Over the Border: A Novel

Bull walked a few paces, then looked back at his horse. Its quivering knees, long, slow shivers, told that it was beyond further service. He returned to the woman. She had sunk into a second collapse, but she looked up at his touch.

“You heard them talking before – before – ”

“Si, señor, from our stables they had stolen three horses. I heard them speaking of Los Arboles; that they would take all of its horses and sell them at the border.”

Nodding, Bull went on his way afoot. But as, head bent, he passed the ruined wall from behind which Terrubio had challenged him long ago a voice called out, “Ole, señor!”

Startled, Bull looked up, half expecting to see again the uncanny eyes, weird cold face. But the faithful servitor was gone; gone with his loved mistress – to wait on her, if such things be, beyond the consuming flame. From behind the wall, leading his horse, hobbled old Rafael, the father of the woman.

“I had thought thee one of those wicked ones.” The old fellow slapped the butt of an old musket. “Once my finger tightened on the trigger, but by the mercy of God I waited. Si, señor, I saw them go. After I sent up the smoke I came back slowly, crawling along the valleys, keeping always the height of land between us. Thus I gained so close that I counted them when they passed; a full score, señor, and more, on their way by the plains trail to Arboles. But the mistress and the niña, señor? They did not harm – ”

He stopped, halted by Bull’s look, then cried aloud while the tears coursed down his wrinkled face. “The white ewe and the lamb! Gone! and I, the old dog, am left? But so it was always. Death takes his pick of the best! I would go after them, señor, those wicked ones; but of what use, save to make a noise, is an old dog after the teeth are gone? The biting must be done by stronger jaws; the running by fleeter feet. Take thou my horse.”

Thus freshly mounted, Bull made such time that he climbed to the smoldering beacon on the mountain’s shoulder before daylight failed. Below lay the valleys in mysterious pools from which long shadows issued to crawl up the flaming hills. Westward the dying sun had left a crimson wake, barred with black across the smoldering sky; a reflection, Bull felt it, of the fiery blossom that glowed in one dark valley. The faint stars weaving a wan embroidery across the trailing skirts of night, the fading light, the first cool breath of the evening, all helped to intensify the loneliness that clothed the obscure prospect. Yet in it that loneliness, the stillness of great solitudes, wide oceans, Bull sensed sympathy and peace; Nirvana, the peace of great worlds, planetary systems swinging through space on their appointed ways. She! They! That pleasant woman, lovely child, had been absorbed into, were part of it, this peace that quieted his troubled spirit.

He did not think this. Such philosophies were beyond him. But he felt and, feeling, a hoarse sob rose in his throat. Bowing his dark face in his hands, the big, black rustler shook in the throes of saving grief. He did not hear the thud of approaching hoofs; saw nothing until with a clatter of displaced stones Sliver and Jake came shooting out of the sage.

Because of its position far out on the plains, the warning smoke had been seen at Los Arboles long before its soaring column rose high enough to be noticed by Gordon above the rim; in fact, Jake and Sliver gained the forks of the Bowl trail while Gordon and Lee lacked still a mile of the summit. As Pedro had delivered Lee’s note the preceding evening, Jake knew that the couple were there. After a moment’s thought he voted down Sliver’s proposal to ride down for Gordon.

“He’d come in handy. Kin shoot some an’ his nerve’s all right. But you jes’ kedn’t shut her out. Better to leave them where she’s safe.”

“That’s right,” Sliver had added. “An’ it ’u’d shore be a shame to break up their honeymoon.”

Accordingly, unaware that the pair were riding hard at their heels, Jake and Sliver had held on until, as before said, they came shooting out on Bull. He had whirled, hand on his gun, but it dropped when a cowman’s yell issued simultaneously from their throats.

“Why, you dolgorned old son of a – ” Sliver stopped as, riding closer, he saw Bull’s face. “Why, hombre! What – ”

Turning in his saddle, Bull pointed at the crimson blossom in the dark valley below. He did not explain. With that keen intuition natural in those who live alone in the wide spaces, they had read in his face that which is denied to speech – the soul agony of a strong man. Given that blossom of fire, their knowledge of Mexican raiders supplied the rest.

“Murdered!.. Mother and child!.. Burned … with the house!”

To one skilled in the polished phrases which city folks hold in readiness for all occasions, the manner in which the two received the news might have appeared heartless. Jake looked off and away over the darkening world. Sliver bit a chew off his plug, then fell to examining a fray in his riata. When the latter finally spoke the aforesaid city person would have been greatly shocked.

“The poor damn kid!”

“Hell, ain’t it?” Jake’s tone was quite indifferent.

But Bull had seen Sliver gulping in an attempt to swallow the choking lump in his throat; also the sudden moisture that quenched the cold, snake sparkle in Jake’s bleak eyes. These were all-sufficient.

“They was heading for Los Arboles by the plains trail.” After a long silence he answered Jake’s question concerning the raiders. “Must be nearly there. My God! Miss Lee an’ – ”

“They ain’t there.” Sliver hastened to relieve his anxiety. “They’re – ” He was relieved from further explanation by a second clatter of hoofs. Out of the gathering dusk came Lee and Gordon.

