Over the Border: A Novel

“God!” It burst from Jake. “If Bull could on’y have been here!”

Both while in the air and rolling over and over he had an impression that he must have jumped almost on top of the engineer. But now, looking around, he became aware – first, that he was standing directly opposite the station; second, of a dark figure in the lighted doorway; third, of a flash, pistol-crack, of a bullet singing by his ear; lastly of a baker’s dozen of other dark figures rushing at him from all around.

In a pinch – how well Sliver and Bull had known it! – Jake could always be counted upon to do the unexpected. Behind him stretched an open, moonlit plain where he would be easily shot down or overtaken. Grabbing the bull by the horns, he rushed straight at the figure in the doorway. Into its dark midst went the butt of his rifle. Bang! he slammed the door, a heavy, three-inch affair of oak that fitted against stone jambs and lintels; was secured by iron swing-bars. As he dropped these in place the panels quivered under the impact of many shoulders. Leaving the man he had overthrown writhing and holding his middle, Jake crossed quickly to the window.

In readiness for just such contingencies, its iron grill had been set out six inches to permit a raking fire along the wall, and shooting at ten feet into the convulsive movement at the door Jake’s first shot dropped a man. As the others dodged around the corner a yell told of another wounded.

A smaller window commanded that side, and, crossing over, Jake raked the fugitives in their flight with a galling fire till the last dim figure disappeared in the brush. Then, after he had noted with satisfaction that the window rose high above the ground, he turned to his captive, who still lay groaning on the floor.

“Git up!”

Steel eyes and ugly pistol muzzle enforced the order.

The man, a fat Mexican with a yellow, bilious face and small, beady eyes, arose. “If you will only let me live, señor – ”

“Shut up!” Jake cut him off. “You’re the station agent?”

“Si, señor!”

“What’s in those boxes?”

“Powder, señor, giant powder that was brought in by revueltosos from a gringo mine. It is to be shipped on the train to-morrow to Valles, who will have it made into bombs for use in his trenches.”

“Thought so.” Jake grinned at the pile of boxes. “’Tain’t no trick to tell gringo dynamite. The markings fairly scream, ‘Made in America!’ So Valles is going to make bombs of it? Well, well!”

“Señor, you will – ”

“Now, Alberto, cut that out.” Having thus transferred the cognomen from the engineer to his present captive, Jake went on. “That precious existence o’ yourn depends altogether upon your paisanos outside. The longer I hold ’em off the longer you live. Get it? Bueno! Now trot over to the window. The second you see any one – yelp! If you don’t – ” He tapped his gun significantly.

The agent thus placed, he looked around the room, The blackened stone of the walls told that it had already been burned in one or other of the revolutions. He grinned again, noting that the original roof had been replaced with laminated iron. “Kain’t roast us out, anyway, Alberto.”

On the rough table a one-wick lamp shed light over the usual litter of a small freight-office. These days there was little real business. Only a few barrels and bundles stood with the dynamite against the back wall. Crossing the room, Jake pried off the lids, then, while the agent watched him with fearful eyes, he carried and piled the boxes in a solid block close to the table. That done, he returned to the larger window.

Beyond the tracks the plains ran off and away under the moonlight. Northward a cloud of steam hung over the cut, cloaking the salvage of dead and wounded from the wreck. From it issued an occasional cry, command, mutter of voices. Raising his rifle, he sighted into the midst, then dropped it again.

“’Tain’t square, shooting wounded.” But there was no pity in his eyes. His mouth drew into a hard grin as he muttered: “I’d like to know jest how many I got! Must have been a tidy mess. Well, well! look who’s here!”

It was a bullet that had flattened against the stone lintel. His quick eye had picked the flash out of a bunch of chaparral a couple of hundred yards away, and he searched the patch with sweeping muzzle emptying the chamber along its front. Then he waited. But came no answer.

