The perspective of the Missouri boy was different. And his disdain was different. A titled belle mattered little with him, and was apart, like the girl in a spectacular chorus. Operettas and royal courts were shows, which real men and women paid to see, and to support. He was a deep-breathing, danger-nourished man of life and of things that count. And his only cynicism, and even that unconscious, was the dry honest sort which sheer unpolished naturalness bears to all things trivial and vain and artificial. One can readily understand, then, the attitude of such a man toward a playactor off the stage; toward a playactor, that is, who thinks to impress the great, wide, live world with the superficial mannerisms of his little playacting world. Here was Din Driscoll, Jack Driscoll, Trooper Driscoll, here he was, traveling near a handsome young woman who for the moment had been cut off from her precious wee sphere. And he saw her outside of it, playing coquettishly, and to her own mind, seriously; playing bewitchingly her shallow rôle patterned after life, yet without once realizing the counterfeit. The Western country boy, whatever his Cavalier stock, had a Puritanical backbone in common with the whole American race. And without being aware of it, his personal, private bearing toward the light and airy French girl was a sneer, a tolerant, good-natured and indifferent sneer.

However, Mademoiselle la Marquise was neither amused nor hurt, because, quite simply, she rode in happy oblivion of the rustic and his standards for the appraising of a girl. He looked very straight of neck and spine, and she wondered if he had been cradled in a saddle, but that was all.

In Jacqueline’s musings there was poetry and there were politics. The poetry justified the politics; moreover, was their inspiration. A dilettante such as Jacqueline, æsthetic and delicately sensitive, was naturally a lover of the beautiful in her search after emotions. A sentiment for her surroundings came now as a matter of course. If she turned, she beheld the chaparral plain stretching flatly back of her to the sands and lagoons of the coast. If she flirted her whip overhead, down hurtled a shower of bright yellow hail from the laden boughs. Her nostrils told her of magnolias and orange blossoms; her eyes and ears, of parrots and paroquets and every other conceit in fantastic plumage. They were a restless kaleidoscope of colors blending with the foliage, and from their turmoil they might have been quarreling myriads, and never birds of a paradise. Little red monkeys grinned down at her as they raced clutching among the branches, while a big bandy-legged sambo, an exceedingly ill-tempered member of the same family, bawled his reproaches in a tone gruesomely human. Now and then her horse reared from an adder squirming underfoot, or she would see a torpid boa twined sluggishly around a limb, as about a victim. Once in a jungle-like place she experienced something akin to the prized ecstatic shudder as she made out the sleek form of a jaguar slinking into the swamp. The ugliest of the picturesque “properties” was a monstrous green iguana with his prickly crest and horn and slimy eye, basking full five feet along a rotten log.

And then it was a thing for wonderment, that beyond, where the mountains were, all this world changed, yet changed to another as strange and vast. And that still farther on there stretched yet other regions, and each one different, and each no less marvelous and grand. A bewildering prodigality of Nature, spelling the little word “romance”! Jacqueline’s lip quivered as she gazed and imagined, and as the poetry of it filled her soul. But of a sudden the little woman sighed. It was a sigh of rebellion. And just here the politics leaped forth, inspired of the wild thrilling beauty of the world.

“To think,” she half cried, “that we are losing this–all this! And yet we have won it! Mon Dieu, have we not won it? Yet for whom, alas? Maximilian?–Faw, an ungrateful puppet such as that, to have, to take from us, such as–this! Now suppose,” her lips formed the unuttered words, while her gray eyes closed to a narrowing cunning, “just suppose that we–that someone–reminds His Majesty how ingratitude falls short of courtesy between emperors.”

For all his campaigner’s instincts, the first of Driscoll’s expected troubles came and was gone before he knew that it was trouble. It arrived so naturally, and was so well behaved! With a stop for a bowl of coffee at a roadside fonda, they had been traveling for perhaps five hours, when Driscoll saw the heads of two horses and their riders over the brush, and at a turn in the trail he found that they were coming leisurely toward him. He observed them suspiciously, and wistfully. The wild tropics around him had quite won his heart as peculiarly adapted to violent amusements of a desperate tinge, far more so really than his own Missouri woodlands. Yet thus far the uneventful tameness had depressed him as a shameful waste of environment.

