The Missourian Part 49

The customary yelling and straining began, and men grunted as they heaved against an axle. After a long seance of such effort there came a sharp exclamation, like an oath, and the confusion fell to a murmur of dismay. Someone jerked open the door, and Dupin's grizzled head appeared.

"Mademoiselle, I regret to have to announce that a wheel is dished in."

Jacqueline's gray eyes regarded him quizzically. The sardonic old face spread to a grin, but deftly readjusted itself to the requisite despair.

Not a carriage except the wrecked one was in sight. Only the Tiger's whelps, by the hundred, surrounded her.

"And the others? Her Majesty?"

"The others did the sensible thing. They know that you will catch up with them when they themselves are mired. Her Majesty, being ahead, is probably still in ignorance of your accident."

"But the wheel?"

"If mademoiselle wishes it mended?"

"Is it so bad?"

Dupin caught her expression. "It will take six hours," he said mercilessly.

"Oh dear!" said Jacqueline.

"There's a settler's cabin a mile from here. If you will accept my horse, and Mademoiselle Berthe can mount behind----"

"Poor Berthe," sighed Jacqueline. But she nodded eagerly.

CHAPTER IV

THE LACKING COINCIDENCE

"Achilles absent was Achilles still."--_The Iliad._

Colonel Dupin helped first one and then the other of his charges upon the same horse and wrapped them about in the same gaudy serape till only two pair of pretty eyes peeped forth at the rain. The Vera Cruz highway clung to the mountain side, but the Contra Guerrillas took a venturesome little bridle path which dropped abruptly down into the rich valley of a thousand or more feet below. Emerging from the dense tropical growth of the highland, they beheld a vast emerald checkerboard of cultivation, field after field of sugar cane, and set in each bright square a little house of bamboo with a roof of red piping. After the dreary black gorges behind them, the light of the sun seemed boxed in here under a leaden cover of cloud. Coming suddenly out of the chill and mist, the two girls felt the very rain gratefully warm and the fragrant smells of the wet earth a thing of comfort. As the beauty and the cheer of it subtly gladdened her mood, Jacqueline thought that here at any rate was an adequate mise-en-scene for whatever tremors might befall.

There was one circ.u.mstance that already seemed a portent, and got on a person's nerves like the stillness of nature just before a Kansas cyclone. This was the curious absence of all human life. Except for the grimly expectant troop around her, and the clanking of metal as the Contras rode, she had no token of a fellow creature. The first of the plantations was deserted, and likewise the next. But the house doors were open. Nothing showed preparation for departure. The riddle was uncanny. At the third Jacqueline stated that she would go no farther.

She hated to tramp down a man's field when the man himself was not about to express an opinion, and the ruthless swath made by her escort through the cane gave her shame. Besides, it was too much like wading, the way her skirts brushed the long leaves and knocked off glistening drops by myriads.

The third cabin was abandoned too, but there were inducements within for any houseless creature. A hammock was hanging from corner to corner in the front room, probably to thwart the fauna of tropical stingers, and there was that comfort unfamiliar to French women, a rocking chair, before a most inviting fireplace, itself a luxury rare in Mexico. The two girls removed their cloaks, and settled themselves to dry their shoes before a roaring fire which the men lighted for them. Then the Cossacks, including their colonel, left on some stealthy business without, and Jacqueline and Berthe were alone.

Jacqueline tried the rocker, found it good, and smoothed her skirts over her knees to the warmth of the blaze. "We've only to yawn at the flies, eh, ma cherie?" said she.

"Not a thing else, madame," came a cheery voice from the hammock.

Jacqueline was at once suspicious. "You absurd little mouse," she cried, "don't I understand that gaiety of yours! And all the while you are really trembling in fear of terrible bandits. For months now you grieve because you imagine that I--well, that I am sad. But you'll not make me hilarious, you won't, Berthe, as long as it's 'madame.' Child, child, will you not let me have my friend in you, I who have none, nor a mother or sister! There now, if I'm not to be--ah--pensive--remember there's no 'madame' between thee and me, dear!"

