It was the end of March when we arrived at Alvarado, and the newspapers were thickly sprinkled with the name of the Mexican President Huerta, printed in big, black letters. A few weeks ago the name would have meant nothing to me, but I hadn't lived in vain in Washington for more than a month. If the name of a Mexican president or general who had done anything conspicuous during the past six years had been suddenly flung at my head (as in the children's game where they shout "Beast, Bird, Fish!" and you answer before the count of three), I could have told who he was, and whether the conspicuous deed had been good or bad.

At Alvarado we had thought to be past invitation zone, and Father had been fearfully hoarding his resources at the expense of his friends, to hold out against high charges at a big hotel. There was said to be a very big one indeed, at the Springs, with bills to match; but at the eleventh hour one of Father's devoted band of rich widows (the widows thoughtfully provided for him by deceased financiers) took a furnished cottage there and asked us to visit her. She was an unusually nice widow, whose husband had made a fortune through inventing gollywogs with different eyes from other gollywogs. The strain had given him a weak heart, and he had died. The widow's name was Mrs. Main, and Di shamelessly christened her the "Main Chance." She certainly was ours!

Mrs. Main, whom we'd met in New York, dashed off to Alvarado Springs a fortnight ahead of us, in time to get acquainted through letters of introduction with the highest-up officers at Fort Alvarado, and the wives of those who had any; also to put the furnished "cottage," as she called it (there must have been fifteen or twenty rooms), in order; and the night we arrived, after our long but utterly fascinating journey, she gave a dinner in honour of Father and Diana.

I had been tremendously interested in the whole trip from Washington to Arizona, and with the first glimpse I had of the romantic Springs I felt a thrilling sensation that it was a place where things were bound to happen. The hotel, as all who have heard of Alvarado must know, stands in the midst of a young forest, overlooking a canon that for colour is like a vast cup full of rainbows, and beyond the forest to the left is the garrison. From the higher stories of the hotel you can see the red roofs of the officers' quarters, and farther away the barracks and the big, bare drill ground, but from the wide verandas no houses are anywhere visible, except the colony of cottages built in Spanish fashion like the hotel itself, each having its own little garden with a flowery hedge. From the glorified cottage Mrs. Main had taken we could walk up to a dance at the hotel in five minutes.

I think Eagle would have liked to meet us at the railway station, but Di had plenty of excuses for not allowing that. He had met Mrs. Main, however, and in the afternoon he called. Father was out prospering round the little town, and visiting the smart club at which he had been put up as an honorary member. Di and our hostess (she made us call her Kitty, a sprightly name to which she struggled to live up to) were in the garden when Eagle came, but I happened to be in the drawing-room with a book, so I had about five minutes alone with him before Mrs. Main's black butler found the others.

I hadn't tried, as a well-regulated young girl would no doubt have tried, to "get over" being in love with Captain March. I had just simply said to myself that the kind of unhappiness which loving him made me suffer was better than any little wretched pretence at half-baked happiness I could hope for by putting him out of my mind. So I had basked in the painful luxury of thinking about him constantly, and dreaming dreams of how I might serve or sacrifice myself for him, and win his passionate gratitude. Consequently, when I raised my eyes from the Spanish novel I wanted to translate, and saw Eagle March come in at the door, I loved him a thousand times more than ever. I don't know if an unprejudiced person would call him actually handsome; but I thought there couldn't be on earth a man worth comparing with that brown-faced soldier.

He was glad to meet his "dear little pal" again, because of what he could get out of her about his loved one. He did hold back his eagerness long enough to rattle off, "Why, Peggy, you're growing up! By Jove, you're almost a woman, aren't you? and a pretty one, too—though you've kept your impish look, I'm glad to see!" But that was only the preface. As soon as he decently could, he turned the conversation to Diana. How was she? As beautiful as ever? Though of course she was! Did she ever speak of him? He'd passed sleepless nights after reading newspaper paragraphs which reported her on the eve of an engagement with this man or that—disgustingly rich, overfed brutes. Was there a grain of truth in any of the reports? No? Thank heaven! Well, then, perhaps there was a sporting chance for him after all!

"But, just like my luck," he went on, half laughing, "there's a chap here who's as formidable as any of them. A regular twelve-and-a-half-inch gun, latest make and improvements; his name's Vandyke; only a major; all the same he's got a pot of money. There's hardly a man in the army as rich as he is, if there's one. Soldiering means only fun for him. Most of us here are like me; or if they don't come from generations of soldiers as I do, they're in the service for a career. Vandyke will probably resign if he gets bored. He's dining at this house to-night. Notice him, and tell me what you think of him afterward, will you?"

"You're coming, too, aren't you?" I asked. "Mrs. Main—Kitty—said you were, and I was so glad."

"I should say I was coming!" he exclaimed. "Catch me giving Vandyke a clear field at the start, if he is my superior officer! You see, Vandyke——"

But on the name, as if it were her cue, Diana floated in, and Mrs. Main steamed in with her, through one of the long windows which opened on to the veranda. After that I ceased to exist.

Di wore white that night for the dinner party. A good deal of what Father was saving in hotel bills he put into clothes for her. It was a new dress, and sparkled all over like a moonlit lily crusted with dew. I had a fancy to put on the frock with roses on it, which I'd bought at Selfridge's so many months ago, with the money paid me by Eagle for my mother's lace. The dress was still alive, and on active service (though the roses began to look somewhat sat upon); and Eagle had never seen me in it. Not that he would notice me now! But I had a queer feeling of sentiment about the gown, and often I had told myself that never, never would I throw it away. I should have had a much queerer feeling if I'd known all that was yet to come of my first meeting with Eagle March in the Wardour Street curiosity shop.

Kitty Main had explained that it wasn't to be a big, tiresome dinner on our first night: merely a few people she thought dear Lord Ballyconal and Lady Di would like to meet, and "who would love to know them—little Peggy, too, of course!"—with a belated gasp of politeness for me.

There would be, besides ourselves, only Mr. and Mrs. Tony Dalziel of New York; their pretty daughter, Millicent, just out; their son, Lieutenant Dalziel—"Tony," too; Major Vandyke; and Captain March, who was already our friend.

The gossips did suggest, Kitty had gone on to hint, that Millicent Dalziel was rather throwing herself at Captain March's head (if an heiress could be said to throw herself at the head of a poor man); but of course, Milly wouldn't have a look in now, if dear Lady Di had any attention to spare for Eagleston March. Di, however, was to be taken in to dinner by Major Vandyke, and Millicent Dalziel by Captain March. It wasn't probable that Milly would give him much chance for talk with Lady Di, although he was to sit beside her. "Good little Peggy" would have young Tony, so nice for both of them! and dear Lord Ballyconal would be placed between his hostess and Mrs. Dalziel.

I ought to have had eyes only for my special prey, Lieutenant Dalziel; but whether I pleased or bored him seemed so comparatively unimportant, that before the guests began to arrive, I found my faculties preparing to concentrate elsewhere. Di hadn't mentioned the name of Major Vandyke while I did her hair, or melted and poured her into the sparkly frock, but I felt her consciousness of him in the air; and when his name was announced at the door of the "cottage" drawing-room, my heart gave a jump as if it wanted to peer over the high wall of the future.

He came before any of the others, so I had time to make a quick black-and-white study of him in my brain. I say black and white, because you would always think of Sidney Vandyke in black and white. An artist sketching him on the cover of a magazine would need no other colour to express the man, except—if he had it handy—a dash of red for the full lips under the black moustache.

"Major Vandyke!" the soft, drawling voice of Kitty's negro butler proclaimed him; and that was when my heart knocked its alarm. Kitty Main generally described people in superlatives, so I hadn't been excited when she remarked that Major Vandyke was the "best-looking man in the army." But this time, she seemed not to have exaggerated. There couldn't be a handsomer man in any army or out of it, and a horrid, sly little voice whispered to me: "What a splendid-looking couple he and Di would make!"

I was standing far in the background, at a window opposite the door, while the others were grouped together more in the foreground; and what I saw was a very tall man (so tall that he could dwarf Eagle March's five foot ten almost to insignificance), six foot two, perhaps, and—not stout yet, but showing signs that one day he might become so. I noticed that he held himself magnificently, his broad shoulders thrown back, his head up; and that he walked with a slight swagger, more like a cavalryman than an officer in the artillery. Perhaps it was the electric light which made his skin look as white as Diana's, without a touch of the tan that darkened Eagle March's fairer complexion; but the white was of a different quality, somehow, from Diana's. Hers is pearl white; his had the thick, untranslucent look which pale Jewish faces have. I didn't know then that Sidney Vandyke was of Hebrew blood, but afterward I heard that his mother had Spanish Jews for ancestors on one side, and that with her came most of the family money. He was in full dress uniform, which became him splendidly; and I had a glimpse of a rather large face, drawn with square, straight lines that gave it a relentless look; square white forehead; straight black brows; straight, short nose; large, squarely opened dark eyes, brilliant and self-confident; straight black moustache; thick, square red lips; square chin, and a full neck set on square shoulders. After that first glimpse I saw only the profile, for in meeting Kitty Main and being introduced to Di and Father, Major Vandyke had to turn half away from me. Even a profile, however, tells something; and when Major Vandyke began to talk to Di, bending down a little, I could see that he admired her very much, or else wanted to convey this impression to her mind.

