The Missourian Part 12

No?--Murgie, if you don't dive, by----"

Murguia dove, and denied with eagerness that he had any further toll-paying appointments. But Driscoll reckoned that he was lying.

"And," he added, "we are going to change our route, pa.s.sport or no pa.s.sport. We'll take--let's see--yes, we'll take the very next crosstrail going in the same general direction."

Murguia's alarm at the proposal belied his former denial. The law required him to follow the course laid down in his pa.s.sport, but he feared the law less than the disappointment of road agents. Don Tiburcio's receipt protected him from those controlled by Don Tiburcio.

But Tiburcio was not powerful, except in blackmail. Murguia paid him lest he inform the government of tribute also paid to Don Rodrigo. Now Rodrigo Galan was powerful. His band infested the Huasteca. He called himself a Liberal and a patriot, and he really believed it too. But he also declared that the tolls he collected went to the revolutionary cause, which declaration, however, even he could hardly have believed.

Don Rodrigo gave receipts, and his receipts were alleged guarantee against other molestation, since he controlled the highway more thoroughly than ranger patrols had ever done. But lately a compet.i.tor had appeared in the brush, and he was that humorous scoundrel, Don Tiburcio of the crossed eye. Goaded near to apoplexy by the double tolls, Murguia had once ventured to upbraid Don Rodrigo with breach of contract. There was no longer immunity in the roadmaster's receipts, he whined. Then the robber chief had scowled with the brow of Jove, and hurled dreadful oaths. "You pay an Imperialista!" he stormed in lofty indignation. "You give funds to put down your struggling, starving compatriots! So, senor, this is the love you bear your country!"

It was a touching harangue, and the remorse-stricken trader ever after denied that he even saw Don Tiburcio, at which times a queer smile would supplant Don Rodrigo's black frown.

It was this same Don Rodrigo who had been reported as slain by Jacqueline's Fra Diavolo. But Driscoll, not having heard of his death, was quite ready to expect more brigands. He insisted, therefore, on changing trails.

"The Senor Coronel is most valiant," sneered Murguia.

"So darned much so, Murgie, that I want to dodge 'em."

But his struggle against temptation was evident. He glanced back at the two women and again denounced the unfamiliar feminine element in men's affairs. To avoid the brigandage encounter took more of manhood than Don Anastasio might imagine in a lifetime.

But they had not followed their new route five minutes before Murguia was again at the trooper's side. An "I-told-you-so" smirk hovered on his pinched visage. "Segundino has gone," he announced.

"So Segundino has gone?" Driscoll repeated. "Well, and who's Segundino?"

"He's one of my muleteers, but now I know he is a spy too. He will tell the bri--if there are brigands--where to meet us." Murguia was thinking, too, of their reproachful increase on collection charges for the extra trouble.

"Then," said Driscoll, "we'll go back to our old trail," which they did at once. Soon after he was not surprised to hear from Murguia that "this time it was Juan who had disappeared."

"Didn't I tell you to set a close watch?"

"Y-e-s, but what was the use? He slipped into the brush, and," the trader complained, "I can't spare any more drivers."

"Don't need to. We'll just keep this trail now."

CHAPTER X

THE BRIGAND CHIEF

"Don Rodrigo de Vivar, Rapaz, orgulloso, y vano."

--_El Cid._

Imagine an abnormally virtuous urchin and an abnormally kindly farmer.

The urchin resolutely turns his back on the farmer's melon patch, though there is no end of opportunity. But the farmer catches him, brings him in by the ear, makes him choose a big one, and leaves him there, the sole judge of his own capacity. Driscoll had tried to dodge a fight, but Fate was his kindly farmer.

"Better fall back a little, Murgie," he said. "You'd only scare 'em, you know."

He himself pa.s.sed on ahead. But it was mid-afternoon before anything happened. Jacqueline meantime had shown some pettish ill-humor. Those who had fought to be her escort were now singularly indifferent.

Driscoll was idly curious and quietly contemptuous, but he detected no fright in her manner. "Fretting for her silver-braided Greaser," he said to himself. "A pretty sc.r.a.pe she's got herself into, too! Now I wonder why a girl can't have any sense." But as the answer was going to take too long to find, he swerved back to the simpler matter of a possible fracas.

"Well, well," he exclaimed at last, rising in his stirrups, "if there isn't her nickel-plated hero now!"

