Over the Border: A Novel

She may have read the answer in Gordon’s eyes and resented the indignity it offered her independence. Or the feeling underneath her sudden stiffening may have rooted deeper. Be a young man ever so comely, a girl ever so pretty, there will flash between them on first meeting the subtle challenge of sex; instinctive defiance based through love’s history to the far time when every girl ran like a deer from a possible lover and only gave in after he had proved his manhood by carrying her off. It passed in a flash, for, noticing her stiffen, Gordon reduced his gaze to respectful attention.

Subtle as it was, Bull had still noticed the by-play. “Looks like she’d taken a down on him.”

But even as the doubt formed in his mind it was removed by her laughing comment: “I suppose I’ll have to stand for it. But you must be starving. Let us get on to the house.”

As they rode along, moreover, Bull noted certain swift, stealthy glances with which she took complete census of Gordon’s clean profile, strong jaw, deep chest, flat flanks; signs of a secret and healthy curiosity.

“She’s a-setting up an’ taking notice.” He winked, as it were, at himself. “I reckon, Bull, you kin leave the rest to natur’.”

XII: THE RECRUIT IS TRIED OUT – IN SEVERAL WAYS

“Well, what do you-all think of him?”

Bull’s question emerged from the thick tobacco reek which invariably mitigated the severity of their evening deliberations.

It pertained, of course, to the new recruit, concerning whose merits or demerits Jake and Sliver had reserved judgment during this, his first week. When they had come from supper straight to the bunk-house, Gordon had taken his pipe and gone for a stroll around the compound, which was never more interesting than when clothed in the mystery of a hot brown dusk. The lights and fires, like golden or scarlet blossoms; the soft brown faces glimpsed in cavernous interiors by the rich glow of abrasero; the women’s subdued chatter; laughter wild and musical as the cooing of wood-pigeons – all had for him perpetual fascination; and while he sauntered here and there, looking, listening, the Three held session on his case.

“What do we think of him?” Jake slowly repeated the question. “It’s a bit soon to jedge, but if he’s half as good as he looks, he orter do.”

Sliver, however, was more critical. “Too darned nice-looking fer me. I hain’t got much use for these pretty boys.”

“Pretty yourself!” Bull swelled like a huge toad with indignation. “He ain’t no pretty boy! You-all orter ha’ seen him clan up that hotel lobby in El Paso.”

“A ho-tel clerk, an’ some bell-hops!” Sliver sneered. “Why, a good cowman ’u’d jest about as soon think of hitting a lady. ’Fore I allow him even a look-in with Lady-girl, he’s gotter show me. If you-all ain’t afraid he’ll spoil, jest send him an’ me out together to-morrow.”

“All right, señor, he’s your meat.” Bull’s grin, provoked by a sudden memory of the thwack with which the hotel clerk had hit the lobby floor, was veiled by tobacco reek that reigned beyond the lamp’s golden glimmer. “Only, don’t chew him. Kain’t afford to have his scenery damaged.”

“Nary a chew,” Sliver agreed. “Twon’t be necessary. I’ll take him in two swallows.”

In this wise was Gordon apprenticed to Sliver for the period of one day, to learn, in course thereof, such lessons in cow and other kinds of punching as it might bring forth. When they two rode out, armed cap-a-pie as it were, with rifles, saddle machetes, and a brace of Colt automatics, in addition to the usual cowman’s fixings, it is doubtful whether North America held a happier young man than he. Out of the thousand and one lovers who had awakened to the knowledge that this was their wedding-day, some might have been equally happy. But none more so, for Gordon was also espoused – to Adventure, the sweetest bride of real men. It may be safely stated that no bride ever surveyed her trousseau with more satisfaction than Gordon displayed in his “chaps,” spurs, guns, and riata.

This enthusiasm, however, he cloaked with a becoming nonchalance. He wasn’t in any hurry to tell all he knew. His few questions were to the point, and between them he maintained a decent reserve. Also he adapted himself quickly to new requirements. Sliver observed with satisfaction that, after one telling, his pupil abandoned the Eastern, high-trotting, park fashion in riding and settled down to a cowman’s lope. In fact, so quiet and biddable was he, Sliver began to feel secret qualms at the course he had marked out for himself; had to steel his resolution with thoughts of Lee.

“’Twon’t do to have no pretty boys pussy-footing around her,” he told himself. “He’s gotter show me, an’ if he don’t – out he goes.”

Opportunity soon presented itself in the shape of a momentary relapse, on Gordon’s part, into the old habit of riding. Sliver seized it with brutal roughness.

“Hey! that milk-shake business may go with missies in pants that ride the parks back East, but if you-all expect to work this range you’ll have to try an’ look like a man.”

Gordon stared. It wasn’t so much the words as the accent that established the insult. Just as Bull had seen in El Paso, his hazel eyes were suddenly transmuted into hard blue steel flecked with hot brown specks. Sliver felt sure he was going to strike; experienced sudden disappointment when he rode on.

“Santa Maria Marrissima Me!” He swore to himself in sudden alarm. “Is he a-going to swallow it?” But the next moment brought relief. Gordon was rising in his stirrups with the regularity of a machine.

With the quick instinct of sturdy manhood, Sliver sensed the motive, the wise hesitancy of a new-comer in starting trouble. “Calculated it would get him in wrong with Lady-girl. He’s putting it up to me!”

