Poor Don Anastasio behaved like a man insane. He wrung his hands. He protested stoutly, then incoherently. He whined. He glared vengefully at the dread sail on the horizon, and then he shrank from it, as from a flaming sword. And as it grew larger, his eyeballs rounded and dried into smaller discs. But at once he would remember his darling cotton that must go to the waves, and the beady eyes swam again in moisture, like greenish peas in a sickly broth. Avarice and terror in discord played on the creature as the gale through the whimpering cordage.

“Try–try more turpentine,” said Murguía weakly.

“Yes, or salt bacon, sir, or cognac, or the woodwork, or any blarsted thing I see fit, sir!” The little skipper hit out each item with a step downward to the deck, and five minutes later Murguía groaned, for bale after bale came tumbling out of the hold. Then over they began to go, the first, the second, the third, and another, and another, and after each went a moan from Anastasio. He leaned through the window to see one tossing in the waves, then suffered a next pang to see the next follow after. It was an excruciating cumulus of grief. The trooper regarded him quizzically. Destruction of merely worldly goods had become routine for him. He returned to his contemplation of the two funnels.

The skipper came back, dripping with pray. “The wind’s changin’,” he said, “and that’ll beat down the sea some.”

“Reckon they’ll get us?” Driscoll asked.

Murguía took the query as an aggravation of woe, and he turned wrathfully on the trooper. “Don’t you see we’re busy?”

“I see you’re very damn sullen, gra-cious me!–Reckon they will, captain?”

“We’ll be eatin’ a United States of America supper, chained, sir.”

“Now look here,” said Driscoll plaintively, “I don’t want to get caught.”

“But I hope as you’ll bide with us, sir?”

“Still, I was just thinking–now that smoke––”

“And I’m a thinkin’ you don’t see much smoke. We’re keepin’ out o’ sight as long as God’ll let us.”

The skipper was first impatient. But as that did no good, he cocked himself for a laugh. Then his mouth puckered to a brisk attention, and at the last word he jumped to his feet. “Damme!” he said, and went thumping down the steps again. He splashed through the water on deck, minding the stiff wind not at all, and dived into the engine-room.

“Soft coal!” gasped Murguía with relief.

It was pouring from the stacks in dense black clouds.

The captain returned. “We’ll try to save the rest o’ that ’ere cotton, sir,” he said.

He looked out at the trembling smoke that betrayed their course so rashly, and from there back to the pursuer on the horizon. He waited a little longer, carefully calculating; then sent an order down the tube to the engineer. The dampers were shut off, and the fuel was changed to anthracite. Soon the smoke went down, and a hazy invisible stream puffed from the funnels instead. The Luz swung at right angles to her former course. The paddles threshed hopefully, and on she sped, leaving no track. The skipper gazed back at the lowering line, which ended abruptly on their port and trailed off toward the horizon with a telegraphy of deceit for the distant sail.

“You soldiers, colonel,” he announced, “don’t ’ave no monopoly on tricks and gammon, I’m a thinkin’. But I s’y, w’at if you and me go down to my cabin and have a noggin?”

Yet what perhaps aggravated the old man most was curiosity. He craved to know the errand of his young despot. In the doorway of the Tampico mesón he still hovered near, and ventured more questions.

“How was it that, that you happened to be sent, señor?” he asked.

“Well now,” observed the trooper, “there you go figuring it out that I was sent at all.”

“It must have been–uh, because you know Spanish. Are you a–a Texan, Señor Coronel?”

“They raised me in Missouri,” said the colonel. “But I learned to talk Pan-American some on the Santa Fé trail. We had wagon trains out of Kansas City when I was a good sight younger.”

“I thought,” said the old man suspiciously, “that perhaps you learned it with Slaughter’s army, along the Rio Grande. Slaughter, he’s near Brownsville yet, isn’t he?”

“Is he?”

“With about twenty-five thousand men?”

“Lord, I’ve clean forgot, not having counted ’em lately.”

“Where did you come from then, when you came to Mobile?”