The Bretonne's gentle eyes filled suddenly. Jacqueline had before sought to change their relations, ever since Berthe's part in Driscoll's rescue from execution, but she had always tried to bring it about by playful bantering. Now, however, Berthe was given to see the utter loneliness of an orphaned girl in one who for all the rest of the world was the disdainfully independent little aristocrat, who had met the proffered intimacy of the French empress with a sneer, who was the cold princess when among princesses of the Blood. The loyal child of simple Breton folk sprang impulsively to the arm of the rocker, and was herself clasped no less impulsively.

"But there," said Jacqueline, laughing rather brokenly, "we're forgetting the flies."

A belt over the fireplace caught her eye, and she unexpectedly discovered that her breath had quickened. She stared fascinated at the letters on the buckle. "C. S. A.," she murmured. Then her startled gaze roved hurriedly over the walls. It became even frightened before a faded gray cape-coat of the Confederate cavalry and a battered white gauntlet sticking from the pocket. Involuntarily, trembling foolishly, she looked to see if there might not be an old cob pipe also. There was not, but the other familiar objects made her imagination leap fearfully to what might be. Both hope and dread will always override common sense, and convoy imagination perforce. If _he_ did live here--if they should meet! Could such a coincidence happen, could it, outside the neat ordering of a book or play?

She sprang to her feet and began investigating. She went awesomely as one would tiptoe over a haunted house. In the next room she came upon what was an odd treasure trove for an isolated bamboo cabin tucked far away under the Tropic of Cancer. It was a printer's shop, after a fashion. The case was a block of stone, in whose surface the little compartments had been chiseled. They were spa.r.s.ely accoutred with type and plentifully with cigar ashes. As for a press, there was none. But a form had been made up on a slab of marble, and near by were a tiny hillock of ink, a roller and a mallet. The mysterious printer could at least take proofs. There was one now on a file. Jacqueline pulled it off, and contemplated a miniature American newspaper, of one sheet, printed on one side only, and no larger than a magazine cover. At the top she read the legend, in German caps: "_The Cordova Colonist_--_Weekly Independent_."

"Is that a pun?" she wondered.

But now at least she could identify the ghostly company of the valley, though not its scribe. That word "Cordova" gave the clue. A year ago one thousand hardy men had ridden into the capital from the north. Their leader was a fiery, black-whiskered little man with a plume in his hat and the buff sash of a brigadier general around his waist. They were the Missourians, defamed as "Shelby's horse thieves and judges of whiskey,"

honored as "The Old Brigade," and so feared and respected under any name that the City fairly buzzed and stared goggle-eyed. But Maximilian again refused their offers to enlist under his standard, and they could only disband. Some took ship to hunt for Kidd's treasure in the Pacific, others went to j.a.pan and the Sandwich Islands, and a number joined a congenial regiment of veterans, the Zouaves. But the majority, she remembered now, had been settlers, persuaded thereto by their countryman, Commodore Maury, who was Imperial Commissioner of Immigration. Maury had secured a grant of land near the town of Cordova, within a hundred miles of Vera Cruz. There were one-half million acres of rich land, suitable for the three Big C's of southern countries, cotton, cane and coffee. But until now the strip had not been cultivated. The Church had held it fallow. Then the Republic had nationalized it; and the Empire was selling it to the Americans at $1.25 an acre. The hopeful settlement bore the name of Carlota.

So the cape-coat and those other things were explained. She was denied her coincidence. But as there was so much of a plot forward anyway, she ought to have been satisfied--as an artist, she ought. She craved an ecstasy of peril or of terror, not as the former dilettante of emotions, but as the lotus eater who exacts forgetfulness.

Meantime she read editorials, and got interested. The _Colonist_ never advanced beyond the proof-sheet stage, but as such it circulated with avidity over the valley. Eloquence flowed serene under mashed type and variegated fonts. The editor persisted in viewing the Empire and Republic as political parties, and the horrors of civil warfare as incidents of an electoral campaign. He had congenial scope for his unpartisan and independent pen, advising with owl-like sagacity or abusing with peppery virulence, and either, for either side, with blithe impartiality. At times, though, the strained a.n.a.logy between ballots and bullets evidently cracked, and rather floored the editor. For instance, in a pot-pourri of long primer and pica with a dash of Old English lower-case was the following:

As we wen[t] to press last week we paused to entertain a torchlight procession of the Young Imperialists' Flambeau [C]lub, which was collecting a campaign contribution in the semblance of our alfalfa stack. The spectacle of citizens taking an active [p]art in the issues before their country ne'er fails to rouse in us a spirit of collaboration, so [w]hat could we do but join heartily in the celebration, so that a most excellent time was had. Later our editorial staff, a score who in our canefields teach the tender sprouts [h]ow to shoot, knowing t[h]e same so well themselves, gently laid to rest a score and one Cossacks, past members of the [F]lambeau Club, wh[o] had lingered behind for the reason that they _were_ past.

