things in time of panic.

"To go through that peril, and yet a coward!" she murmured. "It's a
waste----"

The runaway gained the top of the embankment, and fell behind a rock.
And now a half dozen of the little demons were coming across the trail
to the shack--to take her.

"Oh, the frisson, the ecstasy!" she cried. There was a certain poignant
sense of enjoyment in it.

CHAPTER XI

THE COSSACKS AND THEIR TIGER COLONEL

"Ah, Captain, here goes for a fine-drawn bead;
There's music around when my barrel's in tune."
--_Song of the Fallen Dragoon._

Din Driscoll tumbled himself over among the rocks. "There, I'm fixed,"
he grunted, as he squatted down behind his earthworks. "Plenty of
material here"--he meant the cartridges which he poured from his coat
pockets into his hat--"and plenty out there too"--indicating the Hydra
heads--"and my pipe--I'll have a nice time." He got to work busily.

In the door of the shack Jacqueline saw the campaign for her possession
begin. Don Rodrigo had fled to the corner of the shack, taking his horse
with him. The hut of bamboo and thatch was no protection against
Driscoll's fire, but the two girls, though inside the hut, were between
and afforded a better screen. Jacqueline did not, however, hold that
against her Fra Diavolo. To save himself behind a woman was quite in
keeping with his sinister role. And she, as an artist, could not
reproach him, and as a woman she did not care. But the American's
running away--now that was out of character, and it disappointed her.

She heard Rodrigo bellowing forth an order, and she saw five or six
guerrillas rise out of the cacti and spring toward her. But the constant
shadow of self-introspection haunted her even then. In her despair, and
worse, in her disgust, feeling already those filthy hands upon her, she
yet appraised this jewel among ecstatic shudders, and she knew in her
heart that she would not have had it otherwise.

"Oh, am I ever to _live_!" she moaned in startled wonderment at
herself. "Always a spectator, always, even of myself!--God, dost thou
know? It is a robbery of living!" And the vagabonds were twenty paces
away!

Something hurt her hand, she opened her clenched palm; it was the horn
handle of Driscoll's knife. Had she really thought to defend herself
with that inadequate thing? "Poof!" She tossed it from her, vexed at her
own unconscious heroics. Then two dark arms reached out, nearer