Driscoll got down and undid the spurs from his boots. One of the immense saw-like discs he adjusted to mademoiselle's high heel, passing the strap twice around the silk-clad ankle. Jacqueline gazed down on the short-cropped, curly head, and she saw that the back of his neck was suddenly red. But the discovery awakened nothing of the coquette in her. Quite the contrary, there was something grateful, even gravely maternal, in the smile hovering on her lips for the rough trooper who took fright like a girl over a revealed instep. Still, the interest was not altogether maternal as she watched him doing the same service for Berthe. Perhaps he was too far away, or perhaps practice brought indifference, but at any rate, his neck was no longer tinged in that fiery way. "Now dig 'em!" said he. "We want to make that clump of mesquite yonder, now pretty quick." The trees he pointed to were two or three miles away, but the travelers covered the distance at an easy lope. Driscoll kept an eye on the road they had just left, and once hidden by the mesquite he called a halt. As he expected, a number of horsemen appeared at a trot from the direction of the forest. They did not pause at the cross trail, however, but kept to the highway in the direction of Valles. The American and the two girls could now safely continue their journey along the bridlepath. "Monsieur," Jacqueline questioned demurely, and in her most treacherous way, "how much longer do we yet follow you up and down mountains?" "W'y, uh--_I'm_ going to the City of Mexico." "And we others, we may tag along, n'est-ce pas? But the city is far, far. And, to-night?" "Of course," said Driscoll, "if you should happen to know of a good hotel----" He paused and gazed inquiringly over hills covered with banana and coffee to the frost line. He would not have tried a frailer temper so, but to provoke hers was incense to his own. "You others, the Americans," she said tentatively, as though explaining him to herself, "you are so greedy of this New World! You won't give us of it, no, not even a poor little answer of information. Alas, Monseigneur the American, I apologize for being on this side the ocean at all--in a tattered frock." Driscoll looked, but he could see nothing wrong. She seemed as crisp and dainty as ever. If there were any disarray, it was a fetching sort, with a certain rakish effect. "Oh that's all right," he assured her heartily, "_you_ can stay." "Really, and after you've been writing us notes from Washington to--to 'get out'? We French people do not think that was polite." "I never wrote you any notes, and," he added in a lowered tone, "the devil take Washington, since Lee didn't!"