“W’y, as I remember, from Sand Spring, Missouri, near the Arkansas line.”

A more obscure crossroads may not exist anywhere, but its bare mention had a curious effect on the prying Don Anastasio. In the instant he seemed to cringe before his late passenger.

“Then you–Your Mercy,” he exclaimed, “belongs to Shelby’s Brigade?”

“And, and how many men has Shelby at Sand Spring?”

“Oh, millions. At least millions don’t appear to stop ’em any.”

“But señor, how, how many Confederates are there altogether west of the Mississippi?”

Driscoll, though, had had enough. “Look here Murgie,” he said, “if you keep on crawling, you’ll crawl up on a mongoose one of these days, and those things have teeth.”

He might have gone further into natural history, but a sudden commotion down the street interrupted. “It’s a race!” he cried. “No–Lordsake, if they ain’t fighting!”

He drew off his coat, took the pipe from his mouth, and shoved it into his hip pocket, all with the air of a man who has smoked enough and must be getting to work. His brown eyes quickened. It was akin to the satisfaction a merchant feels who scents an unexpected order. He was ready to deliver the goods instantly. His heavy boots went clattering and his great spurs jangling, and soon he was stooping over two men rolling in the dust. But he straightened and thrust his hands into his pockets. He was disappointed. The unexpected order was a hoax. The combatants were one to one, and he could not fairly enter into competition. Then an unaccustomed method for getting into the bidding occurred to him. He might be peacemaker. He leaned over again, to separate them. Each long-fingered hand reached for a collar. Yet even as he caught hold one of his prizes went limp in his grasp. He pulled out the survivor, who proved to be a ragged Mexican with a knife. The other was a French sailor. Driscoll shook the native angrily, whereupon the little demon swung the knife with vicious intent. But Driscoll held him at arm’s length, and the sweeps fell short, to the amazement and rage of his captive.

But the chocolate-hided only squirmed to get away. Driscoll glanced up the street whence the two had come. At the next corner, before a café, he saw things more promising. A ranchero with a drawn revolver was holding off a young officer in sky-blue uniform, while around them a swarm of natives and ten or eleven sailors were circling uneasily, as if waiting for some sign to begin hostilities. The joy of battle dilated the trooper’s nostrils.

“W’y, here I’ve been wasting time on a smaller edition.”

So saying, he flung aside his prisoner; and in another minute he was the centre of the main affair, and having an excellent time.

Into the crowd before the café, the Storm Centre pushed the argument of shoulders, and quickly gained for himself the place which his pseudonym indicated. Then he stopped, and looked puzzled. Which side to take? The French, being outnumbered, offered the larger contract.

“What’s the row?” Driscoll inquired of Ney. But he was ignored. “Might answer,” he suggested insidiously, “for it’s only a toss-up anyhow which way I enlist. Look here, Sky-Blue, if you don’t understand Spanish, just say so, and tell me why you don’t start the game.”

Ney shoved him aside impatiently, but he calmly stepped back again.

“Come now,” he argued plaintively, “let me in, don’t be selfish? But–goodness gracious, man, why don’t you draw your gun?”

“Because, my good fellow, I haven’t any.”

With his left hand Driscoll next drew forth the second of the brace, and held it out to Ney in his palm. The Chasseur seized the weapon joyfully. He straightened as the humiliation of a disarmed soldier fell from him. But at once his face clouded, and with an oath he handed back the navy-six.

“W’y, what’s the matter?” asked Driscoll.

“You are trifling, man. That thing has no trigger.”

Much as an artisan would explain the peculiarities of a favorite tool, Driscoll said, “Now look here, you strip it–this way–so.”

And as he explained, he illustrated. He raised the hammer under his thumb, he released it on the cartridge, and Fra Diavolo’s sombrero flew off.

Fra Diavolo threw up his hand involuntarily, and there was a second report. Fra Diavolo’s pistol twisted out of his grasp. The brace of navies had not gone higher than the American’s waist.

“So,” Driscoll concluded.

