The Missourian Part 2

"And that's not my affair, but----" Again the business of thumb and fingers--"but this is. Quick now!"

"Senor, I--Your Mercy knows that I always pay at--at the usual place--near the forest."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "MURGUiA"

"He had evidently pa.s.sed through salty spray, had braved the deep, this shrinking old man in frayed black"]

"You mean that you won't pay here, because I am the one in danger here, and not you? Bien, you want a money-getting man for your daughter, eh, Don Anastasio, though you'll deny that you would give her to any man?

Bien, bonissimo, I am going to prove myself an eligible suitor. In another minute Your Mercy will be frightened enough to pay. Attention now!"

So saying he drew a reed whistle from his jacket. It was no thicker than a pencil, and not half so long.

Murguia gripped his arm. "My daughter?" he cried. "It has been weeks since I--but you must have seen her lately. Oh tell me, senor, there is no bad news of her?" He had forgotten the threatened extortion. His voice was open too, generous in its anxiety.

"News of her, yes. But it is vague news. There's a mystery about your daughter, Don Anastasio."

But at this point Fra Diavolo dismissed mystery and daughter both with an ugly grimace. Nor would he say another word, for all the father's pleading. Instead, he remembered the little reed whistle in his hand, and swung round to blow upon it, in spite of the palsied hand clutching at his arm. But in turning, he became aware of the amused Parisienne watching him. His jaw fell, whereat Don Anastasio's hand slipped from his arm, and Don Anastasio himself began to slip away.

"Stop!" roared Fra Diavolo. "No, go ahead. Wait at the meson, though, until I come. Wait until I give you your pa.s.sports."

Then he turned again to stare at the girl who all unconsciously had wrought the poor little crow's release.

CHAPTER III

THE VIOLENT END OF A TERRIBLE BANDIT

"Come listen to me, you gallants so free, All you that love mirth for to hear, And I will tell you of a bold outlaw."

--_Robin Hood._

"Oh, oh, now he's coming to eat _us_!" Jacqueline gasped.

The fierce stranger, however, seemed undecided. His brow furrowed, and for the moment he only stared. Jacqueline peeped through the lashes curtaining her eyes. She wanted to see his face, and she saw one of bold lines. The chin was a hard right angle. The mouth was a cruel line between heavily sensuous lips. The nose was a splendid line, and a very a.s.sertive and insolent nose altogether. The forehead was rugged, with a free curving sweep. Here there would have been a certain n.o.bility, only its slope was just a hint too low. The skin was tawny. The moustache was black and bristling, as was also the thick hair, which lay back like gra.s.s before a breeze. The s.h.a.ggy eyebrows were parted by deep clefts, the dark corrugations of frowning. One wondered if the man did not turn the foreboding scowl on and off by design. But all these were matters that fitted in with the other striking "properties," and Jacqueline was fairly well satisfied with her Fra Diavolo. As she declared to herself, here was the very dramatic presence to mount upon a war charger!

[Ill.u.s.tration: "RODRIGO GALaN"

"The fierce stranger, however, seemed undecided. His brow furrowed, and for the moment he only stared"]

Now when Jacqueline peeped--there was something irresistible about it--the furrows in the black-beetled brow smoothed themselves out, whether the stranger meant them to or not. And a vague resolve took hold on him, and quickened his breath. Her glance might have been invitation--Tampico was not a drawing room--but still he hesitated.

There was a certain hauteur in the set of the demoiselle's head, which outbalanced the mischief in her eyes. He felt an indefinable severity in her tempting beauty, and this was new to his philosophy of woman. But as he drank in further details, his resolve stiffened. That Grecian bend to her crisp skirt was evidently an extreme from the Rue de la Paix, foretelling the end of stupendous flounces. Then there was the tilt to the large hat, and the veil falling to the level of the eyes, and the disquieting charm of both. The wine-red lips had a way of smiling and curling at the same time. And still again there was that line of the neck, from the shoulder up to where it hid under the soft, old-gold tendrils, and that line was a thing of beauty and seductive mystery. The dreadful ranchero went down in humility before the splendor of the tantalizing Parisienne.

Michel Ney leaned nearer over the table. "In all conscience, mademoiselle, your Fra Diavolo is bizarre enough," he said, "but please don't let us stir him up. Think, if anything should happen to you, why Mexico, why France would----"

"You flatter!" she mocked him. "Only two empires to keep me out of a flirtation? It's not enough, Michel."

A shadow fell over them. "My apologies," spoke a deep voice, "but the senorita, she is going to the City, to the Capital, perhaps?"

