The Missourian Part 11

"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, Murguia 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?"

Murguia 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, senor, 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?"

Murguia'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."

Murguia saw a six-shooter sliding out. "You also!" he cried.

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

He wheeled and rode back with the fury of a cavalry charge, heedless of Murguia's cries to stop by all the saints, heedless of the saints too.

Murguia 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. Murguia 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--const.i.tutional."

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 Murguia's silk tile and poured into it from the slouch a s.h.i.+mmering stream of coin and a ma.s.s of crumpled paper.

"To be robbed while I'm along, now that makes me _mad_," he said.

"You won't tell anybody, will you, Murgie?"

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 s.n.a.t.c.hed 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 Murguia's hat.

"Prob'bly my last blow for them promises," he murmured to himself.

Meantime a burro back of them had become possessed of an idea, which for some reason necessitated his halting stock still directly across the trail to think it over. The caravan behind stopped also, while the arrieros snorted "Ar-re!" and "Bur-ro!" through their noses, and prodded the beast. Jacqueline lost patience. She touched her horse, which bounded out of the trail and galloped past the outfit almost to Driscoll and Murguia. So she had seen the exchange of money and she had heard.

She looked thoughtfully at the trooper's straight line of back and shoulder.

"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 senor, 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 Maria, they will be in force and they--they will take the very horse from under me!"

"Tough luck," Driscoll observed.

Murguia darted at him a look in which there was all the old hate, and more added. But it disturbed the trooper as little as ever. "Come," he said, "own up. You knew we were going to meet those fellows?" Murguia said nothing. "Of course you knew. But why didn't you change your route, seeing you're too high-minded to fight?--What's that?--Oh that voice!

Dive for it, man!"

"I, I couldn't change on account of my pa.s.sport."

"What's that got to do with it?"

"In the pa.s.sport 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?