"The poseur, never out of his rôle," murmured his audience there. "How will he enjoy running, I wonder?"
But to her astonishment he did not run, though Dupin was cutting closer and closer through tangled bodies, eager to grapple with his old-time slippery foe. Don Rodrigo raised in his saddle, and looked anxiously in all directions. Suddenly his dark face lighted, and wheeling round, he called to his men, and in his turn strove as furiously to reach the Tiger as the Tiger had striven to reach him. Jacqueline could not now tell which side to feel sorry for. But she exulted in the thrill of it, even as she wrung her hands at sight of the red agony.
Then something happened, which even the Tiger, who knew his warfare so well, had never known; which got into even his dried and toughened marrow. It was the Rebel yell. It rose over a sudden thunderous rush of hoof beats. And next, as a puff of air, a herd of horsemen, a wild mud-spattering streak, surged past the house. On across the open, and straight upon the fray, they merged everywhere, and made bigger and livelier the blotch of mad swarming. Some wore slouch hats, others straw sombreros, and all were ruddily burned. They fought with revolvers, and often one would pause between shots to spit tobacco. They brought to the battle one thing above all else, and that was vim, vim unbounded, vim that simply had to have vent.
Jacqueline caught her breath. What race of men were these? Exalted, quivering, she watched them doing as workmen what fell to their hands, yet ever with that whirlwind of vim.
Through powder smoke and misty rain the figure of one horseman slowly grew familiar. She caught fleeting glimpses of him, as he darted into a mêlée, as he spurred round to find a hotter field. Suddenly her eyes widened, and she pressed a hand hard against her breast.
"The coincidence!" she gasped, trembling from head to foot. "It is the coincidence!"
Her nose flattened against the wet pane. She remembered how that general of the Missourians had told Charlotte about this man, for the Empress had asked. And the general had related how the troop had dubbed him the Storm Centre.
"And no wonder!" she breathed. "Mon Dieu, how he _enjoys_ it!--But, oh--he will be killed--oh!"