Over the Border: A Novel

But for once the railroad went back on all precedents. Just as the crimson tip of the sun slid down behind a black-velvet mountain, the train came puffing in loaded with the usual picturesque rag-and-bobtail of brown soldiers, women, and children clustered like hiving bees on top.

“Must be yesterday’s train a bit overdue,” Bull defended his theory, as the cars clicked by with slowing rhythm. “The comandante’ll be in the passenger-coach ahead. We’d better to mosey along an’ brace him.”

But their passage was much more easily gained. A man who sat with legs dangling from the open doorway of a box-car emitted a whoop.

“Ole! Diogenes! Como le va! What of our matrimonial venture? How did it pan out?”

It was Naylor, the correspondent, Bull’s friend and Cupid’s aide. As his car rolled slowly up, there hove in sight placards that announced the titles of certain American papers in dignified Spanish that their oldest subscribers would never have recognized. But there was nothing foreign in the half-dozen of friendly faces that filled the doorway. From the dignified visage, with its short, gray beard and trim mustache, of their dean, down to the boyish face of a field photographer, all joined in a composite welcoming grin.

“Weekes, Mason, Martin, Roberts, Cummings.” The correspondent breezily ran off the names. “There were more before Santos-Coy, Valles’s chief of staff, stuck us all up against a wall the last time our government clapped one of its hit-and-miss embargoes on munitions. Valles saved us, but after that most of the fellows skipped out. So we have lots of room. Come right up.”

A partition divided the car into kitchen and living-quarters. Bunks rose in a tier of four at the end of the latter. Four more could be slept on long lockers at each side of the table which was being set for supper by the Chinese cook. From the oldest to the youngest, the correspondents were on edge for the approaching battle. At supper their talk ran on its possibilities.

“If Valles is beaten again,” Weekes, the gray-haired dean, summed the conversation, “our government will throw another of its silly flip-flops and turn him down. And then – ”

“ – this corresponding job won’t make good insurance.”

“And then – ” the dean began again.

“We’ll hit for El Paso before Santos-Coy grabs us again.”

“And then” – the dean triumphed over interruptions – “God pity the poor gringos in northern Mexico.”

Bull’s friend nodded. “Valles’s army will scatter into bands that will rake the country with fine-tooth combs for the least bit of plunder. You had better get your girl and her fellow, Diogenes, and come out with us.”

Later, when they had all climbed up on the roof and sat watching the oil-smoke from the laboring locomotive whirl and twist, then float away and lay its great sable plumes against the rich reds and golds of the evening sky, they gave expert opinion on Benson’s mission.

“If Valles wins, so do you,” the dean opined. “He needs horses worse than money, and, as you say, has slathers of it in the El Paso banks. But if he loses – hit for the border at once. I saw him the other day after the first defeat, and hell couldn’t produce his equal. He was crazy; a maniac; a tiger gone stark, staring, frothing mad.

“And lose he will. How do I know?” He answered a challenge. “It’s a mere problem of mathematics, the first equation of which was worked out in the battle the other day. Given two men of equal military ability, the one with a trained mind is bound to win. The other fellow, as you know, is a college man – a college man against a bandit.” He turned to Bull and Benson. “It’s a cinch that he’ll win. If I were you, gentlemen, I’d wait the event.”

Benson shook his head. “If we see Valles now and strike a bargain, we can get our cattle across the border before he’s all in.”

“Good enough reasoning,” the dean admitted. “But – ever since the first defeat he’s been in one of his towering rages. Even his own generals hardly dare go near him.”

Benson shrugged; with British obstinacy he clung to his point. “It won’t be the first time I’ve seen him in his rages. He may be dangerous – to Americans, but John Bull looks after his people and even Valles is careful of how he flies in the old fellow’s face. I shall go to see him at once, and if he refuses – well” – his voice grew harsh and menacing – “he’ll hear the truth about himself.”

