Over the Border: A Novel

Stooping, he awoke the sleepers, then shouldering the rifles and provisions, led off in the gloom, leaving Gordon to help Lee. And she needed it. The nap had left her sleepier than ever. Like a child aroused in the night, she yawned, stretched; still her eyes would not open.

Yet she made light of it. “My feet seem to belong to some one else. All the time they are trying to go off by themselves. Outch!”

It was the barbed thorn of a nopal, which hurt worse coming out than it did going in; the first of a series. Indeed, “cat’s claws” and “crucifixion thorns” lay everywhere in prickly ambush. “Spanish bayonet” scratched their shoes, scored their leather puttees. Now the sage would rise high above their heads, then leave them to scramble in the open among limestone boulders. Stripped to its bones by torrential rains of the last season, the ground heaved and tossed in pits and hummocks. In daylight it would have been heavy going. By night it was heart-breaking. When, after an hour of it, Bull called a halt the two laid down at once; in five seconds were fast asleep.

This time he allowed only twenty minutes, then got them up and pressed on again. So, alternately walking and sleeping, they gained ten miles to the north and east before dawn burst, a red explosion, through the first pale lights.

Its weird illumination revealed the same dreary expanse of limestone and scrub desert they had fought over the preceding day. It also showed Lee, pale, tired, limping, but cheerful.

She nodded when Bull proposed that they should keep on till sunrise. “To be sure! We’ll have all day to rest.”

“I didn’t mean, though, for you to walk no more.” Stooping suddenly, he rose with her sitting on his shoulder.

“Your weight ain’t no more to me than a fly,” he replied to her protest; and while the weird red lights faded to amber washes and these brightened into a fierce sunblaze, he carried her on to a mesa that raised its limestone face like the walls of an old castle from the boulders and sage.

“’Tain’t safe to go on,” he said, setting her down. “You’d think, to look around, there wasn’t a living thing within a hundred thousand miles. But you never kin tell. The desert has eyes that see without being seen; voices that tell of a stranger without being heard. Sometimes it is a herder in search of strays; sometimes a rustler hiding from the rurales; but there’s always some one. We’ll stop while it’s safe.”

He was right. Already they had been seen – by a peon who had been driven by the good looks of his woman to seek a harborage by a secret spring from revueltoso lovers. But the tale of their passing did not go forth by him. Already he and his woman were trudging at the heels of their burro deeper into the desert. But only twelve miles away “Alberto,” the engineer, was pointing out their footprints to the troop ofrevueltosos he had guided up the line.

“Here it was they got off, el capitan. See the marks of their feet? These little ones no larger than a child’s are those of the woman.”

“A white girl, thou sayest?” the leader asked.

“Si, señor, an Americana white as milk. Dressed she was in man’s riding-clothes that showed her very shapely. She will make the fine mate for thee.”

“There should be some pay.” The capitan went on, with a vile oath. “Twenty of us, see you, mashed by the engine the gringo loosed upon us; si, mashed to a pulp. As many more cleaned of hair and hide like pigs come out of a scald. Slow roasting would have been the least I had dealt that gringo. But he goes out like” – he blew out the match with which he was lighting his cigarette – “this! and takes a hundred more of us with him. Bueno!” His shrug accepted that which could not be undone. “They are gone, our compañeros, but we shall meet again – in hell. But these others, the girl and her men, shall pay.”

At his order, his men, about a dozen, strung out on a line the units of which rode a quarter-mile apart. Riding slowly, beating the country to the north and east as they went, they approached Bull’s limestone castle just as the shortening shadows proclaimed high noon.

After Lee and Gordon had eaten and lain down, Bull had built over them a rough ramada of sage-brush to protect them from the sun. Then, sitting in the shadow, he had held his tireless watch. While the revueltosoline was still miles away his keen eyes picked up the individual dust clouds that marked its units serpentining across the sage. He knew, yet let them approach almost within rifle-shot before he woke up Gordon, so carefully that Lee slept on.

“There ain’t many of ’em,” he whispered. “We must make ’em sick at the first shooting. I’m going to slip along the ridge to get that second man. Let yourn come right to the foot of the bluff. Wait till you kin see his eyes; then bust him where he’s biggest.”

Yesterday’s fighting had absorbed most of Gordon’s thrills. But now, as he lay looking down at the revueltoso coming on a little, ambling jog, he sustained a queer revulsion. Yesterday he had lain and loaded and fired as steadily as any of the Three. But, somehow, this seemed different – as different as a duel from a cavalry charge. His Anglo-Saxon instinct for fair play revolted at this ambushing of a single man. When, pausing at the foot of the bluff, the fellow looked up Gordon experienced an absurd impulse to rise and shoot from the shoulder after fair warning.

But while he hesitated Lee turned in her sleep and sighed. It stiffened him, that gentle sigh. A glance along the ridge showed Bull sighting from behind a rock. Drawing his own bead, he fired.