Next came Eagle March, very slim and boyish in shape and size compared to Major Vandyke, though he can't be more than six years younger; and hardly had he time to greet his hostess and look wistfully at Di, when the Dalziels arrived, a party of four. I thought that the father and mother (a dear little, merry, round-faced couple, curiously like each other and like Billiken) looked too young and irresponsible to be parents of anything grown up; but perhaps they had married when they were almost children, for Lieutenant Dalziel, who was inches taller than his father, had the happy air of being twenty two or three, and Mrs. Main had said that the girl was "just out." Young Tony—nut-brown eyes, skin, and hair, clean shaven, smiling, with teeth white and even as kernels of American corn—was a glorified edition of his Billiken father. Miss Dalziel—Milly—was not a bit like any of the others, who had all been cut from the same pattern and painted with the same paint. She was even slimmer and smaller than I am; very fair, with a few freckles, and lots of blue veins at her temples. She had an obstinate pink button of a mouth; dimples, which she made come and go every minute by working the muscles of her cheeks; bright, fluffy red hair done high on her head, floating eyes of gray green, and blackened brows and lashes which, I suppose, had started life in red. She gave an effect of prettiness and of thinking herself prettier than she was, an opinion in which her dress-maker had backed her up.

Tony Dalziel was jolly, and said so many quaint things in priceless slang that he kept me laughing; but I had eyes if not ears only for Di and Major Vandyke. "Say, he's rushing your sister, isn't he? Making a direct frontal attack—what?" remarked my neighbour, so it must have been conspicuous. One could see Major Vandyke consciously absorbing Diana, throwing over her head a veil of his own magnetism, as if to hide her in it from other men, and make her forget their existence.

As for Di, she behaved perfectly, if she wished to fascinate and tantalize a flirt, such as Sidney Vandyke was said to be. She let herself seem to fall under his spell, and then suddenly slipped gently away, turning to Captain March who sat at her other side. She would talk to him in a friendly, intimate way, in a low voice, with little happy outbursts of laughter over their reminiscences of a year ago; then, half apologetically, she would turn back to Vandyke again, raising and letting fall her eyelashes in a way entirely her own, which, somehow, gives the effect of a blush. It was Victorian, or Edwardian at latest, but much more useful than any substitute girls have invented since. That night began the battle which was to have so strange a finish.

I don't know if Major Vandyke was serious at first. Perhaps he wanted no more than a good flirtation with a pretty girl, one of the prettiest he had ever seen, and desperately loved by a brother officer. You see, he had probably heard already from Kitty Main, who told everything she knew and a great deal she didn't know, that Captain March was in love with Di, just as we heard from the same source that Major Vandyke was jealous of his junior because of flying exploits and honours. I think, though, that from the moment they met, Di never meant to let the man go free. She saw that he was flirting, and was angry that he should dare. This put her on her mettle; and Diana on her mettle was and ever will be formidable, because of her cleverness, which never lets the mettle show. She determined that Sidney Vandyke should fall in love—over ears and eyes in love—and he did. But she wasn't satisfied even with that. She couldn't bear to have Eagle March escape, and perhaps be snapped up by Milly Dalziel, who was sitting on the bank of the fishpond with her hook baited. Oh, it must have been an amusing little comedy for outsiders to watch; and I was an outsider in a way; but it didn't amuse me. I was sick at heart, and cross with Tony Dalziel, who wouldn't leave me alone or give me time to think things over.

This sort of maneuvering lasted for three weeks; then a bombshell fell in our midst. Two batteries of the —th Artillery were ordered immediately to El Paso, on the Mexican border, where a raid was apparently threatened. Major Vandyke and Captain March and Lieutenant Dalziel were all to go.



CHAPTER VI

There was desolation at Alvarado Springs, in the hotel, and in the super-cottages. People—when I say people, I mean women—didn't come to Alvarado to drink the celebrated waters, or to admire the wonderful scenery. They came to play with the officers, and now the bravest and best (looking) were to be snatched from them. What had happened, or what might happen, was a mystery to mere civilians; but it was whispered about that possibly there might be real fighting at El Paso. There must have been, everybody said, something serious under the rumours of a threatened attack from across the Rio Grande, otherwise government would not be sending troops to reinforce the large garrison at Fort Bliss, or be offering to take women and children away from the river towns, in armoured trains if desired. Cavalry and infantry were moving south from other army posts, we heard, to guard the concentration camp of Mexican refugee prisoners at El Paso, and to beat back a rabble of invaders if need came.

The order reached Alvarado late in the afternoon, and the batteries were to leave by train at four o'clock the next morning. As it happened, Kitty Main, Father, Di, and I were all invited to a dance that evening at the house of an officer and his wife, Captain and Mrs. Kilburn; but when the news about the batteries going away began to flash from cottage to cottage we expected the party to be given up. Di looked rather blank when Mrs. Main flung the tidings at her, for Sidney Vandyke hadn't proposed yet. If the dance were abandoned, he might be too busy getting his men ready to see her before he left; and heaven alone knew when the batteries would come back. There might be fighting; there might at worst even be war with Mexico; and whatever happened, we couldn't stay on indefinitely at Alvarado. Kitty Main had taken the cottage and asked us to visit her only for six weeks. Besides, Alvarado would be desolate without our best friends and possible lovers.

I could see these thoughts developing and following on one another's heels in Diana's mind. But in my head there was nothing concrete enough to call a "thought." Feelings seemed to have raced upstairs from heart to brain, and driven ideas out of the house. They ran wildly round and round, saying to each other, "What if I never see him again? What if he should be killed?" But while we were in this state, Mrs. Kilburn telephoned to Kitty Main that she had decided to have her dance in spite of all. Her husband was not among those ordered away, and the officers who were going had arranged to spare time to look in for three or four dances in any case. Some of them might be very early, some very late, but there would be plenty of other men to go round; and Mrs. Kilburn suggested that we might "keep things up" long enough to see the soldiers off at dawn, before motoring back to the Springs, if that would interest Lady Diana and Lady Peggy O'Malley.

There was only one answer to this, and when we went over to Fort Alvarado for the dance we put on warmer cloaks than we should have worn ordinarily.

Mrs. Kilburn had brought her husband money; and as she loved gayety she had somehow got permission to build on to the captain's quarters a ballroom surrounded on three sides by a wide veranda. Consequently, a dance at the Kilburns' was worth going to always, and particularly on this moonlight night of April when the whole fort was humming with excitement. The officers who were ordered away had their hands full of work, yet the young ones managed to get off duty if only for a few minutes, long enough to snatch a dance or two with the girls they liked best, or to "sit out" with them on the veranda, where there were colonies of chairs, and garden seats, and hammocks.

Tony Dalziel was one of those who came early to the Kilburns'. He had asked me beforehand for six dances, and I had given him three. When he appeared it was just in time for the first, a two-step. The second would follow directly after, and the third I knew already, from a note sent me in haste, he would have to miss.

"Do you care for this?" he asked, out of breath with his hurry to dress and sprint over from the far-off line of bachelors' quarters. "If you don't, will you come outside and see the moon rise? It's going to be a great sight."

There is no poetry in a two-step, and if there were it would have been lost in hopping up and down with Tony, so I chose the moon. I thought the moon a perfectly safe object to gaze at with such a jolly young man, who made jokes at everything in the heavens or upon the earth; and unsuspectingly I went with him to a nook on the veranda screened off with tall plants from an adjacent hammock. It was a nook intended for two and no more. There were a great many nooks of that sort on Mrs. Kilburn's veranda. She specialized in flirtation architecture.

"Tell me about everything, please," I cheerfully began. "We haven't very long, have we?"

"That's the worst of it," said Tony, "and that's why I must be careful to tell you only the important things. There's just one that really interests me."

"What's that?" I asked eagerly. "I hope not that you expect fighting?"

"No such luck, I'm afraid. But I'm not worrying about that now. What I want to tell you is this." And to my stupefaction he shot a proposal at my head as if it came out of a field gun. I knew he liked me, and liked to be with me, but I couldn't associate the idea of anything so serious as marriage with Tony Dalziel. I gasped and said he couldn't mean it, but he assured me that he did, and a dictionary full of other assurances besides.

