Over the Border: A Novel

“Going to bring ’em up at sundown,” he muttered, “in time to make the first run by night.”

So certain he was of it that he did not scruple to take a sleep himself; cat-napped, with occasional squints down into the valley up to the moment that he was awakened by the hoof-beats of Jake and Bull’s beasts. The glass then showed the raiders working the horses out of the corrals. As the herd thinned out to single file at the trail, one man took the lead; a second and third fell in at even distances; the last brought up the rear.

“They know their business,” Bull commented on the manœuver. “It’s easier to keep ’em moving.” He grimly added: “And easier for us. The line will string out for a quarter-mile, so I’ll go down that distance an’ hide in the chaparral. Let the last man pass me before you hold up the first. Then, while one of you keeps him covered, t’other can take away his tools. I’ll keep ’em moving on up till you’ve got the other three.”

While Jake took away and tied their horses, Bull gained his position. By that time the leading raider had gained a like distance uphill and, peeping, Bull watched the thin file of animals wriggling like a slow black snake up the yellow trail. So clear was the air he could hear, above the thud and scrape of hoofs, the raiders calling to one another. Now they were directly beneath him; so close that he could plainly see the leader’s face, ugly, pock-marked. As he withdrew into the chaparral Bull carried with him an irritatingly haunting remembrance. Somewhere, though he could not place it, he had seen the man before! He was still puzzling over it when Jake’s command rang out in Spanish:

“Hands up!”

The leader looked and complied, persuaded by the black muzzles, wicked eyes, that looked down from the rock above. The second and third men did try to turn, but were blocked by the file of animals. An attempt to pass would have sent them down, bounding from level to level to the floor of the valley below. The fourth man swung his beast around only to find himself looking into Bull’s rifle. So while Jake covered the operation from above and Bull from below, Sliver disarmed and bound the raiders.

After the captives were arranged in line under a copal tree upon a little plateau, where the trail began to fall downhill on the other side, Bull stood frowning down from his height on the man whose face had aroused that haunting memory. “I’ve a hunch that I’ve seen this chap afore.”

He would have been more certain of it had he noticed the fellow’s look of recognition and fear only a moment before. But now his ugly countenance was veiled in that ox-like stolidity which a Mexican peoncan so easily assume. He shook his head in dull negation to all of Bull’s questions. He did not come from any of the neighboringhaciendas! They had never met before! His pais was far – it might have been anywhere in a thousand-mile circle implied by the wave of his hand.

“Yet I could swear to him.” Bull looked musingly at Sliver. “Pock-marked, too. Where have I seen him afore?”

Sliver shook his head. “Can’t prove it be me. All peones look like so many peas in a pod; some mebbe a bit uglier than others; an’ pock-marks ain’t no distinction with two-thirds of ’em pitted like a nutmeg-grater.”

“That ain’t the question before the house, neither,” Jake put in. “All I’m bothering about is whether to hang or shoot ’em. Hanging is what I was brought up to, but shooting’s more fashionable down here. I’d allow they’d likely prefer it.”

“Shooting’s too good for ’em.” In a spasm of virtuous indignation, Sliver shook his fist at the captives. “Hanging’s slower an’ hurts a heap, an’ if it gets about that the gent that meddles with our stock is in for a slow, choking they ain’t a-going to be near so careless.”

“There’s something in that,” Jake conceded. “An’ this copal’s got nice stout limbs. We kin use their own riatas, an’ that’ll be what the Tombstone editor used to call ‘poetic justice.’ Hanging goes.”

Bull was still staring at the raider, but, taking his consent for granted, they proceeded to fit the riatas around the prisoners’ necks. Jake had, indeed, thrown the slack of the last over a bough when there came a rattle of stones and scrape of hoofs on the trail below. Grabbing his rifle, he slid with Bull and Sliver, each behind a tree. One second thereafter their guns were trained on the spot where the trail debouched on the plateau.

Meanwhile, with Gordon in pursuit, Lee had led the race into the hills. Her blood mare was the fleetest animal she owned and, had she chosen, Gordon would have soon dropped out of sight. But she contented herself with just holding a lead.

Unaware of this, Gordon made repeated attempts to catch her with sudden bursts of speed. Perfectly aware of it, on her part, she would wait till his horse’s head almost touched her leg, then shoot ahead with a little laugh. Her face, looking back at him, was hard as her laugh – eyes bright and shining, nose contemptuously tilted, mouth one scarlet line.

To be defied, drawn on, mocked, and teased with low, derisive laughter is not a situation that any man loves. But if thoroughly angry, mad clear to the bone, Gordon’s face revealed only dogged hope. For Chance was riding with him. If Lee’s beast slipped or tired. If she were a second late with the spur. One of the three was fairly certain, and the belief set a gleam in his eyes that caused her a quiver of apprehension.

“Oh, he’s mad enough to beat me!” she told it to herself. “I wonder if he would.”

Nevertheless, every time she looked back at that dogged face she felt a sense of security. With raiders at large, it was just as well to have him around! The thought was in her mind when, with him only a few feet behind, she shot over the edge of the last steep out upon the plateau.

“Oh, my goodness!” It burst from her in sudden fright.

The Three, of course, were out of sight. The natural droop of thecopal’s outer branches hid the halters, and she saw only the four raiders, unevenly grouped, and three rifle-barrels aimed from behind the tree. As she reined her beast back on its haunches Gordon swung his animal sideways between her and the raiders, and, quite shamelessly, she accepted the protection.

“Beat it quick!”