They lifted their sombreros, and he of the gorgeous one inquired if that were Don Anastasio’s outfit coming up behind. A civil answer was merest traveler’s courtesy, and Driscoll reluctantly took his cob pipe from his mouth to reckon that they were pretty nearly correct. He might have loaned them a thousand dollars, to judge from their gratitude, and they made way for him by drawing off the trail entirely. Here they halted till all the burros and horses had gone by. The muleteers in passing them, confusedly touched their hats. Murguía, who was then in the rear, stopped when he saw the two strangers. Driscoll looked back, but judged from the greetings that the three were old acquaintances. The assiduously respectful bearing of the timorous old man was to be counted as only habitual. And when he saw one of Don Anastasio’s mozos bring a bottle and glasses, he was completely reassured, and rested like the others of the caravan some little distance ahead.

Murguía dismissed the mozo, himself poured the cognac, and begged the honor of drinking health and many pesetas to his two “friends.” They craved a like boon, and the clinking of the copitas followed ceremoniously.

Don Anastasio manifested an itch for argument.

“Oh leave all that,” he of the crimson serape broke in. “Why go over it again? We are loyal imperialists, and only our lasting friendship for you holds us from informing His Majesty’s Contras how you contribute to that arch rebel, Rodrigo Galán.”

“But,” weakly protested Murguía, “but who believes that Don Rodrigo turns any of it over to the Liberal–to the rebel cause?”

“A swollen-lunged patriot like your Don Rodrigo–of course he does, every cent,” and the cross-eye took on a jocular gleam.

“Now, Señor Murguía,” he of the same eye continued, “the favor of your attention. See that ‘T’ on my sombrero? That’s ‘Tiburcio.’ See that ‘M’? That’s ‘Maximiliano.’ And that sword? That’s ‘Woe to the Conquered,’ at least the sombrero maker said so. Well, Don Anastasio––” and he ended with a gesture that the poor trader saw even in his dreams, the unctuous rubbing of fingers on the thumb.

Sadly Don Anastasio unstrapped a belt under his black vest, and counted out in French gold the equivalent of two hundred Mexican dollars.

Don Tiburcio took the money, and observed, as in the nature of pleasant gossip, that Don Anastasio had quite an unusual outfit this time.

Murguía took alarm immediately. “Not so large as usual, Don Tiburcio. The crops up there––”

“They–they are Don Rodrigo’s affairs, not mine.”

“Enough yours for you to be anxious to deliver the goods safely, I think. But the rate on that class of stuff is rather high. Now what do you suppose, my esteemed compadre, Don Rodrigo would say if we had to confiscate the consignment?”

But Don Anastasio did not need to suppose. “How much?” he whimpered.

“Well, with the American––”

“Fires of hell consume the American! Collect your tolls from him yourself. He’s no affair of anybody’s.”

The vaqueros laughed. “We’ll throw in the American for nothing,” said Don Tiburcio generously. “Besides, to look at him, he may not be very–tollable. But delicate dress goods now, there’s a heavy duty on them. I should say a hundred apiece.” And without any seeming reference to this revenue statement, the toll taker placed the tip of an index finger under each ear, then pointed them lower down against his throat, then lower again, and at the last the two fingers met in an acute angle, significantly acute, under his chin, while the half-veiled black bead in the outer corner of his eye had a sheen unutterably merry and malignant.

“I say, Don Anastasio, if you want a big return for your money”–Don Anastasio halted instantly–“if you do, well, we ought not to say it, being devoted to Maximiliano. But no matter, I will tell you this much, poor old man–look after your daughter! Look after her, Don Anastasio! We’ve just come from up there.”