Perhaps, if I had not seen Eagle March and fallen in love with him once and forever, I might have thought twice before saying "No" to Tony, if only for the pride of being engaged sooner than Di, and when I wasn't yet eighteen. Tony Dalziel was what all women call "such a dear!" and, besides, he had—or would have—plenty of money, a consideration in our family. I could imagine what a rage Father would be in with me if he knew what I was doing at that moment, calmly refusing a heaven-sent opportunity. But Eagle March, though he was not for me, made all the difference, and put my heart into a convent where it was now undergoing its novitiate. I let the opportunity slip, and told Tony how sorry I was to hurt him. But he wasn't inclined to take that for an answer. He wanted to know if I wouldn't "leave it open," in case anything happened to make me change my mind. I warned him that, so far as I could see, I would never change it; but if an "optimist will op"—as Tony remarked—what can you do? You can't prevent his opping, and rather than hear an irrevocable word he bade me good-bye while I protested. This was in the midst of what should have been his second dance, and I didn't feel equal to going indoors again directly after that scene, even to tango. I asked Tony to leave me where I was, to gather up my wits, and when he had darted away I sat quite still for a few minutes. I had no engagement until the time for my one dance with Eagle March should come; and as Tony hadn't given me much chance for gazing at the "great sight" he had brought me out to see, I tried to cool my brain with moonlight. But I had forgotten all about the hammock on the other side of the flower screen. I remembered it only when I heard footsteps, and a creaking of chairs as some one—or rather some two—sat down.

"Good gracious!" I said to myself. "Now what shall I do?" For as the pair came to a halt they went on with their conversation, which had evidently reached a critical point. I recognized the man's voice, and as it was that of Eagle March, I knew as well as if I had already seen her that the girl must be Diana. I knew also that she would never forgive me if I popped out at this moment, like the wrong figure on a barometer. Nothing on earth would make her believe that I hadn't been "spying"; for though Di didn't realize how much and in what way I cared for Eagle, she often teased me about being jealous because my great "chum" had forsaken me for her. If at any time she could call him away from me by a glance or a smile, it amused her to do so; and she would believe I was "revenging" myself, in the best way I could, on this their last night.

I had half jumped up from the low seat which Tony had shared with me; but on second thoughts I sat down again.

"She won't let him say much," I thought, "so there'll be nothing to overhear. Anyhow, I can stop my ears, if worst comes to worst." But before I had time to resolve on this precaution, I heard Eagle say, "If it wasn't for the money, I shouldn't feel I had the right——"

The rest was silence, for I kept my resolution and refused to catch another syllable; yet those words had set me thinking hard. If Eagle were telling Di that he was now certain to come in for his aunt's fortune, she might look upon him as a bird in the hand, whereas a notorious flirt like Major Vandyke might be worth no more than two in the bush with the saltcellar empty.

I struggled to find consolation by reminding myself that, if Di did marry Eagle, she might make him happy, provided there were enough money for everything she wanted, and if he were willing to cut the army for her sake and live mostly in England. She wasn't an ill-natured or sharp-tongued girl when things went as she wished, I reflected, and if he were content to sacrifice his career for love of her, they might get on very well together. But—what desolating words to use in connection with Eagle March—"get on well together!" He wasn't one to be satisfied with mere contentment, where he had hoped for rapture.

I sat with my ears stopped, until suddenly the two began speaking in a much louder tone; and a third voice, that of a man, joined the conversation. Then I decided that I might come back to life again; and as I let my tired arms drop, I became aware that the newcomer was Sidney Vandyke. He was telling Di that this was his dance, and that he had been looking for her everywhere.

"I heard Kilburn mention that the Old Man had sent for you, March, and I know they're on your scent," he announced.

"In that case, I may not see you again, Lady Diana," Eagle said.

"Peggy and I are going with Mrs. Kilburn and a lot of others to wave to you for good luck, when you start," answered Di, rather nervously, I thought.

"I'm glad. We shall have a last glimpse of you all," replied Eagle. "But I'm afraid I shan't get a word with you then. So I'll bid you good-bye now!"

He spoke in quite a matter-of-fact way; but I, who knew every tone of his voice, guessed what it covered; and I could almost feel the pressure of his hand as it clasped Di's, with Major Vandyke mercilessly looking on. I wondered whether she had been cruel or kind.

In a moment he was gone; and with a stab of pain I realized that, if the colonel had sent for him, he must miss out his dance with me. Would he even remember it? Would he scribble me a line of farewell? I longed to run out and catch him before he went, if only for a word, but I dared not dash past Di, and give her the shock of learning that I had been within three yards of her all the time. Again I was trapped, unless Di and Major Vandyke should go indoors to dance; but no sooner was Eagle March out of earshot than Vandyke asked Di to stay.

"Of course we've known all along that we might get marching orders," he said, and there was no harm in my hearing that. "It's a surprise only to those outside. The adjutant has been fussing over stores and ammunition, and target practice has been a confounded bore. All the same, at the end the move's been sprung on us, just when we'd forgotten to expect it. I feel as if I'd wasted a lot of precious time one way or another, but it isn't too late yet, Lady Di, if you——"

I stopped up my ears again so effectively that I heard no more, and a few minutes later was flabbergasted when Diana and he suddenly broke upon me from behind the screen of plants.

My first thought was that Di had suspected my presence there, and had wanted to pounce; but she gave a jump and a cry of surprise as she saw me sitting bolt upright on the bench, with my fingers stuffed into my ears.

"Good gracious, Peg!" she gasped. "How long have you been here?"

"Ever since before you came," I answered. I might have put it differently by telling tales, and so serving Eagle March's cause, perhaps; but no matter how thoroughly I disapproved of her, I couldn't give my own sister away. "I didn't like to come out, you see, for fear you mightn't like it; but I haven't heard anything you've said, if that interests you to know."

"I don't care whether you've heard or not," said Di, trying to speak playfully, but unable to keep sharpness out of her tone. "Major Vandyke thought this was a nicer seat than the hammock to rest in, so he brought me to it. Of course, we'd no idea any one was—was hiding here!"

"Well, there won't be any one, now I'm free to move," I snapped. "I'm only too thankful to have a chance to get back to the ballroom. You've made me miss a dance."

"We've made you? I like that!" gurgled Di. But I waited for no more. I skipped away toward the nearest long window without looking round, and was just in time to meet my partner in search of me, the partner after Eagle March, and a brother officer of his. "Our dance," said he, "and here's something March asked me to hand you. He's been called away."

The "something" was a leaf torn out of a notebook and neatly folded into a cocked hat. It was rather appropriate that Eagle's good-bye to me should come in this form, because I had given him the notebook for a birthday present only the week before. I'd saved up my pennies to get a good one, and have his initials in silver fastened on to the khaki-coloured morocco cover. The paper of the book itself and the refills were also khaki coloured to match the cover, with lines in very faint blue. I had wanted my little gift to be as distinctive as possible, and had taken a great deal of pains to choose a notebook different from all others, little dreaming what was fated to hang on the difference.

Quietly but carefully I undid the paper cocked hat and read the few pencilled words: "So disappointed, dear little friend, not to have my dance with you, but I'm called back to work. Congratulate me. I've got almost the promise I wanted. The next best thing, anyhow. Farewell for a while. Write to me to El Paso like the good girl you are. I shall look for you at the train to-morrow morning early, though we may not have a chance to speak. Yours ever, E. M."

I folded up the note and tucked it into the neck of my dress. Then I danced. And all the rest of the evening I danced. Yet I thought only of one thing: the half-veiled confidence Eagle had given me. Apparently Di had said something calculated to send him away happy. But Major Vandyke had looked far from sad when he walked into the ballroom with Di, after their tete-a-tete on the veranda in my deserted nook. I felt something was wrong, and determined to have it out with Diana the minute I could get her alone. My chance came sooner than I expected, for just before supper she tore her frock and wanted me to run up with her to the dressing-room and mend it. "A maid will make an awful mess of the thing," she said, "but you'll know what to do, and it'll take only a few minutes."

We had the dressing-room to ourselves, for Mrs. Kilburn's French maid, who was in charge, had slipped away, probably for a sly peep at the dancing. When I had Di at my mercy, holding her by a trail of gold fringe, I opened fire.

"Are you engaged to Eagle March?" I flashed out.

"Certainly not," Di flashed back. "What makes you think such a thing? You said you didn't hear——" In haste she cut her sentence short, realizing how she had given herself away. She would have gone on quickly, but I broke in.

"You ask what makes me think such a thing when I told you that I didn't hear a word of your talk. Which shows that if I had heard, I might have thought of it. Well, I did not hear, but, all the same, I think."

"You needn't, then," she assured me. "If I'm engaged to any one, it is to Sidney Vandyke. But I tell you as much as that, only to prove there's nothing between me and Captain March. It's in strict confidence, and you must be sure and keep the secret, Peg, till I'm ready to have it come out. Nothing's to be said until this Mexican bother is over. Can you make the fringe look right?"

"Yes, if you give me time," I answered. "But, Di, I won't have you playing tricks with Eagle March. I simply won't stand it!"

"It's horrid of you to suggest that I would do such a thing," Diana protested virtuously.

"Pooh!" said I, secure in my knowledge that she dared not move. "I know you pretty well, Di, and although you can be quite a darling when you like, you'd do anything—anything whatever, that was for your own interests, no matter how much it hurt others. You'd better tell me the truth, because I'm sure to find out; and if you mean to hurt or deceive Eagle March I'll stop you from doing it, I don't care how much it may cost me or you, or any one else but him."

