asked Delmonte and Montfort in one breath.

The boy pointed down the road; raised his hand to salute, and fell back,
dead.

[Illustration: "NOW AGAIN IT WAS A RIDE FOR LIFE."]

Now again it was a ride for life--not their own life this time. Rita had
clean forgotten herself. The thought of her faithful friend and servant
in the hands of the merciless Spaniards turned her quick blood to fire.
She galloped steadily, her eyes fixed on the cloud of dust only a few
hundred yards ahead of them, which told where the enemy was galloping,
too.

Jim Montfort glanced at her, and nodded to himself. "She'll do!" he said
in his beard. "Montfort grit's good grit, and she's got it. This would
be nuts to little Peggy."

Jack Delmonte, too, looked more than once at the slender figure riding
so lightly between him and the big rough rider. How beautiful she was!
He had not realised half how beautiful till now. What nerve! what
steadiness! It might be the _Reina de Cuba_, Donna Hernandez herself,
riding to victory.

He felt an unreasonable jealousy of "Cousin Jim." Half--nay! a quarter
of an hour ago, she was riding with him; there were only they two in
the world, they and Aquila, poor Aquila,--who had given his life for
theirs. She was his comrade then, his charge, his--and now she was Miss
Montfort, a young lady of fortune and position, under charge of her
cousin, a Yankee captain of rough riders; and he, Jack Delmonte,
was--nothing in particular.

As he was thinking these thoughts, Rita chanced to turn her head, and
met his gaze fixed earnestly upon her. She blushed suddenly and deeply,
the lovely colour rising in a wave over cheeks and forehead; then turned
her head sharply away.

"Now I have offended her!" said Jack. "Idiot!" and perhaps he was not
very wise.

But there was little time for thinking or blushing. The Spaniards,
seeing Delmonte, whom they regarded as the devil in person, descending
upon them in company with a giant and an army (for so they described
the band of rough riders at headquarters next day), abandoned their
prisoners. The Americans chased them for a mile or so, killed three or
four, and, as they reported, "scared the rest into Kingdom Come,"
leaving them only on coming to a thick wood, into which the Gringos,
leaping from their horses, vanished, and were seen no more. The victors
then returned to the forlorn little group of women and negroes, huddled
together by the roadside. Rita had already dismount