“The minstrels of old, sir,” said Jacqueline, “usually accompanied their more gallant fibs with a harp.”
Her vivacity was rising fast, and for some reason, Berthe darted an angry look of warning on Mr. Boone. But the poor fellow was blind to Jacqueline’s jealousy of a distant conflict, and he blundered further.
“Jack Driscoll’s just that way,” he apologized for his friend cheerfully. “Abundat dulcibus vitiis–he’s chuck full of pleasant faults. When there’s a clash of arms around, let the most alluring Peri that ever wore sweet jessamine glide by, and–she can just glide. While with me––”
“I see. You have stayed. But I, too, like battles, monsieur. Tobie, get back up there with the driver. There’s no admission charge, I imagine, to this battle?”
Boone gladly offered to take them for a nearer view, but he saw Berthe–his eyes were never elsewhere–shrink involuntarily.
409“Stop, arretaz! Hey there!” he ordered, and the driver stopped.
Jacqueline’s pretty jaw fell in wonder. The natural order of things was prevailing over the artificial. Social status to the contrary notwithstanding, it was Berthe who commanded here, and not Mlle. la Marquise. But Jacqueline was happy in it, and perhaps a little envious too. Ah, those Missouriens! This one, who would rather stay than fight! And that other, who was now fighting for quite the opposite reason! They had a capacity for variety, those Missouriens!
It was much later, after a lunch from Jacqueline’s hampers under the nearest trees, and after the distant fusillades had quieted to an occasional angry spat, that the ladies’ escort of Gringo Grays, bearing a flag of truce, set out with their charge toward the town. Daniel rode beside the coach window, and the flaps of the old hacienda conveyance were drawn aside. He wondered how it happened that the hours had passed so quickly. He would not believe that his comrades had been fighting, that many of them had died, so blissfully fleeting were those hours to himself.
“It’s all according,” he mused profoundly.
And he could not help singing. He hummed the forlorn chanson of Joe Bowers of the State of Pike, which Bledsoe, then lying cold and stiff under a mountain howitzer, had so often bellowed forth.