"If ever there was a thorough little pig, it's you, Peggy," said Di.

"Thorough pigs seem to run in our family," I ruthlessly retorted. "But they're intelligent animals, and this one has rooted up something already. I believe you've practically promised to marry both these men, and persuaded them to keep the secret, so you can have time to decide which one will be the better to take, in the end."

"You make me out a perfect wretch," Di moaned piteously, peering over her shoulder to see how the repairs were getting on.

"So you are! A beautiful one, but a wretch. You like them both, Eagle and Major Vandyke. You like Eagle because he's so popular and such a hero as an airman; and you like Major Vandyke because he's awfully good looking and awfully rich and an awful flirt. You were worried to death for fear he wouldn't propose, and I'd have known to-night, from the change in your face, even if you hadn't told me, that he had spoken at last. But Eagle spoke, too, and you sent him away happy. I know that; though the only other thing I do know for certain, is that you think now he's sure to get his aunt's money."

"It's not such a tremendous lot, anyhow," Di gave herself away again. "He won't have more than two or three hundred thousand dollars at the most. If only it were pounds! Every one says Sidney Vandyke has a million. He's one of the few very rich men in the American army."

"But he can't fly, and he can't invent things, and he'll never be the man in any career that Eagle will," I reminded her. "You know this as well as I do. That's why you're waiting. Don't you think you'd better explain your true state of mind to me, if you don't want me to work against you?"

"You're a cat as well as a pig, you little horror!"

"What a museum combination! Don't twitch, or the fringe will go crooked. Is Eagle's rich aunt likely to die?"

"Well, yes, she is," Diana admitted. "She's very old, you know. She's had a third stroke of paralysis. If Eagle could have got leave he would have gone to her, but that was out of the question as things are."

"Did he tell you about her, or was it some one else who gave you the news?"

"It was some one else, of course. Naturally I wanted to make sure, so I—sympathized with him on his aunt's illness. He had only just heard about it, himself. He's always been fond of her, and he said he couldn't have had the heart to come to a dance, if it hadn't been his last night, and the only way to see me before he left for Texas. But he told me that Mrs. Cabot's death would make him comparatively a rich man. Those were the words he used. I don't think he's sure how much he'll get. It was from Kitty I heard what Mrs. Cabot is likely to leave."

"And as 'likely' isn't the same as 'certain,' you're hanging fire till she's dead," I explained Diana to herself.

"You make me out heaps worse than I am," she reproached me. "If I haven't given an absolutely definite answer to Eagle March or Sidney Vandyke, it's—it's—because of this expedition they're both going on. They may get some chance to distinguish themselves. You're such a practical little person that you can't realize the romantic sort of feeling I have about such things. If I marry a man who isn't of my own country, I should like him to be a great hero, whom every one would read about and admire. I've told each of them to work, and do his best for my sake."

"There'll probably be no opportunity for anything heroic in such an expedition as this," said I, living up to the reputation—ill-deserved—for practicality, which Di wished to thrust on me in contrast with herself.

"That's what they both said," she agreed, "but one never knows."

"And so you get a story-book-heroine excuse to wait!"

"Little viper!"

"The cat-pig-viper won't sting unless you force it to," I guaranteed. "There! Your dress is all right again."

"You could have finished five minutes ago, if you hadn't been determined to lecture me. Thanks, all the same. You have your uses, though they're not always sweet, like those of adversity."

We went our separate ways with the men who were waiting to take us in to supper; and we didn't come together again till the dance was over, and every one but the party specially asked to stay had gone home. We heard the bugles sounding reveille; then presently the beat of drums and the rumble of the field guns going to the station. When Captain Kilburn announced that the entrainment was well under way, we started in his big limousine, shivering a little in evening cloaks flung on hastily over low-necked dresses. We waited till the platform was clear of the great mass of khaki-clad young men, and then timidly appeared, to stare through the dusk of early morning in search of friends. Ours wasn't the only party engaged in that business. Others were there; and swathed figures of girls and women, in rich-coloured cloaks over pale-tinted ball gowns, glimmered in the dawn like a row of tall flowers crowding along the edge of a garden path. My eyes were trying to find Eagle March when Tony Dalziel spoke by my shoulder, and made me jump. "I've just a minute," he said when I turned. "I want to ask you if you'll forget you turned me down last night, and be friends again. I will if you will. Will you?"

"Yes," I returned gladly, shaking hands. "I'm so glad you've realized that you were silly to feel about me like that. Why you or any man should, I can't think!"

"Can't you? That's because you haven't seen yourself, or heard yourself, and don't know what a quaint, darling sort of girl you are. But never mind. Let it go at that. We'll be friends. And promise, if my mother and Milly ask you to do something for them, you will."

"Anything I possibly can," I warmly answered. "Good-bye! Good luck!"

He was off. I meant to follow him with my eyes and wave to him when he looked out of his window in the train. But before he appeared again, I caught sight of Eagle March on a car platform, and forgot Tony, just as Eagle had forgotten me. Behind Eagle's slight figure towered massively Major Vandyke's splendid bulk; and as I waved my handkerchief to Eagle, while the train slid slowly out, I was vaguely aware of Diana's outstretched arm and a butterfly flutter of something white and small. Eagle's eyes went past me to her, though his smile was for me also; and Di was able deftly to kill her two birds with one stone, at the last. Her farewell look and gesture did equally well for both, yet each could take it wholly to himself.



CHAPTER VII

The next night I had a dreadful dream about Eagle March. Somehow or other, he had been condemned to death by Major Vandyke (who had unbecomingly turned into a judge) and Eagle was to be executed unless I could arrive in time to save him, armed with a reprieve or pardon—I didn't quite know which—that I had got from Washington. I waked up crying out, because a hand had been stretched forth through darkness to clutch my shoulder, and prevent me from getting to El Paso until too late. Even then, when I was wide awake, the dream had been so horribly vivid that I couldn't persuade myself it wasn't true. I had always laughed at superstitious people who believed in dreams, yet I couldn't clear my mind of this one, or keep from asking myself in a panic, "What if it's a warning?" It seemed that after all such things might mysteriously be.

Alvarado Springs was as dull as a convent after the officers we liked best had gone from the fort, and Kitty proposed subletting her cottage to an invalid who, for a wonder, had really come to the place for nothing but to take the cure. This rare creature was distressed by the noises of the hotel, and was willing to pay more than Kitty had paid, for the remaining few weeks of Mrs. Main's tenancy. Our hostess was enchanted with the idea, clapped her fat, dimpled hands like a little girl, and proposed to "blow" the money (this was slang she had delightedly picked up from Father) on a motor tour to California. She had no car of her own, but she could hire one, with a chauffeur we had often taken for short runs, and at Los Angeles, Riverside, Santa Barbara, San Francisco, and other places, she had friends who would shower invitations. The trip would take from two to six weeks, according to our own desire. Then, when we were tired of motoring and country-house visiting, the car would be sent home, and we could have the fun of going East together by the "Limited," which, Kitty said, was one of the most wonderful trains in the world.

This was the proposal, and it suited Father and Di very well. Each had a reason for wishing to prolong the tour in America, if it could be done "on the cheap." Di, of course, wanted to see Major Vandyke or Captain March—whichever she decided to take in the end—and settle her affairs definitely before going home to prepare for the wedding. As to Father, I began to ask myself about this time if he seriously thought of making our "Main Chance" a countess, and counting her dollars into his own pockets. In any case; travelling luxuriously in a land where poor Irish earls weighed as well in the balance as a rich English variety, was better than vegetating at Ballyconal or economizing in London; so he smiled upon the plan, and I was the one obstacle. The only comfortable car that Mrs. Main could get at short notice, was ideal for five, counting a chauffeur and a maid, but close quarters for six. I couldn't be put permanently with the chauffeur; and, besides, Kitty's looks were of the sort that depend upon a maid. "Dear little Peggy must just squeeze in somehow," was her verdict, although Di would temporarily have done without my services rather than be cramped, if I could have been disposed of elsewhere. She and Father put their heads together, and I had begun to feel in my bones that an invitation for me from Mrs. Kilburn was to be hinted at, when Mrs. Dalziel came to the rescue.

Her husband had gone back to New York long ago, and she and Milly had been wondering ever since Tony's orders came, whether it might be feasible to follow him to El Paso, and "see what was doing there." He had now wired that all the women of the neighbourhood had refused to leave the men; that the "scare" was dying down; that it looked as if the imported troops would have nothing more exciting to do than guard the concentration camp; and there was a gorgeous hotel in the town, full of rich Spanish refugees, men who were celebrities, and women who were beauties. Mrs. Dalziel had accordingly decided to venture; and Milly would enjoy the trip immensely, if Father would let me go with them as their guest. The eyes of my family lighted at this hope of liberation, and I suddenly understood what Tony's last words to me had meant. This was his plan; but I wanted so violently to go to El Paso and was so violently wanted to go by Father and Di, that I didn't stop to debate whether or no it was right to say yes. I simply said it, and—hang the consequences!

