Maximiliano I. of Mexico was dead. His dynasty and his Empire were the frippery of a past time. Yet there was his capital, still holding out against the Republic. Leonardo Marquez, the Leopard, spitefully refused to capitulate. But why he would not, no one knew, neither the starving City, nor the patient besieger outside. No one, unless it was Jacqueline. The very day of the triple execution she called on Escobedo, commander in chief at QuerÉtaro. She desired to return to the capital, and she wanted a pass through the Republic’s lines there. She mentioned, in case it were any inducement, that the place would fall within twenty-four hours after her arrival. Jacqueline had difficulty to speak at all. She could not endure the general’s monstrous flaps of ears, his rabbinical beard, his cruel black eyes.

“MarÍa purÍsima,” he exclaimed, “you cannot mean, seÑorita, that you, all alone, will deliver the City of Mexico into our hands?”

“It will certainly be an incident of my stay there,” she replied.

The hard, Jewish features lighted cunningly. “Then, por Dios, you are as wonderful as I’ve always heard! But may–may one be allowed a little curiosity?”

“I might say,” and Jacqueline forthwith said it, “that I have just had a cipher telegram from Louis Napoleon.”

497“Which,” breathlessly demanded the other, “will interest Marquez, eh? Will disappoint him? Will cause him to surrender?”

“Your Excellency is of course entitled to his own conjectures.”

But the commander-in-chief was satisfied. “We must hasten your going by every means,” he declared. “You shall have an escort. You––”

“Then I choose the Gray Troop–because,” she added carefully, “they’re the best.”

Now, why, by all that’s feminine, was she surprised next morning when the Gray Troop gathered round her coach, as though that were a coincidence? At least she arched her brows, and lifted one shoulder petulantly, and unmistakably showed that she expected a tedious time of it. The sunburned colonel of the Grays beamed so with happiness too, as he drew rein to report to her. They met for the first time since Maximilian’s embarrassing little scene for their express benefit. Driscoll noted her disdain, and it is likely that he only grinned. He did that because he knew how helpless he was, and how merciless she could be. For she was not only beautiful, she was pretty–a demure, sweet, and very pretty girl. Some vague instinct of self-defense guided him. His broad smile was exasperating in the last degree, and it was not she, but the other young woman in the coach, whom he addressed.

“I got some side saddles, Miss Burt,” he announced, “and a few extra mustangs, whenever anybody gets tired of traveling behind curtains.” Curiously enough, both girls wore riding habits. “Oh, by the way,” he inquired suddenly, “how’s Miss Jack’leen this morning? Is she well and–docile?”

Jacqueline’s chin dropped in astonishment. She seized the old canvas window flap and jerked it down. But at once she raised it again, and thoughtfully contemplated the trooper.

“I wonder,” she mused aloud, in that quaint accenting of 498the English which cannot be described, “when is it that you are going to grow up, ever?”

“I did start to,” Driscoll informed her soberly, “but it got tiresome as all creation, and I reckon I’ve backslided just since”–a world of earnestness came into his lowered voice. –“well, just since we had that talk with poor Maximilian.”

The old canvas curtain fell for good then, and very abruptly.

A moment later, however, she was avenging her flushed cheeks on Mr. Daniel Boone, who rode at the other side, also sunburned, also effulgent with happiness.

“If it isn’t the animal disputans!” she exclaimed. “Look Berthe, and rejoice; our sighing Monsieur le Troubadour!”

Driscoll hovered near a moment, then reluctantly rode ahead of his battered dusty warriors. So he and the wilful maid from France began a second journey together, yet far, far apart. But only after many torturing hours did his first joy consent to perceive the distance between them.

Now and then, though rarely, and never when he hoped for such a thing, she would ride with him. And then he usually stirred up hostilities before he knew it, and notwithstanding all that was tender and humble which he meant to tell her. There was, however, cause enough for savagery. She made him the least of the troop, though he arranged each detail of speed and comfort, laid out tempting noon-day spreads, improvised cheer in the cheerless hostelries, and all with a forethought showing pathetically how his every thought was of her. But if she divined the inwardness of this, which of course she did, outwardly she contrived to be oblivious. She thanked him sincerely and simply, the while that he craved repayment, as the heart repays. He yearned for only a chance to speak his mind, and to force hers. But now craftily she would bring the others flocking round, to decide for her if they did not think monsieur absurdly mistaken in this or that! 499The same instant she would conjure up the most trivial of arguments, and be vastly shocked over the ridiculous contentions which she herself assigned to Driscoll.