Luckily, firearms were out of the question where both sides were so mixed together. But Mexicans and sailors plied their knives instead, so that there was much soppy red spreading over the yellowish white of shirts, and over the blue of jackets. The pigeon-wing diversion, called the savate, also played its bizarre rôle, for wherever a Frenchman found space for the straightening out of a leg, in that instant a little native shot from him as a cat from the toe of a boot. Fra Diavolo was deposited flat on his back each time he tried to rise, till the sole of a foot took on more terror than a cannon’s mouth. As for Michel Ney, he was beautiful and gallant, now that what he had to do came without thinking. He achieved things splendidly with the butt of his enemy’s revolver, and exhorted his men the while to the old, brilliant daring of Frenchmen.

The Storm Centre, though, was merely workmanlike. He put away the six-shooters, and strove barehanded with joy and vigor, which was delightful; yet so systematic, that it was anything rather than romance. It might have been geometry, in that a foe is safer horizontal than perpendicular, and the theorem he applied industriously, with simple faith and earnest fists.

Yet, all told, it was a highly successful affair. Din Driscoll objected to the brevity, but that could hardly be altered for his sake. The little demons of Mexicans crawled from the outskirts of the mess, here one, there two or three, and now many, limping and nursing heads, and rubbing themselves dubiously, with hideous grimaces.

Suddenly the café door opened, and Jacqueline emerged, tripping lightly. Din Driscoll was filling his cob pipe, but he paused with a finger over the bowl. “If there isn’t a woman in it!” he muttered. He felt imposed upon. The game was a man’s game, and now its flavor was gone.

“Looks like the wrong side won out,” mused Driscoll, feeling a little uncomfortable.

“Permit me to congratulate you–sergeant,” she went on. “It’s a good beginning for promotion. If you only knew how hard Maximilian tries to win over these natives, and here the very first thing you–Hélas! poor Prince Max!”

Driscoll caught one word from her French. “What’s that about Maximilian?” he interrupted. He had to repeat, and then Jacqueline only glanced at him over her shoulder. Some mule driver, she imagined, and turned again to the abashed Chasseur.

But the pseudo mule driver moved squarely in front of her. He was embarrassed and respectful, but determined. Jacqueline lifted her brows. “My good man, this is effrontery!” But her good man did not quail. She noticed him a little then. He was ruddy and clean, with a stubble growth on his jaw. Since the civilization of Mobile, Lieutenant Colonel Jno. D. Driscoll had backslided into his old campaign ease. His first genuine stiff beard had found him sabre in hand, so that his knowledge of cutting instruments and of arched brows was limited. He said that he would be much obliged to have his question answered. Whereat Jacqueline thought, by her faith, “What a round, wholesome voice these rustics sometimes have!” The one she heard possessed the full rich quality of an Irishman’s brogue, with the brogue worn off.

“You know Spanish, do you not, señorita?”

“Con-grat-ulate you,” Driscoll returned. “But what’s this about Maximilian?”

An eagerness in his manner caught her attention. But she answered with her old irony. “His Imperial Majesty seems to concern you profoundly, monsieur?”

“H’m’m–oh no! Only it’s curious how he gets mixed up in this shindy of ours.”

“If–if you are asking about Maximilian, señor,” a heavy voice began. Fra Diavolo at least was not indifferent to the American’s questioning, and now he explained that the lady was the Marquesa d’Aumerle, and that she was on her way from Paris to the Mexican court. But a storm having brought her to Tampico, she wished to finish her journey overland. He, the Capitan Morel of His Majesty’s Contra Guerrillas, had offered her escort for the trip. But the French caballero had presumed to force her to continue by water.

“By water?” Driscoll repeated, glaring at Ney. “That poor little girl!–And make her sick again!”

Jacqueline’s chin tilted. “Ma foi, monsieur, I was not sick.”

Driscoll noted her fragile dainty person, and recalling his own experience, had grave doubts about the consistency of Nature. But this was apart. There was still the mystery of his having blundered into a business that somehow concerned the Emperor of Mexico. And it was a matter that must be set right.