Ever since they spied the smoke column, its dread possibilities had weighed down the girl’s spirit. But at the sight of Bull she forgot – for the moment. Uttering a glad cry, she dismounted, was running to him, hands outstretched, but suddenly halted, shocked by his look.

“Why – what – ” Following his pointing finger, she saw the fire. That, their inaction, told all before he spoke. “Gone! – both! – burned with the house!” Crying bitterly, she turned instinctively, as though to run to Gordon. Then, recognizing a need greater than her own, she faced about again and ran to Bull.

“Oh, you poor, poor man!”

Grasping his big, hard hands, she pressed her wet face against his knee while she sobbed out her sorrow and sympathy. Freeing one hand, Bull gently stroked her hair. Nodding for Sliver and Gordon to follow, Jake led them a few yards back up the trail; so there was none but Bull to hear when she began to sob out a broken confession.

“Oh, I feel – so wicked. While all this – was happening – I – I was – getting married!”

“Married?”

“Yes – to Gordon.” She ran on brokenly, giving him in bits the tale of all that had happened since his departure – her abduction, Ramon’s death, Gordon’s ultimatum. “He begged so hard – and the padre and the jefe said – that I ought – and I wanted to, myself – and we were so happy until – we saw the smoke. And now I – I feel like a criminal.”

“Then you needn’t.” He patted her shoulder. “The jefe was right. Never again will you have more need of a man’s strength.”

“But? At this time? While – ”

“How were you to know? An’ remember how hard she worked and wished to bring this very thing about. ’Twould have filled her with joy to know that it had come to pass. ’Deed, Missy, she does know an’ is glad at this very moment.” With that mixture of rude faith and humility that made his enormous strength incongruous, he went on: “Sure she knows an’ some day she’ll tell you so herself. ’Twon’t be for me to hear it. My kind don’t go where she is. But you will, an’, mark me, the first thing she’ll tell will be how happy she was in your marriage.”

“Oh, if I thought she would!”

“Be certain of it, child.” The last lights had now gone out on the highest peaks. Looking off and away into the gathering gloom, he recited many a hope that Mary Mills had expressed.

While he talked Lee’s sobs diminished. She looked up when he finished. “That makes me feel better. And you? You, too, think I did right?”

She could see, through the gloom, his sadness lighten. “For what d’you s’pose I brought him here?”

“Not to marry me?” She gasped. In spite of the gravity of the moment, her own real sorrow, she could not repress feeling natural in a girl who, having made, as she supposes, her own free choice, finds that, from the very beginning, her husband had been wished upon her. “Oh, if I’d only known it!” She added, with loving illogic, “I’m so glad that I didn’t.”

“That’s fine.” He patted her head. “It will be easier, now, if you have to live for a while in the States.”

“The States?” she repeated.

In a brief way, omitting mention of Benson’s death – she had enough to bear – he described the scattering of Valles’s army, concluding, “They’re wild against Americans.” He nodded at the fire. “The men that did this are on the way to Arboles; must be almost there.”

“My poor people!” she broke out, in sudden distress. “Gordon! Come here!” When, with Sliver and Jake, he emerged from the shadows she cried it again: “Our poor, poor people! They are on their way – the raiders! To Arboles! We must go – at once!”

“Too late!” Bull spoke heavily. “Even an aeroplane couldn’t get us there in time.” After, even more briefly, he had sketched for the others recent events, he went on: “I came back to bring you and Mary and the child out. For them it’s too late, but you must go at once – you an’ your husband an’ Sliver an’ Jake.”

“And you?” Lee questioned.

“I’m going on.” The statement in its simplicity carried more significance than the wildest vow of revenge.

“Alone?” Lee again demanded. “And you think we’d go slinking home to the States and leave you to face that band yourself?”

“It’s my quarrel, my work.” His answer, steady and heavy, issued on the darkness. “You are young and have your husband. Your future is all ahead. Mine is most behind. You folks head at once for the border. With Sliver an’ Jake to guard you – ”

But here he ran against a second obstacle. Sliver’s voice rose in the darkness. “An’ there’s nothing I’d like better ’n to look after Lady-girl. But I ain’t so much of a fool that I don’t know the store she sets by you, Bull, that’s been father an’ mother to her, now, for nigh on a year. So it don’t go that-a-way. It’s me for Arboles while you-all hit with them for the States.”

“Good enough!” Jake’s acid tones trembled through the gloom. “With a small amendment. You’re that young an’ foolish, Sliver, it ’u’d be a shame to cut you off – worse ’n the green grass that goes to the oven. So it stan’s like this – you-all go back; I go on.”

“No, you don’t.” Gordon’s quiet voice interrupted. “At any other time I’d feel diffident about putting in my oar. But these are our people. I could never look my wife” – he felt her hand steal up into his – “I could never look her in the face again if I stood for this. She ought to get out at once, and if you fellows will see her to the border – ”

“They won’t – till we all go,” Lee broke in. “It’s easy to see that you’ve all made up your minds to stay – and you’ll need me to hold the horses. We’d better be getting on.”