The Missourian Part 78

There was one other among the spectators, but keeping himself hidden, whom Maximilian would have been concerned to see there. He was Driscoll.

He came to watch the shriveled derelict, Murguia. He came to stand guard over a soul, Maximilian's. What peace that soul had found should not be destroyed. And so he screened himself in the crowd, holding ready to crush a viper whose fangs were heavy with poison. When Maximilian paused and spoke to the old man, Driscoll was very near, near enough to hear, and to strike. But the old man had only wheezed and mumbled. Though why that old man did not utter a first word, though why he could not, will never be explained. But this much is true, that the ambushed soul, moving so calmly toward eternity, then stepping so near the coiled serpent, was yet its own guardian, unwittingly.

Until the very end Driscoll staid there alert. The old man, baffled, insatiate, might yet cry out what he knew. Driscoll's gaze never relaxed. He felt as though he watched a murderer while the murder was being done. But the old man only listened. Unable to see within the hollow square, he listened, and waited. His lower jaw hung open, and over his lip a white froth grew and grew, until it broke and trickled down his chin. The red eyeb.a.l.l.s gleamed ravenously, as still he waited.

"When this is over," Driscoll said to himself, "he'll plump down in a fit and blow out. Else he'll go raving crazy. Lord, that look!"

When it _was_ over, Driscoll went to him. He had but to reach forth a hand and fasten on his shoulder. He held him against a scurrying of spectators, whom the tragedy's close had that instant brought to life.

"Here, Murgie, here's something that belongs to you," he said. "Well, what's the matter? Take it, I don't want it."

The old man looked up. An ivory cross was dangling from the other's fingers. The cross still showed bloodstains; no later flowing of blood had washed _them_ away. But the father of Maria de la Luz stared, stared vacantly at the trinket. The masterful, consuming rage of two years past was gone out of his eyes. Instead they were watery and senile. The brows, and even the lashes, had turned as white as the thin strands of hair, and contrasted gruesomely against the yellow, mottled skin, which stretched like clouded parchment over the bony death's head.

At last the old man put out his hand and took the cross, not comprehending.

"No, I didn't give it to him," Driscoll explained bluntly. "I told you I wouldn't."

Yet no spasm of chagrin distorted the weazen face.

"This chain here, it's--it's _gold_!" the old man cried.

Then he sputtered, choked. What had he betrayed? Would the strange donor reclaim the gift, knowing it was gold? He leered craftily at Driscoll, and with a hungry, gloating secrecy--his old slimy way of handling money--he smuggled the holy symbol under his jacket. But from cunning the leer changed to suspicion and quick alarm. He delved into his pockets, one after another. He searched greedily, wildly, until the last coin on him lay in his palm. Quaking in every feeble bone, he counted his poor wealth again and again. There was very little left. He glared at Driscoll. He glared at townsmen, officers, blanketed Inditos, all swarming past to gaze on the three corpses. He cried "Thief!" first at one unheeding pa.s.ser-by, then at another.

"I had more than this!" he whined. "More--more than this! There was my hacienda, my peons, my cotton, my mills, my canvas bags. There was my blockade runner. She was Clyde-built, she was named _La Luz_, she cost twenty thousand English gold pieces. Who has taken these things from me? Who--where----Curse you, do _you_ know?"

Dissipating his h.o.a.rds, sacrificing his last chattel, all that was now a blank. But his h.o.a.rds, his chattels, were all that were now worth while, and the miser clamored for them, and them only. Vengeance, however, is an ironical bargainer. Vengeance kept her pay, and "abhorred Styx, the flood of deadly hate," had dried and left a stranded soul, parched by avarice. Driscoll was moved by a pity half ashamed.

"Look here, Murgie," he threatened terribly, "Do you say _I_ stole your----By the Great Horn Spoon, I'll----" He flung his hand to his revolver.

