Over the Border: A Novel

“Yes, to ours.” He snatched her bridle. “Come! already we have wasted too much time.”

As they had spoken in English, Gordon heard all. Now he spoke. “You stopped them killing me, but that would have been less wicked. Remember she is no peona, but an American subject. For any mistreatment you will be called to account by our government.”

“Your government?” Turning his head, Ramon spat aside in the dust. “Your government? The Germans harried us for three years till we ran down and hanged the murderers of their countrymen at Covodonga. In Guerrero a villageful of people were shot for the murder of one Englishman. For the massacre of its citizens at Torreon even the Chinese demanded and obtained an indemnity of five million dollars. But your government – for the murder of hundreds of its men, dishonor of scores of its women, it has lodged – complaints. One more or less will not embarrass us – nor helpyou. Come on, hombre!”

As he moved off, leading Lee’s beast, Gordon writhed in a last effort to break his bonds. For the moment he was blinded by the rush of blood to his straining eyeballs, but as his sight cleared he saw Lee looking back. That womanly pity which transcends fear had lifted her for the moment above her own terrors. Like a light filtering through a storm, her smile gleamed wanly through the pale window of her distress. Then the chaparral swallowed her, and he settled back in black despair.

Though it was only a few seconds, it seemed an hour passed before a foot swinging into his line of vision caused him to look up. The revolutionists had finished dividing the money and were looking down at him.

“Going to cut my throat, now he’s gone,” Gordon read it – and did not care.

But he had failed to count on the streak of good humor that crosscuts even a bandit nature. “We are the richer by a hundred pesos by him.” Ilarian, the fellow who had tried to cut his throat, grinned at the others. “Let us lift him over there in the shade.”

“’Tis hard on thee, amigo,” the fellow went on, after they moved him. “’Tis hard to have thy girl snatched thus away. But have no fear” – though he caught only an occasional word of Spanish, the gestures, helped out by a gross leer, threw light brilliant as lightning on his meaning – “we will avenge thee. These days the pretty ones go to the strong. He has not got her yet. Adios – and better luck!”

As, laughing loudly, they left him, all the romance that had colored, for him, the Mexican revolutions, drained away, leaving him with clear, cold vision to face its dread facts – the tragic realities even then in course where the smoke columns rose, far away, under brazen skies. In agony of fear for Lee that transcended physical torture he watched them go.

XXXI: “BRAINS WIN”

Two days later Bull awoke from a wild nightmare through which drunken faces, infuriated faces, maudlin women faces, had whirled in a mad phantasmagoria, devil’s dance of singing, drinking, swearing, fighting. As though it were another, he dimly saw himself hurling men through a window while glass crashed and furniture crumbled around him. More clearly, a second picture stood out – of a big black rustler – to wit, himself – set up against a wall before a firing-squad. He even saw the rifles aimed, and yet – his brain cool and that enormous desire gone, he lay in a little cell-like adobe room. Light streamed over the sheet across the doorway, and as, rising, he looked out into the patio of the German Club he heard far off the boom of cannon punctuating the staccato pulsations of rifle-fire.

“The battle’s on!”

As the thought passed through his mind it was killed by sudden agony, poignant, though mental, as physical pain. His great hands went up and covered his face, but could not shut out despair. “My God! I’ve fallen down!”

Outside people were moving and talking. But he paid no heed; just stood, face buried in his hands, till he recognized the “dean’s” voice.

“Well, come on, fellows! They’re going to it again. Let’s get out where we can see.”

“I’ll take a look at Diogenes first,” came the voice of his friend. “You chaps go on. I’ll catch up.”

Bull dropped his hands, revealing bleared eyes and swollen face to the correspondent’s gaze. “Well! well! Up and bright as a cricket! You went it some in El Paso, Diogenes; but – last night!” He shook his head in mock reproof.

“What did you do? What didn’t you do? Drank up all the whisky here, then went out and tried to dry up the cantinas. A few are still in business – those you didn’t break up. It took a troop to round you up. They had you stuck against a wall when Enrico, my amigo, happened along. Remembering that he had seen you with me, he brought you over here.”

“Well, I’m sorry! damned sorry that he did!” Bull shrugged. “On’y to be shot, like a soldier, would be too good a death for me. My kind smother in the gutter.”

His bitterness touched the other. “Look here, old man, don’t take it so hard. We all of us have our slips. The only thing to do is to get up and go on again.”

Underneath his first lightness and present sympathy a heavier feeling had made itself felt. Bull had stretched out again on the cot, and now, as he stood looking down upon him, the correspondent’s face grew grave. Once he opened his lips; then, unconsciously, Bull opened the way.

“Where’s Benson?” He looked up. “Did he go again to Valles?”

“Unfortunately, yes. His consul warned him against it – without avail. What happened we can only guess. You know his temper; remember what he said on the train. Perhaps he threatened Valles. He could not have done much more, for he left his guns in the car with the Chinaman. ‘So if the son of a gun kills me,’ he told him, ‘the boys will know it for murder.’ He must have had a hunch, for he never came back.”