“You say you are an officer,” he demanded of the ranchero, “but your Greaser clothes, that’s not a uniform?”

Uniforms were not necessarily a part of the contra-guerrilla service, said the Mexican; and besides, there might be reasons for a disguise. But as to his own identity, he reproduced the order signed by Colonel Dupin.

“Correct,” said Driscoll, and handed back the paper.

Unconsciously the French soldier replied as to a superior officer. “I’ve just been transferred to the service of His Excellency, Marshal Bazaine, in the City of Mexico, and am on my way there now.”

“You are in the French service?”

“Of course I am.”

“Your rank?”

“Sergeant.”

Here, in a caprice of kind heart, as well as of mischief, Jacqueline interposed. “Your sergeant, Monsieur the American, is the Duke of Elchingen.” But she might have called Ney a genus homo, for all the impression it made.

“Too bad, sergeant,” said Driscoll, “but a captain ranks first, you know, and–well, I reckon I’ll have to change sides. I know it’s tough,” and his brow knitted with droll perplexity, “but I’m afraid we’ll just have to do this thing all over again, unless–well, unless you give in, sergeant.”

Jacqueline had been waxing more and more agog, and her boot had tapped impatiently. Now she gave way, and declared that it was too much. What, she demanded, had monsieur to do with the matter in the first place? Driscoll took off his slouch hat and ran his fingers through his hair to grope for an answer. It had never been brought to him before that fighting might be a private preserve. But his face cleared straightway. In this second skirmish, due momentarily, he would be a legitimate belligerent and not a trespasser, because since he had stumbled amuck of Maximilian’s authority, another joust was needed to correct the first. It all depended on whether Miss–Miss–if the señorita–still wished to go by land.

“If monsieur will have the condescension,” returned Jacqueline.

“Now captain,” said Driscoll.

Fra Diavolo took the cue instantly. “A-i, mis muchachos!” he called, and the little demons came hurrying back, like a damned host with a new hope of heaven.

If there were any police about, or had been, they were mysteriously indifferent. But Jacqueline did just as well. No one had thought to put her back in the café, and she promptly took a hand in the man’s game.

“Michel Ney,” she commanded, “do you hear me; lower that pistol!”

“You, you wish me to surrender, mademoiselle?”

“You know I don’t! If anyone even asks it, I will go back to the ship with you, at once.”

“But I, I don’t understand.”

“You understand that I want your escort overland. Is it gallant, then, to disappoint me by getting yourself killed?”

“But all your trunks are on the ship.”

Jacqueline turned to her Fra Diavolo. He could answer that? To be sure he could, and he was honored. He suggested, with her permission, that she spend the night on shore, she and her maid, since the café was also a hotel. Meantime, the sailors could bring what she needed from the boat.

“Now then,” reflected the beaming young Gaul, “our spirituelle little marquise will find that one may have wits, and not read her dense old poets, either.”

He opened the café door for her and both joined the maid Berthe, who was still clinging to sanctuary inside.

The American lieutenant-colonel and the Mexican capitan looked at one another. They felt deserted. Fra Diavolo’s teeth bared. “Ai, que mal educados,” he observed. “They’re ill-bred, I say. They kick a gentleman in the stomach–in the stomach, señor!”

Driscoll turned to go. It was enough of satisfaction to reflect that, if any mention of the affair reached Maximilian, his own part therein would not injure his errand to Mexico. As for the rest, Mexicans and French could go their own ways–he had amused himself. “Well, adios, captain,” he said, and swung on his heel.

“Wait! Which direction, señor?”

“To this mesón here, around the corner.”

“If Your Mercy is not in a hurry––”

Driscoll nodded, and the capitan stopped to say a few words to two of his vagabonds. One of these immediately hurried off in the direction of the river. The other was still loafing outside the café when his chief rejoined Driscoll.

“Looks like you were interested in His Resplendent Majesty,” Fra Diavolo began with weighty lightsomeness. “Mustn’t hurt his feelings, eh, caballero?”

Driscoll laughed easily, “It was all on the girl’s account,” he said.

