Over the Border: A Novel

Over the Border: A Novel
Herman Whitaker

Whitaker Herman

Over the Border: A Novel

I: THE THREE BAD MEN OF LAS BOCAS

The Three had chosen their lair wisely.

In the picturesque Spanish phrase, it “situated itself” midway of the desert, the great Mexican desert that is more varied in its heated monotony than a land of woods and fields and streams. Here it runs to sparse grass land under upland piñon; there spreads over wide, clean sands that reflect like burnished brass the intolerable glare of the sun. Now it marches for leagues with the yuccas that fling crazed arms and shrunken limbs like posturing dwarfs; again it is dotted with lonelymesas, monolithic masses that raise orange and vermilion facades out of a violet mirage. A magic land it is, made out of shattered rainbows, girded with crimson-and-gold mountains that wear around their high foreheads cooling bandages of snow; a land of deathless calms, cyclonic storms, torrential rains, peopled only by the vultures that wheel against the sky and the little golden dust-whorls which dance together over its heated face. A country where dwells the very spirit of romance; of which anything might be predicted and come to pass; therefore, as before said, the very place for a lair.

Secondly, the Three had shown a nice discrimination in the selection of a site. Its capacities in the way of offense and defense would have earned the instant commendation of a medieval baron, Mexican bandit, revolutionist, or “movie” director in search of an ideal robber’s roost. Years ago a Yankee “prospector” with more faith than sense and money enough to have left prospecting severely alone, had kept a raft ofpeones busy for the better part of two years ripping the heart out of a mountain-top in a feverish search for fabulous gold. Rumors that still linger in Sonora jacales tell that the gringo worked under the direction of the spirits – or a spiritualist, which may or may not be quite the same. The results – to wit, a huge gap in the mountain and an abandoned adobe powder house, now serving as a residence for the Three Bad Men – seem to favor the rumor. Spirits were never good miners. But that is neither here nor there, the Three concerning themselves only with the natural fortifications they thus inherited.

The adobe stood well back in a semicircular gap, protected on three sides by the curving walls of the excavation. Behind them, the mountain dropped almost a thousand feet sheer, and the level bench in front of the house could only be gained by a narrow path that fell like a yellow snake down the steep slopes into thick chaparral. From its edge one overlooked the vast reaches of the central Sonora desert, an ashen sea of sage and mimosa shored in by far mountains that loomed dusky purple or stood out stark yellow as they happened to lie to the sun. Since the Yankee went back on his “controls,” or they on him, a sahuaro cactus had raised its fluted barrel within the excavation, captaining a squad of dwarf yuccas that poked grotesque arms in pathetic entreaty out of the rubble. To these natural improvements the Three had added aramada, broad porch of poles and cornstalks, in the shade of which they took their ease one hot nooning, two playing pedro at a rough wooden table while the third dozed and nodded with stool tilted back against the adobe wall.

It did not require more than a cursory glance to know the Three for members of that sad colony which is doomed by its past to remain on the wrong side of the Mexican border. Beginning with Sliver Smith, the sleeper; his drowsy lids hid blue eyes that were hard as chips of agate and exactly fitted his reckless face. Just now sleep had softened its lines and brought a certain underlying good-nature. But for the mouth and deep creases down each side of the nose, which bespoke passions violent and unrestrained, one would have put him down now for that which he had been – a cowman from the New Mexican ranges.

The other two, however, really looked the “bad man.” “Bull” Perrin, the biggest and eldest, might have been especially cast by nature for the part. Big, burly, black-visaged, and heavy-jowled, excessive drinking had dyed his face out of all relation to the creamy skin the gods had given him. The hot brown eyes under straight bushy brows bespoke a cyclonic temper. But though Bull conveyed the impression of an “ugly customer” at first sight, a physiognomist would have picked Jake Evers, his partner, as a far more dangerous man. The cold, bleak sparks of eyes in his lean, lantern-jawed face scintillated with cunning. But for a certain humor that lurked about the corners of his mouth, his face would have been utterly repulsive.

Yet after granting their “badness,” there was about them no taint of the mean, rat-like wickedness of the city criminal. Their composite was of strong impulses, misdirected forces gone to waste, of men cast by birth in a wrong age. In the councils of a nation in the olden time, their strength, ferocity, would have gained them power and place; here, out in the desert, they exactly fitted their environment. As much as the horned toad in the sand at Bull’s feet, as much as the lizard that coursed swiftly along the adobe wall above the sleeper’s head; as much as thesahuaro and the tormented yucca, they belonged to the land. Its gold glowed in their bronze. It were a safe bet that – horses and cattle not being in question – they would, at a given emergency, live in the letter of its best traditions.

