Over the Border: A Novel

“The gall of them! Our horses!” Repeating his former observation, Sliver would have ridden after.

But Jake caught his bridle. His bleak eyes were scintillating like sunlit icicles. His lean, avid face quivered with subdued ferocity. “Don’t be a damn fool! They’re only using ’em for cover! We’ll shoot along this side of the ridge an’ catch ’em at the end of the valley!”

Meanwhile Bull rode on down the slope. After a surprised stare that showed her rescuers to be Americans, Lee had knelt again beside her father. As before said, Bull was no beauty. His black beard, bushy brows, hot red eyes, drink-blotched face, were of themselves sufficient to frighten a woman. Yet when she looked up sympathy illumined his countenance till it shone in her distressed sight as a clear lamp radiating human feeling. Without fear or doubt she turned to him for help.

“It’s my father! I’m afraid – Can’t you do something?”

So far Carleton had lain with his eyes closed. Now he opened them and spoke in detached whispers as Bull knelt by his side. “You’re – American. I told her not to follow. Don’t bother – with me. I’m shot – through lungs and stomach – bleeding inside. Get Lee – back to the house.”

“Plenty of time,” Bull soothed him. As a crackle of rifle-fire turned loose in the distance, followed by sudden silence, he added, “That ’ull be the last o’ the Colorados. I’ll fix you a bit, an’ when my fellows come back we’ll jest pack you home.”

With a plainsman’s skill in crude surgery, he tore up Carleton’s shirt to make a pad and bandage which he twisted with a stick till the blood-flow stopped. This was no more accomplished before Jake and Sliver rode up, driving the horses ahead.

“They won’t cut no more soles offen people’s feet,” Jake answered Bull’s questioning look.

“Fine and dandy.” Bull nodded. “You, Jake, rope a fresh horse outer the band an’ ride like hell to the railroad an’ wire El Paso for a doctor.”

“No!” Lee eagerly suggested. “Wire the American Club at Chihuahua. These dreadful days all gringos help one another.”

Freshly horsed, five minutes thereafter, Jake galloped away – but not before, cold, crafty, laconic, dissolute gambler as he was, he had left a comforting word in the girl’s ear. “Don’t you be skeered, Miss. I’ll bring out a doctor, if I have to ride inter El Paso an’ raid a hospital.”

As he went out of sight over the next roll Sliver, with the girl’s aid, lifted the wounded man up to Bull in the saddle. So for the second time within three days did the giant rustler bear like a child in his arms agringo victim of the Mexican revolution. To the leaven that had been working within him was now added the most powerful influence that can be brought to bear on a man – a woman’s heartbroken sobbing.

VI: BULL TURNS NURSE

Passing over into the next valley, they came on the body of old Francisco, hacked almost to bits. So far Lee had kept a strong grip on herself. But now she burst out crying.

“The poor fellow! He was faithful as a dog. We saw them cut him down, and that caused dad to lose his head. Otherwise he would never have tried to pursue them alone.”

“He was old – an’ died a man’s death,” Bull offered her rough comfort. “You couldn’t wish him a better ending.”

It was man’s reasoning, therefore contrary to her woman’s feelings, yet it helped to control her grief. She acquiesced at once when Bull suggested that she ride ahead and prepare a room.

By her departure Sliver was afforded an opportunity to get something off his mind. After a glance at Carleton, who had relapsed again into unconsciousness, he nodded at the horses. “Don’t you allow I’d better leave ’em here? After we get through with him we kin come back an’ – ” He stopped, shuffled uneasily, under Bull’s stare.

“You’re dead right! Don’t trouble to say it. I’d steal the horses offen a hearse.”

Bull’s glance dropped again to the unconscious man. Then, very slowly, he voiced his opinion, formed on frontier code: “Wait till he’s well enough to fight for his own. Till then – we leave him alone.”

Stepping at a lively gait, they passed in half an hour under the patiogateway. Within, arched portales ran around three sides, supporting the gallery of an upper story. From the red-tiled roof above a wonderful creeper poured a cataract of green lace, so dense, prolific, that only vigorous pruning kept it from burying the portales beneath. In the center rose a great arbol de fuego, “tree of fire,” contrasting its flaming blossoms with the rich greens of palms and bananas.

They were met at the entrance by a flock of frightened brown women, house servants, and peonas; for of the scores of men who had worked for Carleton before the wars there were left only three witheredancianos to bear his body up the wide stone stairway to a room that caught the fresh breeze from the mountains.