At the mesón Don Anastasio regarded the American with much more respect to see him returning in such company. But to Fra Diavolo he addressed himself in his thin obsequious voice, “You see I am waiting, as you wished. But on my, my daughter’s account, I––”

“So, captain,” Driscoll interrupted, “you’re the one that’s holding back Murgie! Just tell him, Murgie, that I am in a rush.”

Fra Diavolo smiled and bade his American have patience, for he quite believed that the Señor Murguía would be starting in the morning.

“Si señor,” he went on in a different tone, when Driscoll had left him alone with the trader, “you set out to-morrow, and you are to have two extra horses ready. But for whom, do you suppose? Bien, they are for La Señorita Jacqueline and her maid.”

Murguía’s countenance changed strangely, a most inexplicable contortion. His little rat eyes focused on the ranchero, and he drew back in a sort of fear. Convoy her whom people called Jacqueline through the lawless Huasteca, at the bidding of this man! “No, no, no!” he cried, and shuddered too.

Trying to read a meaning behind the capitan’s dark scowl, he knew only too well the meaning that was there. He moaned at the thought. Maximiliano would have him shot, or burned, or tortured. He would lose his ranch, his cotton mill. He would be poor. It was vague, what would happen, but it was horrible, horrible!

“Hush, you fool!” growled Fra Diavolo. “The entire mesón will hear you, including that Gringo.”

“That Gringo? He, he is one of your friends?”

“Yes, yes. And there’s a–a mystery in his business.”

“What do you mean?”

“If I knew, would it be a mystery?”

“Who is he?”

“He won’t tell. I only know that he is a Confederate officer.”

“A Confederate officer?” The capitan whistled low and softly. “Come to the Plaza, there you can tell me what you think.”

And in the solitude of the Plaza they planned according to their suspicions.

“Strange there’s no motion,” thought Jacqueline the next morning, rubbing her eyes. “Why, what ails the old boat, I wonder?” Then she remembered. She was in the Tampico hotel which called itself a café, and the landlord’s wife was knocking on her door and calling “Niñ-a, niñ-a” with a plaintive stress on the first syllable. The word means girl, and oddly enough, is often used by a Mexican servant to address her mistress.

“I’m not a n-e-e-n-ya,” Jacqueline assured her drowsily, “and if I were, madame, why make a fête out of it this way in the middle of the night?”

“Niñ-a,” the unctuous nasal rose higher, “if Your Mercy goes with Don Anastasio, she must hurry. It is late. It is four o’clock, niña.”

“Four o’clock–late?” gasped the luxurious little marquise. “And how much difference, exactly, would your four o’clocks make on the planet Mars, my good woman?”

“But niña, there is Don Anastasio, he is ready to start.”

“And who is Don Anastasio, pray?”

“The trader, niña, at the mesón. He is to take Your Mercy to Valles, as Don–as the Capitan Morel told Your Mercy yesterday.”

And sighing at the sacrifice of an age of slumber, Jacqueline reached out for the matches. But there was no dainty limbed night table of a Louis XV. beside her bed, which helped her again to remember where she was, and if doubts still remained, they were gone when her bare feet touched the fibrous, prickly native carpet instead of soft furs.

She groped to the door, and opened it enough to take a greasily odorous candle from a dusky hand outside. As the sickly glimmer awakened the shadows, she called the woman back in sudden dismay. “My trunk, señora, kindly have it sent up at once. No,” she added, catching a fluffy garment from a chair, “in five minutes.”

There was a brief silence, followed by positive lament. “Niña, it is not here. I believe, niñ-a, it is at the mesón, with Don Anastasio.”

“F-flute!” cried Jacqueline. The word means nothing at all, but it may express a lass’s exasperation in a wardrobe crisis, and that is nothing except a catastrophe. “Now just possibly,” she soliloquized, “they permit themselves to imagine that one can wear a white frock two days together,” whereupon she sat herself down despairingly among the crisp things that had already had their poor little day. To mock her there was the jaunty handsatchel packed for an hour’s shore leave. She let petulance have sway, and informed herself that she should not go a step, when the voice in the hall pleaded insidiously that Her Mercy make haste.