Even more loath, now, to push than he had been to begin the quarrel, there was nothing left but to go on. So, riding alongside Gordon, he began to deliver himself of a forcible opinion concerning his mode of riding. “Why, you blankety, blank, blank of a blank – ”

The rest of it was cut off by a crack between the eyes that toppled him out of the saddle. He was up again, hard eyes flashing, as Gordon leaped down, and as he rushed, broad round body swaying above his short hairy chaps, Sliver looked for all the world like a charging bear.

A clever writer once described a terrific combat between two sailors in two words, “Poor McNab!” Sliver was almost as terse in describing his defeat to Bull and Jake that evening.

“Gentlemen, hush! He leaned over as I took my holt, grabbed me round the waist from behind, straightened, an’ away I flew over his shoulder an’ kem down spread-eagled all over the grass, plumb knocked out.”

Returning to the combat: When Sliver gathered his shocked wits together and sat up, Gordon stood looking down upon him, hands on his hips, quiet, determined, yet with an inquisitive twinkle in his eye.

Sliver answered the twinkle. “Say, that was sure a lallapaloo. I’ve wrestled with bears an’ once choked a cougar till he was gol-darned anxious to quit. But I draw the line at earthquakes. If you-all ’ll please to tell how you done it, I’ll shake han’s an’ call it squar’.”

“Done!” Gordon broke out in a merry laugh. “And I’ll promise, on my part, never to ride like that again.”

“For which I’ll be greatly obliged; that hippity-haw, side-racking gait does sure get on my nerves.”

Striking hands upon it, they mounted and rode on.

They were heading for a mountain valley, enormous green bowl hemmed in on all sides, that could only be reached by a single rough trail. Watered by a running stream and knee-deep in lush grass, the difficulty of approach and sequestration rendered it almost raider-proof. But as it afforded pasture for barely a third of Lee’s stock, it was their habit to send the animals out in relays to remain under charge of an ancianofor a week at a time.

As they rode along, Sliver’s secret satisfaction revealed itself in many a stealthy glance. At first they expressed that feeling alone, but presently there entered into them a leaven of doubt. Their way now led along the foot of the hog’s back from the crest of which Sliver had obtained his first view of the fonda on the other side, the discovery of which caused his first lapse from grace. The slight doubt was explained by the thought that accompanied his glance upward at the ridge.

“He’s a fine upstan’ing lad an’ kin take his own part. But that ain’t all. Supposing he drinks? We-all jest kedn’t stan’ for any young soak around Lady-girl.”

In view of his own shortcomings, his grave shake of the head was rather comical. Nevertheless, it was quite sincere; likewise his emendation: “’Course we wouldn’t have him no canting prig. He orter be able to take his two fingers like a gentleman, then leave it alone.”

Reining in suddenly, he asked, “D’you ever take a drink?”

Gordon looked surprised. “Why, yes, on occasion. But you don’t mean to say – ”

“Come on!” Sliver’s manner was quite that of the “mysterious stranger” of melodrama who demands absolute faith in those he is about to befriend. It is feared, however, that both it and his thought, “It’s a fine chance to try him out,” cloaked certain strong spirituous desires.

Quarter of an hour’s heavy scrambling up and down rutted cattle tracks brought them out in the fonda dooryard. From above Gordon had noted its golden walls nestling beside the stream in a bower of foliage. His eyes now went, first to the two ancianos, a wrinkled old man and woman, who dozed in the shade of the ramada; then to the girl who knelt by the stream pounding her soiled linen on its smooth boulders. Though he knew Spain only through pictures, the tinkling bells of a mule-train going up the cañon added the last touch, vividly raised in his mind the country inns of the Aragonian mountains. But for her darker colors the girl with her shapely poundage might easily have been one of their lusty daughters. She had risen at the sight of Sliver. With unerring instinct she now walked inside, let down the wooden bar window, and set out a bottle of tequila.

Through all, her big dusky eyes never left Gordon. With what would have been brazenness in a white girl she studied him. But her gaze was wide and curious as the stare of a deer, and caused him no offense. When their eyes met, she smiled, but, unskilled in the ways of her kind, he missed both its invitation and question till Sliver put it in words.

“She wants to know who you are an’ all about you,” he translated her rapid Spanish, in which her small hands, satin arms and shoulders played as large a part as her tongue. “She says her father an’ mother are about ready to cash in. If you’ll stay here an’ be her man, you’ll stan’ right in line for the fonda.”

It was sprung so suddenly, Gordon gasped. “Cash in? – the fonda? Say! You’re fooling?”

Sliver raised his right hand. “Take my oath!”

“Then she’s fooling.”

“Nary!” Sliver grinned. “She’s serious as a New England housewife in chase of a bedbug.”

Now Gordon’s merry laugh rang out. “Is this leap year, or does this sort of thing go all the time down here? Her proposal calls for a priest, I suppose, and a marriage license?”

“Nary.” Sliver grinned again. “Ladies of her class get along very nicely without them artificial aids to marriage. All she wants is for you to settle down here with her to housekeeping.”

“Why – but – ” He still half believed that Sliver was joking; but, looking at the girl, he saw for himself the smoldering flame in her dusky eyes. This time his laugh was a little confused. “Please tell her that I’m dreadfully sorry, that I appreciate the high compliment, and if it wasn’t for the fact that I don’t expect to stay long in this country I would give her nice offer my most distinguished consideration.”

Any further doubts that he might have entertained would have been effectually dispersed by her dark disappointment when Sliver translated. A touch of pity mingled with his amusement; moved him to add, “I hope that you put it nicely.”