Over the Border: A Novel

Jake nodded. “If we douse the headlight and race by afore they have time to block us.”

Looking back, just then, at Gordon, now stripped to his undershirt and growing sootier every minute, Lee heard the answer. She did not, however, give it much thought. The hills and rocks that took on queer shapes in the dim light of a rising moon, giant sahuaros that went slipping past like huge ghosts, the occasional fires and lights, glimpses of strange brown faces, the rush and roar of the engine speeding through mysterious night, held her senses. Yet it stuck in her mind, came popping out when, as the engine rounded a sharp curve, the headlight beam struck full on a sheaf of glittering wires.

“Oh!” she called out in sudden alarm. “We ought to have cut the wires!”

It was a vital error. Gordon’s whistle expressed their joint dismay; but Jake, with his intense practicability, recovered first. “Well, what’s to do – stop an’ cut them?”

Bull shook his head. “Too late! We’ve been running over an hour. Nothing left but to take a chanst.”

Jake nodded. But presently he spoke again. “Chanst? If they pull up a rail an’ ditch us at La Mancha, I’d hardly call it a chanst with half of the brigada Gonzales shooting us up from all around. We’d be pickled for keeps.”

During their “rustler days” it had always been Jake’s craft that pulled them out of tight places. Habit held Bull silent till, after he had spoken to the engineer, Jake went on: “He says the track runs two per cent. down into La Mancha. We kin shut off steam an’ pussy-foot it the last few miles. So here’s the dope. We drop you-all” – his glance took in the others – “a mile this side of the station, give you two hours to go around, then shoot ahead. If we get through, you-all strike a light an’ we’ll stop and pick you up. If we don’t – we don’t. But you’ll be less ’n thirty miles from the border an’ have all night to make your getaway.”

“But – ”

Gordon’s objection, however, was nipped by Bull. “It goes.”

Lee, however, was not so easily silenced. Climbing down, she crossed the wabbling cab with unsteady steps and caught Jake’s arm. “Oh, don’t take the risk. We’ll abandon the engine. Come with us!”

Looking down into her face, Jake’s bleak eyes were almost soft. He gently patted her hand. “Now don’t be jumping at conclusions, Missy. We need the enjine to go on, but I ain’t a-going to commit suicide. If the tracks are blocked we’ll back right off. Then I’ll take to the bushes an’ follow you round.”

With that she had to be content. But, realizing the danger, she climbed up and sat beside him while the mogul rolled and racked and plunged forward through the night. She was still sitting there when, an hour later, a headlight flashed up far away.

“They’ve wired ahead!” Bull yelled across the cab. “Make him stop, Jake! We’ll take to the bushes here.”

“Oh! now you come with us!” Lee cried.

But Jake’s answer wiped out her happiness. “No, Missy, I’ll pull ’em along for a few miles while you-all make your getaway afore I drop off.”

Already the throttle was closed. Slowing under the brakes, the mogul glided to a stop. Leaping down, Gordon caught the provisions, ammunition, and rifles as Bull threw them down. Meanwhile Lee stood looking up at Jake with wide, distressed eyes.

“Come on, dear!” Gordon called up from below.

“No time to waste.” Bull touched her shoulder.

Still she stood. “Oh, I hate to leave you. Do come!”

“Oh, shore!” Jake laughed, patting her cheek. “I’ll jine you in a few hours – or at El Paso, if I miss you here.”

Because of his cynical outer crust, she had given him, perhaps, the least affection of the Three. But in the last few weeks she had sensed beneath it his loyal human feeling. Now, trembling, she put out her hand, then, reaching suddenly, she pulled down his head and kissed his cheek. The next second she leaped from the cab into Gordon’s arms.

Bull had already jumped. Left alone, Jake stood still while the engineer threw the reversing lever and opened the throttle. As the mogul began to glide slowly backward he raised his hand and touched the spot her lips had pressed. Perhaps it revived some memory of his boyhood, some reverent memory of the days when other women than wantons had held him in love and respect. His face was very soft; so soft and tender it would never have been recognized by his dance-hall flames.

The engine had moved back a hundred yards with increasing speed before he even moved. Then just as ice spreads its frozen mask over pleasant waters so the outer crust that hid the real Jake from the undiscerning spread again over his lantern features. In sudden shame at being caught by himself in such softness, he turned furiously upon the engineer.

“What are you grinning at?”

The man was not. He was far too much afraid. But though he asserted his seriousness with profuse apologies, it made no difference to Jake.

“The trouble with you, Alberto, ain’t that you Mexicans are a dirty, lying, thieving, murdering lot so much as you’re too plumb ignorant to know your betters when they chanst around. In that brown pudding you call a face there ain’t a gleam to show you’re sensible of the honor you’ve jest been paid. You don’t know it, Alberto, an’ you probably never will, but take it from me that if you was president of this rotten country ’twouldn’t come near it. If I don’t blow the top of your head off during the next hour – which I likely will – you’ll be able to tell it to your descendants that a white girl once rode in your cab. If they’re smart they won’t believe you. But it’s the closest to fame you’ll ever get, so play it for all it’s worth. Now listen, Alberto” – he shook his finger in the engineer’s frightened face – “if you ever expect to hand it down to them descendants aforesaid, cut out them grins and get down to business.”

