“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 assertive and insolent nose altogether. The forehead was rugged, with a free curving sweep. Here there would have been a certain nobility, 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 grass before a breeze. The shaggy 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!

19Now 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 seÑorita, 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. 20He 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 Chasseurs, 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 cumbrous pleasantry.

“Alas, seÑor,” 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 seÑorita 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.

21He 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 assured him, but she watched him quizzically, for she knew that another name was hovering on his lips.

“Surely not––” he began.

“Si seÑor,” 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 Ladyship,” 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 passing 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 identity, 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 ship 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 SeÑorita 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.

22“Éh bien,” returned the seÑorita, “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 finishing 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 dispassionately 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.”

Jacqueline turned to the stranger who served as itinerary folder. Would he dispose of the childish objection? He would. But he wondered why the seÑor had not mentioned one who was the most to be feared of all bandits; in fact, the most implacable of the rebels still battling against His Truly Mexican Majesty. The stranger paused expectantly, but as Ney seemed to recognize no particular outlaw from the description, he went on with a deepening frown, “––and who is none other than the Capitan Don Rodrigo GalÁn.”

“Who’s he?” Ney inquired, willing enough to have any scarecrow whatever for Jacqueline.

“Is it possible?–Your Mercy does not know?”

Ney pleaded that he had never been in the country before.

“But surely,” the Mexican objected, “Don Rodrigo is a household word throughout Europe?”

23“He has certainly been heard of in Mexico,” said Jacqueline, whereat Fra Diavolo turned to her gratefully. “But,” she added, “Monsieur Ney will now find in him another objection to my journeying overland.”

The ardor of the bandit’s eulogist faltered. “The seÑor might indeed,” he confessed, “only,” and here he hesitated like a man contemplating suicide, “only, Don Rodrigo has been–yes, he’s been shot, from ambush; and his band–yes, his band is scattered forever.”

Having achieved the painful massacre, Fra Diavolo traveled on more easily to assure the seÑorita that since then the country had been entirely pacified. Ney, however, was not. How did they know the story was true? And if it was, he was sorry. He would enjoy meeting the terrible and provokingly deceased Monsieur Rodrigue, if only to teach him that being terrible is not good manners. But, did they know for certain that the bandit was dead?

“We do,” said the Mexican, again like a reluctant suicide, “because I killed him myself.”

“But how are we to know, sir,” Ney persisted, “that you are so terrible on your own account?”

“My identification, you mean? Bueno, it is only just. Here, this may do,” and the ranchero drew a paper from his money belt and handed it to Jacqueline. The paper was an order addressed to one Captain Maurel, who was to proceed with his company to the district of Tampico, and there to take and to shoot the guerrilla thief, Rodrigo GalÁn, and all his band, who infested the district aforesaid, known as the Huasteca. The Captain Maurel would take note that this Rodrigo GalÁn frequented the very city of Tampico itself, with an impudence to be punished at all hazards. Signed: Dupin, Colonel of His Majesty’s Contra Guerrillas.

“Colonel Dupin?” Jacqueline repeated with a wry mouth. Dupin, the Contra-Guerrilla chief, was a brave Frenchman. 24But the quality of his mercy had made his name a shudder on the lips of all men, his own countrymen included.

“Yes,” said Fra Diavolo between his teeth, “Mi Coronel Dupin–the Tiger.”

“So he is called, I know,” said Jacqueline. “And you, it appears, are Captain Maurel–Maurel, but that is French?”

“The way it is spelled on the paper, yes. But my Coronel, being French, made a mistake. He should have written it ‘Morel.’”

“No matter,” said Jacqueline, “for you are only a trite, conventional officer, after all. But how much merrier it would be if you were–were––” and suddenly she leaned over the paper and placed an impetuous finger on the bandit’s name. “So,” she continued wistfully, “there is no danger. We ride, we take a stage. It is tame. I say it is tame, monsieur!”

Captain Maurel, or Morel, desired to add that there was a trader who owned an hacienda in the interior, and that this trader was starting for his plantation the very next morning; all of which was very convenient, because the trader had extra horses, and he, Captain Morel, had a certain influence with the trader. The seÑorita’s party could travel with his friend’s caravan as far as the stage.

“VoilÁ!” cried Jacqueline. “It is arranged!”

“Diable, it is not!” Michel was on his feet again.

His wayward charge looked him over reflectively. “Our Mars in his baby clothes again,” said she, as a fond, despairing mother with an incorrigible child.

The Mexican had shown himself hostile and ready. But seeing Jacqueline’s coolness he melted out of his somewhat theatrical bristling, lest her sarcasm veer toward himself.

The tempestuous Mars, however, was beyond the range of scorn. He kept one stubborn purpose before him. “We go back to the ship, or”–he took breath where he meant to put a handsome oath–“or–it’s a fight!”

25“There, there,” said Jacqueline gently. “Besides, are you not to go with me just the same?”

Ney turned to the stranger. “I ask you to withdraw, sir, both yourself and your offers, because you’re only meddling here.”

The intruder grew rigid straightway. “I am not one to take back an offer,” he stated loftily. His voice was weighted to a heavier guttural, and in the deep staccatos harshly chopped off, and each falling with a thud, there was a quality so ominous and deadly that even Jacqueline had her doubts. But she would not admit them, to herself least of all. “And I, Monsieur Ney,” she said, “have decided to accept,” though she had not really, until that very moment.

Ney turned to the one sailor with him. “Run like fury!” he whispered. “Bring the others!”

“Oh, very well,” said the Mexican.

As he doubtless intended, Fra Diavolo’s words sounded like the low growl of an awakening lion, and at the same time he brought forth the reed whistle and put it to his lips. The note that came was faint, like that of a distant bird in the forest.

Ney smiled. It seemed inadequate, silly. Lately he had become familiar with the sonorous foghorn, and besides, he was not a woodsman and knew nothing of the penetration of the thin, vibrant signal. When the sailors should come, he would take the troublesome fellow to the commander of the garrison on the hill. But then a weight fell on him from behind, and uncleanliness and garlic and the sweating of flesh filled his nostrils. Bare arms around his neck jerked up his chin, according to the stroke of PÈre FranÇois. Other writhing arms twined about his waist, his legs, his ankles; and hands clutched after his sabre and pistol. But at last he stood free, and glared about him, disarmed and helpless. Jacqueline’s infernal Fra Diavolo was surveying him from the closed door 26of the CafÉ, behind which he had swept the two women. His stiff pose had relaxed, and he was even smiling. He waved his hand apologetically over his followers. “His Exceeding Christian Majesty’s most valiant contra guerrillas,” he explained.

The so-called contra guerrillas were villainous wretches, at the gentlest estimate. Their scanty, ragged and stained cotton manta flapped loosely over their skin, which was scaly and as tough as old leather. Most of them had knives. A few carried muskets, long, rusty, muzzle-loading weapons that threw a slug of marble size.

Almost at once the burly French sailors appeared, but Fra Diavolo’s little demons closed in behind them and around them and so kept them from reaching Ney. Thus both sides circled about and moved cautiously, waiting for the trouble to begin in earnest. Michel only panted, until at last he bethought himself that there was such a thing as strategy.

“One of you out there,” he shouted in French, “quick, go to the fort. Bring the soldiers!”

The Mexicans did not understand, and before they could prevent, a sailor had taken to his heels.

Then Fra Diavolo comprehended. “You idiots!” he bellowed. “You–Pedro! Catch him! Faster!–Catch him, I say!”

A little demon darted away in pursuit of the sailor. Obviously, the situation hung on the swifter in the race.