Looking at Bull and Jake as they sat at play, the former might be likened to a grizzly; the latter to a tiger, alert, stealthy, cunning, ferocious; qualities which sprang into evidence with startling suddenness when a shrill burst of woman’s scolding presently disrupted the heated silence.

Apparently the noise issued from a white cloud that hid the doorway; but as this settled and cleared away, a buxom slattern of a Mexican girl stood revealed. While flicking out the last dust of flour from an empty sack she bitterly reviled the Three. Though delivered in Spanish, the substance of her complaint was international and goes easily into English.

“Flojos! Lazy ones! how shall one cook without flour? The coffee, too, is gone – and the sugar. Of lard or grease there is not a smear for the pan. You must go forth, to-day.”

This was merely the text. While she enlarged thereon with copious illustrations to prove their worthlessness as providers, the two men at the table proceeded quietly with their play. It was the third that finally interrupted the harangue with the irascibility of one aroused from pleasant sleep.

“Shut up, Dove!”

In its literal sense the word stands for the most innocent of birds. But she chose to take the opposite meaning of the sarcastic Spanish.

“Si, señor! I am that or I should not be here now, cooking for three beasts.” After a comparison between them and the lower animals that greatly favored the latter, she ran on with increasing heat:

“‘Dove,’ indeed? Then where is my price? Where are they, the fine clothes, the silks and satins and linen, the jewelry and laces you were to gain for me? Was it by this I was bought?” She held out her dirty black skirt. “I, that might be now sitting in the cantina of Ignacio Flores at Las Bocas, selling aguardiente and anisette to his custom? Si, señores, where are they, the velvets, ribands, and neck chains? I – ”

It was at this point that Jake displayed his quality. Swinging swiftly around, he threw his knife, so hard and quickly that it stuck quivering in the door lintel close to the girl’s throat before she had time to close her mouth.

“Here! don’t be so careless.” Bull’s bushy brows drew down over his burning eyes in quick reproof. But his next remark proved that the interference was not based on altruism. “If you croak her, who’s to do the cooking? Any corn left, Rosa?”

Whereas Sliver’s rude interruption had merely stimulated her tongue; whereas, also, she had stuck out that member at Jake the instant she made sure the knife had missed, she now caught her breath with a little, frightened gulp. “Si, señor.”

“Then make some tortillas and serve them along with the jerky,” he called after her. “And bring us out a drink.”

At this Sliver, who had resumed his doze, sat up again. His lugubrious exclamation, “Oh, hell!” caused the others to look up a moment later. With an empty demijohn held upside down Rosa stood in the doorway. She did not speak. But her tragic pose, vindictive nod, said quite plainly, “Now will you go?”

Neither did they speak. The situation was beyond revilings. Slowly Jake picked up and pocketed the cards. Sliver rose to his feet. In single file they marched down the path to find their horses. Indeed, they had caught the animals, saddled up at the stable on the flat below and were riding away through the chaparral before they recovered sufficiently to attempt to fix the blame for the shortage.

Sliver – who, by the way, had gained his nickname under the law of opposites because he was short and stout – remembered that he had warned them several times “notter hit it so hard.” But his testimony lost force by reason of certain “lone drinks” in the absorption of which he had, by the others, been caught. Jake, on the other hand, had pleaded for more liquor and less flour the last time they stocked up at Las Bocas. By frank confession, moreover, he reduced the force of Sliver’s charge that he would never be satisfied with less liquor than “he ked swim in.”

“That’s right. I never really seen at one time more whisky than I felt I c’d drink.”

From this he went on with invectives against the wave of reform which, by its sudden flooding of the “Territ’ries” – as he still called the States of Arizona and New Mexico – might be held indirectly responsible for his present thirst. “For a cowman, like Sliver here, it don’t matter so much, him being used to dry spells out on the range. But for a man that’s dealt faro in a s’loon for a spell of years with two fingers of bourbon allus under his nose, it comes some bitter. Them was the golden days. What a man made in beef cattle or gold was his’n to plank down on a bar or place on a card. Till them pinch-faces from the Middle West descended like locusts upon the lan’, drought was unknown save by a few fool prospectors that got themselves lost in the desert. Locusts? I wrong ’em! A locust does live up to its natural instincts. Locusts is a blessing compared to pinch-faces. Why – ” But certain lengthy reflections that established the place of the “Middle-Wester” beneath even the lowly bedbug in the scale of creation, must give place to his conclusion. “Si, señores! ’twas them druv’ me to rustling. But for them I’d still be living honest, dealing straight faro to all comers with on’y an occasional turn from the bottom of the box for the good of the house.”

“Pity for you!”

Bull’s pithy comment was enlarged upon by Sliver.