At the crack of the rifle Lee slid from under the ramada, startled and wide-eyed, in time to see the man collapse in the saddle, then slide headlong to the ground. Bull’s man was also down, and as the riderless horses threw up their heads and galloped away the dust clouds along the sage whirled back and combined half a mile away.

By that time Bull had returned, and as they moved on back he pointed at a gap in a low range that drew its jagged line across the horizon. “That is the Tejon Pass – about ten miles away. The American border is on’y twelve beyond. Mexicans never fight in the dark. If we kin hold ’em till then we’ll have all night to climb through the Pass.”

They made a good gain while the revueltosos were recovering from that first sharp lesson. By the time the latter had described a wide circle around the bluff Bull had taken up a second position on a smaller elevation, and held it while Lee and Gordon retired still further.

Thus began a repetition of the previous day’s fighting – with this disadvantage, lacking horses in open country devoid of the limestone ridges that afforded natural barriers, and surrounded most of the time with tall sagebrush, they had to keep up a constant fire, searching the brush with their bullets to keep the revueltosos from crawling up on them. It was hot work, slow work, laborious work, growing all the time more dangerous, for, following up in a wide circle, the revueltososbrought its ends around until, just before sundown, a shot fired directly from their rear informed Bull that their investure was complete.

It was not, however, for long. While Gordon threw bullets around the circle, checking its constriction, Bull crept through the sage till he sighted, at last, a light smoke puff issuing from a bush. He aimed into the middle of it and, following the crack of his rifle, a man leaped up, then fell forward.

So began again the retreats which continued while the lowering sun set the Tejon range on fire above a desert of lavender and purple. At dusk a huge, flat moon rose and hung like a polished shield on the horizon’s dark wall. Sailing on up, it flooded the desert with quiet radiance, supplying light for their tired feet. As they journeyed the dim mass of the range rose higher and higher till it blotted out the stars. Shortly thereafter they entered the Pass.

From its mouth a mule path wound up between high rocky walls, then fell, hours later, into a narrow valley, where they found a spring and pool, at which they refilled their water-bag. It was hard to leave. But after they had drunk and washed the dust from their faces Bull hoisted Lee on his shoulder again; with tireless strength carried her on up the trail to a plateau almost at the height of land that overlooked the valley. So tired was she Gordon had to keep her awake while she ate the dole of crackers and salt meat, the last of their provisions. Then, gathering her to him, he fell, with her, into dreamless sleep.

Again, to please her, Bull had feigned sleep. Again he returned to his ceaseless watch. Not since he left the train five nights ago had he closed his eyes. Yet his mind functioned as usual. Just as his body was accustomed to move, ride, walk under the heat of a desert sky, so his thoughts flashed and faded in the sultry heat of his brain. If anything, it was stimulated. His vision reached farther; he saw with crystal perception, grasped mental conceptions beyond his normal. As he gazed down on the sleeping pair his mind reached out beyond the danger of the hour.

Unconscious of his kindly scrutiny, the two slept on, Lee gathered in the curve of Gordon’s arm, fair head pillowed on his breast, both faces turned up in the moonlight. Exhaustion had drained most of the girl’s color, and, the redder for it, the arched bow of her mouth showed under the small nose, fine nostrils. The rounded oval of her cheeks, broad, low brow, smooth throat gained delicacy by contrast with the heavier mold of Gordon’s features. His level brows, firm mouth, straight nose, forehead broad and high above wide-spaced eyes, the good, square jaw, supplied the masculine equivalent of her fineness. One face, as the other, indicated quality, breeding. The girlish figure, well rounded in spite of its litheness, complemented the rangy body, flat flanks, long limbs, alongside which it lay so quietly.

In their wholesome, healthy youth they were perfect as a double flower. The man and the woman! given to him for a helpmeet in the Garden of Eden; a helpmeet in joy and sorrow, love and fighting, in play and earnest throughout the generations! The unconscious tenderness of that age-long relation was expressed by his guarding arm, her soft dependence; something of the feeling, mystery, and beauty of all past loves enveloped them sleeping there.

“Jes’ naturally made for each other. Not once in a thousand do you get such a pair.”

Bull’s murmur was founded on truth, for he had seen enough of the world to know of the misfits and mismatings, of the strong with the weak, of health and disease, ugliness and sweetness; the sales of youth to degenerate age; the chance matings of the slums that bring into the world a wretched swarm to fill the hospitals and prisons. Once in a thousand? Not once in a hundred thousand was Nature’s intent so completely fulfilled.

To the greatly wise and the greatly simple are vouchsafed visions, and to Bull, looking out over the dim plains, was given a dream. It began at Arboles. Just as he had seen Lee sitting under the portales many a time, fair head inclined over a bit of mending for one or other of the Three, he now saw her sewing and making for the small children that tugged at her skirt, tried to climb her knee. Small replicas of herself and Gordon, with the marvelous celerity of visions, they grew under Bull’s eyes into strong boys, healthy girls, whose shouts and laughter raised the echoes in the patio. Now they were young men and women! He saw the lads go forth and return proudly with young wives. He saw fine young fellows come in to woo and win Lee’s girls.

