lung open the
door and stepped into the road. She could still see Driscoll's troop, or
rather the cloud of dust, speeding toward Queretaro, but her arm swept
the horizon impersonally. "Only tell me," she demanded, "what's
happening now, over yonder?"

"Pressing business, ma'am--mademoiselle, and," Daniel lied promptly,
"Colonel Driscoll wished me to make you his excuses."

"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.

"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.