The Missourian Part 16

With an arm behind his shoulders Driscoll forced him down the trail to his caravan. Most of the animals were lying down, dozing under their packs. Murguia's eyes grew watery when he saw them, but he was still dazed and his delusion was obstinate. The leer shot exultant gleams. "A rich man _can_ enter heaven," he chuckled with unholy glee.

"Oh wake up, and give me two donkeys for the girls. Their horses got hit, you know."

Then the stunned old miser began to perceive that he was not in heaven.

His tyrant's voice! "You get my horses killed," he whined, "and now you take my burros."

Driscoll said no more, but picked out two beasts and bound some cushioned sacking on their backs for saddles. Then with a brisk hearty word, he swept Berthe up on the first one.

"Next," he said, turning to Jacqueline.

But the marchioness drew back. Next--after her maid! It nettled her that this country boy, or any other, could not recognize in her that indefinable something which is supposed to distinguish quality.

"What's the matter, now?" he asked. "Quick, please, I'm in a hurry."

"It's too preposterous. I'll not!"

"You will," he said quietly.

Her gray eyes deepened to blue with amazement. She stood stock still, haughtily daring him. She even lifted her arms a little, leaving the girlish waist defenseless. Her slender figure was temptation, the pretty ducal fury was only added zest. Up among the rocks Driscoll had found himself whispering, "She's game, that little girl!" But at the same time he had remembered Rodrigo's innuendo, the linking of her name with Maximilian's. She was so brave, and so headstrong, so lovably headstrong, and her beauty was so fresh and soft! Yet he could not but think of that taint in what nature had made so pure. Of a sudden there was a something wrong, something ugly and hideously wrong in life. And the country boy, the trooper, the man of blood-letting, what you will, was filled with helpless rage against it; and next against himself, because the girlish waist could thrill him so. "A silly little b.u.t.terfly," he argued inwardly. Before, he had been unaware of his own indifference. But now he angrily tried to summon it back. He set his mind on their situation, on what it exacted. It exacted haste, simple, impersonal haste. And keeping his mind on just that, he caught her up.

"Oh, you boor!" she cried, pushing at him.

His jaw hardened. His will was well nigh superhuman, for he battled against two furious little hands, against the dimple and the patch so near his lips, against the fragrance of her hair, against the subtle warmth of his burden.

"No, no!" she panted. "Monsieur, do you hear me? I am not to be carried!"

"Maybe not," said he, carrying her.

A moment later she discovered herself planted squarely on the burro.

"Bonte divine!" she gasped. But she took care not to fall off.

He drew a long breath.

"Now whip 'em up," he commanded.

The first village beyond, where Dupin had promised to meet Jacqueline, was a squatting group of thatched cones in a dense forest of Cyprus and eucalyptus. Its denizens were Huasteca Indians, living as they had before the Conquest, among themselves still talking their native dialect. The name of the hamlet was Culebra.

The coy twilight waned quickly, and the caravan was still pushing on through the thick darkness of the wood, when a high tensioned yelping made the vast silence insignificant, ugly. But as the travelers filed into the clearing where the village was, the curs slunk away with coyote humility, their yellow points of eyes glowing back on the intruders.

With a forager's direct method, Driscoll roused the early slumbering village. He would not take alfafa, he declined rastrojo. It was human food, corn, that he bought for his horse. He housed his dumb friend under a human roof too. After which he prepared a habitation for the women. He swept the likeliest hut clean of ashes, brazier, and bits of pots and jars. He carpeted the earth floor in Spanish moss, as King Arthur's knights once strewed their halls with rushes. It was luxury for a coroneted la.s.s, if one went back a dozen centuries. There were c.h.i.n.ks between the sooty saplings that formed the wall, but over these he hung matting, and he drove a stake for a candle.

Supper followed. The trooper chose to change Don Anastasio from host to guest, and he exacted what he needed from the Inditos. They, for their part, were alert before his commands. None of them had been overlooked in his preliminary largesse of copper tlacos and they made the teaming wilderness contribute to his spread. Kneeling, with sleeves rolled from his hard forearms, he broiled a steak over hickory forks. The torches of gum tree knots lighted his banquet, and the faces of the two girls, rosy in the blaze and mysterious in the shadow, were piquant inspiration.

