Over the Border: A Novel

A few minutes later he dropped, almost on its edge. Yet even in that dire moment he remained his cheerful self.

“Shot in the leg! I always said that was the only way they’d ever get me. Here’s my notes, Diogenes! Give them to Weekes and tell him to chuck ’em on to the wires. Now, run like hell!”

And Bull did “run like hell” – with the correspondent across his shoulders, into the chaparral where the rain of bullets slacked; faded out by the time he reached the horses. The bullet had gone through the knee. All that he could do was to stop the bleeding with a handkerchief twisted tight above. Then, with the correspondent lying forward in his saddle, arms around his horse’s neck, he headed for the town.

As they rode, in their rear rose a huge, raucous voice, the charging yell of the Carranzistas pouring in a brown flood over the trenches. Followed the terrible roar of a rout – yells, shrieks, curses, victorious shouts, scattering shots, occasional volleys. On the edge of the town it caught and engulfed them, that mad rout. Helpless jetsam, they floated above, a stream of wild, sweating faces, powder-grimed, bloody, flecked with a yeast of glistening, fearful eyes, floated through the painted adobe streets to the railroad yards.

There fugitives were already piling by thousands on top of the trains and increasing the confusion; there came, just then, a flash from the hills they had left. Followed the shriek, rising crescendo of the shell, then – the explosion smoke cleared, showing a splintered mass be-spattered with mangled humanity that had been, a moment before, sentient human beings. The Carranzistas were shelling the station with Valles’s own guns.

“We’re farther up!” the correspondent whispered through white, drawn lips. “We bribed the engineer, last night, to pull us out on the main line to insure our getaway.”

He spoke again, with an effort, when they had ridden another half-mile. “That’s queer. It stood about here, yet I don’t see the placards. Perhaps we have overshot.”

But as Bull made to turn a man slipped from the brake-rods under a car ahead. “Here, señores! This way!”

Just then, too, the door rolled back and the “dean” looked out. “Hurry up! Ten minutes more and you would have been too late. The Gonzales Brigada played discretion for the better part of valor and made a quick sneak. We go next! We tore off the signs for fear they might cut us out. We’re traveling, for the present, incognito. You’re hurt! Here, you fellows, lift him in and shut the door quick!”

After the correspondent had been laid in his bunk the “dean” turned to Bull. “That chap outside has been here ever since yesterday morning, looking for you. He said his business was muy importante, so the Chinaman kept him fed. Perhaps you had better see what he wants.”

But when Bull looked out the man was gone. Also, just then, a welcome accompaniment to the roar of the mad rout outside, came the groan, bang, and rattle of cars starting in succession under the engine’s tug.

XXXII: TRAVAIL

The instant she passed from Gordon’s sight Lee’s smile went out, quenched by mortal fear. For years tales that defied by their black horror exaggeration by even the fervid peon minds had filtered into Los Arboles, and, more vividly than Gordon, she realized her danger.

It was not so much Ramon. At San Carlos she would have a fighting chance; stood ready to match her woman’s wit against his man’s strength. Her fear centered on the men.

As, overtaking them, he rode by on the narrow path, Ilarian pressed close against her. “Cheer up, little one! ’Tis the fighting cock that wins his hen. ’Tis the way of the world, and what matter it so long as she be won? ’Tis his turn now, but later ’twill be for thee to keep him itching.”

Laughing hoarsely, he rode on, but in passing his rude fingers searched the softness of her arm and she caught the bold look into her eyes of his grinning fellow. Thereafter she felt their glances touching, plucking at her like fumbling fingers. Now glowing with shame, again frozen with terror, she endured it – to her it seemed hours before she spoke to Ramon.

“I’m afraid of those men. Can’t you – send them away?”

He shrugged. “You have more reason to be afraid of me.”

“You?” In spite of the deadly chill at her heart she managed a little laugh. “That is impossible.”

“Why?”

“Fear one’s oldest friend?” Already, with intuitive guile, she was laying the foundations of her defense. Though he looked at her with quick suspicion, she returned the innocent eyes nature has given woman for her chief protection. “For you – a man of whom I have known only good? But these men fill me with fear.”

Suspicion clouded, for a moment, his eyes. Passing, it left his gloom lighter. Reassurance softened his tone. “Don’t be afraid. They will leave us at San Carlos.”

“But, Ramon, it is now noon. If we ride hard we cannot get there before dark.” She shuddered at the thought.

“You would rather we were alone?”

“A thousand times.” She returned to his gaze the same innocent eyes – and once more his gloom lightened a shade.

“They are going to San Carlos anyway, so I can hardly send them away. But I am armed, and there is no necessity for you to be afraid. Also – you said that the jefe and priest at San Carlos would refuse to marry us. If so, these are the men who can help me compel.”

