heir situation, on what it exacted. It exacted haste, simple,
impersonal haste. And keeping his mind on just that, he caught her up.

"Oh, you boor!" she cried, pushing at him.

His jaw hardened. His will was well nigh superhuman, for he battled
against two furious little hands, against the dimple and the patch so
near his lips, against the fragrance of her hair, against the subtle
warmth of his burden.

"No, no!" she panted. "Monsieur, do you hear me? I am not to be
carried!"

"Maybe not," said he, carrying her.

A moment later she discovered herself planted squarely on the burro.

"Bonte divine!" she gasped. But she took care not to fall off.

He drew a long breath.

"Now whip 'em up," he commanded.

* * * * *

The first village beyond, where Dupin had promised to meet Jacqueline,
was a squatting group of thatched cones in a dense forest of Cyprus and
eucalyptus. Its denizens were Huasteca Indians, living as they had
before the Conquest, among themselves still talking their native
dialect. The name of the hamlet was Culebra.

The coy twilight waned quickly, and the caravan was still pushing on
through the thick darkness of the wood, when a high tensioned yelping
made the vast silence insignificant, ugly. But as the travelers filed
into the clearing where the village was, the curs slunk away with coyote
humility, their yellow points of eyes glowing back on the intruders.

With a forager's direct method, Driscoll roused the early slumbering
village. He would not take alfafa, he declined rastrojo. It was human
food, corn, that he bought for his horse. He housed his dumb friend
under a human roof too. After which he prepared a habitation for the
women. He swept the likeliest hut clean of ashes, brazier, and bits of
pots and jars. He carpeted the earth floor in Spanish moss, as King
Arthur's knights once strewed their halls with rushes. It was luxury for
a coroneted lass, if one went back a dozen centuries. There were chinks
between the sooty saplings that formed the wall, but over these he hung
matting, and he drove a stake for a candle.

Supper followed. The trooper chose to change Don Anastasio from host to
guest, and he exacted what he needed from the Inditos. They, for their
part, were alert before his commands. None of them had been overlooked
in his preliminary largesse of copper tlacos and they made the teaming
wilderness contribute to his spread. Kneeling,