Di bade me an affectionate farewell, with a plaintive reminder that a girl not likely to be proposed to every day might do worse than Tony Dalziel. I, in turn, reminded her that any knavish juggling with Captain March's faith would be dealt with severely by me; and so we parted, she to go her way to California en automobile, I to go mine to Texas by Santa Fe trains.

I was grateful to Mrs. Dalziel and Milly for taking me, though I couldn't help seeing that it was not for my beaux yeux they had asked me to be their guest. I was a handle, or cat's-paw; but I preferred the part of usefulness to my hostesses to being carted about by them as an expensive luxury. Mrs. Dalziel really wanted me for Tony, who had never been denied anything short of the moon that he cried for. Milly wanted people to think that she wanted me for Tony, in order to have an invincible, ironproof excuse for the rush to El Paso, which her friends of the cat tribe might attribute to a different motive. She had been rather depressed at Alvarado, but began to bubble over with wild spirits the moment we were off for El Paso. She said that this would be the great adventure of our lives, and she was only sorry all danger along the border was over, as we shouldn't get the chance to show how brave we were.

It was an interesting journey, every stage of it; and at Las Cruces and after, we began to realize how close we were to old Mexico. Only the river ran between us and that mysterious, ancient land, as far removed in thought from the United States as though it were an annex of Egypt. Here and there, too, the Rio Grande (which I'd thought of geographically as a vast stream, wide as a lake) was a mere water serpent, writhing in its shallow bed of mud. This, we heard our fellow passengers say, explained the late danger of a raid. It would be as "easy as falling off a log" for a party of ill-advised Mexicans to make a dash across the river, and already there had been small private expeditions of cattle stealers. Staring out of the windows at little adobe villages, their huddled houses turned from brown to cubes of gold by the afternoon sun, we listened to all sorts of disquieting gossip. According to the travellers, who talked loudly to each other across the car, the "scare" was suddenly on again. Some more Federals had escaped the Constitutionalist soldiers, and got into Del Rio, where they had been protected by American soldiers, and there had been some shooting from one side of the river to the other. Carranza was threatening reprisals; no one seemed to know what Villa's attitude would be. A few American women who had little children had decided after all to go north. At Las Cruces and El Paso you could no longer buy a Browning, or arms of any kind. All had been snapped up. Las Cruces men, remembering that the militia was composed of Mexicans, had begun giving their wives lessons in target practice. At El Paso there was the peril of the Mexican population to be faced in case of attack from across the river; to say nothing of the thousand Mexicans employed in the smelting works down on the flats, and the five thousand refugees in the concentration camp, if they should mutiny and get out of control.

Poor Mrs. Dalziel drooped more and more piteously as this ball of gossip was tossed from one side of the car to the other, and Milly's ever white face grew so pale that her freckles stood out conspicuously. She ceased to exclaim with excitement over the cowboys galloping along the road on the United States side of the river, or to count the automobiles and the great alfalfa barns near small stations where black-veiled Mexican women waved sad farewells to weedy, olive-faced youths, perhaps going to the "war."

"Of course, we're not afraid for ourselves," said Mrs. Dalziel. "We—we should want to be near Tony, whatever happened. It's of you we're thinking, Peggy. I don't know if we ought to have brought you to such a place. And I do wish Tony's father were with us, anyhow."

The nearer we came to El Paso, the more foreign and Mexican the country seemed, with its wild purple mountains billowing along the sunset sky of red and gold; its queer, Moorish-looking groups of brown huts, and its dark-skinned men in sombreros or huge straw hats with steeple crowns. It was quite a relief to draw into El Paso station where everything was suddenly modern and American, and comfortably normal again.

Tony had got off duty to come and meet us; and after the first "how-do-you-dos," his mother began bombarding him with questions. What had happened? What was likely to happen? Wouldn't it have been better to telegraph us not to come?

She and Milly both had the air of eagerly hoping that he might after all be able to sweep away their fears with a word or a laugh; but for once, Tony kept as solemn a face as the conformation of his benevolent Billiken features permitted.

"There's nothing at all to worry about, if you don't get silly and panicky," said he. "I did think of telegraphing, not because there's any real danger, but because I was afraid that when you got down here, if things hadn't cleared up, the newspaper 'extras' and the way they talk at the hotels might give you the jumps. I couldn't have wired till after you'd started, though, because there was nothing doing before that, worth a telegram. I thought it would scare you blue if you got a message delivered to you in the train saying better not come, or words to that effect; so it seemed best to let things rip. Now you're on the spot, you just keep your hair on, and don't believe anything you read or hear; then you'll be all right."

"My hair doesn't come off, dearest," objected Mrs. Dalziel mildly, which made us laugh; and that did everybody good.

"I bet Lady Peggy isn't afraid worth a cent," Tony remarked.

"Rather not!" said I. "I wouldn't go away—no, not if you set mice at me! Even if Mrs. Dalziel and Milly went, I'd stay on and volunteer as a nurse. I can do first aid, and I don't mind the sight of blood if there isn't too much; though, of course, it would be better if it were a peaceful green or blue instead of that terrifying red."

Tony took us in a taxi to the Paso del Norte, a big hotel good enough for New York or London; and even in that short spin through the streets, we saw the newspaper "extras" being hawked about by yelling boys who waved the papers to show off their huge scarlet headlines. The marble entrance hall of the hotel was crowded with people who had just bought these extras, and were reading aloud tit-bits of "scare" news to each other, or discussing the situation in groups. Some looked very Spanish, and Tony said they were refugees, from the heart of Mexico; but the women seemed to have had plenty of time to sort out and pack their prettiest clothes before they fled.

That night Eagle March was asked to dine with us at the hotel. He sat between Mrs. Dalziel and Milly, and more than once I caught his eyes resting on me thoughtfully, almost wistfully. I wondered if there were something that he was particularly anxious to say, but Milly kept him occupied even after dinner was over and we were having coffee in the hall. I was resigning myself to the idea that we shouldn't be given time for a word together, when out of the crowd appeared Major Vandyke. He was with friends, but escaped, and crossed the hall to shake hands with us. I noticed what stiff, grudging nods he and Eagle gave each other, just enough of a nod not to be a cut. Something disagreeable had evidently happened between them since they left us at Fort Alvarado; for in those days, no matter how they felt, they always kept up the pretence of being good enough friends.

When Major Vandyke had been civil to me and asked after my "people," he began telling Mrs. Dalziel and Milly things about the state of affairs in El Paso. "You may have come in for a small adventure, after all," said he. "We've had to warn the occupants of some of the tallest buildings in town that they may be called on to clear out at five minutes' notice, if we have trouble, for their houses would be in range of gunfire from both sides. But you'll be all right here at the hotel, whatever happens. We're strong enough to protect you."

He laughed, and I saw that he enjoyed teasing timid little Mrs. Dalziel. I thought that haughty "we," constantly coming in, was characteristic of the man, and judging by the odd expression which just flickered lightly across Eagle's face, he was thinking the same thing. Tony joined boyishly in the conversation, to reassure his mother and Milly, and Eagle promptly seized the moment for a word with me.

"Any message?" he asked in a low voice. I shook my head.

"Oh, well," he said, "I'm mighty glad to see you, anyhow, little girl. Lucky Tony! I'm rather jealous of him, you know. I'd got sort of in the habit of thinking I had the only claim."

I felt myself go scarlet. What a good thing one doesn't blush all colours of the rainbow!—for I had the sensation of a prism. "Tony Dalziel may be lucky," I stammered. "I hope he is. But his luck has nothing to do with me. Neither has he—except as a friend. That's quite understood between us."

"Oh, is it?" smiled Eagle. "I'm a selfish beast to be glad, but I am. I was feeling quite low in my mind and 'out of it' at dinner."

So the wistful looks had been for me! It seemed too good to be true, even to have so much place in Eagle's heart that he didn't want to lose me.

When Milly turned to him, as she did almost instantly, for consolation after Major Vandyke's teasing, Eagle told her, while I listened, how very little, in his opinion, there was for any one to fear. It was true, of course, that the troops had come to El Paso for a purpose. Every one thought it had been served by frightening out of a certain faction of Mexicans such vague, secret hopes as they might foolishly have cherished. Now to be sure, the "scare act" was being read again, but the big field guns pointing across the river were in any case powerful enough to keep the peace. Captain March wanted to know if we would care to visit the camps next day. If so, he would help Dalziel arrange the visit. This suggestion saved Milly the trouble of hinting for it, and she was happy; but her happiness was destined to be short-lived. It was destroyed in the night by a band of vicious microbes with which she had been fighting a silent battle during the long journey to El Paso. They won, and kept her in bed with a pink nose and eyes overflowing with grief and influenza.

I nobly offered to stay with her, but Mrs. Dalziel had a son as well as a daughter. She said we must go and take a look at Tony's tent, if we did nothing else; and perhaps it would have ended in our doing not much more if it hadn't been for Eagle.