She grew honestly fond of the other Missouri colonels, with their ranger uniforms, and brawn scarred by weather and battle, and they and the marchioness became great friends. She was a dainty flower among them, but they were prime comrades, and she, the mad-cap tomboy her life long, took to them in the impulse that here were her own kind. Driscoll was proud to see it, without need of being generous. She gathered Berthe, as a soberer sister, into the merry communion, and she rode with Clay of Carroll, with Carroll of Clay, with Reub Marmaduke, with Crittenden, with cherubic Old Brothers and Sisters, with Hanks the bugler, and she mocked Meagre Shanks, that disputatious animal, because he tried to monopolize Berthe and would not dispute at all. She asked them questions. She asked Harry Collins if his tribe were the same as that of ces Missouriens-lÀ, and the Kansan confessed that the two tribes had been a bit hostile of late, but what with raiding, razing, and murdering, he guessed they’d laid the foundation for a mutual self-respect, as behooved valiant redskins. So she often got strange answers for her inquisitiveness, but she had grown wary among Westerners, and she usually paid them back. They were a happy party. But Driscoll wanted a more definite focusing of the joy. And at times, indeed, yielding to temptation herself, she permitted him to lose his heart deliciously over again. Shadows were lifted now, and she was just a lovable girl, just sweet Jacqueline. And he loved her with the boy’s young strength of adoration and diffident awe. Precisely in which state she made him suffer exquisitely. No one could be more contrary and capricious than the lovable girl of a moment before. Whereat storms brewed within him.

There was one of the rare times when the Missourian and 500the maid rode up and down the winding white ribbon of a Mexican highway, and for awhile both were quiet. This once they dared the risk–she did, rather–which lurks in the silence that requires no words. For him it brought the old time, and the rides of that time, when he wondered what was the matter with him, and she knew all along. And he thought how during the hard winter in the Michoacan mountains and swamps, he had caught himself almost crying aloud, that he wanted her, that he wanted her–wanted again the subtle comradeship of those silences which require no words. And here, at last, here she was, riding beside him!

He looked at her furtively. She was in profile. He looked again, to be sure that it was not memory, but the breathing girl herself. Yes, for a fact, it was the girl herself. And here was her own queenly head, here its regal poise, here the superb line of the neck to the shoulder. Reverence grew on admiration, for as he gazed he beheld her character revealed, of lines as stately, as womanly, and withal as flexible, too, before the cheery glow of each moment’s life. He stirred, and was vaguely restive, and perhaps a little frightened also, because of the deep mystery of something within himself which he could not understand. The classic outline of her features was softened now in the warmth of flesh. Her vivacity was off guard, in the forgetfulness of reverie. The pure white of the little tip of ear was tinged with pink. Her eyes were lowered to the saddle horn. They were melting. They were almost blue.

“Jack’leen!” He burst out fervently, before he thought, with an arm half lifted toward her.

The drooping lashes raised. The eyes were gray again. She regarded him for awhile without speaking.

“Why don’t you quarrel?” she asked finally.

The spell was broken. Her pounding heart had vent in a nervous laugh of raillery. She touched her horse with the 501riding crop in her gauntleted hand. Somehow she would not leave that dumb brute, the horse, in peace. Driscoll’s old Demijohn, however, was used to the game by now. He pointed his ears, and checkmated that last move by bringing his master once more to the lady’s side.

“You used to,” she went on, as though there had been no interruption, “nicely. You were of an interest then. In fact, I reck-on–I know no one that I had rather have quarreled with.”

But still he would not, though that “reckon” from her lips was most alluring. She stole a mischievous glance at his face, but the fixed look there made her lift her hand toward him. Perhaps, if he had seen and had spoken then–But he did see.

“Eh bien, since monsieur won’t fight, won’t, won’t,” she cried, “then it’s more fun to––”

Evidently to seek livelier company. For she wheeled the mustang, swerved from a grasp at her bridle, and went galloping back to the coach. He twisted in his saddle, pushed his sombrero higher on his head, and dubiously watched her flying from him, a lithe, trim figure in snug Hungarian jacket, the burnished tendrils fluttering on the nape of her neck, the soft white veil trailing like a fleecy cloud from her black amazona hat. He bent a perplexed gaze to the road. “It’s ’way, ’way beyond me,” he told himself. Then he grew aware of a sense of warmth on his forearm. Yes, he remembered. For an instant she had laid a hand on his sleeve, and he had thrilled to the ineffable token of nestling. He was never immune from her tantalizing contradictions. He felt this one yet.

Hoofs pounded behind, and Mr. Boone drew up alongside. “She came back, and made me get away from the coach,” he announced. “Prob’bly she wanted to cry some; she looked it.”

502Yet another of her contradictions!

“Then why in the nation,” Driscoll demanded, “do you keep hanging round that coach for? Look here Shanks, you make me plum’ weary. The idea of you falling in––”

“No more’n you, you innocent gamboling lamb of an ol’ blatherskite.” But Daniel’s steel blue eyes had softened to their gentlest. “Say Jack,” he added, “she’s going back to Paris.”

“Don’t I know it? Lord A’mighty!”

