“All right,” he said, as if the matter were of no further consequence. “Then I can make a nice comfortable report to Maximilian.”
“Report to Maximiliano?” exclaimed Murguía.
Driscoll nodded indifferently.
“But Señor Coronel, when you do, you–you will remember that I said nothing to–that is, to persuade the señoritas to take this journey.”
“Nor not to take it, Wriggler.”
“Yet you will say to His Majesty that I did suggest–yes, I do now–that they had better not––”
His utterance drivelled to incoherency. The Mexican woman, she of the café, stood before him. There was a warning on her stolid countenance. Murguía wet his lips. “But,” he stammered, “there–oh what danger can there be in their going?”
Driscoll shoved him aside and placed himself at the head of Jacqueline’s horse. “You had better risk the water, miss,” he said quietly.
“My good sir,” she replied, clear and cold, “I commend your prudence, in making certain, before you dared touch my bridle-rein, that neither of the two gentlemen were here.”
Din Driscoll swung on his heel. “Damned!” he murmured, and he pronounced the “n” and the “d” thoroughly, to make the word adequate if possible. “Lord, I believe I feel like a closed incident! And to think, Demijohn,” he went on as he busied himself about his horse, “to think that it’s the first and only time we’ve ever seen trouble coming and tried to keep out of it.”