"I see. _You_ have stayed. But I, too, like battles, monsieur. Tobie, get back up there with the driver. There's no admission charge, I imagine, to this battle?" Boone gladly offered to take them for a nearer view, but he saw Berthe--his eyes were never elsewhere--shrink involuntarily. "Stop, arretaz! Hey there!" he ordered, and the driver stopped. Jacqueline's pretty jaw fell in wonder. The natural order of things was prevailing over the artificial. Social status to the contrary notwithstanding, it was Berthe who commanded here, and not Mlle. la Marquise. But Jacqueline was happy in it, and perhaps a little envious too. Ah, those _Missouriens_! This one, who would rather stay than fight! And that other, who was now fighting for quite the opposite reason! They had a capacity for variety, those _Missouriens_! It was much later, after a lunch from Jacqueline's hampers under the nearest trees, and after the distant fusillades had quieted to an occasional angry spat, that the ladies' escort of Gringo Grays, bearing a flag of truce, set out with their charge toward the town. Daniel rode beside the coach window, and the flaps of the old hacienda conveyance were drawn aside. He wondered how it happened that the hours had passed so quickly. He would not believe that his comrades had been fighting, that many of them had died, so blissfully fleeting were those hours to himself. "It's all according," he mused profoundly. And he could not help singing. He hummed the forlorn chanson of Joe Bowers of the State of Pike, which Bledsoe, then lying cold and stiff under a mountain howitzer, had so often bellowed forth. "It said that Sal was false to me, Her love for me had fled, She's got married to a butcher-- The butcher's hair was red." But he sung it as a plaint, yet not hopelessly, and Mademoiselle Berthe was the maid entreated of his melody. The sharpshooters on both sides paused as the coach drove into the little sweet-scented wood that was called the Alameda, and the Missourians, with sabres at salute, transferred their charge to the Imperialists crowding around. Among the latter were some of Jacqueline's own countrymen, and those, in starvation and defeat, were as debonair as the cadets of Gascogne. "A rose, mademoiselle," said one, bowing low. He had an arm bandaged, and his sword was broken. "An early merciful bullet plucked it for you, so that it fell unhurt, though the petals of all the others are scattered everywhere among the leaves, among the fallen branches, among the shattered statues of our classic grove here. See, like the rose I tender, you come among us poor broken soldiers of fortune. I think, dear lady, there will be those above to bless you for it." Jacqueline smiled behind her tears. "Always a Frenchman, eh, mon lieutenant?" she said.