El Paso was one of the most deliciously exciting places in America just then, and there were many things which I wanted far more to see than Tony Dalziel's tent. There was the town itself, with its broad streets and tall buildings (which made me shiver with the wildly absurd thought of their being smashed by silly rebel guns from across the river); its shady avenues of alluring bungalows, and its parks—all so gay and peaceful in the warm spring sunshine that the very suggestion of war within a thousand miles seemed fantastic melodrama, despite the shouting newspaper boys with a fearsome "extra" coming out every fifteen minutes. There was new Fort Bliss, the cavalry post, and old Fort Bliss, famous, they told me, as long ago as the days of Indian warfare. There was the concentration camp where five thousand Mexicans were guarded by soldiers, and there were the camps of the reinforcing troops, artillery, cavalry, and infantry. I wanted to miss nothing, but when we had motored to old Fort Bliss down by the river and the smelting works, and seen the faded houses in temporary occupation of visiting officers; when we had spun out to new Fort Bliss to admire the smart quarters and barracks, and when we had trailed about a little in "Tony's camp," Mrs. Dalziel was tired. The sun was very hot, and she thought she ought to go home to poor Milly. Captain March, however, was certain that what I ought to do was to see his tent before deserting camp. He had something there which he particularly wished to show me. Tony volunteered to take his mother back to our hired automobile, waiting near the Zoo, and to return for me. I hoped that he might be away a long time, and looked forward to my few minutes alone with Eagle as to a taste of paradise, having no idea that those moments would be long enough to decide the fate of two men.

The camp was a neat, khaki-coloured town of canvas houses, big and little, seemingly countless rows of them, set in rough grass, and sandy earth of the same yellow brown as the tents. How the officers and men knew their narrow lanes and low-browed dwellings apart, I could not imagine, for they all bore the most remarkable family resemblance to one another in shape and feature, except those which boasted mosquito-net draperies to keep out the flies.

Among these more luxurious soldier houses was Eagle's. His tent, prepared for the day, consisted of a canvas wall with a wide-open space all around, between it and the roof; and the whole internal economy was ingenuously open to public gaze. Not that it mattered, for everything was as neat as a model doll's house: the narrow bed, the pathetically meagre toilet arrangements, the one chair, the small trunk which was the sole wardrobe, and the ridiculous shaving mirror stuck up on a pole, above a miniature arsenal.

"I should think you'd cut yourself to pieces," said I, giggling impolitely as I stood on tiptoe, and peered into my own eyes in the tiny looking-glass. "There isn't room to see more than half a feature at a time. I've always been glad I wasn't a man, for two reasons: because I'd hate to have to shave, or to marry a woman. Both are horrid necessities."

"That depends on the razor—and the woman," laughed Eagle. "But as a matter of fact, I value that six-inch square of glass more than any of my other possessions. It's the thing I expressly wanted to show you. Stand back a minute, Lady Vanity, and you'll see why."

I stood back. Eagle did something to the plain dark frame of the mirror, which had a gold rim inside. Then he pulled out the glass from the bottom, and there instead, framed in black and gold, was a photograph of Diana—a lovely photograph: just a head, lips faintly smiling, eyes gazing straight at you and saying in plain eye language, "I love you dearly."

I had never seen the photograph before, and seeing it now gave me a strange frightened feeling, as if I had found out something about Diana which I wasn't supposed to know. It was such an intimate portrait, intended to be revealing, yet really concealing! I felt it was wicked of those beautiful eyes to say what they did not mean, or, perhaps, did not know how to mean; and for my critical stare, behind that "I love you," calculation hid, like the cold glint deep down in the jewel eyes of a Persian cat, when she doesn't want a mouse to guess that she knows it is there.

"Now you can understand why I'm glad to be a man," said Eagle, "in spite of—no, because of—well, anyway one of the two 'necessities' you think so 'horrid,' my child. What glory to be chosen out of all the rest who love her by such a woman! And I hope she is going to choose me. I don't believe she's the kind of girl to have a photograph like that taken expressly for a man, if she didn't feel a little of what the picture seems to say she feels, do you?"

I suppose men's ignorance of what she is at heart is a Providence-given suit of chain armour for every woman. But I wasn't myself sure enough yet of what Di might decide to do, to try and disturb Eagle's happy confidence in her. So, instead of answering his questions, I asked him one: "Did she have that photograph taken expressly for you?"

"Yes," Eagle answered triumphantly. "I don't think she'd mind my repeating to her own sister that she told me so, or that there's only this one copy, and she gave orders to have the negative destroyed."

He had hardly got these words out of his mouth when we heard footsteps, and Major Vandyke stopped suddenly in front of the doorway. In an instant, Eagle had unhooked the frame from the pole, and holding the face of the portrait toward his breast, quietly slipped the mirror into its place again, as, with sang-froid apparently unruffled, he called out: "Hullo, Vandyke! Have you come to see Lady Peggy or me?"

"I didn't know Lady Peggy was here. I was only passing by, on my way to the colonel's," explained Vandyke. "But seeing her, I thought I might be allowed to stop and say 'how do you do?'"

He spoke rather brusquely, but it was impossible to tell from his tone whether it covered anger or expressed only the coolness which had grown up between him and Captain March. As I shook hands with Major Vandyke, I was asking myself anxiously if he could have seen the photograph in passing? If not—and it did seem as if Eagle's head and mine ought to have hidden it from him—our tell-tale words would have meant nothing to his intelligence, even if he had overheard them as he came. If, however, he had snatched a glimpse of Diana's face, and at the same time caught what Eagle said, I was afraid there might be trouble. Provided it were only for Di, I didn't much care, because she thoroughly deserved to have trouble, and it would give her a lesson; but something warned my instinct that the consequences might spread and spread until others suffered, as a ring forever widens in smooth water when the tiniest pebble is thrown.



CHAPTER VIII

We were still skirmishing on the outskirts of conversation—What did I think of a soldier's out-of-door quarters? Why hadn't any one yet shown me the great sight, the concentration camp? when Tony Dalziel came hurrying up, to take me back to his mother and the motor. His arrival seemed to bring relief from strain. It was like a brisk breeze blowing away the brooding clouds that stifle the atmosphere before a thunderstorm. I dreaded to go and leave those two men together; but when Major Vandyke suggested walking with us to the car, and asking Mrs. Dalziel about Milly, my heart felt lighter. We stopped only long enough with Eagle to arrange a visit to the concentration camp for next morning, if Milly were better, and then Vandyke, Tony, and I started off.

For the first two or three minutes the major walked along in silence; but when we were well out of sight of Eagle March's tent he interrupted some sentence of Tony's ruthlessly. I don't think he was even aware that the other was speaking.

"See here, Tony, old man, will you do me a favour?" he asked in his nicest manner. "There's a book in my tent I promised to give Lady Peggy, to read aloud to Miss Dalziel—a jolly good story! I forgot to bring it out when I came, and I don't want to go back now if I can help it, because a party of bores are being shown round in that direction, awful people I've escaped from. You don't know them, so they can't hurt you. Will you, like a dear chap, cut off and grab the book? It's on the table; you can't miss it; purple cover."

Tony obligingly "cut," and I waited, breathless, for what was to come, knowing now without being told that Sidney Vandyke had seen the photograph. He had not promised me a book, nor mentioned one.

I had only a few seconds to wait. "Is it true that your sister gave March the picture he has in his tent?" he demanded, rather than asked.

I gasped, doubtful whether it would be wise to bring things to a crisis, or better to try and keep them simmering. But an instant's reflection told me that to shilly-shally with the man in this mood would make what was already bad far worse. "Yes, she gave it to him, of course," I replied. "I think you must have overheard him say so."

I really didn't mean to put emphasis on the offending word, but Major Vandyke suspected it. Perhaps the cap fitted!

"I wasn't eavesdropping," he said. "I happened to hear. That's a very different thing from overhearing. And I have a right to ask you as Diana's sister, Diana herself not being on the spot, to give me an explanation, as I'm sure she would if she were here. Because I have the duplicate of that photo. She told me she'd had it taken for me, and the negative destroyed. I considered it sacred. I would have shown it to nobody."

"I am nobody," said I, "nobody except Captain March's friend, to whom he tells things he wouldn't tell to others. He had the best of reasons to believe I was in Diana's confidence, as well as his. And as for the photograph, it's as sacred to him as it could be to you, Major Vandyke. You might realize that from the clever way he has thought of to hide it; and no person who wasn't absolutely prying could have recognized it in passing by his tent. He knew that very well, or he wouldn't have uncovered the picture for even a second."

"If you were a man, you wouldn't dare say such a thing as that to me, Lady Peggy."

"Oh, yes, I would," I retorted, "if I were nearly as big as you. I'm Captain March's friend, not yours; and I'm not a bit afraid to be your enemy if you are his."

"You are more loyal to your friend than to your own flesh and blood," he flung at me. "If you say your sister did give that photograph to March, you make her out a liar. But I won't believe it of her. I prefer to believe it of March instead."