“Ramon!” she spoke with dread earnestness, “look quickly behind you!”

He did, and his quick frown told that he was not pleased. Dismounting under a pretext of cinching up his saddle, he motioned for the two men behind to pass ahead.

“You saw!” she said, riding on. “You are armed, but they are four to one; may take you unawares. I ask only one thing. Keep my feet bound, take any other precaution you choose, but unfasten my hands and – lend me your knife.”

“To use on me, if you get the chance?”

“Not on you nor them!” Her steady look carried her meaning.

His glance went forward to the revolutionists, who broke out, just then, in uproarious laughter.

“If I thought – ” His hand went to his gun, then fell again. “No! they are rough and coarse, but they know well that my father is Valles’s friend; that if they lifted a hand against me he would flay them alive. Really, there is no danger, yet – if it will make you less fearful. But you promise – to return it, the knife, at San Carlos?”

“I promise.”

“I never knew you to lie, and I – ” His face lost a little of its hardness. “I would prefer to be gentle.”

Leaning over, he unbound her arms, then gave her the case-knife that hung at his hip. “I suppose I’m a fool,” he said as she slid it under her belt inside her shirt.

“Indeed you are not!” she began, in a flush of relief. Then, as a picture of Gordon lying bound on the trail rose to her mind, she turned her head in fear that he might read the sudden impulse to slash the lead rope and go galloping back.

The certain knowledge that she would be overtaken checked the impulse. Also, with a woman’s self-abnegation, she comforted herself with the thought that every mile she traveled lessened his hazard. She rode on till certain whisperings between the revolutionists ahead brought her again under fear that grew and reached its climax when, later in the afternoon, they swung at right angles on to the San Carlos trail and rode, now along the flank of a mountain, again through a wooded valley, thence up and over a great hill, while the sun slid down behind them. While they traveled dusk quenched the flaming peaks. The long shadows drew together, enwrapping hill and valley in a thick veil through which men and horses loomed as dark, sinister shapes. When they stopped, suddenly, where a stream emerged from a wood, she shook with apprehension.

“The beasts are tired, señor, and this is a good place to camp,” a voice came back.

“Oh, don’t! Let us keep on!” she pleaded.

“The animals are tired and must be fed,” Ramon answered. “After they are rested we will go on.”

As, dismounting, he began to untie her feet, she was seized again with a wild impulse to turn and dash away in the dark. But even had it been possible, just then a heap of dried grass and leaves flared up from a match illuminating the woods and stream. Reaching up, Ramon lifted her down and seated her close to the fire.

Sitting there, she watched him unsaddle and hobble their beasts. Her swift, uneasy glances showed the revolutionists doing the same. Yet – all the fears of that long afternoon now concentrated in a cold horror. Intuitively, she knew. When, his hands full of food he had unpacked from his saddle-bags, Ramon came walking past the revolutionists toward her, she broke out with a sudden scream:

“Take care!”

Too late! A pair of sinewy arms locked like brown snakes around him, pinioning his arms to his body. As he went down, fighting madly, Lee leaped up and ran. But already Ilarian and another man had started toward her. Running her swiftest, straining madly with the beat of his pursuing feet, like a drum in her ears, she had gained the edge of the wood, was almost within its safe blackness, when she was seized and pulled back with a wrench that tore the shirt away from one white shoulder and threw her to the ground.

She rose instantly on one knee, then paused at the sight of the brutish face above. One hand clutching the torn shirt at her neck, eyes dark lamps in a face of white horror, she crouched like an animal at bay till, with a sudden snatch, he stooped and lifted her bodily.

“No, no!” The snatch of the second man loosened the other’s grip so that she fell between them to the ground. “No, hombre, fair play between compañeros. We shall gamble for her. The winner, if he choose, can then sell his chance.”

The fighting, writhing mass at the other side of the fire now straightened out, and as they rose, leaving Ramon securely bound on the ground, the other two added their protests. “Si, hombre, we will not stand for that. She goes first to the winner, according to our custom. Bring her back to the fire.”

To avoid their handling, she rose and walked herself. As she came where the light fell on Ramon she saw that he had managed to struggle up on his knees. Now he began to speak, pleading, arguing, threatening his captors with the displeasure of their general.

But he drew only jokes and laughter. “Valles?” Ilarian answered him. “He was defeated by the Carranzistas, and has trouble enough to care for himself. The requisition el capitan showed was made out months before the battle. Had the señor, your father, been fool enough to fill it, we should have taken the horses for ourselves.” With a shove that sent Ramon flat on his back, he added: “Lie down, hombre! For these many years thou and thy fathers laid the whip on our backs. While we starved they fed fat and made free with our women. Now it is for thee to watch us at the eating and loving.”