“An’ you-all needn’t to be howling so loud, either, about them dry spells on the ranges. We allus had it in the bunk-houses an’ ’twas a poor cook that couldn’t hide a keg in the chuck-wagon. As for your faro – ’twas to play the odd card you wolves dealt from the bottom that I med my first rustle. But for you I’d be taking my copa right now out of the cook’s keg instead of dying of thirst in this lousy desert.”

There was real heat in the accusation, but the ex-gambler’s lean, leathery face merely split in a dry grin.

“If your mother bred you a fool, don’t blame me. The flea bit the dog, the dog bit me; I kicked the dog an’ killed the flea. Take a drink of water, Sliver; it all works out in the end. You next, Bull. Which was it – water, wine, or weemen?”

“None of ’em.” The big rustler shook his head. “Early piety did for me. Prayers morning, noon, an’ night; grace before meals; two long sermons on Sundays, an’ two hours, Sabbath-school, and what would you expect? I was so well brought up I jest had to go wrong. But if we don’t jog along we won’t make Las Bocas to-night.”

As Bull spurred on ahead, Sliver looked at Jake. “Say, he ain’t exactly what you-all ’d call frank in his conversings. If there’s a thing he don’t know about us – well, ’tain’t our fault. But him? When you come to think of it did you ever hear him say how he kem to take up rustling?”

The gambler shook his head. “In a gen’ral way – so gen’ral that I couldn’t tell jest how I got it – I’ve sorter gathered that he once croaked a man. But whether ’twas before or after he took up the profesh I couldn’t say. In the natural order of things, a rustler’s bound, sooner or later, to down some prying fool. There’s so many that try to mix in his business. But if it was before, Bull done it – I’ll bet you the gent had it coming.”

II: OVER THE BORDER

That night the Three put up at the cantina in the little adobe town of Las Bocas, where, by reason of occasional largesses to the leader of the revolutionary faction that happened to be on top, a welcome was always certain. Just now it was more particularly so because the presentjefe-politico, a Carranzista, varied his political activities by acting as “fence” in the disposal of their plunder.

In accordance with his advice, the following afternoon found them approaching the American border at a point far west of their usual sphere of operations. While they journeyed the sun slid down its western slant till it hung like a smoky lamp in the far dust of the desert. Behind them the sea of sage still ran off to distant mountains, but the sunset glow washed its dust away, draping the land in a royal robe. Ahead the grade was rising imperceptibly but steadily to a sparse grass country where the sage, palo verde, and yucca gave place to hugesahuaros that strewed the plain with their fluted barrels like the jade columns of some vast ruin. Among them roamed the flocks and herds of a pink-walled hacienda that nestled in a grove of lordly cottonwoods. As they rode past, the Three noted with appraising glances the sleek hides of a fine bunch of steers.

“Dress a thousand pounds of beef apiece,” Jake opined.

“Worth eighty pesos, gold, on the hoof, in El Paso,” Sliver yearningly added.

But their interest went no further – for reasons that appeared when, at sundown, they rode past the concrete pillar that marked the international boundary. Rustler that he was, drunkard and gambler, utterly worthless if the reports current on the New Mexican ranges were to be believed, Sliver’s eye nevertheless lit up at the sight of it; the glow on his hard face was not all sunset reflection.

“The good old U.S.,” he commented. “Some country!”

“He wasn’t talking that way las’ time we crossed.” Jake winked at Bull.

“Guess not. He was cussing Cristobel Columbo for ever having discovered it.”

“That’s right,” Sliver admitted. “But I was what you-all might call in a bit of a hurry with a squad of rangers streaking at my heels. Other things being ekal – ”

“Which they ain’t,” Jake interrupted. “Mexico’s good enough for me. Mexico an’ revolution! For I tell you right now that if Porfirio Diaz was still boss, his rurales would have taken right holt where the rangers left off. Instead of dangling from a pine on the American side, we’d hev’ finished with a fusillado on this. But with the government switching every five minutes between Orozco, Villa, Huerta, Carranza, an’ the jefe-politicos an’ governors slaughtering each other between-whiles, it’s nobody’s business to look after us. We make our little sneaks across the border an’ return in peace an’ quiet. So ‘Viva la revolucion!’ That reminds me – where’re you heading, Bull?”

“Livingstone rancho on the Little Stoney.”

“Say, but that’s horses! Don’t they run ’em into the corrals at night?”

The big rustler nodded. “All the easier to find, an’ after you once get them moving it don’t take three days to run ’em over the line. Besides, Don Manuel tol’ me at Las Bocas yesterday that the Carranzistas are needing heavy horses for their artillery over on the Coast. He’ll pay fifty pesos apiece an’ take his chance on a five-thousand-per-cent profit after the old gentleman grabs the presidential chair.” He emphatically concluded, “Horses, you bet!”