The Missourian Part 34

"Tibby's the reason, I reckon. That Tibby is a deep one."

She made him explain, and he told her. The blackmailing humorist, Tiburcio, had paid him a visit at his dungeon window during the night.

Being chief witness for the prosecution, Tiburcio could pa.s.s the sentry unchallenged.

"Come for your money?" Driscoll had inquired, and Tiburcio seemed hurt.

"What is the matter," Tiburcio demanded, "with pointing a revolver at the Senor Americano right now, and making him deliver?"

Driscoll had not figured out what the objections might be, but he reckoned some would materialize.

"But," said Tiburcio, "I'm not doing it, and why? Simply because I want to know if you care to escape?"

"W'y," returned Driscoll, "I'll think it over, and let you know in the morning," at which lack of confidence Tiburcio was more hurt than ever.

"What's the use," Driscoll objected, "they'd catch me again?"

"Not if I fixed their horses, and if I do, will you promise to get out?"

And thus the bargain had stood, and thus it was fulfilled, though at the last the anxious Tiburcio had called in Jacqueline to help.

"Now," said the marchioness, settling herself for a treat, "I _must_ know. Tame for me the miracle, explain it. I cannot longer hold my curiosity. But it was fine--exquis--however you have done it!"

"Weren't they a surprised lot, though?"

"But the miracle, monsieur! The miracle!"

"Well, it was this way. Being on the yawning brink--as old Meagre Shanks, friend of mine, would say--I figured it out that lacking in G.o.dliness, I'd try to get the next best thing."

"Please, monsieur!"

"That I'd try to get a bath."

"Of dust and mud, for example?"

At that Driscoll ceased all miracle taming and brushed himself off. But, putting him back into his dungeon, one will recall how he plotted to obtain two jars of water. This water he used simply to soften the hard, sun-baked adobes. First he hung his coat over the window. A suspicious guard naturally wanted to know why, and Driscoll appeared at the bars stripped to the waist. To keep out the cold air while he bathed, he said, and his teeth chattered. Then he went back to work. He handled his precious water with desperate economy. He began at the exposed end of one adobe brick, soaking it as needed and digging it out with a chip of earthenware knocked off one of the jars. The wall was two adobe lengths in thickness, but after he had gotten out his first brick, it was easy, by tugging and kicking, to tear out the others of the inside tier, since luckily they did not dovetail in with the outer ones. Soon he had an arch-shaped niche in the wall almost as high as his head when mounted on Demijohn. The really tedious part remained, and it was an all night job.

To deepen the niche without breaking through, he had to sc.r.a.pe it out piecemeal, wetting the dried mud as he toiled. He measured carefully just how much of the thickness to leave, because the weed stalks in the adobe could not be trusted to hold too thin a crust, and also he had to take care that the water did not soak entirely through and make a tell-tale blot on the outside when daylight should come. It was an infinitely laborious task, and even with completion at last, there was yet the question--which would break first, bone or masonry?

But he would learn when he should dash his horse's skull and his own against the sh.e.l.l that remained. He saddled Demijohn, filled an empty jar with the soft earth of his excavations, and waited. His dramatic appearance at the instant of the door's opening was not a coincidence.

It was minute calculation. Already mounted, he faced the wall, with the heavy jar poised over his head in both hands, his spurs drawn back to strike. He waited until sentinels and shooting squad had gathered at the door. He waited to draw their fire, to empty their muskets. But he did not wait until the door should open enough to give them unimpeded aim.

In the second of its opening he drove back the spurs, hurled the jar against the wall, and--crashed through his dungeon as easily as breaking a sucked egg.

"But," demanded Jacqueline eagerly, "how is it you did feel?" She was disappointed that the personal equation had had so little prominence.

"I don't recollect," said Driscoll, puzzled, "there was nothing hurting especially."

"No, no! Your sensations facing death, then escaping?"

