Over the Border: A Novel

Laughing, he caught Lee again with a sudden snatch, was forcing her head back, when Rafael again interfered. “Hands off, hombre, till the cards say she is thine!”

“Si, muddle not the waters for our drinking,” the others added. “Let us eat, then get to the cards.”

“The bride? She must not go hungry at the wedding feast.” The fourth man offered her food. “Here, little one.”

Weak and faint, she was backing away, but stopped with a sudden inspiration. “If I may share it with him?”

“Seguro.” Rising, the man dragged Ramon a few feet away and set him up, back propped against a tree. “Only take care he bite not thy pretty fingers.”

Laughing, he went back to the fire, leaving her to sit and watch their feeding of meat and tortillas, with gulps of liquor from clay bottles.

Between her and them yawned a gap in time wider than the centuries that intervened between herself and her wode-stained ancestors running wild in the woods of Britain. Their low, sloping foreheads, unbalanced heads with all the weight below; their loose mouths, brute jaws, dark skin, nature’s infallible stigma of inferiority, pronounced them half a million years behind her, the last-bloom of a higher race.

In her a solitary youth had intensified the delicate fancies, sensitiveness, timorous imaginings, shrinkings, and retreats that mark a young girl’s first reachings toward love. And now – her idealizations were suddenly confronted with the caveman’s brutal practice. Sitting there, she endured a thousand tortures. Worse than their coarse jests were their glances. She shrank under them in hot shame; to escape them took the food they offered, moved over and knelt beside Ramon.

He was sitting, head hanging, but as, now, he looked up the firelight showed the sweat in beads on his brow. “You bring me food?” His accent carried more than a thousand self-reproaches.

She did not attempt consolation she did not feel. “Pretend to eat.” She spoke in English. “They are watching, now. But soon they will gamble” – she shuddered, thinking of the stake – “will see only the cards. I still have your knife. When the time serves I will cut you loose. Their rifles are piled behind us with the saddles. They may shoot you down from the fire. But to reach them is our only chance.”

He lowered his head to hide a sudden flash of hope. “I will do anything, take any chance. Greater punishment no man could suffer than I am enduring. But it has made me think – realize my blind selfishness. I can only ask your forgiveness.”

“Now, compañeros, the cards! Cut and shuffle for love!” A hoarse voice came from the fire.

While the first hand of a game she did not understand was being dealt she watched the flying cards with dread interest; was still watching when Ramon whispered:

“I know that game. Five minutes will see it finished. By leaning a little to one side, your body will cover my elbows. One cut will set them free. I will still sit as I am, and when I whisper slash the riata at my feet, then run! run into the depths of the woods. From here to San Carlos is but a couple of leagues. Once there – with the jefe, you will be safe.”

Ilarian’s bellowing laugh rang out, just then, marking the close of the first hand. “One to me, little one! Be not impatient. The luck is with us. Soon we shall take a little pasear together.”

“If he wins again it will be over in a minute,” Ramon whispered, while the cards were fluttering around again. As the men bent over them, thumbing their hands, he gave the word, “Now!”

With two slashes she did it, one at his arms, the other at his feet. But swift as was the movement, Rafael caught it in the tail of his eye. When he turned she had dropped the knife in the grass and, though her heart stood still, she resumed her pretense of feeding Ramon. As he watched her the suspicion died out of the man’s stare. He was just about to turn again to the game when, as Ramon leaned forward to take the bite she was offering, the severed riata fell from his elbows.

Given two men in a sudden juncture, the one with a definite plan wins the lead. As the man jumped up, pointing, Ramon sprang, reached the rifles, aimed and shot him down. The others looked up, startled, and as he aimed again they pulled and fired.

“Run, querida, run!” Ramon had called it, leaping up. As he collapsed on the heap of saddles it issued again on his last dry whisper, “Run!”

It had all happened while she was scrambling up. Naturally she turned when Ramon fell and paused, horror-stricken. Not till the others were almost upon her did she turn and run – too late.