The counter-irritant had instant effect. All moisture died out of the rat eyes, leaving them two little horrible beads. The miser shrank, groveled, in mortal terror of some physical hurt.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE CONTRARINESS OF JACQUELINE

"Much adoe there was, G.o.d wot; He wold love, and she wold not."

_--Ballad of Phillida and Corydon._

Maximiliano I. of Mexico was dead. His dynasty and his Empire were the frippery of a past time. Yet there was his capital, still holding out against the Republic. Leonardo Marquez, the Leopard, spitefully refused to capitulate. But why he would not, no one knew, neither the starving City, nor the patient besieger outside. No one, unless it was Jacqueline. The very day of the triple execution she called on Escobedo, commander in chief at Queretaro. She desired to return to the capital, and she wanted a pa.s.s through the Republic's lines there. She mentioned, in case it were any inducement, that the place would fall within twenty-four hours after her arrival. Jacqueline had difficulty to speak at all. She could not endure the general's monstrous flaps of ears, his rabbinical beard, his cruel black eyes.

"Maria purisima," he exclaimed, "you cannot mean, senorita, that you, all alone, will deliver the City of Mexico into our hands?"

"It will certainly be an incident of my stay there," she replied.

The hard, Jewish features lighted cunningly. "Then, por Dios, you are as wonderful as I've always heard! But may--may one be allowed a little curiosity?"

"I _might_ say," and Jacqueline forthwith said it, "that I have just had a cipher telegram from Louis Napoleon."

"Which," breathlessly demanded the other, "will interest Marquez, eh?

Will disappoint him? Will cause him to surrender?"

"Your Excellency is of course ent.i.tled to his own conjectures."

But the commander-in-chief was satisfied. "We must hasten your going by every means," he declared. "You shall have an escort. You----"

"Then I choose the Gray Troop--because," she added carefully, "they're the best."

Now, why, by all that's feminine, was she surprised next morning when the Gray Troop gathered round her coach, as though that were a coincidence? At least she arched her brows, and lifted one shoulder petulantly, and unmistakably showed that she expected a tedious time of it. The sunburned colonel of the Grays beamed so with happiness too, as he drew rein to report to her. They met for the first time since Maximilian's embarra.s.sing little scene for their express benefit.

Driscoll noted her disdain, and it is likely that he only grinned. He did that because he knew how helpless he was, and how merciless she could be. For she was not only beautiful, she was pretty--a demure, sweet, and very pretty girl. Some vague instinct of self-defense guided him. His broad smile was exasperating in the last degree, and it was not she, but the other young woman in the coach, whom he addressed.

"I got some side saddles, Miss Burt," he announced, "and a few extra mustangs, whenever anybody gets tired of traveling behind curtains."

Curiously enough, both girls wore riding habits. "Oh, by the way," he inquired suddenly, "how's Miss Jack'leen this morning? Is she well and--docile?"

Jacqueline's chin dropped in astonishment. She seized the old canvas window flap and jerked it down. But at once she raised it again, and thoughtfully contemplated the trooper.

"I wonder," she mused aloud, in that quaint accenting of the English which cannot be described, "when is it that you are going to grow up, _ever_?"

"I did start to," Driscoll informed her soberly, "but it got tiresome as all creation, and I reckon I've backslided just since"--a world of earnestness came into his lowered voice--"well, just since we had that talk with poor Maximilian."

The old canvas curtain fell for good then, and very abruptly.

A moment later, however, she was avenging her flushed cheeks on Mr.

Daniel Boone, who rode at the other side, also sunburned, also effulgent with happiness.

"If it isn't the _animal disputans_!" she exclaimed. "Look Berthe, and rejoice; our sighing Monsieur le Troubadour!"

Driscoll hovered near a moment, then reluctantly rode ahead of his battered dusty warriors. So he and the wilful maid from France began a second journey together, yet far, far apart. But only after many torturing hours did his first joy consent to perceive the distance between them.