Not knowing him, the correspondents received it in silence. While they smoked Benson went on in his hard, rough voice. “I tell you, amigos, that your people have made a sad mess of this whole Mexican business. For three years, now, you have been trying to apply the principles of your Declaration of Independence to a race which won’t have evolved to a point where it has the faintest understanding of them for a thousand years to come. You stand on your Monroe doctrine, but refuse to take up its obligations and give alien nationals the protection you will not allow their own government to extend. While your statesmen prattle about the sacred right of revolution and Mexico’s ability to settle her own affairs, the country is overrun with bandits and mobs of pelados who are killing off the decent people and destroying billions in property they never created.

“Bah!” he snorted his disgust. “Don’t talk to me of republics. Do you suppose that either England or Germany would have stood for the anarchy which rules here? For centuries John Bull has been ruling brown peoples and he knows his job. ‘Be good and you’ll be happy!’ he tells them. If they’re not – they get it, hot and heavy, on the spot where it will do most good. The brown man is all right in his place – which isn’t on top of the white man – but your government, so far, has failed to perceive it.”

He went on from a pause: “Republics are incapacitated by nature in any case for the job. They are too divided in their counsels – swayed to-day by capital that will accept any dishonor rather than jeopardize its revenues; to-morrow by sentimentalists who hold up hands of horror at the very thought of war; governed most of the time by a ridiculous yellow press. Individually, you Yanks are good people, but taken collectively, as represented by your government and papers, you are hypocritical, weak, hysterical, sentimental, without dignity or force. You are grown fat with wealth, soft with luxury, too lazy and indifferent to undertake your responsibilities abroad, and if you were not, you lack the first essentials – centralized federal authority and military strength to enforce your will. If you do anything here it will be accidental – such as when the blowing up of the Maine aroused one of your periodical brainstorms, stung you into action. But in the mean time the destruction of Mexico will be complete. There will be nothing left of the civilization built up at such enormous pains by Diaz and which it was your duty to maintain.”

Silence followed, the uncomfortable silence that attends the digestion of unpalatable truth. While they talked, the cars had resolved into dim masses that swayed and swung through hot dusk that was splashed, here and there, with the red glow of charcoal cooking fires. On those immediately ahead and behind, dim sombreroed figures still loomed in half-gloom. The flash of a match occasionally set a dark face out in startling relief. The tinkle of a guitar accompanying a high, nasal peonchant, mingled with the roar and rattle of wheels. For some time its whine rose under the stars before the voice of the dean broke the silence.

“What you say is true – most of it. We have been tried in the balance and found wanting. We’ve neglected our duty to the Mexicans and our own people – that’s the hell of it! But nations, like individuals, learn their lessons through painful mistakes. We’ve had bad leadership and worse counsels – so much of it that it would almost seem that we were irrevocably stamped as incapable. But it’s only a phase. Under it all the heart of the people still beats sound and true. Sooner or later its voice will be heard. And when it is – the bleating of the sentimentalists will be drowned in the tramp of marching men.”

“You bet you!” It rolled out in chorus.

“In the mean time,” a voice added, “what’s the matter with a little drink?”

Instantly the recumbent figures rose in a shadowy mass, and as its units made their way down over the edge of the swaying car, the correspondent jogged Bull’s elbow. “Come along, Diogenes!”

But though a flame, sudden and fierce, had leaped within him; though he trembled under the intensity of his desire, he shook his head. “Thanks, I’m not drinking.”

“Why – Diogenes? Whatever is the matter? If parental responsibilities do this, damned if I know whether I’ll ever dare to hook up – providing my San Francisco girl ever consents. Is this straight?”

“Straight.”

Warned, perhaps, by a certain earnestness, the other answered: “All right, old man – only – if you change your mind, come on down.”

Bull made no answer, could not, for as he lay there, huge bulk stretched out on the running-board, face turned up to the stars, every ounce of his energy, even the bit that would have been used up in speech, was consumed in the fight against the furious desire that brought the sweat starting on his brow, shook him like a leaf. Out of the rack and bang of the swinging cars, click and roar of the wheels, his ear presently picked the clink of glasses. Out through the lamp-lit doorway floated Benson’s rough voice.

