The ranchero glanced at him quickly, sideways, a dark look of suspicion. “On her account, señor, not Maximilian’s?” he repeated. “Dios mio, caballero, I’ll wager you have forgotten 53her already.” Which, to tell the truth, was fairly exact.
At the mesón Don Anastasio regarded the American with much more respect to see him returning in such company. But to Fra Diavolo he addressed himself in his thin obsequious voice, “You see I am waiting, as you wished. But on my, my daughter’s account, I––”
“So, captain,” Driscoll interrupted, “you’re the one that’s holding back Murgie! Just tell him, Murgie, that I am in a rush.”
Fra Diavolo smiled and bade his American have patience, for he quite believed that the Señor Murguía would be starting in the morning.
“Si señor,” he went on in a different tone, when Driscoll had left him alone with the trader, “you set out to-morrow, and you are to have two extra horses ready. But for whom, do you suppose? Bien, they are for La Señorita Jacqueline and her maid.”
Murguía’s countenance changed strangely, a most inexplicable contortion. His little rat eyes focused on the ranchero, and he drew back in a sort of fear. Convoy her whom people called Jacqueline through the lawless Huasteca, at the bidding of this man! “No, no, no!” he cried, and shuddered too.
Trying to read a meaning behind the capitan’s dark scowl, he knew only too well the meaning that was there. He moaned at the thought. Maximiliano would have him shot, or burned, or tortured. He would lose his ranch, his cotton mill. He would be poor. It was vague, what would happen, but it was horrible, horrible!
“Hush, you fool!” growled Fra Diavolo. “The entire mesón will hear you, including that Gringo.”
“That Gringo? He, he is one of your friends?”
“Friend! For Dios, he nearly ruined my little plans for 54Jacqueline. Listen, he has business of some kind with Maximiliano.”