Over the Border: A Novel

“Some risky, cutting ’em out?” Sliver, too, looked dubious.

“Not as much as you think. Did you never have some flea-bitten son of a gun rub down the bars while you slept plumb up against the corral an’ wake next morning to find nary a head in sight? A horse don’t like a corral any more’n a man loves prison. The bars once down, you kin trust ’em to soft-foot it out to the open. Why” – his grin at the remembrance set a flash of good-nature in his hard face – “why, I’ve seen an old nag look back at a colt that kicked the bars passing out just like he was saying, ‘You damn young fool! now you’ve upset the soup!’ Leave it to me. I’ll work ’em out on foot while you sit tight an’ hold my horse. Moon’s going to be jest about right, too. She’ll be taking her first peep about the time we get ’em out in the clear. It’ll be a pipe, then, to saddle up fresh beasts an’ shoot ’em over the border.”

The rancho for which they were heading lay still two hours away, and while they rode the sahuaro pillars gave place in turn to piñon and juniper thinly strewn over rolling grassland. Before night settled down, the wandering cattle-trails they had followed drew into the twin ruts of a wagon-road. Their going was timed by the moon. But it stole out from behind a low hill a trifle ahead of schedule. By its first dim radiance they made out the dark mass of the rancho buildings, house, corrals, stables, in a swale between two hills. It was, however, dark enough for their purpose, and, leaving his horse with the others, Bull went forward on foot.

It was nervous work, sitting there watching the buildings take form under the waxing moon. Their strained senses took every sound, smell, and sight; a dog’s bark, click of horns as a steer scratched his forehead on the top rail of a corral, the impatient pawing of a horse, the warm cattle odor that floated on the night breeze. Dim, uncertain shapes seemed to form and fade in the nearer gloom. They were nervous as cats by the time a gun suddenly flashed under the dark porch of the house.

The croupy cough of a child plus the nervous fears of its mother did it. Not that the woman saw Bull when she drew the curtain and peeped out. But these days, with a new revolution breaking, as Jake put it, “every five minutes” over the border, the American ranchers along the international line slept always with an eye open for possible raids. So far as Bull was concerned, her whisper was just as fatal as though she had seen him.

“Pa! get up! I’m sure there’s some one out there!”

Perhaps the rancher did see. Educated in objects moving through dusk, his plainsman’s eye may have noticed movement. Or perhaps he shot on chance. In either case he was quickly informed by the roar and clatter of hoofs that followed, for though Bull did not expect, now, to get away with a single head, pursuit would be blinded and divided by stampeding the beasts. Dropping the bars while the gun continued to flash its staccato warnings, he started the animals out, leaped on the back of one; as soon as it cleared the huddle, went shooting down the trail, guiding the animal with the swing of his body.

Unfortunately, the whim that governs a stampede moved the other beasts to follow. So when the rancher and his men – in shirts and trousers, but not one without a gun – pulled their mounts out of the stables, their pursuit was guided by the distant thunder of hoofs. Neither did Bull’s quick change to his own beast divert the stampede. When the Three galloped on, the scared animals still followed like dogs at their heels.

“First time my prey ever chased me!” Jake laughed harshly, looking back at the band. “If old man Livingstone don’t follow too close we’ll get ’em yet!”

Bull shook his head. “Not with the moon sailing up to her full an’ the critters leaving a trail broad as a pike road. Listen to that!”

A sharp report punctuated the thud and clatter of the stampede; the first shot of a fusillade that grew hotter and hotter as the horses trailed off right and left, leaving the rustlers more exposed. As yet they were running in the shadow of a long hill where the light was poor. But half a mile ahead lay an open plain unbroken by cover.

“They’ll shoot the lights outen us there!” Sliver prophesied. “Better make a stan’ while we can.”

“They are getting sassy,” Jake agreed, as a bullet whizzed under his chin. “We’ll have to teach ’em this ain’t no turkey-shoot.”

The deciding word came, as usual, from Bull. “They’d surround an’ hold us for the posse. You ride on while I check ’em. If they try to round me it’ll be up to you to take ’em from the rear. Get behind so’s they don’t see me turn.”

In the faint light his sudden whirl behind a bush went unnoticed. He had already unshipped his rifle from the saddle slings, and through the upper branches he took careful aim. A hundred yards away Livingstone was coming at full gallop, about the same distance ahead of his men. Bull waited till he could see the old fellow’s hair, silver in the moonlight, framing his angry red face. Once the sights lined up level between the eyes. But muttering, “I ked sure spoil your beauty, but – I won’t,” Bull lowered them to the horse’s chest and fired.