When the two girls came downstairs, the landlord’s wife took their satchel, and led them over broken sidewalks to the mesón, where the street was filled with torches and laden burros and blanketed shadows. Murguía’s caravan was forming, making a weird, stealthy scene of activity. Jacqueline picked up a lantern, and searched here and there.

“Now where can it be?” she cried.

The rebosa about the shoulders of the Mexican woman rose. She knew nothing. But the gesture was an unabridged philosophical system as to the resignation and the indifference that is seemly when one knows nothing. Jacqueline refrained from pinching her, and pursued the quest of her trunk even into the mesón.

Hardly had she passed within when a greatly agitated little old man tried to overtake her. But at the door he thought better of it and vented his chagrin on the Mexican woman.

“Why did you let her go in there?” he cried. “She will wake the Gringo, she will wake the Gringo!”

Jacqueline reappeared. “No trunk,” she announced. “Do you know, Berthe, I do not believe it came at all?”

The old man’s voice sounded at her elbow, faltering, placating. “With permission, señorita, we must be starting.”

“And similarly with permission, señor, who are you?”

“Anastasio Murguía, the servant of Your Mercy.”

“Ah, the poor little crow? Perhaps you will tell me, sir, why neither the Señor Ney nor Fra–nor Captain Morel is here?”

“That poor Michel!” said Jacqueline. “He’s determined that I am to have a French escort. But Captain Morel, señor?”

Murguía would not answer. He repeated the question to the Mexican woman, who took up explanations with a glib readiness. “Si, niña, I saw the capitan, not more than an hour ago. He was riding by the café, to meet his–Contra Guerrillas. But he stopped and woke me. He said that I was to bring Your Mercies here to the mesón, and to say that he would meet Your Mercies–yes, surely, before you had gone very far, niña.” Her tone was a sugared whine, and more than once she peered around at Murguía; while he, for his part, stood by as though overseeing a task. But Jacqueline only allowed herself a little inconsequential sniff, and went back to the really serious business that did worry her. She demanded her trunk.

“How, the señorita does not know?” asked Murguía.

“Know what?”

“That the sailors did not come back from the ship?”

“Not come back! Eh bien, I will not go a step.”

At first Don Anastasio’s pinched face lighted with relief. But at once a conflicting anxiety, lest she might not go, seemed to possess him. “But señorita,” he protested, “what will Your Mercy do? The ship, yes, señorita, the ship has sailed already. It left last night for Vera Cruz.”

“And here am I,” Jacqueline exclaimed, tapping her foot, “with only one dress!”

A long bubbling whistle sounded near a gendarme’s lantern in the middle of the street. A block away another sounded, then another, and another, and others yet, each thinly shrill and distant. It was the challenge to slumber and the answer of wakefulness from the watches of the night over the silent city.

A tremor cut short his words. Someone had just emerged from the mesón.

“Gracious, Murgie, off so early?” the newcomer observed cheerily.

Murguía scowled. He knew that tone.

“If I’m late, I apologize,” the other drawled gently, from behind the flare of a match over his pipe. “Howsoever, all my eyes weren’t shut, and you wouldn’t of left me. Pretty quiet about striking camp, though! Didn’t want to disturb me, maybe? Well, well, who made you so thoughtful? Not Captain Morel? Now I wonder!”

“I uh, why should I wake you, Mis-ter Driscoll? Have I asked you even to go?”

“N-o, but you evidently asked old Demijohn there.” And Driscoll pointed to his horse, all saddled. “But cheer up, Convoluting Squirmer, of course I know you aren’t a horse thief. No, I just come out to say you forgot the blanket. I was sleeping on it.”

Then he turned to the two girls. They were going also. But why try to leave him behind, even without a horse? He knew, for all his whimsical cheerfulness, that something serious was afoot. It was hardly likely that the girls themselves had interfered. Still, he must make sure. To provoke a reply elsewhere, he asked Murguía if it were the señoritas, perhaps, and not Captain Morel, who preferred his absence? A surprised “Ma foi!” from Jacqueline answered him. As he supposed, she had not thought of him one way or another.

