The Missourian Part 13

"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 Ladys.h.i.+p to the stage at Valles."

Din Driscoll had been gazing far away at the mountains, his thumbs tucked in his belt. He stood so that the Mexican was between him and the scattered boulders on the right of the trail. Now he addressed the mountains. "The stage at Valles? There is no stage at Valles---- And, captain," he dropped Nature abruptly, and turned on the man, "who are you, hombre? Come, tell us!"

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 a.s.sured him fervidly that there was such a stage, whereas pa.s.sing 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 Galan 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, senor," thundered the robber, "you don't----" He stopped, catching sight of the timorous Murguia 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."

But Jacqueline was--whistling. The bristling highwayman swung round full of anger. Driscoll stared at her amazed. Then he laughed outright.

"Well, well, Honorable Mr. Buccaneer of the Sierras, now maybe---- Yes, that's what I mean," he added approvingly as Fra Diavolo leaped astride his charger and jerked forth two pistols from their holsters, "that's it, get the game started!"

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 paean 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.

"'The news I bear, fair lady----'"

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

"'The news I bear, fair lady, Will cause your eyes to weep.'"

"'----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 rea.s.sured him.

"Well, what next?" Jacqueline demanded sweetly. "Is it to be the--the 'game' at last?"

"One word," said the Mexican solemnly. Straight in his saddle, he fixed them with keen eyes, keen, black eyes under s.h.a.ggy 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 Galan. 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 Const.i.tution, 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, Senorita Marquesa. He will know it, too, when he learns that Captain Maurel--a Frenchman, senorita, 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 Galan. But his Tender-Hearted Majesty will grieve less for that than for the loss of you, Senorita--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!"

Thus she stopped the insult. Also she stopped an unforeseen champion at her side. Driscoll, with pistol half drawn, was willing to be checked. A shot just then, placed as they were, would mean a bad ending to the game. That he knew. So he was thankful for Jacqueline's hand on his wrist.

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."

She looked around for Monsieur the Chevalier to make it so, but to her dismay, to her disgust, he had taken to his heels. He was running away, as fast as he could go. Then her horse reared, for musket firing had suddenly, mysteriously begun on all sides of her. Many fierce pairs of eyes were bobbing up from behind the boulders on the right of the trail; yellow-brown faces, like a many-headed Hydra coiled in the cacti. They were shooting, not at her, but at the fleeing American. She felt an object in her hand, which Driscoll had thrust there, and she remembered that he had whispered something, though she had forgotten what.

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.

CHAPTER XI