uld bring the others flocking round, to decide for her if they did not
think monsieur absurdly mistaken in this or that! The same instant she
would conjure up the most trivial of arguments, and be vastly shocked
over the ridiculous contentions which she herself assigned to Driscoll.

She grew honestly fond of the other Missouri colonels, with their ranger
uniforms, and brawn scarred by weather and battle, and they and the
marchioness became great friends. She was a dainty flower among them,
but they were prime comrades, and she, the mad-cap tomboy her life long,
took to them in the impulse that here were her own kind. Driscoll was
proud to see it, without need of being generous. She gathered Berthe, as
a soberer sister, into the merry communion, and she rode with Clay of
Carroll, with Carroll of Clay, with Reub Marmaduke, with Crittenden,
with cherubic Old Brothers and Sisters, with Hanks the bugler, and she
mocked Meagre Shanks, that disputatious animal, because he tried to
monopolize Berthe and would not dispute at all. She asked them
questions. She asked Harry Collins if his tribe were the same as that of
ces Missouriens-la, and the Kansan confessed that the two tribes had
been a bit hostile of late, but what with raiding, razing, and
murdering, he guessed they'd laid the foundation for a mutual
self-respect, as behooved valiant redskins. So she often got strange
answers for her inquisitiveness, but she had grown wary among
Westerners, and she usually paid them back. They were a happy party. But
Driscoll wanted a more definite focusing of the joy. And at times,
indeed, yielding to temptation herself, she permitted him to lose his
heart deliciously over again. Shadows were lifted now, and she was just
a lovable girl, just sweet Jacqueline. And he loved her with the boy's
young strength of adoration and diffident awe. Precisely in which state
she made him suffer exquisitely. No one could be more contrary and
capricious than the lovable girl of a moment before. Whereat storms
brewed within him.

There was one of the rare times when the Missourian and the maid rode up
and down the winding white ribbon of a Mexican highway, and for awhile
both were quiet. This once they dared the risk--she did, rather--which
lurks in the silence that requires no words. For him it brought the old
time, and the rides of that time, when he wondered what was the matter
with him, and she knew all along. And he thought how during the hard
wint