Now and then, though rarely, and never when he hoped for such a thing, she would ride with him. And then he usually stirred up hostilities before he knew it, and notwithstanding all that was tender and humble which he meant to tell her. There was, however, cause enough for savagery. She made him the least of the troop, though he arranged each detail of speed and comfort, laid out tempting noon-day spreads, improvised cheer in the cheerless hostelries, and all with a forethought showing pathetically how his every thought was of her. But if she divined the inwardness of this, which of course she did, outwardly she contrived to be oblivious. She thanked him sincerely and simply, the while that he craved repayment, as the heart repays. He yearned for only a chance to speak his mind, and to force hers. But now craftily she would bring the others flocking round, to decide for her if they did not think monsieur absurdly mistaken in this or that! The same instant she would conjure up the most trivial of arguments, and be vastly shocked over the ridiculous contentions which she herself a.s.signed to Driscoll.

She grew honestly fond of the other Missouri colonels, with their ranger uniforms, and brawn scarred by weather and battle, and they and the marchioness became great friends. She was a dainty flower among them, but they were prime comrades, and she, the mad-cap tomboy her life long, took to them in the impulse that here were her own kind. Driscoll was proud to see it, without need of being generous. She gathered Berthe, as a soberer sister, into the merry communion, and she rode with Clay of Carroll, with Carroll of Clay, with Reub Marmaduke, with Crittenden, with cherubic Old Brothers and Sisters, with Hanks the bugler, and she mocked Meagre Shanks, that disputatious animal, because he tried to monopolize Berthe and would not dispute at all. She asked them questions. She asked Harry Collins if his tribe were the same as that of ces Missouriens-la, and the Kansan confessed that the two tribes had been a bit hostile of late, but what with raiding, razing, and murdering, he guessed they'd laid the foundation for a mutual self-respect, as behooved valiant redskins. So she often got strange answers for her inquisitiveness, but she had grown wary among Westerners, and she usually paid them back. They were a happy party. But Driscoll wanted a more definite focusing of the joy. And at times, indeed, yielding to temptation herself, she permitted him to lose his heart deliciously over again. Shadows were lifted now, and she was just a lovable girl, just sweet Jacqueline. And he loved her with the boy's young strength of adoration and diffident awe. Precisely in which state she made him suffer exquisitely. No one could be more contrary and capricious than the lovable girl of a moment before. Whereat storms brewed within him.

There was one of the rare times when the Missourian and the maid rode up and down the winding white ribbon of a Mexican highway, and for awhile both were quiet. This once they dared the risk--she did, rather--which lurks in the silence that requires no words. For him it brought the old time, and the rides of that time, when he wondered what was the matter with him, and she knew all along. And he thought how during the hard winter in the Michoacan mountains and swamps, he had caught himself almost crying aloud, that he wanted her, that he wanted her--wanted again the subtle comrades.h.i.+p of those silences which require no words.

And here, at last, here she was, riding beside him!

He looked at her furtively. She was in profile. He looked again, to be sure that it was not memory, but the breathing girl herself. Yes, for a fact, it was the girl herself. And here was her own queenly head, here its regal poise, here the superb line of the neck to the shoulder.

Reverence grew on admiration, for as he gazed he beheld her character revealed, of lines as stately, as womanly, and withal as flexible, too, before the cheery glow of each moment's life. He stirred, and was vaguely restive, and perhaps a little frightened also, because of the deep mystery of something within himself which he could not understand.

The cla.s.sic outline of her features was softened now in the warmth of flesh. Her vivacity was off guard, in the forgetfulness of reverie. The pure white of the little tip of ear was tinged with pink. Her eyes were lowered to the saddle horn. They were melting. They were almost blue.

"Jack'leen!" He burst out fervently, before he thought, with an arm half lifted toward her.

The drooping lashes raised. The eyes were gray again. She regarded him for awhile without speaking.

"Why don't you quarrel?" she asked finally.