Over the Border: A Novel

A little pressure at his waist made answer.

Reaching behind, he drew her other arm forward till her hands clasped in front, then squeezed his own elbows down tight over hers. Thus, oblivious once more of the toiling billions, revolutionists beyond the mountain’s loom, they rode forward again in that illumined dream, two foolish, happy souls at loose in the spheres.

XXV: LOVE AND BUSINESS

In those days of raids and “requisitions,” the customary oversight of the herds on the Chihuahua haciendas had grown of necessity into a system of patrols. At Los Arboles not a day passed without Gordon and the Three describing a circle around the hacienda.

Riding south after the others left, Bull had covered only a few miles before he spied a lone horseman topping a distant ridge. As the rider drew near the first indefinite outlines resolved into the square, hard figure of William Benson. Scarcely a week had passed without a visit from the Englishman. From the first he had accorded Bull the respect due to his quiet strength. Later, this had developed into a real liking which showed in the smile that wiped out, for the moment, his native harshness.

“Heard the news? The Carranzistas have given Valles a lovely trimming. He didn’t stop running till he reached El Oro.”

Bull’s black brows rose. “We’d allus allowed Valles could whip twice his weight in Carranzistas. So long as they keep on killing one another off, we sh’d worry.”

Nodding, Benson went on. “Valles lost heavily in horses, and is looking for fresh mounts. One of his colonels came to my place yesterday and offered me a thousand pesos apiece for all I have.”

“Gold?”

Benson’s big mouth split in a sardonic grin. “Valles money, amigo, beautifully printed on butcher paper. He must have used up all the newspaper stocks in northern Mexico.”

“And you sold?”

“I’d cut their throats first. It may come to that, but just now I see a way – if not to pull even, at least to avoid complete loss. Between us we can pretty nearly equip Valles with fresh mounts. The beggar has gold – hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, in the El Paso banks, and my idea is for us, you representing Lee, to go down to El Oro and offer him all that we have for a low price in gold on condition that he permit us to drive our other stock across the line. If he accepts, we then go out of business till order is restored.”

“Fine idea!” Bull added. “Could you let Mrs. Mills in on it? She was telling last night she didn’t know where to turn for living expenses.”

Benson heartily agreed. “Only too glad!”

“And when do you start?”

“To-morrow night. There’s a freight going down.”

“All right. Pity you hadn’t come earlier. Mrs. Mills left only a couple of hours ago. But I’ll ride over this afternoon, get her written authority, then meet you at the railroad.”

Riding back to Los Arboles, they perfected their plans. They were, indeed, in sight of the buildings before Benson switched the conversation to Lee. Her oldest and stanchest friend, it was his right to know, and Bull told all, from his plotting with the widow down to the disastrous ending in the sudden engagement.

“The little spitfire!” Benson grinned. “Hello! What’s that?”

It was Lee’s horse galloping down a distant slope toward the hacienda. In that wild country a riderless beast generally bespoke tragedy. Without a word they galloped off in the direction from which the beast had come; rode at top speed until Benson, who had gained a lead, suddenly reined in.

A bunch of chaparral intervened, at first, between Bull and the object at which the other was pointing. Then, rising in his stirrups, he saw Lee and Gordon on the one horse; at least in Bull’s sight it was a horse. In that of the lovers, horses, plains, haciendas, and other commonplaces of ordinary existence had vanished, leaving them unconscious of time and space, proceeding magically through the aforesaid illumined dream.

Perhaps some touch of their feeling wirelessed across the intervening space, for Benson’s harshness melted, delight burst like sunlight through Bull’s truculence.

“That’s too good to spoil,” Benson whispered. “Let them go by.”

They had passed over the next ridge before Bull spoke. “I tol’ you Mrs. Mills could do it. She’s a right smart woman.”

“A fine woman!” Benson echoed. “I don’t know what you are thinking about. Now if I were single – ” He burst out laughing at Bull’s blush. Instantly it was drowned in brighter scarlet. But this faded as Bull noted the kindly twinkle in the other’s eye. He shook his head in deprecation.

“What c’d a nice woman do with a bear like me?”

“That’s her business. I’m not denying that it would some job.” Benson critically surveyed Bull’s great bulk. “But if there’s anything in the world a woman loves it is making a man over, like an old dress. After she finishes, she generally realizes that she’s spoiled the material and wishes him back as he was. But in the mean time she has had her fun. I’ll bet Mary Mills is just itching to try her hand on you.”

“Do you really mean that?” Bull looked up with sudden hope – that quickly died. He shook his big head. “She deserves something better. I’d only spoil her life.”

Nevertheless, he relapsed into deep thought, returning only monosyllables to Benson’s talk. The little seed thus planted rooted deep in his silence.

Strange is first love with its intense desire for purity! Cleanliness is next to Godliness, and Godliness is Love. Thus Cleanliness must be next of kin to Love.

If this be doubted, observe a ten-year-old boy, self-convicted of water-marks on his neck and soil in his ears enough to grow potatoes. See him scrub himself with profuse use of soap till his countenance shines so that it might serve as a mirror for the small charmer who has ensnared his budding affections with her bright curls. Watch him, later, a man grown, solicitous about his daily tub, careful of his raiment, choice in cravats! Later his wife shall drive him with revilings to his bath! Coming to cases, observe Gordon in the bunk-house after a cooling shower, carefully arranging his tie on the bosom of a brand-new shirt.

