You and your maid go with me."

Driscoll's jaw dropped. "Diablos," he exclaimed, bewildered, "you don't
mean---- Look, Don Roddy, you're crazy! Such things----"

"Come!"

"But I tell you it's foolish. Such things do not happen, unless in
melodrama."

For reply the guerrilla chief wheeled his charger and caught the bridles
of the two horses that the girls rode. He pulled, so as to leave exposed
the troublesome American behind them.

"Grands dieux," exclaimed Jacqueline, "have the men in this country
nothing to do except catch my bridle! But really, sir, this situation is
forced. It is not artistic. As--as Monsieur the Chevalier says, it's
quite impossible."

She looked around for Monsieur the Chevalier to make it so, but to her
dismay, to her disgust, he had taken to his heels. He was running away,
as fast as he could go. Then her horse reared, for musket firing had
suddenly, mysteriously begun on all sides of her. Many fierce pairs of
eyes were bobbing up from behind the boulders on the right of the trail;
yellow-brown faces, like a many-headed Hydra coiled in the cacti. They
were shooting, not at her, but at the fleeing American. She felt an
object in her hand, which Driscoll had thrust there, and she remembered
that he had whispered something, though she had forgotten what.

Her captor was straining at the bridle. In his frenzy he leaned over, to
lift her from the saddle, and then she struck him across the face with
her whip. And then, with what the American had put in her other hand,
she struck again. The weapon was Driscoll's short hunting knife. The
blade grazed Rodrigo's shoulder. He loosed his hold, and before he could
prevent, both she and Berthe were in the shack under the cliff. The maid
sank to the floor. The mistress stood in the doorway. There was a glint
in the gray eyes not lovable in man or woman, but in her it was superb.

Fifty feet back up the trail she saw Driscoll scaling the cliff. That
demon yelling, which is the first spasm of Mexican warfare, had not
ceased, and each demon was shooting as fast as he could reload. She saw
the white dust spurt out from the bullet peppered rock. But either the
sun slanting down from the mountain line was in their eyes, or they were
disconcerted at the American's change in their plans; at any rate their
laboriously ascending target did not drop. Up he climbed. Jacqueline
wondered why he still clung to the jacket over his arm, as people will
cling to absurd