But the trouble might appear now, he had done what he could. The thought brightened him, and he patted his short 62ribs musingly. There was a friendly protuberance there on either side. His belt sagged comfortingly. He opened the pack which he was tying with his blanket behind his saddle, and from it he filled with cartridges the pockets of his rough cape coat.
By now the caravan was passing him. The burros, like square-shelled monstrosities with ears, were settling into a steady trot. Their blanketed arrieros ran beside them and prodded, and were in turn prodded by the fretful Murguía. Then Jacqueline rode by on an ambling little mountain-climber. She had forgotten his presence. This was not a pose with the Marquise d’Aumerle; she had, really. But her little Breton maid coming behind timidly drew rein. Driscoll looked and saw in the moving yellow torchlights that her face was white. A thing like that somehow alters a man’s attitude. “W’y, child,” he exclaimed, “what’s––”
“Monsi–señor,” she said hastily, in pathetic and pretty broken Spanish, “you, oh, you will not leave us! In the mercy of heaven, tell me that you will not! Ah, seigneur,” she sobbed, “mademoiselle will yet lead us to our death!”
“Berthe,” mademoiselle at that instant called, “oh you little ninny, are you coming ever?”
The maid obeyed. “Just the same,” she sighed, “God bless her!”
“And did I,” Driscoll had begun angrily, but she was already gone, and he finished it to himself, “did I once intend to leave you?”
He leaped astride his buckskin horse, who trotted with him briskly to the head of the caravan. Behind was Anastasio Murguía, a quaint combination of silk hat, shawl, and ranchero saddle. The two Frenchwomen followed, and behind came the straggling file of burros and pack horses.
Yet the American was as a solitary traveller leaving a town for the wilderness at the first touch of dawn. The road soon 63narrowed down to a trail as it wound through the undergrowth of the Huasteca lowlands, then westward toward a bluish line of mountains. At each cross trail the American would turn in his saddle to force an indication of their course from Murguía. Then on he would ride again, the while sinking deeper and deeper into his thoughts; thoughts of why he had come, of how he might succeed, and of the Surrender at that moment perhaps a fact. For him, though, there was his sabre yet, dangling there under his leg. And there were the sabres of comrades that likewise would not be given up, for to save them that shame was he in Mexico. Riding there, so much alone, and lonely, he was a rough, savage, military figure. But in his meditations, so grave and unwonted in the wild, hard-riding trooper lad, there was nothing to indicate a second nature in him, an instinct that was on the alert against every leafy clump and cactus and mesh of vine.