With the report the beast plunged forward, head and neck doubled under, throwing his rider out in the clear. Though badly shaken, the old man was up the next instant, and as he ran for cover his sudden change of expression from anger to flustered surprise drew from Bull a grin.

“Teach you not to get so fresh.”

At the crack of the rifle the others had also darted for cover, and as their guns began to spit and flash from the chaparral along the hillside, Bull laughed outright. “Not a rifle among ’em. Easy going! Hasta luego, señores! Some other time!”

One or two bolder spirits emerged from the chaparral as Bull rode out in the open. But they scuttled back like rabbits as he swung in the saddle with leveled rifle. Though they followed till the boundary pillar stood out, two hours later, a shining silver shaft under the brilliant moon, they preserved always a safe distance, and Bull denied Sliver’s suggestion to “chuck a volley” into the dim mass.

“Kain’t you leave your Uncle Samuel sleep? He ain’t a-going to be moved off his ‘watchful waiting’ by the loss of no horse, but if we go to killing folks, he’s sure going to take time to catch our goat b’twixt revolutions.”

“To-morrow morning,” Jake commented, grinning, “the morning papers will be running scareheads an inch high about the ‘Latest Border Outrage!’ Meanwhile we’ll be jogging home – ”

“ – without the horses,” Bull dryly finished.

“An’ Rosa, back at the roost,” Sliver added, “howling for coffee an’ flour an’ grease.”

Which reminded Jake of their former argument: “I told you we orter ha’ bought more whisky. Nothing left but to ride back to Las Bocas an’ hit Don Miguel for credit.”

III: EVEN A RUSTLER HAS HIS TROUBLES

Las Bocas was slowly stewing in its native filth when the Three sighted it again at noon next day.

In all the world nothing reflects its environment more faithfully than a Mexican town. Southward, the great cities of Mexico and Guadalajara testify with their stately cathedrals, ornate public buildings, theaters, parks, and plazas, the flowering patios of lovely and luxurious homes, first to the richness of the central Mexican plateau, secondly to the fact that in normal times all the wealth of the republic drains to them. Oppositely, the northern towns with their squalid adobe streets, overrun with a plague of dirty children, dogs, vultures, pigs; desiccated by fierce heat, drowned by torrential rains; these in their place and turn are eminently characteristic of the arid desert. Save that it was a little smaller, a little dirtier, perhaps a little richer in the variety of its stenches, Las Bocas might serve as the type of all Mexican frontier towns.

As the wind blew their way, the Three smelled it from afar. But usage breeds indifference even to evil odors. If not actually homesome, the fetor bespoke a possible drink.

A quarter mile before entering the town they crossed the arroyo that gave it drink. Its waters also furnished an open-air laundry for two brown girls who knelt by its edge, pounding their soiled linen on flat boulders. These days of rampant revolution, a good girl had needs be careful, and at sight of the Three, dusty, unkempt, bearded, and gaunt from tire and travel, gringos at that, the two leaped up and fled toward the town.

Grinning at their fright, Bull and Sliver would have ridden on, but Jake, who never missed a trick, reined in his beast and began to examine the laundry with the eye of a connoisseur. Though the remainder of her be clad in rags, the humblest peona will have her lace petticoat, and the dozen or so pieces that were already spread out to dry on the neighboring bushes were really very fine.

“D’you allow to turn lady’s maid?” Sliver spoke, as Jake bent to stuff the lingerie into his saddle-bags.

“Not till Rosa’s had the refusal of it. This orter keep her satisfied for at least a month.”

Grinning, the pair of rascals spurred their jaded beasts and overtook Bull as he entered a narrow gut of a street that followed the meanderings of the original cow-path to the jefe’s house, a plastered adobe, limewashed in purple and gold, that faced the inevitable military barracks across a sorry attempt at a plaza.

If the small traders and artisans who constituted the bulk of the population had been addicted to such flights of imagination, they might have pictured the jefatura’s yawning gates as a huge gullet through which, in normal times, their substance drained in taxes, fines, and imposts to Mexico City, the nation’s stomach, there to be consumed by a hungry tribe of official hookworms. Now, of course, it was being deflected into the private pocket of the dominant revolutionary chief. Lacking the imagination, they cursed beneath their breath and waited patiently till the next revolution should bring a new tyrant to avenge them on the present oppressor.