Delivered in English, the harangue flew high over the Mexican’s head. But it did Jake lots of good. Having, as it were, palliated his shameful emotions, he followed his own advice and turned to the business in hand.

“How far is that enjine, Alberto?” He poked the question in with his gun.

“Five miles, señor.”

“Jest an enjine?”

“No, señor, it rides too steadily. It draws two cars; no more or it could not take the grade at this speed.”

“How long afore they catch us?”

“Ten more miles, señor. They travel two to our one.”

“All right, slow up a bit.”

With hollow clank of drivers the mogul moved on at slackened speed until less than half a mile intervened. It was running, of course, reversed, and across the intervening space the headlights stared. When, obedient to Jake’s order, the throttle was thrown wide again the two engines ran like giant insects through the night, one in chase of the other, thundering across bridges, whizzing around curves, shooting through cuts, chimneys spitting smoke and flame, headlights flashing defiance like fiery eyes.

All the while Jake timed the distance. “Cut her off a notch,” he ordered when the mogul began to gain. “I wanter draw ’em on as far as I kin.”

But out of the dim smoke that trailed behind the pursuing engine broke, just then, a series of red flashes in furious staccato. The drumming reports were drowned in the roar and clank of the racing engines; but the hail of bullets that rattled and glanced from the mogul’s side was unmistakable.

“Machine-guns!” Jake exclaimed. “Chuck her into high, Alberto!” As, under a full head of steam, the engine picked up and ran through the night like a frightened girl, he added: “Sheer accident, they hit us, anyway. They kain’t do it again.”

Proving his words, the next burst of firing went wide. Only one bullet struck the cowcatcher, and, leaping like a horse from the spur, the mogul launched in dizzy flight down grade; had drawn two miles ahead by the time she took the next sharp curve.

“Hold her at that,” Jake ordered.

But again he had failed to reckon with the wires, which, after blocking their advance, now cut off retreat. Shortly thereafter came a flash of light as the engine shot from a cut through the first of the series of stations they had passed on their way up.

In accordance with the inscrutable law which governs the location of Mexican stations, it stood a half-mile from the little adobe town that dragged its unclean, brown skirts across the tracks. If the inhabitants thereof had been content to obey telegraphed orders to build an obstacle and let it go at that, the mogul would probably have gone into the ditch without a second’s warning. But, desiring to see the smash, they had lighted a huge fire alongside the tracks, and under its glare the pile of ties, earth, and stones stood out plain as by day. Wheels grinding, blue sparks shooting from the sanded rails, the mogul stopped within a hundred yards.

After he had closed the throttle and thrown on the brakes the engineer’s eye had gone to the cab door. Then it switched to the ugly, black muzzle of Jake’s gun. Releasing the brakes, he reversed and opened the throttle.

A sputter of musketry had followed the first yell of disappointment that went up from the rabble of peon watchers. Fired from ancient pieces, however, the bullets fell short or rebounded like peas from the mogul’s sides. Picking up her stride, she outran their feeble pursuit in a hundred yards.

It was then that the engineer’s voice rose in protest: “But, señor, we shall run into the other train! Mira! Mira! it is now only a mile away!”

Jake’s eye measured the distance. Then, in dry soliloquy that, even if it had not been couched in English, would still have gone over the other’s head, he spoke. “Do you know what a maquina loca is, Alberto? You don’t? You s’prise me.” Scared out of his small wits, the poor devil had not even answered. “It’s the one great invention your pais has produced. ’Twas first used by Mr. Orozco shortly after he graduated from a mule’s tail to be commander-in-chief of Madero’s army. He designed it for the extirpation of Huertistas that got to tagging after him like these gents is trailing us. ’Twas very simple. He’d load up half a ton of dynamite on an enjine cowcatcher an’ turn her loose with the throttle wide open jest where she’d catch a troop-train in a blind cut. Mighty effective, it was, too. Some o’ them Huertistas was so elevated above their normal they hain’t finished raining down yet. Of course we’re shy on the dynamite. But a forty-ton mogul careering along at sixty miles an hour ain’t to be despised. Anyway, we’ll try it. At this gait we orter catch ’em in the cut beyond the station. Hit her up.”

While talking he had not been idle. First he laid his rifle by the cab door, ready to jump; then slipped over his head and shoulder the bandoliers of cartridge-clips Gordon had left for him. Meanwhile the Mexican’s frightened glance swung between him and the tracks which were slipping faster and faster under the mogul. Beyond the station a faint glow, reflection from its headlight, marked the entrance of therevueltosos’ train into the cut. In his mind the engineer’s horror, burning, mangling, scalding, fought for supremacy with his fear of Jake – and won. Selecting the moment that the latter’s two hands were engaged with the bandoliers, the engineer crossed the cab in one leap and plunged down and out.

“You son of a gun!” Grabbing his rifle, Jake jumped after.

But in the few seconds that elapsed between their leaps the mogul carried Jake a hundred yards. A second to a bump and each roll as he struck rebounded and turned over and over lost more time. A few more were required before he picked himself up. Then his glance went after the mogul, now shooting like a comet toward the cut from which therevueltosos’ train had just emerged. In the glare of the headlights each vividly illuminating the other, like two dragons breathing fire and smoke, they flew at each other’s throats.

Came a yell! a crash! Then darkness, hazy with steam, wiped out all but screams and agonized curses.