He brightened. "W'y yes," he replied, happy to catch her meaning. "I felt toler'ble busy."

She sighed despairingly. Yet there was plenty left her for wonderment, and in it she revelled.

"Ingenuity!" she mused. "I declare, I believe the first human being to stand up on his hind legs must have been an American. It simply occurred to him one day that he didn't need all fours for walking, and that he might as well use his before-feet for something else."

"And a Frenchman, Miss Jack-leen?"

She flung up her hands.

"_He!_" she exclaimed. "If ever a compatriot of mine had gotten that idea into his--how you say?--pate, would he not carry it out to the idiotic limit, yes? He? _He_ would try to walk without any feet whatever, and use _all_ of them for other things. Already you have seen him doing the, the pugilat--the box--with every one of his fours.

Voila!"

But time was pa.s.sing. Lopez had certainly repaired his girths by this time. Driscoll arose. "There's a shorter way back," he announced. "The river junction can't be far down stream, and I'll wait for you there, Miss Jack-leen, while you scout on ahead to the hacienda house. If all's clear, you signal and I will advance with the heavy cavalry."

"C'est bien, mon colonel."

"Whatever that means, I hope it ain't mutiny."

At best it was only mock compliance. Jacqueline also knew that time was pa.s.sing, but she had not mentioned the fact. Now the reason transpired.

She harked back on their separation, with a grave earnestness and a saddened air of finality. He was to leave her here, she said. He was to go back to his own country. How badly had his reception fared so far?

Why not, then, leave Mexico to ingrat.i.tude, and have done? The romantic land of roses was notoriously a blight to hopes. Why should he seek to thrive despite the mysterious curse that seemed to hover over all things like a deadly miasma?

Driscoll shook his head. "You know I have come to see Maximilian."

"But you are under sentence. You will lose your life."

"Miss Jack-leen, you said a while back that I was your prisoner. You have the Austrian escort. All right. You will deliver me to the Emperor," and he waved his hand as though the matter was arranged.

"But monsieur," she cried, "may not others have plans as vital as yours?

And, perhaps--yes, you interfere."

He did interfere, in grimmest truth. Leaving the Sphinx of the Tuileries, she had come with her mission, and with an idea, too, of the obstacles that must be vanquished. But here, almost at landing, she encountered a barrier left out of her calculations, and which alone, unaided, she had to surmount. It was the surrender of the Confederacy, and what this upsetting complication meant against her own errand was embodied in the man before her. For in him lay the results of the Surrender as affecting the Mexican empire. In a word, he brought aid for Maximilian at the moment when Maximilian might be discouraged enough to give way to France; when the forgetful prince might gladly leave all to the generous nation which had placed him on his throne and which by him was cheated of the reward of its costly empire building. Should the French threaten to withdraw, should they in reality withdraw, still he would not abdicate, not with Confederate veterans to replace the pantalons rouges. Like the dog of the fable, Maximilian would cling to the manger.

"Oui, oui, monsieur," she repeated sharply, "you interfere!"

"In that case," said Driscoll quietly, "I will leave you at the river junction. When I see that you are safely at the hacienda----"

"You will go back to America?"

"That need not worry you."

"Then you are _not_ going back, back to your own country?" He would keep on to the City alone. She would have no chance to intercept him.

After all Fate had been good to her--no, cruel!--to cast him in her path. "You might find the Austrian escort safer than going alone," she said enticingly.

He hesitated. What all this was about, he could not imagine. He knew nothing, naturally, of the dark intrigues of an enigmatical adventurer far away in the Tuileries, nor how they could affect him. And so he put away as absurd the fancy that she in her turn might interfere with him.

Besides, he was tempted.

"It's a go!" he said.

She for her part was thinking, hoping, rather, that perhaps she was mistaken. Perhaps he only bore the offer of a paltry few hundred, a handful of homeseekers from his regiment. She hoped so. She would have prayed for it, had praying occurred to her.