With that the vision expanded till it embraced all the land. Under forced peace, he saw the flood of immigration that had been arrested by the revolutions rise again and pour in wider streams by rail and ship into Mexico, now, in her turn, the melting-pot of the world. Ships thronged her ports; over her rich bosom railroads spread their lace of iron; and here, there, yonder, he saw Lee’s children, always strong, always upright, always considerable people among their neighbors. In legislature, church, halls of state, they took place – at first a few white faces among the brown; then, as time moved on and the brown race drowned under the foreign inundation, whites among white, governors, legislators, presidents of the Mexican United States, worthy peer of its neighbor across the Rio Grande.

It required hours for his slow visioning to arrive at this stately consummation. In course thereof the moon sailed down to its setting in the north, but while its dew-light still fell on the sleepers Bull’s gaze came back to them.

Surely they were “fit,” the chosen of Nature, ripe fruit of her age-long process. Surely they and their children, the big-boned, cool-brained children of the north, would displace the hotheads who now laid waste the land with their lusts and passions. Not by war would it be brought about so much as that commercial conquest which is more lasting and complete. “Fit,” morally and physically, in the fullest sense of the term, yet down there in the valley, in the dark Pass beyond, men more ruthless than the tiger, more cruel than the wolf, the “fit” of ten thousand years ago, were waiting for daylight to renew the attempt on their lives.

It should not succeed! As Sliver had sworn to it – and died; as Jake had sworn to it – and died; so Bull took oath. Also, with slow deliberation, heavy practicability, he began his dispositions. First, he examined the cartridge-belts, and his face darkened as he noted that two days of heavy firing had almost exhausted their ammunition. There was left only enough for one rifle; indeed, to fully charge Gordon’s, he had to empty his own.

“Won’t need it, anyway.”

Muttering it, he sent a satisfied glance around the plateau. All last evening while they were climbing over the first heights into the valley, then on up here, he had searched for just such a place.

“No, I won’t need it.”

Repeating it, he kneeled beside the sleepers and looked closely into Lee’s face, pale from exhaustion, but spirited as ever, and as sweet. He knew it for the last time – just as Sliver had known it; as Jake. Like Sliver, he would have loved to say farewell. But just as Sliver had repressed the desire to save her pain so Bull sealed his self-denial with a heavy shake of the head.

“Twould on’y break them up an’ do me no good.”

Very gently he woke up Gordon. “Don’t wake her till I’m through telling. It will soon be daylight. With it they’ll be on top of us again. The border’s over there – on’y a few miles.” With heavy steadiness he went on with the last fine lie: “I’m keeping the bulk of the ammunition, an’ I’ll stay here, for a whiles, to hold them off. But don’t you wait for me. She’s well rested now; so keep going and going till you’ve crossed.”

Reaching up, Gordon took Bull’s hand in a strong grip. “I suppose there’s no use asking you to let me stay?”

“No.” Bull shook his head. “An’ if I would – she wouldn’t! Now wake her up.”

Sleep had revived her wonderfully. She chatted quite cheerfully while making their last small arrangements. All day yesterday Bull had covered their retreats, and there was nothing unusual in his staying behind. Yet when, looking back as she and Gordon moved off, she saw Bull standing there, perhaps with some presentiment she ran hastily back.

“Oh, won’t you come?” she pleaded.

“Sure, come on!” Gordon seconded her plea. “We can fight and run like yesterday.”

“Yes, do?” Through the dusk her eyes, distended with fear for him, shone big and black in the dim whiteness of her face. In her dread earnestness she seized his arm; tried to pull him along. “Oh, won’tyou come? I’m so afraid. First it was Sliver, then Jake, now you. I’m dreadfully afraid that something has happened to them – will happen to you. And if it did – oh, what should I do? What shall I do?”

Her pallid face, earnest pleading, shook Bull like a leaf. For almost a year now her slightest wish had been his law. If he had succeeded in holding up his end in Torreon, to use his own phrase, “had walked in an’ come out again, sober, like a man,” he might have given in; gone on in her service. But, besides the deadly hurt that had slain in him the desire for life, he knew himself; as Sliver had known himself; as Jake.

She was crying now, head bowed on his arm, and small wonder. Through events that had been enough to shatter nerves of iron she had borne herself like a man. Even now she sobbed quietly, doing her best to restrain her tears. “There! there!” Gathering her to him, Bull patted her back gently, as though she had been a grieving child. “There! there! In a few hours we’ll be over the border, and ’twon’t be long afore we’ll be back at Arboles, you an’ Gordon an’ me an’ Sliver an’ Jake.” He said more; drew a picture of them all in the full swing of the old life. Then, with an assumption of cheerfulness that was remarkable because of the pain it covered, he concluded: “So don’t bother about me. There’s less risk here than in any of the stan’s we made in the last three days. I’ve got ’em all down below me an’ there’s on’y this trail. If they try to come on, it ’ull be like shooting turkeys for a raffle. I’ll hold ’em jest for a whiles, then ketch up afore you reach the border. So run along.”