murguía lingered. He sipped his toddy absently.
“I, I wonder why the friends of the señoritas do not come?” he ventured.
105“Want to get rid of them, eh, Murgie?”
The old man shrugged his shoulders. “And why not? You may not believe me, señor, but should I not feel easier if they were–well, out of the reach of Don Rodrigo?”
“Out of––Look here, where’s the danger now?”
“Ai, señor, don’t be too sure. Colonel Dupin still does not come, and it might be–because the guerrillas have stopped him.”
“Man alive, he had ’em running!”
“H’m, yes, but there’s plenty more. This very village breeds them, feeds them, welcomes them home. Don Rodrigo can gather ten times what he had to-day. And if he does, and if, if he is looking for the señoritas again––”
Driscoll shifted on his blanket. “I see,” he drawled. “F’r instance, if the señoritas vanish before he gets here, he won’t blame you? Oh no, you were asleep, you couldn’t know that I had up and carried ’em off. Anyhow, you’d rather risk Rodrigo than Colonel Dupin––Yes, I see.” He tucked his saddle under his head, and lay flat, blinking at the stars. “This trail go on to Valles?” he inquired drowsily.
Murguía’s small eyes brightened over him. “Yes,” he said, eagerly.
“Correct,” yawned the American, “I’ve already made sure.”
“And if––” But a snore floated up from the blanket.
When Murguía was gone, the sleeper awoke. He carefully poured out all the remaining whiskey. “It may be what they call ‘fine Italian,’” he muttered, with a disgusted shake of the head, but he neglected to throw the flask away as well. Next he saddled Demijohn and two of the pack horses, then lay down and slept in earnest, as an old campaigner snatches at rest.
The night was black, an hour before the dawn, when his eyes opened wide, and he sat up, listening. He heard it again, faint and far away, a feeble “pop-pop!” Then there were106more, a sudden pigmy chorus of battle. He got to his feet, and ran to call the two women.
“So,” said Jacqueline, appearing under the stars, “monsieur does not wish to be relieved of us? He will not wait for his friends?”
“Get on these horses! Here, I’ll help you.”
Soon they three were riding through the forest, in the trail toward Valles. Behind them the fairy popping swelled louder, yet louder, and the man glanced resentfully at his two companions. He was missing the game.
Back in the village of Culebra a demon uproar hounded Don Anastasio out of serape and slumber. All about him were fleeing feet. They were shadows, bounding like frightened deer from the wood, across the clearing, and into the wood again. Some turned and fired as they ran. Screaming women and children hurried out of thejacales, and darted here and there. Dogs howled everywhere. A storm of crashing brush and a wild troop of horsemen, each among them a free lance of butchery, burst on the village. A second crashing storm, and they were in the forest again. They left quivering blots in their wake, and a moaning gave a lower and dreadfuller note to the wailing of women. Only the leader of the pursuers, with a few others, drew rein.
“Death of an ox!” the French oath rang out, “We’re in their very nest. Quick, you loafers, the torch, the torch!”
Flames began to crackle, and in the glare Murguía was seen frantically driving burros and peons to safety. The leader of the troop leaned over in his saddle and had him by the collar.
“Who the name of a name are you?”
Don Anastasio looked up. His captor was a great bearded man. “Colonel Dupin!” he groaned.
“Who are you?–But I should know. It’s the trader, the accomplice of Rodrigo. Sacré nom, tell me, where is she? We can’t find her here. Where is she?”
107“How can I know, señor? She–perhaps she is gone.”
“With Rodrigo–ha! But he’ll have no ransom–no, not if it breaks Maximilian’s heart.–Now, Señor Trader––”
He stopped and called to him his nearest men. Murguía sank limp.
“But he hasn’t got her! Rodrigo hasn’t got her!”
“Who has then?”
“The other one, the American.”
“Which way did they go?”
“If Your Mercy will not––”
“Shoot him!” thundered the Tiger.
“But if he will tell us?” someone interposed.
It was Don Tiburcio, still the guardian angel of the golden goose.
“Bien,” growled the Tiger, “let him live then until we find the American.”
“Which way did they go?” Tiburcio whispered in Murguía’s ear.
“To, to Valles,” came the reply.
The blazing huts revealed a ghoulish joy on the miser’s face. The Gringo, not he, would now have to explain to the Tiger.