A half cry escaped the father as he jerked back his horse. He demanded what they meant. He pleaded. But they waved him to go on, and rode away indifferently, taking a cross trail through a stretch of timber.

Rigid, motionless, Murguía looked after them until they had disappeared. But when they were gone, a frenzy possessed him. He turned and galloped to his caravan, which was again moving. He did not stop till he reached the American. “You owe me two hundred dollars,” he cried. Thus his decent emotion concerning his daughter found vent. “Two hundred, I tell you!”

“Will you,” asked Driscoll, “take ’em now, or after you tell me what I owe ’em for?”

Murguía wavered. The simple question brought him to his senses. But he had gone too far not to explain. Besides, his insane device for reimbursing himself appealed to him as good. “Because–don’t you know, señor, that travelers here must pay toll? You don’t? But it’s true, and–and I’ve just paid out two hundred pesos on Your Mercy’s account.”

The trooper’s brown eyes flashed. “Which way did those thieves go?” he demanded. “Quick! Which way?”

Murguía’s avarice changed to trembling. He feared to tell. Driscoll caught his bridle. “Which way, or by–by–Never mind, you’ll pay toll to me, too! I’ll just learn this toll-taking trade myself.”

“Also?” laughed Driscoll. “There, I knew it, they were robbers.”

He wheeled and rode back with the fury of a cavalry charge, heedless of Murguía’s cries to stop by all the saints, heedless of the saints too. Murguía did not care what happened to his guest, but he cared for what might happen to himself, afterward, at the hands of Don Tiburcio and partner. He frantically called out that he was jesting, that Driscoll owed him nothing. But Driscoll had already turned into the side trail, and was following the hoof prints there. Murguía could hear the furious crackling of twigs as he raced through the timber. But in a little while he heard and saw nothing.

“He’s a centaur, that country boy,” observed Jacqueline critically. “The identical break-neck Centaur himself. Really, Berthe, I think we shall have to dub him Monsieur the Chevalier. Why Berthe, how pale you are!”

“I? Oh, mademoiselle, is there any danger?”

“Danger, child? Nonsense!”

“But what made him do that, that way?”

“Poor simple babe! That was a pose. Our mule driver knows he can ride, but we did not. And there you are.”

“But the little monsieur, he looks like a ghost?”

Jacqueline laughed. “That, I admit, is not a pose. With the little monsieur, it’s become–constitutional.”

A half-hour later they heard an easy canter behind them, and Din Driscoll reappeared, flushed and happy as a boy pounding in first from a foot race. His left hand covered the bowl of his cob pipe from the wind, the other held his slouch hat doubled up by the brim. As for bridle hand, old Demijohn needed none. Driscoll seized Murguía’s silk tile and poured into it from the slouch a shimmering stream of coin and a mass of crumpled paper.

The old man did not hear. His palsied hands were dipping down, dipping down, bathing themselves in the deep silk hat. The hat was heavy with gold and silver pesos, and foaming with bills.

“Greenbacks, Confederate notes,” he mumbled. “Some I’ve paid before–only, lately, the rascals won’t take anything but coin.”

“Why’s that, Murgie?”

“Why, because these green things are not worth much now, while these gray ones”–he fingered them contemptuously–“would not, would not buy a drunkard’s pardon from our cheapest magistrate.”

The slur on Mexican justice only emphasized his scorn of the Confederate notes.

“Give ’em here!” Driscoll snatched them from the yellow, desecrating fingers. “These here are promises,” he muttered, “and we’ve been fighting for four years to make them good. For four years, even the children and old men, and–yes, and the women folks back of us!”

The impulsive mood carried him further. He counted and pocketed the despised notes. Then from an humble tobacco pouch he sorted out a number of British sovereigns, and flung them into Murguía’s hat.

“Prob’bly my last blow for them promises,” he murmured to himself.

“Monsieur the Chevalier,” she murmured softly, as though trying the sound of the words for the fast time. She would have supposed that none but a Frenchman could have done that.