The syllables fell one by one, distinct and heavy. The Spanish was elaborately cermonious, but the accent was Mexican and almost gutteral.

"L'impertinent!" cried Ney, bounding to his feet. No diffidence cloyed his manner now. He was on familiar ground at last, for the first time since fighting Arabs in Algeria. He was supremely happy too, and as mad as a Gaul can be. "L'impertinent!" he repeated, coaxingly.

"Now don't be ridiculous, Michel," said Jacqueline. "He can't understand you."

Moreover, the fame of the Cha.s.seurs, of those colossal heroes with their terrible sabres, of their legendary prowess in the Crimea, in China, in Italy, in Africa, none of it seemed to daunt the Mexican in the least.

"How, little Soldier-Boy Blue?" he inquired with c.u.mbrous pleasantry.

"Alas, senor," said Jacqueline, "he's quite a little brother to dragons."

"What are you talking about?" Michel demanded.

"I am keeping you from being eaten up, young sire, but," and Jacqueline's tone changed, "pray give yourself the trouble to be calm.

He only means a kindly offer of service, no doubt, however strange that may seem to your delicacy of breeding, Monsieur the Duke."

Michel heaved a sigh and--sat down. He was no longer on familiar ground.

Then Fra Diavolo proceeded to verify mademoiselle's judgment of him.

Sombrero in hand and with a pompous courtliness, he repeated his natural supposition that the senorita was on her way to the City (meaning the City of Mexico), and perhaps to the court of His Glorious Majesty, Maximiliano. He offered himself, therefore, in case he might have the felicity to be of use. This she need not consider as personal, if it in any way offended, but as an official courtesy, since she saw in him an officer--an officer of His Most Peace-loving Majesty's Contra Guerrillas. And thus to a conclusion, impressively, laboriously.

Jacqueline was less delighted than at first. The dash and daredeviltry was somehow not quite sustained. But she replied that he had surmised correctly, and added that she was Mademoiselle d'Aumerle.

He started at the name, and her eyes sparkled to note the effect. "The Marquesa Juana de Aumerle!" he repeated.

"Jeanne d'Aumerle, no other, sir," she a.s.sured him, but she watched him quizzically, for she knew that another name was hovering on his lips.

"Surely not----" he began.

"Si senor," and she smiled good humoredly, "I am--'Jacqueline.'"

It was a name that had sifted from the court down into distant plebeian corners of the Mexican Empire, and it was tinged--let us say so at once--with the unpleasing hue of notoriety.

"His Ever Considerate Majesty Maximiliano would be furious if any harm should befall Your Ladys.h.i.+p," Fra Diavolo observed, "though," he added to himself, "the empress would possibly survive it."

Jacqueline looked at him sharply. But in his deferential manner she could detect no hint of a second meaning. Yet he had laid bare the kernel of the whole business that bore the name of Jacqueline. She betrayed no vexation. If this were her cross, she was at least too haughtily proud to evade it. For a pa.s.sing instant only she looked as she had in the small boat, when she had said that about the mission of a woman being to give. The next moment, and the mood was gone.

With knowledge of her ident.i.ty, the project that was building in the stranger's dark mind loomed more and more dangerously venturesome. But as he gazed and saw how pretty she was, audacity marched strong and he wavered no longer. And when she thanked him, and added that the s.h.i.+p was only waiting until she finished her coffee, he roused himself and drove with hard will to his purpose.

"Going on by water?" he protested. "But Senorita de Aumerle, we are in the season for northers. Look, those mean another storm," and he pointed overhead, to harmless little cotton bunches of clouds scurrying away to the horizon.

"eh bien," returned the senorita, "what would you?"

He would, it appeared, that she go by land. He hoped that she did not consider his offer an empty politeness, tendered only in the expectation of its being refused. He so contrived, however, that that was precisely the way his offer might be interpreted, and in that he was deeper than she imagined. She grew interested in the possibility of finis.h.i.+ng her journey overland. He informed her that one could travel a day westward on horseback to a place called Valles, then take the City of Mexico and Monterey stage, and reach the City in two days, which was much shorter than by way of the sea and Vera Cruz. He spoke as dispa.s.sionately as a time table. But he noted that she clothed his skeleton data with a personal interest. And Ney also, who had caught the drift of things, saw new mischief brewing in her gray eyes.

"You really are not thinking, mademoiselle----" he interrupted.

"And why not, pray?"

"Why not? Why--uh--the bandits, of course."