Already he had pulled his gun, and but for the fact that Bull just then stepped out in the open the question of hanging or shooting would have been decided for at least one of the thieves. As it was, his readiness served one purpose – reduced the heat in Bull’s eyes.

“Put up your gun, Son, the job’s done.” Pointing at Lee, he sternly inquired, “But what’s she doing here?”

Now fright, plus Gordon’s chivalrous behavior, had driven the last vestige of anger out of Lee. She spoke before he could answer. “Don’t blame him. He did his best to take me in.”

“Then who shall I blame?”

“Me!” The coals of her anger sent forth a last flash that was immediately quenched by her mischievous smile. “Or blame yourself for leaving me the machete. I wiggled and wiggled till one hand was free, then cut the rope.”

Combined with the smile, her little illustrative wriggle completed his rout. He turned to hide a grin, but was betrayed by his shaking shoulders. Noting it, she flashed with feminine quickness from defendant to accuser. She pointed at the halters.

“What are you going to do?”

Sliver and Jake had now come out. The former answered, “We was jest about to bump ’em off, Miss.”

“What? Hang them?”

“Now look a-here, Lady-girl!” Sliver burst forth in indignant remonstrance. “Didn’t we catch ’em red-handed? An’ d’you allow we’re a-going to let ’em loose to try again?”

“But hang them? Just for stealing? Of course, if they were Colorados, but – ” She stopped, clasping her hands in sudden fear. “Oh! they killed him – poor Pedro?”

“Nary; jes’ tied him up,” Sliver quickly reassured her. “I seen him wiggling through the glass, an’ the big thief, there, says they didn’t harm him.”

Sighing with sudden relief, she returned to the charge. “Then if they spared him, why are you going to kill them?”

“Look a-here, Missy,” Bull now intervened. “’Twas agreed between Benson an’ all the hacendados to make an example of captured raiders. If you once start letting ’em off, there won’t be a head of stock left in all this country at the end of a year. That was why I wanted you to go back, an’ – ”

“I’m glad that I didn’t.”

Up to that moment the raiders had accepted the situation with Indian stoicism. Two of them were still puffing cigarettes Sliver had placed in their mouths while Jake adjusted the nooses. But their fatalism did not preclude hope. Though Lee had spoken in English, the language of pity is universal. They knew she was interceding, and now the fellow with the pock-marked face loosed upon her a veritable torrent of Spanish.

They were poor hombres with families back in their pais reduced to the point of starvation by incessant revolutions. Of themselves they would never have conceived this great wickedness! They had been tempted to banditry by an evil one with the offer of a great price! For themselves, they cared not! A few kicks, a gurgle or two, and there would be an end! But their women? And the little niñas? These would be left in continual suffering!

Children? It drew instant response from dominant maternalism, the deep instinct that caused Lee to tyrannize over the Three. Dismounting, she began to question the prisoners concerning their families and women. Their number, names, and sex? Were they good children? Had they been duly christened by the priest? Their dispositions and traits? Thus and so on till from a lynching-bee the occasion was in danger of lapsing into a catechism. For, once started, the bandits were equally willing. Oblivious of nooses and bonds, they plunged into family history and reminiscence, reminding each other of this or that, and while they related and recalled, the sullen hardness died out of their faces, leaving them soft and human.

Vividly, as in real life, Lee saw their corn-stalk jacales with their brown wives in the doorways looking anxiously from under shading hands for their men’s return; their small, nude children playing in the hot dust. Here was little Pancho, who would some day be a great vaquero, roping chickens and cats with a string riata, then dragging them, captive, to the feet of chubby Dolores, who was, as her father swore by the saints, sweet as the Infant in the arms of the Blessed Virgin. It was then that she turned to the Three, her face aglow.

“This man has three little girls. The others all have families. They were driven to steal by want. Under the same circumstances any one of us might have done the same thing. If you had and were caught, how would you feel?”

“Under the same circumstances, they might have done the same thing!” She was looking at Bull, but as her glance returned at once to the prisoners she did not see him flush. He looked at Jake, who looked at Sliver, who looked away.

A busy and useful present soon buries the memory of a doubtful past, and beyond the pleasant span of to-day’s existence the old rustler life of yesterday loomed very far away. The fact that, by tacit consent, it was now never mentioned among them had helped to bury it more completely. But now, perhaps more vividly for the lapse, there rose in the mind of each the spiteful bead eyes, scorpion utterances of Don Miguel in Las Bocas, urging them to raid these very horses. Small wonder if they looked away, or that, as their glances returned, they exchanged sheepish grins.

“Under the same circumstances,” Bull answered, slowly and truthfully, “we-all ’u’d expect to hang. But if you feel different” – his glance interrogated Sliver and Jake – “it goes as you say. On’y, if you let ’em go, we’ll have to run ’em out of the country in fairness to the other haciendas.”

“Of course.” Lee joyfully accepted the compromise. “We’ll take them home now, and to-morrow Sliver and Jake can run them out.”

This settled, and while Sliver rode on down into the valley to free theanciano, Bull and Jake cinched the thieves securely in their saddles. Then, driving them and the horses ahead, with Lee and Gordon following, they started down the trail.

Now the spectacle of four men trussed for hanging is not to be seen every day – let us say, on the streets of New York – and though Gordon had looked on with breathless interest, he could hardly believe that the business would have been carried to a conclusion.

“Do you really think they would?”

Lee looked at him in surprise. “Of course! You know Valles has issued orders for hacendados to shoot raiders on sight; that is” – she added it with a little sigh – “all but his own.”