The Missourian Part 17

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 the _jacales_, and darted here and there. Dogs howled everywhere. A storm of cras.h.i.+ng brush and a wild troop of hors.e.m.e.n, each among them a free lance of butchery, burst on the village. A second cras.h.i.+ng 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 Murguia 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. Sacre nom, tell me, where is she? We can't find her here. Where is she?"

"How can I know, senor? She--perhaps she is gone."

"With Rodrigo--ha! But he'll have no ransom--no, not if it breaks Maximilian's heart.--Now, Senor Trader----"

He stopped and called to him his nearest men. Murguia 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 Murguia'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.

CHAPTER XIII

UNREGISTERED IN ANY STUDBOOK

"La belle chose que l'aristocratie quand on a le chance d'en etre."

--_Voltaire._

That garish daub which was sopped up from the burning homes of men and bespattered over the forest's dark crest was already mellowing under the gentler touch of dawn, when the three travelers gained the open country.

"Poor, dirty, little Inditos," Jacqueline mused aloud. Berthe struck her pony in a tremor of fright. The American was riding ahead. "Fire and sword," Jacqueline went on, and her voice lowered to intense scorn, "they make the final tableau, but--it's gaudy, it's cheap."

The trail had broadened into a high road, and now it wound among the hills like a soiled white ribbon. Driscoll turned in his saddle. "I shouldn't wonder," he observed in the full-toned drawl that was peculiar to him, "but what we'd better be projecting a change of venue. This route is too public, and publicity around here strikes me as sort of prejudiced. S'pose we just stir up an alibi?"

A certain stately old judge back in Missouri would have smiled thus to hear the scion of his house. But the marchioness, confident in her mastery of English, thought it was the veriest jargon. What was the boy trying to say? His next words grew fairly intelligible. "We are now headed for Valles. Well, we've decided not to go to Valles."

Perhaps they had, but she at least had ceased deciding anything, since the overruling of her veto in the matter of precedence when one is hoisted upon a burro.

A narrow pony path crossed the road. "First trail to the left, after leaving the wood," Driscoll said aloud, "and this must be it."

Campaigner in an unfamiliar country, he had informed himself, and it was with confidence that he led his little party into the bridlepath. But he looked anxiously at the forest behind. He did not doubt but that Rodrigo, if it were he back there, would terrify Murguia into betraying their destination, or their supposed destination, which was Valles.

"Can't you hurry 'em up a bit?" he called back.

"We do try," protested Jacqueline, holding aloft a broken switch, "but they only smile at us."

Driscoll got down and undid the spurs from his boots. One of the immense saw-like discs he adjusted to mademoiselle's high heel, pa.s.sing the strap twice around the silk-clad ankle. Jacqueline gazed down on the short-cropped, curly head, and she saw that the back of his neck was suddenly red. But the discovery awakened nothing of the coquette in her.

Quite the contrary, there was something grateful, even gravely maternal, in the smile hovering on her lips for the rough trooper who took fright like a girl over a revealed instep. Still, the interest was not altogether maternal as she watched him doing the same service for Berthe. Perhaps he was too far away, or perhaps practice brought indifference, but at any rate, his neck was no longer tinged in that fiery way.

"Now dig 'em!" said he. "We want to make that clump of mesquite yonder, now pretty quick."

The trees he pointed to were two or three miles away, but the travelers covered the distance at an easy lope. Driscoll kept an eye on the road they had just left, and once hidden by the mesquite he called a halt. As he expected, a number of hors.e.m.e.n appeared at a trot from the direction of the forest. They did not pause at the cross trail, however, but kept to the highway in the direction of Valles. The American and the two girls could now safely continue their journey along the bridlepath.

"Monsieur," Jacqueline questioned demurely, and in her most treacherous way, "how much longer do we yet follow you up and down mountains?"

"W'y, uh--_I'm_ going to the City of Mexico."

"And we others, we may tag along, n'est-ce pas? But the city is far, far. And, to-night?"

"Of course," said Driscoll, "if you should happen to know of a good hotel----" He paused and gazed inquiringly over hills covered with banana and coffee to the frost line. He would not have tried a frailer temper so, but to provoke hers was incense to his own.

"You others, the Americans," she said tentatively, as though explaining him to herself, "you are so greedy of this New World! You won't give us of it, no, not even a poor little answer of information. Alas, Monseigneur the American, I apologize for being on this side the ocean at all--in a tattered frock."

Driscoll looked, but he could see nothing wrong. She seemed as crisp and dainty as ever. If there were any disarray, it was a fetching sort, with a certain rakish effect.