“Go on, never mind me,” said Mr. Boone. “Groan out loud, if you want to. For she sho’ly is, yes, back to Paris. Now Buh’the”–The Troubadour’s r’s always liquefied dreamily with that name–“Buh’the has been telling me a few things, and I’m sure reporter enough to scout out the rest of the story, and it’s just this–Jack, she’s fair broken-hearted.”

“Miss Burt?”

“No, no, the marchioness. She staked out a campaign over here, and it’s panned out all wrong, and it wasn’t her fault either. Poor girl, no wonder she might like to cry a little. She’s lavished everything she had on it too, ancestral chÂteau, and all that.”

“But,” said Driscoll quickly “she’ll not suffer. There’s her title––”

“Title?” exclaimed Daniel. “W’y, she’s going to give that up too, not having any chÂteau any more, and she’ll trip blithely down among the people again, where she says it’s more comfortable anyhow. Title? Well, you’ve suhtinly noticed that she always did take that humorously. Her grandfather–Buh’the says–was right considerable of a jurist, used scissors and paste, and helped make a scrap-book called the Napoleonic code, and Nap the First changed him into a picayunish duke. But wasn’t the nobility of intellect there already? Sho’ly! Miss Jacqueline, though, likes the father of her grandfather the best. He never was noble, 503technically I mean. His was the nobility of heart, and he’d have scorned to be tagged. He just baked bread, and fed most half of Saint Antoine for nothing at times, while the Dauphin at Versailles was throwing cakes to the swans. Howsoever,” Mr. Boone added hastily, as sop to his softness for princes, “I reckon that there Dauphin was noble too. Both of ’em fed the hungry mouths that were nearest.”

“But,” demanded Driscoll, “doesn’t her title carry some sort of a–a compensation?”

“Not a red sou. The majorat–that’s the male line–died out with her father, which means that the annuity died out too.”

“W’y, Great Scot, she’s––”

“She’s tired and disheartened, that’s what she is, and she’s going back to Paris, and you–” Boone paused, and glared at his companion, “–and you mean to let her!”

Old Demijohn felt a spur kicked against his flank, and he lifted his fore feet and sped as the wind. It was fully an hour later when Meagre Shanks caught up with horse and rider again. Rather, he met them coming back. His conversation was guileless, at first.

“Do you know, Din,” he began, “those two girls are only half educated? Yes sir, gastronomically, they are positively illiterate, and it’s a shame! W’y, they don’t know hot biscuits and molasses. They don’t know buttermilk. They don’t know yams. Nor paw-paws, nor persimmons. They don’t even know watermelon. Now isn’t France a backward place?”

“Don’t, Shanks!” Driscoll begged. “You’ll have me heading for Missouri in a minute. You didn’t, uh, mention peach cobbler?”

“And peach cobbler, big as an acre covered with snow. And just think, it’s roastin’ ea’ah time up there now, now!” How Daniel’s voice did mellow under a tender sentiment! “And to think,” he went on, “of the marchioness living on in 504 such ignorance! It’s a thing that’s just got to be remedied, Jack.”

“Then suppose you take her to Missouri,” growled his friend, “and let me alone.”

“I take her? Oh come now, Din, I see I’ve got to tell you something which is–” The Troubadour’s accents grew low and fond, and the other man respected them, with something between a smile and a sigh for his own case. “Which is–well, nobody’s noticed it, but the fact is that Buh’the, that Miss Buh’the––”

“Dan,” interrupted Driscoll severely, “you’re not going to tell me any secret. You mean that you weren’t mistaken when you mistook her for a queen.”

“That–that’s it!” ejaculated Daniel. “Of coh’se,” he added soothingly, “the other one is a–a mighty nice girl, but––”

“Oh, is she? But Miss Burt is the one you want to take to Missouri? Well Dan, why don’t you?”

“Because,” was the doleful reply, “those two are just like orphan sisters together, and–well, she won’t desert. She is a queen, by God, sir! Miss Jacqueline might make her, but I haven’t got the heart to ask it. Now, uh, if–if you would just bring along the other one?”

So, here was the goal of all of Daniel’s manoeuvering!

Driscoll cast a leg over the pommel of his saddle, and faced Boone squarely. “Shanks,” he demanded with tense vehemence, “do you suppose I need your woes for a prod? Don’t you know how much–Lord A’mighty, how much!–I’d like to oblige you? But–she won’t let me–even speak. There’s, there’s something the matter.”

Boone’s lank jaw fell. “What, I wonder?”

“And don’t I wonder too?” Driscoll muttered savagely. “But it’s something.”

From which moment until the end of the journey, and afterward, 505there were two men who pondered on what could be the trouble with Jacqueline. But while one pondered gloomily and fiercely and with a semi-comic grin under the lash, the other let perplexity delve and ferret into the mystery. For Mr. Boone had grown aware that an enormous heap of happiness for four depended on himself alone.