“Well, here’s to Uncle Sam! wishing him better counselors and quicker understanding!”

Bull heard no more, for he had rolled over, buried his face in his arms to hide from his snuffing nostrils whiffs of spirits. Once he half rose, looking toward the ladder. But, strengthening his resolution, there rose in his mind just then a picture of Betty and her mother as he had seen them at parting – her hands on the child’s shoulders, stooped in slight dejection, yet radiating faith and trust.

Lying down again, he lay, hands clasped under his head, gazing up at the fire of stars, while his mind traveled back to the rancho, lived over and over again the slow, sweet hours of last night. Below, an undertone to the roar of the speeding train, he now caught the hum of talk. But he took no heed – even when it ceased. He dreamed on till a hand shook his foot.

“Aren’t you coming down to bed?”

“No; I reckon I’ll lay out here. It’s cooler.” He did not acknowledge to himself his fear of sniffing the spirituous odors.

“All right, only don’t roll off.” The correspondent paused on his way back to the ladder. “Say! did your friend mean what he said? Or was it just talk?”

When Bull answered with a sketch of Benson’s violent temper, illustrated by a few instances, the correspondent shook his head. “Well, don’t let him see Valles alone.” Going down the ladder, he called back, “If you should change your mind about the drink, you’ll find the jug on the table.”

Instantly it materialized in Bull’s vision, a round stone jug and glasses, as solid and real as though it stood within the reach of his hand. Nor could he shut out the vision, as he had the odor, by burying his face. With the cars swinging and swaying through the night, shut out, it stood forth clearer than ever. He saw himself snatching out the cork; felt the burning liquid coursing down his throat.

“My God! why did I come? I’ll never be able to stan’ it!”

The thought of the temptation, ever present, growing more powerful through the coming days, gaining in strength while he grew weaker, brought out of him a cry of dismay: “I’ll never be able to stan’ it!” Then, very quickly, “I’ll have to! If I don’t – then I’m no fit man for her!”

The thought brought her face again in all its sweet wholesomeness. Through the warm dusk, as it were beside him, he saw her hand fluttering like a homing dove into his. He felt it lifting, raising him above his temptation. The memory of its soft pressures strengthened and comforted. Presently his fingers relaxed their convulsive grip on the running-board. Exhausted, he fell asleep.

XXVIII: A “REQUISITION”

Slipping in over the patio wall, a golden sunbeam struck behind where Gordon sat writing and flooded the portales with topaz lights. From the kitchen came the soft spat, spat of tortillas in the course of shapement between Teresa’s palms, competing splash and flop of Maria’s cloth as she washed off the brown-tiled floor. No other sound disturbed the morning freshness, for Gordon had risen early to get off a letter with Lovell, who had dropped in last night on his way to El Paso to attend Phœbe’s wedding.

So engrossed was he that a gentle agitation of the sheet which hung across Lee’s bedroom doorway on the gallery above passed unnoticed. The rail hid from his view the small, bare feet, but he missed a glimpse of white shoulder, flash of brown eyes under her hair’s bright tousle, round, red mouth opened in a yawn before, seeing him, she hastily dropped the sheet. He did not see her even when she came out in kimono and slippers and soft-footed it down the stone stairs at his back. Though, sitting up on her heels, Maria looked on smiling, Gordon’s first notice came from the soft palms that slipped over his eyes.

With loose treachery the kimono sleeves had slipped back and he could feel the soft coolness of her forearms on his neck and cheeks; wherefore it is not to be wondered at that he found difficulty in guessing whom she might be. Jake, Sliver, Maria, Teresa, Lovell, the ancianos, he was enumerating by name all the women, children, cats, and dogs of thehacienda when she cut him off.

“Your stupidity is suspicious, sir. But it punishes itself. If you had guessed right I might have given you a – ”

He took it – in triplicate, then pulled her down on his knee. “To my father and mother,” he replied to her question. “I thought it was about time I dropped them a line – haven’t written home since I came down.”

“What?” She uttered a small shocked scream. “You’ve let them suffer all this time in suspense and alarm?”