"'Liar' is a strong word," I temporized. "I was always taught that it was very rude, too. You're a flirt, Major Vandyke! Every one says that of you, and I believe you're proud of it. So you ought to have some sympathy with a fellow flirt, like Di. If any one must be blamed, of course it's she, not Captain March. He has as much right to accept a photograph from a girl as you have. But you needn't be too angry with Di, if she made you believe that you were the only one, when she was doing the same thing with Captain March. Probably she didn't 'lie' to either of you in so many words."

"It's not necessary for you to defend Lady Diana to me, I assure you," returned Major Vandyke. "Whatever she may have done, I'm ready to forgive her, if she's willing to stand by me. But I won't have March swaggering around and boasting that she gives him special favours."

"If I were a man you wouldn't dare say that!" I burst out. "When you talk about 'boasting,' or 'swaggering,' you must be judging him by yourself, for you are always doing both, he never. I believe Di likes him better than she does you, because he's a sort of popular hero with his flying, and you have nothing except your flirting and your fortune to recommend you to a girl."

If only I hadn't lost my head and thrown that taunt at him! I suppose I shall never know how much difference, or how little, this mistake of mine made. The instant the words were out I would have given anything to recall them. But it was too late. To apologize, or try to explain, would only do more harm. I ventured one sidelong glance at Major Vandyke's face after I had shot that bolt; and I quivered all over as I saw how the blood streamed darkly up to his forehead and swelled the veins at his temples. If I hadn't been afraid of him for Eagle, whose superior officer he was, I might have pitied him for the pain I had inflicted, under which he could keep silence only by biting his lip. I knew he was hating me violently, but I didn't care a rap. All I cared for just then was that he was hating Eagle March, and counting on paying him out in some way—I couldn't guess what.

"I must warn Eagle," I said to myself; and I could almost have kissed Tony, I was so glad to see him when he came back with the purple-covered book which nobody wanted.

Major Vandyke walked on with us to the motor, as if nothing had happened, but he was very silent, letting Tony and me talk undisturbed. It was only after he had spoken in a dry, mechanical way to Mrs. Dalziel, and the car was about to start, that I caught his eyes. There was a look in them as cold and deadly—or I imagined it—as deliberate murder.

I couldn't wait until next day to see Eagle and tell him—I hardly knew what, but something, to put him on his guard. He had said that he was engaged to lunch with a man named Donaldson at the Hotel Weldon, and it occurred to me that I might reach him there by telephone. At a little before one o'clock, I called up the hotel, and inquired if Captain March had arrived, to keep an appointment with Mr. Donaldson. The answer was "yes"; and when I had given my name, I was asked to hold the line for a few minutes, until Captain March should come to the telephone.

As I sat with the receiver at my ear, waiting, somebody began to talk in weird Spanish—or "Mex," as I'd heard it nicknamed in El Paso. The telephone and I had never been intimate friends at home, and I'd practically made its acquaintance since coming to America, so I scarcely realized why or how I was hearing that voice. "Is it some one trying to call to me?" I wondered stupidly. "Who knows here, except Eagle, that I speak Spanish?" Then, gradually, it dawned on me that I had "tapped" a conversation going on between persons with whom I had nothing to do. Their chatter could have no interest for me, even if it were excusable to listen, but I didn't drop the receiver lest I should miss Captain March, having been instructed to hold the line till he came. I couldn't help being vaguely pleased, too, that I had picked up enough Spanish in my home studies to understand what was being said. But suddenly my silly conceit was turned into horror. I was overhearing (that word which Major Vandyke had resented!) a plot between a pair of Mexican servants to poison the American families who employed them.

Two women were talking to each other, rapidly, earnestly, in tones of such agitation as they hurried on, that only for the first instant could I fancy a practical joke was being played. "You got the stuff safely? Yes? Then it has gone round among those who will do the work. Only a few have refused to come in. Those who eat will not die, but all will be sick. Then the men cannot fight our men if they come across the river. It is a very good plan to let us women help in our way. Yet, above everything, there must be no mistake! It is for the noon meal on Thursday, but only if we are sure of an attack for that night. We should be lost if we acted too soon. I am the one to pass the word. I am telling one after another to wait until it comes from me, by telephone or in some other way."

The words were rattled off so fast that I could catch no more than half, but I had seized enough to fill up the spaces for myself when the voices were cut off into silence, and Eagle March called, "Hello! Is that you, Peggy?"

"Yes," I said. "I had something important to say to you, but I've heard the most horrid talk going on over the telephone. I'm afraid it may mean a real danger for El Paso. I daren't tell you about it on the wire. Do let me see you! I must! Can you possibly take a taxi and rush over here now, or shall I go to you? I'll do that if you can't come to me."

"I'll come to you, of course," answered Eagle. "I'll excuse myself to Donaldson, and be with you in five minutes."

"Good; in the hall," I said. "I'll run down now and wait for you."

Mrs. Dalziel and I were to lunch in Milly's room, to keep her company and tell her all the news; but the meal wasn't due yet for half an hour, so there was plenty of time before my hostess should come knocking at the door. I had just found a quiet place in the corner of the big marble hall, and annexed a sofa for two, when I saw Eagle walk in. He was looking for me. I beckoned, and he came to me with long strides. It would be hard to tell why, but never had I loved him so well as at that moment. I did not see how I was going to bear a whole, long life without having him in it.

When he had sat down by my side, I told him quickly what I had overheard, and how. The moment he had got the pith of the story he jumped up, looking preoccupied and anxious. "I must go at once," he said, "before the girls at the telephone exchange have time to forget the numbers of those who've called and been called up in the last twenty minutes or so. We may be able to catch the ringleader in that way, and get from her the names of every one in the plot—if it's a genuine plot; and I agree with you that it looks rather like it. Peggy, your fad for studying languages and your quick wits may have saved El Paso from something at the least unpleasant."

"Oh, I hope so!" I cried. "And the women talked about some 'attack!' Don't forget that."

"No fear!" he almost laughed. "Now I must go. You may be asked some questions later on. I hope you won't much mind."

I shook my head. "What does it matter? But, oh, Eagle! I cannot let you go until I've told you what I rang you up for. Major Vandyke saw Di's picture, and heard what we said. And he's furious, because it seems she gave him a photograph—something like yours. I don't quite know what he thinks, but he's more angry with you than with her, and I believe he'll try to get even with you in someway. Look out for him!"

"I will!" This time he laughed outright. "And I don't think he will be able to frighten me into giving up Diana—if she'll have me. Good-bye, dear, and thank you for everything, with all my heart. You're my good angel!"

"How I wish I could be!" I sighed. But he heard neither sigh nor words. He had hurried away and into his waiting taxi.



CHAPTER IX

Unluckily, nothing could be proved through the telephone people, though there was certain circumstantial evidence against one or two Mexican women, as I heard through Eagle March. But American families who employed Mexicans were privately informed of the existence of a possible plot against them, and consequently a number of Mexican servants in El Paso were thrown out of employment at an hour's notice. The authorities did all they could to keep any report out of the papers, but, of course, did not succeed, and the "extras" had choice tit-bits of sensation for that afternoon. The mysterious threat of an impending raid was enlarged upon, too, and to calm the public, as well as impress "the other side of the river," it was decided to have a great parade of troops through the town. A day was settled upon to be called "Army Day"; but meanwhile, precautions were taken to guard against any "surprise coup," such as had been carried out across the Rio Grande at Juarez by a few Constitutionalists against Federals, one night some months before.

The crowds who had been out to stare at the concentration camp, peopled with dark-faced thousands of men, women, and children, trailed in procession as near as they were allowed to approach the field guns placed on a bare, brown eminence whence their long noses pointed grimly across the river. There were six of these guns the day I saw them, all guns of Captain March's battery; but owing to their alignment, and the position of El Paso's few skyscrapers between this hill and the river, only four of the guns would threaten destruction to any buildings in the town, in case the artillery had to be brought into action.

The other two could be fired in the unlikely event of a disturbance, it was believed, without danger to American property. I heard this, with lots of other exciting details of the preparations going on, from Tony Dalziel, who thought—whether rightly or wrongly—that he could chat to me on the one great subject of interest without indiscretion. He told me among other things, that if fire had to be opened on Juarez, just across the river, he understood from talk he heard that these two comparatively innocuous guns would alone be used at first. If the damage they did on the opposite side were enough to force the enemy to capitulate in haste, the other four guns would remain silent, and El Paso intact. But, said Tony (and his fellow officers said the same), in spite of the persistent rumour of a raid, it was almost certain now that there would be no trouble. It was whispered that because Americans had given sanctuary to Federal troops in flight, and for other reasons not so widely known, General Carranza had wanted to organize an attack on the United States frontier across the Rio Grande, temptingly shrunken by a long drought; but it was reported at the same time that General Villa had forcibly opposed the suggestion, and it was very improbable that any serious attempt would be made to carry it out.

It was Tuesday when I gave the alarm of the poison plot, and Thursday was the day gossip suggested for a raid. Nevertheless, the people were no longer nervous. They felt a joyful confidence in the troops who had been sent to reinforce the garrison at Fort Bliss, and even the most bloodcurdling newspaper headlines had at length lost much of their gruesomeness.

