––Voltaire.
That garish daub which was sopped up from the burning homes of men and bespattered over the forest’s dark crest was already mellowing under the gentler touch of dawn, when the three travelers gained the open country.
“Poor, dirty, little Inditos,” Jacqueline mused aloud. Berthe struck her pony in a tremor of fright. The American was riding ahead. “Fire and sword,” Jacqueline went on, and her voice lowered to intense scorn, “they make the final tableau, but–it’s gaudy, it’s cheap.”
The trail had broadened into a high road, and now it wound among the hills like a soiled white ribbon. Driscoll turned in his saddle. “I shouldn’t wonder,” he observed in the full-toned drawl that was peculiar to him, “but what we’d better be projecting a change of venue. This route is too public, and publicity around here strikes me as sort of prejudiced. S’pose we just stir up an alibi?”
A certain stately old judge back in Missouri would have smiled thus to hear the scion of his house. But the marchioness, confident in her mastery of English, thought it was the veriest jargon. What was the boy trying to say? His next words grew fairly intelligible. “We are now headed for Valles. Well, we’ve decided not to go to Valles.”
Perhaps they had, but she at least had ceased deciding anything, 109since the overruling of her veto in the matter of precedence when one is hoisted upon a burro.
A narrow pony path crossed the road. “First trail to the left, after leaving the wood,” Driscoll said aloud, “and this must be it.” Campaigner in an unfamiliar country, he had informed himself, and it was with confidence that he led his little party into the bridlepath. But he looked anxiously at the forest behind. He did not doubt but that Rodrigo, if it were he back there, would terrify Murguía into betraying their destination, or their supposed destination, which was Valles.
“Can’t you hurry ’em up a bit?” he called back.
“We do try,” protested Jacqueline, holding aloft a broken switch, “but they only smile at us.”
Driscoll got down and undid the spurs from his boots. One of the immense saw-like discs he adjusted to mademoiselle’s high heel, passing the strap twice around the silk-clad ankle. Jacqueline gazed down on the short-cropped, curly head, and she saw that the back of his neck was suddenly red. But the discovery awakened nothing of the coquette in her. Quite the contrary, there was something grateful, even gravely maternal, in the smile hovering on her lips for the rough trooper who took fright like a girl over a revealed instep. Still, the interest was not altogether maternal as she watched him doing the same service for Berthe. Perhaps he was too far away, or perhaps practice brought indifference, but at any rate, his neck was no longer tinged in that fiery way.