The light was not good, and she did not see his lips pucker as for a long whistle. But he did not whistle. He replied very humbly; and so sweetly that Murguía quailed for the little shrew.

“W’y miss,” he said, “it all comes of feeling my responsibility. I’m the cause of your going, and that’s why I’m going too.”

His very earnestness gave her to understand that he had forgotten her entirely. The finesse of the Tuileries could not have struck home more delicately, and more keenly. “I’ve often heard,” she thought to herself, “that an awkward swordsman is dangerous.” But she made no cry of “touchée!” Instead she caught at the point to turn the blade aside. “Responsibility? Truly sir, you are considerate. But permit me–my safety on this trip, what concern can that have for Your Mercy?”

“None at all,” replied Driscoll, heartily.

His brow, none the less, was crinkled, and he watched dubiously as Murguía helped the two girls into great armchair-like saddles. There was not a woman’s saddle in Tampico, but Jeanne d’Aumerle did not mind that. She, the marchioness, enjoyed the oddity of a pommel in lieu of horn. And the lady’s maid might have been on a dromedary, for all the consciousness the poor child had of it.

“Say,” Driscoll interrupted with cool obstinacy, “where’s our friend the captain and that sky-blue Frenchman?”

“All right,” he said, as if the matter were of no further consequence. “Then I can make a nice comfortable report to Maximilian.”

“Report to Maximiliano?” exclaimed Murguía.

Driscoll nodded indifferently.

“But Señor Coronel, when you do, you–you will remember that I said nothing to–that is, to persuade the señoritas to take this journey.”

“Nor not to take it, Wriggler.”

“Yet you will say to His Majesty that I did suggest–yes, I do now–that they had better not––”

His utterance drivelled to incoherency. The Mexican woman, she of the café, stood before him. There was a warning on her stolid countenance. Murguía wet his lips. “But,” he stammered, “there–oh what danger can there be in their going?”

Driscoll shoved him aside and placed himself at the head of Jacqueline’s horse. “You had better risk the water, miss,” he said quietly.

“My good sir,” she replied, clear and cold, “I commend your prudence, in making certain, before you dared touch my bridle-rein, that neither of the two gentlemen were here.”

Din Driscoll swung on his heel. “Damned!” he murmured, and he pronounced the “n” and the “d” thoroughly, to make the word adequate if possible. “Lord, I believe I feel like a closed incident! And to think, Demijohn,” he went on as he busied himself about his horse, “to think that it’s the first and only time we’ve ever seen trouble coming and tried to keep out of it.”

By now the caravan was passing him. The burros, like square-shelled monstrosities with ears, were settling into a steady trot. Their blanketed arrieros ran beside them and prodded, and were in turn prodded by the fretful Murguía. Then Jacqueline rode by on an ambling little mountain-climber. She had forgotten his presence. This was not a pose with the Marquise d’Aumerle; she had, really. But her little Breton maid coming behind timidly drew rein. Driscoll looked and saw in the moving yellow torchlights that her face was white. A thing like that somehow alters a man’s attitude. “W’y, child,” he exclaimed, “what’s––”

“Monsi–señor,” she said hastily, in pathetic and pretty broken Spanish, “you, oh, you will not leave us! In the mercy of heaven, tell me that you will not! Ah, seigneur,” she sobbed, “mademoiselle will yet lead us to our death!”

“Berthe,” mademoiselle at that instant called, “oh you little ninny, are you coming ever?”

The maid obeyed. “Just the same,” she sighed, “God bless her!”

“And did I,” Driscoll had begun angrily, but she was already gone, and he finished it to himself, “did I once intend to leave you?”

He leaped astride his buckskin horse, who trotted with him briskly to the head of the caravan. Behind was Anastasio Murguía, a quaint combination of silk hat, shawl, and ranchero saddle. The two Frenchwomen followed, and behind came the straggling file of burros and pack horses.