As to Don Anastasio, the Quixotic redemption in specie was beyond him entirely. He gave it up. The counting of discs was more tangible to his philosophy. His rusty black tile, so wondrously become a cornucopia of wealth, had by that same magic upset the old fellow into a kind of hysterical gaiety, which was most elfish and uncanny. He motioned Driscoll to ride faster.

“Ai, ai, mi coronel,” he cackled, when they were gone out of hearing, “you talk of bandits! Ai, ai, Dios mio, you have robbed them!”

“What the devil––”

“Si señor, robbed them! A-di-o-dio-dios! here’s more than they took from me!”

“N-o?” said Driscoll in dismay. “Gracious, I hadn’t any time to count money when I searched ’em!”

“You!–searched Don Tiburcio?”

“Why not? Isn’t he a thief?”

“But–he permitted––”

“W’y yes, they both let me, I had the drop. But they got indignant and called me a thief–I believe they’d of called a policeman if there’d been one handy, or even–– Now what,” he exclaimed, “what ails the old bare-bones now?”

The senile mirth had left the trader’s face, and his olive skin was ashen. “Next time,” he moaned, “next time, Santa María, they will be in force and they–they will take the very horse from under me!”

“Tough luck,” Driscoll observed.

“I, I couldn’t change on account of my passport.”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

“In the passport I declare the route I take.”

“I see, and you can’t change it afterward?”

“No.”

“Now look here, Murgie, have you got any more of these dates on?–Yes? No?–Murgie, if you don’t dive, by––”

Murguía dove, and denied with eagerness that he had any further toll-paying appointments. But Driscoll reckoned that he was lying. “And,” he added, “we are going to change our route, passport or no passport. We’ll take–let’s see–yes, we’ll take the very next crosstrail going in the same general direction.”

Murguía’s alarm at the proposal belied his former denial. The law required him to follow the course laid down in his passport, but he feared the law less than the disappointment of road agents. Don Tiburcio’s receipt protected him from those controlled by Don Tiburcio. But Tiburcio was not powerful, except in blackmail. Murguía paid him lest he inform the government of tribute also paid to Don Rodrigo. Now Rodrigo Galán was powerful. His band infested the Huasteca. He called himself a Liberal and a patriot, and he really believed it too. But he also declared that the tolls he collected went to the revolutionary cause, which declaration, however, even he could hardly have believed.

It was a touching harangue, and the remorse-stricken trader ever after denied that he even saw Don Tiburcio, at which times a queer smile would supplant Don Rodrigo’s black frown.

It was this same Don Rodrigo who had been reported as slain by Jacqueline’s Fra Diavolo. But Driscoll, not having heard of his death, was quite ready to expect more brigands. He insisted, therefore, on changing trails.

“The Señor Coronel is most valiant,” sneered Murguía.

“So darned much so, Murgie, that I want to dodge ’em.”

But his struggle against temptation was evident. He glanced back at the two women and again denounced the unfamiliar feminine element in men’s affairs. To avoid the brigandage encounter took more of manhood than Don Anastasio might imagine in a lifetime.

But they had not followed their new route five minutes before Murguía was again at the trooper’s side. An “I-told-you-so” smirk hovered on his pinched visage. “Segundino has gone,” he announced.

“So Segundino has gone?” Driscoll repeated. “Well, and who’s Segundino?”

“Then,” said Driscoll, “we’ll go back to our old trail,” which they did at once. Soon after he was not surprised to hear from Murguía that “this time it was Juan who had disappeared.”

“Didn’t I tell you to set a close watch?”

“Y-e-s, but what was the use? He slipped into the brush, and,” the trader complained, “I can’t spare any more drivers.”

“Don’t need to. We’ll just keep this trail now.”

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!”

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.

“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.”

“You will go, 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 a jacal of 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.”

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.”

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, who are 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!”

“The terrible Rodrigo?” 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.”

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.

she sang, and nodded at the bandit, to indicate that here was his line,

“’––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.

“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!”

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.”

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.