“Afraid I’ve spoiled another of your colleagues.” He turned to the agent. “They ain’t very keen, anyway. You Mexes like a sure thing. It’s a cinch they’re not a-going to try anything till the moon goes down, an’ I simply kain’t waste any more of my valuable time on them. You kin keep watch, Alberto.”

Seating himself at the table, he produced the pack he always carried and laid out the first cards in a game of solitaire. As he played game after game Jake’s brow puckered, the corners of his mouth loosened and tightened again in accordance with the fluctuations of his luck. He could not have been more interested, absorbed if, instead of playing with fate on the edge of the grave, he were cleaning out cowboys in a frontier bunk-house.

In the eyes of the Mexican, watching fearfully, the cold, grim face loomed in the yellow lamplight, a mask of terror. Yet his fright held him the more closely to his work. Not a leaf stirred in the brush, puff of dust raised under the night wind, without his notice; and while he watched the darkening plains one second, the grim, hard face under the gold of the lamp the next, Jake played steadily on, played till, having compassed her circle, the moon rolled down to the horizon and hung poised, a huge silver ball, on the tip of a far-off peak.

Rising, then, he walked to the large window, threw the shutters and looked out over the plains, dim and mysterious in the fading light. A stir of movement, buzz of voices, told of the attack that was preparing in the chaparral behind the station. The hard line of his mouth curled in derision, but as his gaze traveled northward to where the black peak now pierced the bright face of the moon its contempt faded.

Lee’s face, whitely anxious for him, was in his mind, the thrill of her arms around his neck, when he murmured, “On’y thirty miles to the border, a clean getaway.”

Ranging southward again, his glance brought up on the dim, dark range that marked Sliver’s last stand. Once more Jake saw him lying, face turned up, among the rocks. But the vision brought no grief. His small nod expressed merely approbation. Till the moon went out and darkness settled over the plains he stood there, thinking; stood till, with a sharp ping! a bullet whistled past his ear. Then, after closing the shutters, he returned to the table – not any too soon; for as he sat down and picked up the cards came the crash of a volley fired at short range, the splitting and splintering of bullet-pierced shutters.

Through all, as a rat in a corner might watch a cat, the agent had watched him with deadly fascination. From the north window where he stood it was but a step to the door. Apparently Jake did not notice him take it, for he did not look up – even when the agent’s hand touched the upper bar.

“If I was you, Alberto, I’d come away from there.”

The agent froze. But Jake had spoken in English. The hand went again to the bar, was slowly lifting it when, following a second splintering crash, he fell forward on his face with a hollow cough.

“Through the lungs, I reckon.” Jake looked down at the gross body, writhing in its death agony. “I told you to keep away, Alberto.”

The man’s last convulsive clutch had swung the upper bar clear of its sockets, but Jake did not move. The lower bar still held and, standing up, he watched the oaken panels quiver and split under heavy blows. With rhythmic regularity came the crash of volleys fired point-blank into the shutters. Bullets, too, were spitting through the side window – to strike and flatten on the opposite wall. Over all, above the crash of rifle-fire, thud of the beam they were using on the door, rose the roar and howl of a blood-mad peon rabble.

“The hull town has come to the funeral,” Jake muttered. “Well, they’ll see some wake.”

As the door crashed in he stooped and blew out the light. Darkness fell through the room – darkness that pulsed with convulsive movement. Over the body of the agent the leaders tripped and fell. Upon them others piled in a heap, yet under the pressure of the howling crowd outside still others streamed in. Above the oaths, curses, mad howls, rose yells for some one to bring a light.

Presently it came, a piece of engine waste soaked in alcohol at the end of a stick; and when it did, the rolling eyeballs, furious faces, vicious mouths, stood out for a second, writhing in murderous lust, then set in sudden horror.