As, heart fluttering like that of a frightened quail, she ran for the wood Ilarian seized her. Wildly beating the brutal, pock-marked face, she writhed helplessly in his arms.

XXXIII: THE DEATH IN THE NIGHT

During the rest of the day, while the train rolled and rattled and jolted its slow way over the heated face of the desert, the correspondents stewed with Bull in their own juices in semi-darkness. At intervals there would come a stop. With the mad, blind selfishness of panic the brigada Gonzales had burned the watering-tanks as they passed. So those that followed had to draw for the engine with buckets from wells. Also there were occasional rails to be replaced which, with equal selfishness, they tore up again the moment the train passed over.

When the sun finally set in a fiery conflagration and dusk brought some cess of the heat the conductor came in with tales of wholesale desertions from the brigada Gonzales, and shortly thereafter began the dispersion of their own men. As they approached familiar country, or tempted by tales of rich loot to be taken from near-by haciendas, they began to drop off in fives, fifties, tens. Of those that had kept the corrugated-iron roof beating like a drum with their stampings and shufflings throughout the afternoon, there remained only a single solitary figure when, after dark, Bull climbed up on top to air his choked lungs.

As he sat down on the running-board the figure looked up, then moved closer. “It is thee, señor?”

Peering, Bull made out the face. It was the sentry who had spoken to him at Valles’s door. As his mind associated what the “dean” had said with the recognition he spoke quickly. “The señor Benson? Didst thou see – ”

“Si, señor.” His head moved in the gloom. In the rambling peon fashion he ran on: “‘The close mouth admits no flies,’ said Matador. ‘Keep thine shut and we shall make thee a captain to-morrow.’”

“A captain of what, señor? Of ghosts? For I was not deceived. He that was sentry when they killed the German? He became a captain? Also they that helped to roast the Spaniard till he told where he had hidden his gold? And the three that killed el presidente for Huerta? Captains and majors and colonels were they – of the dead. Si, among the revueltosos it is become a saying, ‘Be not a captain till thou hast grown lieutenant’s spurs.’ Si, I knew that I should be dead before the eve of another day, so I fled my guard, señor, and came straight to thee.”

Though he was on fire to hear, Bull knew better than to bring his crude thought into confusion by interruption. While the train ambled along he let the narrative take its own course.

“‘A captain?’ said Matador!” His eloquent shoulders quivered in the gloom. “Better to be a live mozo at the tail of Don Miguel’s horses in Las Bocas.”

From a second pause he ran on: “He came to the cuartel general, the señor Benson, while I was sentry of the second watch at the door of my general. He was in there, Valles, with a girl. I had seen her go in – such a girl! tall and straight, with eyes misty as twin nights, teeth white as bleached bone, hair thick and black as the pine forests that clothe the Sierra Madras! Santisimo, señor! such a girl as one may have when he has combed a country and taken first pick of its women! I could hear her laughing in there when the señor Benson came striding up the stairs.

“I saw, when he drew near, that his face was flushed, but there was no smell of liquor upon him. ’Twas the red of the great anger that burned in his veins, kept his head shaking like that of a tormented bull. When I barred the way he looked at me with eyes that snapped like living sparks, shoved me aside into the corner with one sweep of his arm, before I could stop him had opened the door and walked in – walked in, señor, through the anteroom into the private office where Valles was at play with the girl!

“El Matador himself had warned me, ‘Let no man pass!’ But when I had picked myself out of the corner and followed in, there he stood in front of Valles, who had dropped the girl and leaped to his feet. Surprise and fear showed on his face – the fear of bullet, knife, and poison that dogs him everywhere. But it changed at once to a grin – the terrible grin his people fear. His glance at me said, ‘Stay!’ and as I stood, waiting in fear and trembling, he spoke with a voice that cut like a knife.

“‘It is my amigo, the señor Benson.’

“Señor, I have seen his generals tremble when he spoke like that. Even el Matador, tiger that he is, would slink before him like a whipped cat. For all the pesos in all the world I would not have taken his place. Yet that great Englishman stood before him solid and square as a stone; answered with a voice of a hacendado in speech with a peon.