“Dead?” Bull broke a shocked silence.

The other nodded. “They acknowledge it – say he tried to kill Valles, which is, of course, all rot.”

Bull had leaped up. “Dead! And I did it! Drunken swine that I am! It’s no use.” He waved away expostulations. “You yourself warned me not to let him go alone!” He started out the door.

“Here!” the correspondent seized him. “Where are you going?”

“Out – to get drunk – get killed if I kin!”

Though he waved like a blown leaf at the end of the club-like arm, the correspondent stuck. “All right! all right! But what’s your hurry? You’ll be a long time dead, old man. If you must get killed, come with me.”

Through Bull’s black despair flashed a sardonic gleam. “Humph! Stand on a hill with a pair of glasses five miles off?”

“Not on your life, hombre! When we interviewed him yesterday that’s exactly the crack Valles made about ‘gringo correspondents’ and ‘long-distance reporting.’ I’m going to show the beggar. It’s me for the outposts where folks get killed.”

Now, in his turn, Bull showed no concern. “Don’t be a fool! You’re paid to get the news, not to do Valles’s fighting.”

The change of positions was so swift, the correspondent could not repress a grin. “What’s sauce for Diogenes is sauce for me. If you have a right to get yourself killed, so have I.”

The black shadow again wrapped Bull. “I’ve good reason. If I kin git myself shot, like a man, I’m just that much ahead. But you – ”

“Aw, shut up! Do you think I am going to let that greasy bandit get away with a crack like that? We’re doing too much talking. Come on!”

“I’d – ” Bull hesitated. “I’d like to see —his consul first. His wife – she’d naterally like to know. She’s in El Paso, just now, an’ I know her address.”

“We go past there. Then I want a minute with our consul. In case I don’t turn up, I wouldn’t want my San Francisco girl to be wearing weeds too long.”

Going out, Bull stopped at the bar. “You needn’t to be scairt.” He answered the other’s look. “My thirst’s over – for a while. But I need a bracer.” Yet the half-glass of raw brandy he swallowed had a deadlier significance. It marked the utter abandonment of hope, sealed his return to the old life.

Shortly thereafter the two entered the British consulate. With the quiet of despair he listened while the consul talked.

“I did my best to prevent Mr. Benson from going back, and thought I’d succeeded. If it hadn’t been that he was seen going in, he would simply have disappeared. As it is, the cuartel general has given out several stories. First, that he tried to shoot Valles; which is absurd, for he carried no gun. Then that he was shot while trying to escape after being placed under arrest. Lastly – to satisfy me and give his murder the semblance of a military execution – that he was tried by drumhead court-martial and fusiladoed for his attempt on the life of the general. But of one thing I can assure you, Mr. Perrin” – he went on from a heavy pause – “this does not end it. Already the particulars are entered upon my records, and the British government never forgets. It may be one year – it may be ten. But when peace is restored this business will come up again. No matter how high the murderer may have risen, how low he may have fallen, the case will never be dropped till there appears opposite the name of William Benson in our archives, ‘The murderer was brought to justice.’”

The quiet surety of his speech, based on a record of centuries among wild peoples, made it impressive. Outside, the correspondent commented thereon in his breezy fashion.

“That’s Johnny Bull for you, dignified, slow in speech, but surer than hell! One of his subjects is killed in a far corner of Afghanistan. Up goes a regiment and decimates the tribe – or a brigade, or an army, if necessary; in which case, to offset the expense, the country becomes a British province. Hombre! how long do you suppose it would take that fat old fellow to settle this Mexican affray? Humph! He’d make shorter work of these mushroom generals and sawdust presidents than he did of the Hindu rajahs.”

In another way the scene at the American consulate was equally impressive. When they entered the single little stuffy room, twelve feet square and entered from an alley, that conserved the dignity of the United States the consul looked up, then handed the correspondent a letter.

“Hum! Last call for Americans to get out of Mexico!” He coughed ironically. “Know ye, all gringos, by these presents: Owing to the fact that four hundred of you have been murdered, ravished, or tortured, and in order to remove further temptation from the path of the gentle Mexican, you are hereby ordered, without regard to your financial ability, consideration for the lives you endanger in transit, or property left behind, to return to your own country and thereby save this department from further annoyance by your kicks and complaints! Oyez! Oyez! Frankly,” he turned to the consul, “what do you think of it?”

The consul shrugged his shoulders. “You wish to register?”

His pen scratched in the silence for a while, setting down the correspondent’s name and commission. “Anybody else you wish to notify?”

The pen scratched on in silence the name of the San Francisco girl. Then he reached for the letter the correspondent handed.

“To be sent, in case of your death. Now, Mr. Perrin?”

The pen scratched Lee’s name and address.

“Anything to send?”