For the bluish flare fell full on a grim figure, tall, lean, topped with a hard face, steel-point eyes. The muzzle of Jake’s gun touched the top layer of powder. Cold, weird, satanic, he must have loomed in their vision as the Evil One in whose existence they all believed. Paralyzed by the impending doom, some stood staring. Others, screaming hoarsely, fought in vain to beat back through the crowd. Till the last moment, yes, till one hardier scoundrel raised a gun, Jake held them in torture, then —

Both shots were wiped out by the tremendous explosion whose thunder and red sky-flash were heard and seen by Bull fifteen miles away.

XLII: BULL DREAMS A DREAM!

After the mogul glided away, Bull, Lee, and Gordon crouched in the sage-brush while the revueltoso engine approached. With a roar it came at them out of the night, its beam light shooting an angry glance ahead. For a moment they saw it on the high railroad bank in black silhouette against the moonlit sky; an engine and two box-cars that swung and swayed under a heavy top load of soldiers beneath a luminous trail of smoke. On the first car a machine-gun showed in skeleton outline on spider legs. For a second the train loomed in their sight, then roared past, leaving the moon staring down at them through a yellow cloud of dust.

Rising, Bull held a brief council. The eastern hills had swung in while they traveled northward, now lay only a few miles away.

“We’ll gain into them a piece, then rest up for a couple of hours,” he said. “We kain’t afford more. On foot, this-a-way, we’ll have to travel at night an’ hide up during the day – unless we chance on a rancho where we kin steal horses! Of course, it’s terrible on you, Missy. But if you kin stan’ it for a little longer – ” He stopped as Lee shook, as he thought, with a sob.

It was, however, merely a little laugh strangled at birth by tire and trouble. “It seemed so funny that I, with hundreds of horses of my own, should have to turn rustler.” With a little mothering pat that somehow reversed their positions and brought him, the big, dark giant, under her fostering care, she added: “Don’t worry about me. If I could only make you some coffee! Do something to justify my existence! Here, give me a rifle. I can at least carry something.”

But Gordon took it from her. Bull shouldered the cartridges and provisions. Then, like dim ghosts, they moved over the desert, winding through sage, palo verde, stinkbrush, on their way to the obscure hills. Though Lee pleaded, time and again, to carry something, they obstinately refused – and it was well that they did. When Bull called a halt, at last, on the crest of the first hill she stood weaving and swaying until Gordon seated her on a flat rock.

“Don’t dare to move,” he ordered, “till I get you something to eat.”

They had left of their own provisions only coffee, crackers, and salt meat. But after “Alberto” cut off the engine Gordon had “requisitioned” his tortillas and chile stew – plenty for three. Once again Lee wished she could make them coffee. Fire being impossible, her dominant instinct still found a vent. While Gordon sat munching leathery tortillas his head was suddenly seized; with her wet handkerchief she washed the engine soot off his face.

Neither did Bull escape. “There!” Bestowing a little, loving box on Gordon’s ear, she turned on Bull. The cool, damp, soft hands seized and washed and wiped his black visage just as though he had been a child. Whereafter she gave a little sigh of satisfaction.

“Well, you’re half-clean, anyway.”

Like two boys they looked up at her through the dusk. Gordon had taken his punishment with a grin. Now he paid for it with a kiss that drew from Bull a grave smile. “Sleep, now, you kids,” he admonished them. “Two hours an’ we’ll have to be moving again.”

“You, too!” Lee insisted.

Exhausted by days of riding and fighting, she and Gordon slid almost at once into the deep, dreamless slumber of tired youth. Till the slower rhythm of their breathing informed him of the fact, Bull lay quiet. Then, rising stealthily, he stood over them, a dim giant figure guarding their sleep while the moon sailed down to the mountains. Fifteen miles to the southward Jake was playing his last lone “hand.” He was in Bull’s mind when a distant rumble followed a flash that lit the night sky with calcium red.

“Something doing there.” Though he could have no accurate knowledge, Bull nevertheless put his intuition into words. “Bet you Jake had a finger in it.”