“‘I came to tell you, Valles’ – just like that he spoke, señor, without even a ‘my general’ – ‘I came to tell you that I do not take my answers from secretaries. The offer I made you this morning was fair and square and good business for both of us. It deserved more than a threat of ‘requisitions.’ You’ll never get my horses that way – if I have to cut their throats. If you want them, say so – yes or no.’

“He got it, the ‘no,’ quick and hard. Then the great anger that was in him burst forth like a river in flood. Like bear and tiger they quarreled, the señor threatening Valles with the power and vengeance of his government, Valles snarling defiance, their passions feeding each other as brands burn together in a fire.

“One other thing, and you will have a picture of it, señor – the two at their furious talk, the girl against the wall behind Valles, one hand held out, fear in her great eyes, and a fourth; for as they wrangled there came a stir behind me. So quietly that I, whom he touched in passing, did not hear, el Matador came into the room. One second he stood, watching them from narrow eyes, then, slowly and quietly as a snake slipping through grass, he drew up behind the señor. I have shot men in this war. At home in Las Bocas I have drawn the knife in passion. But the cold glittering of his eyes, slow snake crawl, chilled the blood of me.

“He had gained knifing distance when the señor roared in disgust. ‘Bah! Why do I waste words on a peon? My general, is it? I have had such generals whipped on my place! General? A bandit peon who steals horses in place of the chickens with which he began his thieveries!’

“‘Bandit peon? Stealer of chickens?’ This, señor, to Valles that had killed a hundred men with his own hand before the wars ever began? The yellow eyes of him seemed to leap out of his face. At the sight of him, frothing like a mad tiger in lust to kill, the girl screamed, hiding her face! At his belt hung pearl-jeweled pistols, the best of their kind. But with the instinct of his old trade the hand of the butcher flew to his knife.

“They say that the señor tried to kill him. It is a lie! Even when the knife flashed in his eyes he still stood at his distance, shaking his big fist, growling his threats, angry but unafraid; so big, strong, masterful, that Valles, even in his fury, hesitated. But not el Matador! Looking back as she ran out of the room, the girl saw as I saw; screamed aloud as the knife passed, once! twice! with a hiss and ’heigh! splitting the backbone, piercing the heart.”

With that strong sense of the dramatic which makes the peon a born story-teller he stopped. For a moment the flash of a match lifted the brown, hard face from the gloom under a tattered sombrero, lighting the faded red of his blanket serape. Then they faded again into a dim, huddled figure that swayed with the rack and swing of the cars.

Bull had unconsciously suspended his breath. Now it expired in a sigh. “His disposal. Know you aught of that?”

The shrug quivered again in the darkness. “There is little more that I saw. Across the body el Matador looked at me, and I chilled with the sure knowledge that I should never see my niñas again. He even stepped, then Valles spoke.

“‘This is a good hombre. He will help thee with – that!’ He followed the girl into the next room.

“Between us, el Matador and I, we rolled the señor in serapes, binding them with cords so that the face should not be seen by them that carried him out to the secret place; and it was then that he spoke of my captaincy.

“‘Go now to thy quarters, señor.’ He clapped me on both shoulders. ‘And dream of the stars the morning sun will see flashing here.’

“But lest I sleep too well, señor, I came from the cuartel here.”

For a full minute, while Bull chewed the bitter cud of remorse, the cars racked on through the night. Then he spoke. “There is one in El Oro, the consul Ingles, that would have given many pesos – not the currency of Valles, but real pesos of silver and gold – for thee to set thy name to this!”

“Si!” His cigarette glowed in the midst of a shrug. “Of what use pesos, even silver and gold, when the sight is darkened and the mouth shut? When one may no longer see the niñas at play, watch the dancing of girls? When the taste of good food is gone from the mouth, the feel of warm liquor from the throat? He that betrays Valles will have no more use of these.”