But, we ask, _ad quod d.a.m.num_?--i.e., isn't it as futile as cauterizing a wooden leg? How much longer, O Jove, must we let our public-opinion moulds cool off while we chase enthusiastic young patriots away from our alfal[f]a!!!... In conclusion, with a cool brow, we are constrained to say that if the party in power cannot discourage the depredations above ci[t]ed, we shall have to fortify ourselves to the contemplation of a c[h]ange of administration.

[Transcriber's note: characters in brackets were originally printed as bold Old English lower-case as explained above.]

"Why," cried Jacqueline, "what an _animal disputans_ it is!" She perceived an ink bottle, and exclaimed, "Ah, more milk from the black cow!" Taking up a wad of copy paper, on which a future editorial was already begun, she read, and quickly her amus.e.m.e.nt changed to a livelier interest.

"Rumor goes," she read under the caption, _Ardentia Verba_, "that Father Augustine, political manager for the administration, vice eloin, is soon to leave for Europe. He goes to have a pourparler with the Pope.

He will concede everything, since the Empire no longer hopes to win over the moderate Mexicans. But the obstinate though Holy Father will negotiate a concordat on one basis only, and that is the return to the Mexican church of all nationalized church lands.

"Men of the colony, attention now! We each own something like three hundred acres apiece of these lands. And we are paying for them, we are cultivating them, and we have to defend them against both guerrillas and contra-guerrillas. And now they are to be confiscated! Our new homes are to be taken from us!! Alas, we who are peaceful settlers, to think that we were Trojans on a time!!! Fellow citizens, with us it's a severe case of _e pluribus unum_. Oh, for a leader! But our incomparable chief of yore will not stir. Yet there _was_ one, gallant cavalier of the South, peerless captain, just the dauntless heart for any forlorn hope under the starry vault of heaven, if he were only here! If he, John D.

Driscoll, were only----"

The matter stopped abruptly. More than that, by force of habit the scribe had ringed the figures "30" underneath. They meant "finis." The editor had known, then, that he would not return to end his harangue.

"A flea bite," mused Jacqueline, "would interrupt the penning of an Alexandrian line. Now, I wonder who or what the flea could have been, and what----"

But there, she would ask herself no question concerning the editorially mentioned "John D. Driscoll."

It was mid afternoon when Colonel Dupin, like a s.h.a.ggy, dripping bear, returned to the house and begged leave to dry himself. Standing before the fire, he reloaded his holster pistols. They were tremendous, elegant utensils of French make, with a nine-chambered cylinder, and a second barrel underneath that carried a rifle ball. Where no prisoners were taken on either side, the owner of such a weapon usually reserved the murderous slug for himself, and the loading of that lower barrel became a sort of ghastly rite. Jacqueline shuddered as she watched him fix on the cap.

"How do you explain your desertion of Her Majesty?" she asked. "Our Fra Diavolo should thank me for drawing you off."

The Tiger adjusted the double hammer so that it would play on the cylinder first. A rumbling chuckle came from the depths of his throat.

"I should be honored with mademoiselle's approval," he said, "for at court mademoiselle is a guileful warrior. The casualties there may not be so sanguinary, but the strategic principle is the same. Know, then, that Rodrigo Galan employs a spy whom I own, body and soul. By now Rodrigo has learned from this spy that the Imperial coach broke down, and that to-night Her Majesty rests--here. So you see that she is not likely to be attacked----"

"But I see that _we_ are, parbleu!"

"Of course," and the Tiger unctuously rubbed his hands in the blaze.

"It's my chance to trap him. He has only three hundred men."

"And you, monsieur?"