The latest incumbent was at lunch under the peppertree in the patiowhen the Three dismounted at the gates. Fat and sleek and brown, his generally gross appearance was accentuated by pouched beady eyes, waxed mustache, unhealthy, erupted skin. As he sat there, shoveling infrijoles and chile, even a peon’s slack imaginings could have easily established a resemblance – if not between him and a hookworm, at least, to some greedy parasite. The irritability, blind individualism, offensive conceit, treachery, too common to Mexicans, lay hidden under the usual veneer of Spanish courtesy. The embraces, backpattings, effusive greetings with which he welcomed the Three would have graced the reception of a favorite son.

“Enter, amigos!” His welcome buzzed through the patio. “Sit down and eat. Afterward we shall look over the horses. You have bestowed them – where?”

But when he learned of their failure, the scorpion showed through the glaze of courtesy like a fly in amber. “Carambar-r-r-aa, señores!” His read wagged in a nasty way. “I had counted on the horses – to save your alive. On my desk lies a requisition from your gringo border police, demanding your bodies. Que desgracia!” The spite that scintillated in his beads of eyes gave his words sinister significance. “One would dislike to do it, if ’twere only through hate of your Government. But one has to account to his chiefs. Already they have inquired for you, and always I made answer, ‘These are good hombres, useful to our cause.’ But deeds count more than words. Horses for their artilleria would have proved your worth. But now – ” a second nasty wag told that their failure left them as other gringos, to be despised, hated, persecuted. Having given the impression time to sink in, he suggested, “But there must be others? You will try again?”

“No use.” Bull’s gloom emphasized the denial. “This is the second time in a month that we’ve been chased across the border. They’re looking for us all along the line.”

“Si? Then must you go elsewhere. What of” – pausing, he looked cautiously around – “what of this side? In central Chihuahua there are many horse-ranchos, gringo ranches with fine blooded stock.”

“But – ”

The jefe’s shrug anticipated the objection. “Si, si! ’tis Mexico. That is what I have always told my chief – ‘these hombres bother only the gringo pigs.’” With a covert grin at the safe insult, he continued, “But a gringo is a gringo, whether here or in your United States. If they be despoiled, we shall not shed many tears. There will be a complaint, of course, to and from your Government, and much writing between departments. In the mean time we have the horses. So – ”

“But that’s Valles’s country, isn’t it?” Jake put in. “He’s a bad hombre to fool with!”

The jefe turned on him his evil grin. “What if the gringo ranchers had caught you last night? Hanging, amigo, is a dog’s death. I would prefer the fusilado of Valles’s men.”

“What if he kicks to your people? Puts in a claim for our heads? You’re working together, ain’t you?”

Once again the jefe looked around. “Listen, amigos! Between friends one may show the truth. Already there is a cloud, a little cloud, no bigger than a child’s hand arisen between us and Valles. If the horses are taken from a gringo rancho in Valles’s country, my chiefs will be the better pleased. What they have Valles cannot get in the days when the cloud grows big and black and bursts.”

Sliver, who understood more Spanish than he could speak, here nudged Bull. “Ask him if he’ll grub-stake the deal.”

“Ask nothing!” Bull’s hot eyes shot brown fire. “You heard him rubbing it into us, didn’t you? If it wasn’t that we need him I’d wring the little brown adder’s neck.” He went on, suavely, in Spanish, “My amigo questions me of the price. It will be the same – fifty pesos apiece, señor?”

Nodding, the jefe glanced impatiently back at his lunch. He appeared to have forgotten his invitation. Pleading an engagement, he bowed them out through the gates, then returned to his gorging while, hungrier, and even still thirstier, the Three rode down the street.

Usually they were not averse to an exchange of glances, or a flirtation – if the hombre was not in sight – with the brown girls who watched them from their doorways. But now their glances sought only thecantinas, whose open bars displayed a tempting array of bottles. While they looked their progress grew constantly slower, finally stopped in front of one whose owner was taking his siesta stretched out on the bar.

Jake looked from the sleeper to his companions, then at the bottles of anisette and tequila on the rough wooden shelves. “If he was drunk it ’u’d be easy – ” As the Mexican disposed of the doubt, just then, by opening one excessively sober eye, Jake desperately concluded, “Say, kain’t we raise the price among us?”