By this time Milly Dalziel was as well as ever once more, and using her regained health to make a "dead set" at Eagle March. (I shouldn't tell this of her, if what she did later hadn't influenced events in a strange, dramatic way.) She couldn't let Eagle alone; and she showed her feelings so plainly—as a very rich girl sometimes thinks she may do with a comparatively poor man—that even Eagle himself, despite his lack of self-conceit and his preoccupation with thoughts of Di, couldn't help understanding. He kept out of Milly's way as often as he could, but she attributed this retirement to the calls of duty; and at last began to behave so foolishly that for her own sake he gently snubbed her.

Poor Milly Dalziel had not her pretty, bright red hair for nothing. Her impulsive emotions, which she concealed badly, and her fiery temper were its natural accompaniments. When it burst upon her that Eagle March did not admire her as she admired him, and thought it best she should realize this once for all, she suffered a wild reaction of feeling. From being slavishly, ridiculously in love, she flew to the other extreme; and after an embarrassing little scene, in which Eagle firmly avoided her, she broke out to me in hysterical abuse of him. He was rude; he was "no gentleman"; and she didn't see how I could make a friend of such an ungracious brute. The one thing he could do was to fly, and she only wished he would fly—far away, and never be seen again.

I was too sorry for the girl to resent as I ought to have resented her childish but mean abuse. I knew, only too well, how much it hurt to be in love with Eagle March, and not to have him care an American red cent in return. I let Milly talk for a while, and then tried to soothe her down, saying that she would feel differently about everything next day. This was the signal for the girl to turn on me, which she did so ferociously that I began to fear I must find an excuse to cut my visit short. I wanted to stay; I had very little money for travelling, and I was sure Father would send funds with reluctance, especially as he no doubt hoped that Tony and I would after all come together. With Di and me both safely disposed of to rich husbands, he would be free to marry Kitty Main, or do anything he pleased. With this thought in my mind, the situation looked rather desperate, and that night—Thursday night—I was lying awake to wonder what I could do, when suddenly the night silence which falls on lively El Paso after twelve was broken with the noise of a tremendous explosion.

The huge bulk of the hotel quivered, as if struck with a Titan's hammer, and it must have been the same with every other building in town. I jumped out of bed mechanically, not knowing what I did. Only my body acted. For an instant my brain was dazed—connection cut off. The first thing I really knew, I found myself standing at the open window clinging to the curtains. "What is it? What is it?" I was stammering out aloud. And before I could get any answer from within, again came the same appalling sound. With that, as if a second shock could restore the senses stolen by the one preceding, I guessed that what I had heard must be gunfiring on the hill.

"The raid has come, then, after all!" I thought, with awe rather than fear; and thousands of other people must have been thinking the same thought at the same moment.

It was a clear, starry night, the sky glittering like a blue, spangled robe that scintillates with the motion of a dancer, and the electric lamps of the city below lighting the streets as brightly as if the moon were up. When I first reached the high window and stared down from it, I had the impression that those streets were empty, but immediately after the second shot and its reverberating echo, dark figures began swarming out. Heads appeared in every visible window of the hotel. Electricity was switched on in darkened rooms, and women showed themselves in their nightgowns, with hair streaming over their shoulders, or hair lamentably absent, careless whether they were seen or not. I heard screaming and shouting, and then all such small sounds were swallowed up in another roar—the third.

My thoughts flew to Eagle. If there were a raid he would be in danger. He might be killed, and I should never see him again. I didn't think at the minute what might happen to the rest of us. Nothing and no one seemed to matter except Eagle. Still only half conscious of what I did, unable to decide what might be best to do, I dropped on my knees to pray that Eagle might be safe. But I had only just begun to stammer out my appeal when there came a sharp tapping at the door. "Let us in—let us in!" Milly's voice cried, and Mrs. Dalziel quaveringly repeated the same words.

I shot back the bolt, and the two in their nightgowns almost fell into the room. Milly, crying, seized me in her arms and begged me to forgive her for all her unkindness to me. We should probably be dead in a few minutes or hours, and she wanted to die at peace. As she faltered on, Mrs. Dalziel sobbed that Tony would be killed, and their fears made me brave. I was suddenly convinced that there had been no raid and said so. "I'm sure there's nothing to be afraid of," I insisted stoically. "Remember, we've heard only three cannon shots, or sounds like shots. There'd be constant firing if there had been a Mexican surprise. And there couldn't have been a 'surprise' after all the warnings we had. Anyhow, a handful of Mexicans wouldn't dare, with all those troops and guns on the spot."

"But what can have happened if it isn't an attack?" wailed Mrs. Dalziel. "If only my son were here!"

"Did the shots come from our side of the river, or the other?" Milly asked, speaking more to herself than to me, for one was as ignorant on the subject as the other. "I couldn't tell for sure, could you?"

"No," I said. "I hadn't thought of the other side. I just took it for granted it was our own guns firing for some reason or other."

"But what reason?" persisted Milly. "Why should they fire three shots in the dead of the night, and then stop?"

"Perhaps it's maneuvers, or a firing drill, or something," I hazarded weakly, feeling all the time that it was nothing of the sort.

"Perhaps," Mrs. Dalziel and Milly both agreed, looking a little relieved by my silly supposition.

"Shall we hurry up and dress ourselves and go downstairs?" I suggested. "See what a lot of people are in the streets. The whole town's surprised out of its wits, and wild to know what's happened. Why shouldn't we know, too?"

"Oh, yes, let's go down," cried Milly. "By this time Therese is certain to be in mother's room, in hysterics and nothing else! We'll make her stop and drape herself in a blanket and dress us."

"Thank goodness I can dress myself, and in five minutes," I said. They went hesitatingly out, forgetting to close my door, and before I could do so myself I heard Therese's voice across the hall.

I didn't stop to put up my hair, but let it hang down my back; I didn't even tie my shoes, or fasten more than three hooks of my easiest blouse: one at the top, one in the middle, and one at the waist. Consequently, I was ready before the Dalziels, but waited for them outside the door of their suite, almost dazedly watching people—men and women, half clothed—dashing out of their rooms toward the stairs and elevators. Some of these were jabbering to each other, but nobody seemed to know what had happened. They were merely wondering, as we were; and in the big hall, where some of the lights had been switched on, we could glean no further details. Several of the hotel employes had arrived on the scene, more or less dressed, and they did what they could to calm their guests. Presently one of the managers appeared, and he strongly advised every one to remain in the hotel. If any trouble were afoot, it would be safer indoors than out, and news might be expected soon. He had already sent a trustworthy messenger, he explained, to inquire of the police and the answer would be more reliable than mere wild gossip picked up in the street, among the crowd.

Some of the older men, and all the women, took the manager's advice, though a good many young men disregarded it, and went off foraging for news. Those of us who remained in the house, however, didn't think of meekly returning to our rooms. We herded together in the hall of the hotel, in a fever of expectation, strangers hobnobbing like old acquaintances and exchanging opinions on the mysterious alarm. The time of waiting seemed long; but we three had not been below more than twenty minutes, perhaps, when people who had been out began to stream back with tidings of a sort for their families. No two men had quite the same story to tell. One had heard that a band of Apaches from a low quarter of the town had organized a scare to stir up the military. Another had been told on good authority that the Mexicans had fired guns from across the river and injured one of the tall buildings in El Paso, nobody knew which. A third assured everybody that our guns had been fired, but charged only with blank, to frighten the Mexicans, at the moment when they hoped to give us a surprise. By and by, the messenger dispatched by the manager came back; but he had little new light to throw on the situation, except to assure every one on the authority of the police that there had been no raid, and there was no danger of any kind for the town. Accordingly, the best thing for its inhabitants to do would be to go to bed again.

Very few, however, seemed inclined to take this advice. Mrs. Dalziel might have done so had Milly and I consented; but I had an idea that Tony would come to the hotel, if possible, sooner or later, expecting us to be anxious. I was right, for in an hour, or not much more, while we all sat munching sandwiches, hastily provided, the familiar plump figure in khaki stalked into the hall. Milly and I both sprang up, and Tony directed himself toward us; but before he came near enough to speak, I knew that something really terrible had happened. Whether he meant to tell us the truth or not was another question. The jolly, round-faced boy seemed to have lost the characteristics I associated most closely with him; and when a a youth with comical features of the Billiken type is suddenly fitted with a tragic mask, the effect is somehow more alarming than any look of distress on a serious face.

He tried to grin, as his mother greeted him like one returning from the dead. "Why, mater," he said, "any one'd think to see and hear you that I'd been blown to smithereens, and this was my ghost. You'll laugh, I guess, when I tell you what really happened. I got leave to make a dash and put you out of your misery." When he had gone so far, he stopped, and swallowed. He looked sick, and all the more so because of the Billiken grin which he was afraid to let drop. His eyes wandered from his mother to me, and I saw pain in them. I felt for the first time that little Tony was a grown-up man.