A quarter of a mile ahead, mounted, waiting stock-still across the trail, was Fra Diavolo. The American put away his pipe and barely moved his spurred boot, yet the good buckskin's ears pointed forward and he trotted ahead briskly. From old guerrilla habit, the cavalryman noted all things as he rode. To his left the blue of the mountain line, being nearer now, had deepened to black, and the Sierra seemed to hang over him, ominously. But the dark summits were still without detail, and midway down, where the solid color broke into deep green verdure and was mottled by patches of dry slabs of rock, there was yet that ma.s.sive blur which told of distance. Foothills had rolled from the towering slide, and mounds had tumbled from the hills, and a tide of giant pebbles had swept down from the mounds. These rugged boulders had turned the trail, so that the American was riding beneath a kind of cliff. To his right, on the east of the trail, the boulders were smaller and scattered, like a handful of great marbles flung across the cactus plain. He may have glanced toward this side especially, at the clumps of spiny growth over the pradera, and caught glimpses behind the strewn rocks, but his look was casual, unstartled. He breathed deeply, though. The old familiar elation set him vaguely quivering and tingling, with nervous, subtle desire. The young animal's excess of life surged into a pain, almost.

Even the buckskin, knowing him, took his mood, and held high his nostrils.

Fra Diavolo's peaked beaver, his jacket, his breeches, his high pommeled saddle, his great box stirrups, the carabine case strapped behind, all be-scrolled with silver, danced hazily to the magic of rays slanting down from the lofty Sierra line. Like himself, his horse was a thing of spirited flesh, for glorious display. The glossy mane flowed luxuriantly. The tail curved to the ground. A mountain lion's skin covered his flanks. He was large and sleek and black, with the metal and pride of an English strain. He was a carved war-charger. The man astride was rigid, stately. Man and horse had a heroic statue's promise of instant, furious life.

"Oh, la beaute d'un homme!" cried Jacqueline, perceiving the majestic outline silhouetted against the rocks. "Why, why--it's Fra Diavolo!"

"It--it is!" confessed Murguia. There was dread, not surprise, in his exclamation. The waiting horseman, and a lonely hut there behind him--none other than a brigand "toll-station"--these were but too significant of an old and hated rendezvous. Don Anastasio got to his feet and nervously hurried his caravan back a short distance. Then he ran ahead again and overtook the two Frenchwomen. "Senoritas, wait!

Neither of you need go. But I will--I must, but I can go alone, while you----"

"Why, what ails the man?"

"Back, senorita, back, before he sees you!"

Jacqueline looked at the imploring eyes, at the palsied hand on her bridle. "Berthe," she said, "here's your little monsieur getting const.i.tutional again."

"You _will_ go, senorita?"

"Parbleu!" said the girl, and lashed her mustang.

"Dios, Dios," gasped the little monsieur, hurrying after them, "when Maximiliano hears of this----"

"You should see Maximilian when he is angry," Jacqueline called over her shoulder. "It is very droll."

Din Driscoll had vaulted to the ground in the instant of halting.

Immediately he led his horse behind the solitary hut, which was a _jacal_ of bamboo and thatch built under the cliff, and left him there. Demijohn was a seasoned campaigner, and he would not move until his trooper came for him. When Driscoll emerged again, his coat was over his left arm, and the pockets were bulging. Fra Diavolo had already saluted him, but gazed down the trail at the two women approaching.

"How are you, captain?" Driscoll began cordially.

Fra Diavolo looked down from his mighty seat. "Ai, mi coronel, I was expecting Your Mercy."

"Honest, now? Or weren't you worrying lest I'd got left back in Tampico?"

One of the ranchero's hands rose, palm out, deprecatingly.

"But someone might have told you I didn't get left at all," Driscoll pursued. "Segundino maybe? Or was it Juan?"

"Or Don Tiburcio?" suggested the captain. He dismounted and doffed his big sombrero. "Good, I see you brought Her Ladyship safely."

"Or I myself, rather," said Jacqueline, reining in her pony at the moment, "Ah, the Senor Capitan as an escort knows how to make himself prized by much antic.i.p.ation."

"Senorita!" The Mexican bent in heavy ceremony, the sombrero covering his breast. "I am honored, even in Your Mercy's censure. Those who deserve it could not appreciate it more."

"Forward then, captain. On with the excuses, I promise to believe them."