Now observe a girl, a vestal in purity, delicately perfumed, flowering in her ribands and laces like a pretty bud. At some time all of them earnestly desire that they had been born men. Yet one moment there is when they are unfeignedly glad to be women. So Lee, who was perhaps even a bit more boyish than the average, came to lunch in a soft white dress with a flower at her throat, powdered and delicately perfumed, bright hair framing happy eyes, every soft line and fold proclaiming her womanhood. Like an emanation, soft and effulgent as moonlit mist, the fullness of her content proceeded from her, wrapped her in a bright atmosphere in the midst of which she softly brooded. Not that she was silent. She laughed and talked; seriously discussed Benson’s schemes. But that was all of the surface. Behind the chatter she lived in the enchantment of her dream.

It was too marked to pass unnoticed. But if Bull and Benson saw the clinging of glances, sensed the pulsing feeling, they observed with the friendly indulgence of experience the young man’s honest devotion, the girl’s shy happiness. During the long hour they sat talking after lunch, no silly jest marred its beauty. Except for a greater kindliness of manner, with delicacy quite foreign to his harsh exterior, Benson gave no hint of his understanding up to the moment he rode away.

Then for a brief moment Bull was taken into the dream. While Gordon went for his horse, Lee packed his saddlebags with clean things for the journey, and was giving him the usual last critical inspection. As he stood smiling down on her, hugely pleased, her eyes rose from the tie she was arranging to his; and as she read their sympathy and intelligence, she clasped his neck and hid her face against his broad breast.

Until the beat of hoofs at the patio gate announced Gordon’s return, he held her to him with one arm while the other hand gently patted her shoulder. Neither spoke. Words would have told less. When she withdrew and walked with him to the gate, she was soothed and comforted as any girl that ever made a confidante of her mother.

When she ran back after the quirt he had purposely left on the table, he had time to pass a word to Gordon. “Remember, she don’t leave this house to go anywhere alone!”

Gordon nodded, and, satisfied, he rode away with Lee’s last charge floating after him, “Come home soon!”

The words were still ringing in his ears, he still felt the firm, cool clasp on his neck, when he drew rein at the first rise and looked back at the hacienda. From one corner, where an anciano had burned some rubbish, rose a lazy pennon of smoke, but the brown girls, women, and children who usually filled the compound with restless life were in full enjoyment of the noon siesta. Within its bright walls, the place dozed in the pleasant shade of its towering cottonwoods.

Somehow the stillness recalled to Bull’s mind the Spaniard’s house he had shown Gordon from the railroad – sacked, burned, its vacant windows staring like empty eyes over the desert. His face clouded. He moved uneasily in his saddle, but presently the golden peace that incited the memory worked its own remedy. Jake and Sliver and Gordon were there, and the place was still far beyond the surge and swirl of the revolution.

“And I’ll be home again in less than a week,” he encouraged himself.

Home! It recalled again Lee’s words. He felt her clasp, thrilled at the memory. He, “Bull” Perrin, the rustler! Around his neck that had been in constant hazard of the halter for a dozen years, this fine, clean girl had thrown her arms. His tender musing over the wonder would have excited the scorn of a city man, blasé and stale from the constant presence and attentions of pretty women. But it was sincere. While he rode on over the hills and plains, the thought warmed his heart, quickened the seed planted therein by Benson, freed his soul from the bonds of his great humility.

“Of course it’s damn foolish for you even to think of it,” he chid himself. Nevertheless, he did, slowly, heavily, taking stock with minute exactness of his own demerits. How great they were none knew better. The rustling, of course, he had abandoned along with certain gross habits of life. But the liquor? These periodical debauches? Was he strong enough to conquer them?

“If I c’d only ride into a town an’ either leave it alone or take a man’s fair allowance,” he mused. “But kin I? Mebbe with a fine little woman like that to help me.” But the next instant he shook his head. “An’ have her take the chance? No, no, hombre, you’re crazy. You put all that behind you by your own act years ago.”

Yet this conclusion did not end the argument. When, at sundown, he drew rein at the accustomed spot and looked down on the rancho buildings now dyed a flaming apricot he took his breath deeply. With its bougainvillea draping walls and porches in rich purple clusters, its pretty patio and outside kitchen garden, it was just such a home as would fit the dreams of a common man. Instantly his mind filled in the picture, the man and woman sitting after supper on the veranda, he with his pipe and paper, a child on his knee, she with her sewing. A thousand intimacies were supplied by his lonely, hungry soul, and when the picture stood complete he burst out with a great resolve.

“By God, I’ll do it! You’re a-going to walk like a man into town an’ come out without teching a drop!”

From where he was sitting he usually could see – either Betty at play on the veranda, her mother moving in and out, or Terrubio moving around the stables. To-night silence wrapped the place. From the west, as on the south where he sat, the land fell rapidly toward the rancho, and as he rode forward, puzzled, the silence was explained. Over the western ridge the widow, Terrubio, and Betty came riding, and reached the house just as he rode up.

“Though we brought bad news to his son,” she explained the delay, “the old Icarza would not permit us to leave till we had broken his bread. How did Ramon take it? Just as I said he would – out came the Mex in in all of its nasty selfishness, blind conceit. She was promised to him and he would hold her to it! He’d kill any one who interfered. Goodness! you never saw such fireworks! He showed no trace of the real pride that would have kept one of our boys from showing his hurt; and still less consideration for Lee. It was” – she gave a little sniff of disgust – “just sickening. I was almost sorry she couldn’t have been there, for it would have effectually cured her remorse. But she’ll get it to-morrow, for he’s going over to plead his own cause.”

Unease swept Bull’s dark visage. After a brief statement of his mission he voiced his apprehension. “But if he’s coming to-morrow, I don’t know but I orter go back.”

“Nonsense!” Mrs. Mills pooh-poohed the idea. “It’s all fireworks – and there’s Sliver and Gordon and Jake.”

To which Betty added a direct command. “You are just going to stay here. We haven’t seen you for ever so long, and mama is just dying to tell you her troubles.”