Even the sharp features of Don Anastasio stirred him into a phase of whimsical benevolence. He knocked two chickens from their perch in a tree and baked them in a mould of clay. There was an armadilla too, which a Culebra boy and the dogs had run down during the day. Its dark flesh was rich and luscious, and the Missourian fondly called it 'possum. Crisply toasted tortillas, or corn cakes, served for bread, and for spoons as well. But to Driscoll's mind the real feast was coffee--actual coffee, which he made black, so very good and black, a riotous orgie of blackness and strength and fragrance. Here was a feast indeed for the poor trooper. He thought of the chickory, of the parched corn, of all those pitiful aggravations that Shelby's Brigade had tried so hard to imagine into coffee during the late months of privation along the Arkansas line.

And the Marquise d'Aumerle? Learning to eat roasting ears, which somehow just would leave a grain on her cheek with every bite, the dainty Marquise thought how much finer was this than the tedious b.u.mping ship.

How much more tempting than the ultra-belabored viands on white china that had to be latticed down! Here was angel's bread in the wilderness.

And the appet.i.te that drove her to ask for more, that was the only sauce--an appet.i.te that was a frisson. A new sensation, in itself!

And later, sleep too became a pa.s.sion, a pa.s.sion new and sweet in its incantation out of the lost cravings of childhood. When the nearer freshness of the woods filled her nostrils, there from the live-oak moss in her night's abode, she smiled on the grave young fellow who had left her at the door. And both girls laughing together over the masculine notions for their comfort, knew a certain happy tenderness in their gaiety.

"eh, but it's deep, madame," said one.

"It's the politeness of the heart," the other explained.

Outside Driscoll spread his blanket across the doorway where his horse was sheltered, and wrapped in his great cape-coat, he stretched himself for a smoke. But Murguia came with cigars, of the Huasteca, gray and musty. Driscoll accepted one, waving aside the old man's apologies. He puffed and waited. Conviviality in Don Anastasio meant something.

"Ah, amigo," the thin voice cracked in a spasm of forced heartiness, "ah, it was a banquet! Si, si, a banquet! Only, if there were but a liqueur, a liqueur to give the after-cigar that last added relish, verdad, senor?"

Driscoll tapped his "after-cigar" till the ashes fell. "Well? he asked.

"Ai de mi, caballero, but I am heavy with regrets. I can offer nothing.

My poor cognac--no, not after such a feast. But whiskey--ah, whiskey is magnifico. It is American."

He stopped, with a genial rubbing of his bony hands. But his sad good-fellowship was transparent enough, and in the darkness his eyes were beads of malice. Driscoll half grunted. A long way round for a drink, he thought. "Here," he said, getting out his flask, "have a pull at this."

Murguia took it greedily. He had seen the flask before. The covering of leather was battered and peeled. "Perhaps a little--water?" he faltered.

Driscoll nodded, and off the old Mexican ambled with the flask. When he returned, he had a gla.s.s, into which he had poured some of the liquor.

The canteen he handed back to the trooper, who without a word replaced it in his pocket. Murguia lingered. He sipped his toddy absently.

"I, I wonder why the friends of the senoritas do not come?" he ventured.

"Want to get rid of them, eh, Murgie?"

The old man shrugged his shoulders. "And why not? You may not believe me, senor, but should I not feel easier if they were--well, out of the reach of Don Rodrigo?"

"Out of----Look here, where's the danger now?"

"Ai, senor, don't be too sure. Colonel Dupin still does not come, and it might be--because the guerrillas have stopped him."

"Man alive, he had 'em running!"

"H'm, yes, but there's plenty more. This very village breeds them, feeds them, welcomes them home. Don Rodrigo can gather ten times what he had to-day. And if he does, and if, if he is looking for the senoritas again----"

Driscoll shifted on his blanket. "I see," he drawled. "F'r instance, if the senoritas vanish before he gets here, he won't blame you? Oh no, you were asleep, you couldn't know that I had up and carried 'em off.

Anyhow, you'd rather risk Rodrigo than Colonel Dupin----Yes, I see." He tucked his saddle under his head, and lay flat, blinking at the stars.

"This trail go on to Valles?" he inquired drowsily.

Murguia's small eyes brightened over him. "Yes," he said, eagerly.

"Correct," yawned the American, "I've already made sure."

"And if----" But a snore floated up from the blanket.

When Murguia was gone, the sleeper awoke. He carefully poured out all the remaining whiskey. "It may be what they call 'fine Italian,'" he muttered, with a disgusted shake of the head, but he neglected to throw the flask away as well. Next he saddled Demijohn and two of the pack horses, then lay down and slept in earnest, as an old campaigner s.n.a.t.c.hes at rest.

The night was black, an hour before the dawn, when his eyes opened wide, and he sat up, listening. He heard it again, faint and far away, a feeble "pop-pop!" Then there were more, a sudden pigmy chorus of battle.