Here Bull redressed the wounds. His skill, however, was only of the surface. As it would require at least four days to bring a doctor even from Chihuahua, he felt that unless Jake materialized one out of the dry desert air Carleton would surely die. Nevertheless, he stoutly denied the possibility to Lee during the two days that he shared her watch.

Sliver, on his part, also did his best to cheer and comfort, relating marvelous tales of accidents and illnesses that, by contrast, made shooting through the lungs and stomach look smaller than a toothache.

“You she’d have seen Rusty Mikel, Miss, the time his Bill-hoss turned a flip-flop onto him. Druv’ the pommel clean through his chest, it did. Yet he was up an’ around, lively as a bedbug by candle-light, in less ’n five weeks.”

Surely without them the girl would not only have broken down, but her father could never have survived to see the doctor, whose arrival was announced by a rapid beat of hoofs the following evening. For Jake had achieved the impossible, grabbed him, if not from midair, at least from a revolutionary-hospital train that had stopped at the burned station to bury its dead.

The doctor was American. But even as he dismounted at the gate Bull picked him for a “colonist.” Just how, he himself could not have said. His premature grizzle, unhealthy pallor, might have been due to overwork. But a certain brooding quiet, seen only in those who have been cut off for long periods from communication with their fellows, impressed even Sliver. He remarked on it while they sat with Jake under the portales while he ate.

“Say! but he’s whitish. Looks like he’d done time.”

“He has,” Jake nodded. “I had it from a Yankee machine-gunner in Valles’s army that had got himself shot through both arms an’ was being taken back to the base hospital with about a hun’red others. When I landed at the burned station he was a-setting with his legs dangling out of a box-car door, watching ’em bury his compañeros that had died on the way.

“‘Gotter do it quick,’ he says. ‘They don’t keep worth a darn in this clime.’

“He’d met Carleton once in Chihuahua, an’ ’twas him that sent the doctor an’ tol’ me about him while he was packing his grip. Seems that he’d belonged to a gang that worked insurance frauds on American companies. They’d insure some peon that was about ready to croak, paying the premiums themselves an’ c’llecting the insurance after he cashed in. If he lingered ’twas said that they hurried him. That was never quite proved, most of ’em being too far gone to testify when they was resurrected. But the doc had furnished the death certificate, an’ as the Mexicans ain’t so particular about technicalities as our courts, he was sentenced to be shot along with his pals. If he’d been Mexican they’d have done it, too. But Diaz, who liked a bad gringo better than a good greaser, commuted the sentence to life imprisonment. He’d actually served twelve years – think of it, hombres! twelve years in a Mexican jail before the revolutionists let him out to serve on their hospital-trains.”

“Twelve years!” Sliver echoed it. “An’ just for croaking a few Mex? He orter ha’ practised in New Mexico. They’d have give him a medal up there.”

After Jake had eaten, the Three sat and smoked till the doctor came down. While eating he made his report. “If I could do any good I’d stay. But he will surely die to-night. It’s going to be mighty hard on that poor girl. Like most of us” – his glance took in all Three – “Carleton didn’t come down here for his health. It’s bad form in Mexico to inquire about a man’s past. Nevertheless, it’s pretty well known that he killed the seducer of his wife and came here with the child when she was four years old. She’s never been away since, and has no kin that she knows of. To run a hacienda, these days, is too big a job for a girl.”

His deep concern showed an underlying goodness. Genuine sadness weighted his words when he gave his last orders from the saddle. “I’ve left an opiate in case he suffers. He may regain consciousness, but don’t be deceived. It will be the last flare before the dark.”

It happened at midnight. An hour before, Bull had put Lee out of the room with gentle force to take needed rest. He had then moved his chair to the door, which opened out on the corredor, to secure the free air his rustler’s lungs demanded. Across the compound he could see the moon’s pale lantern hanging in the branches of a yucca that upraised its maimed and twisted shape on a distant knoll. Northward the mountains loomed, dim and mysterious, in tender light that reduced the vivid chromes and blues of lime-washed adobes in the compound to pale violet and clear gold.

Gringo as he was, his people had lived under Carleton’s hand fuller, freer lives than their forebears had ever known under the Mexican overlords, and, day or night, the patio had never lacked a dozen brownpeonas on their knees at their prayers to the saints. Under thearbol de fuego in the center of the patio below three old crones had erected a small altar, and its guttering candles now threw splashes of gold up through the crimson dusk of the tree. Adding the human note which, by contrast, accentuated the infinite mystery of that still night, their mutterings rose up to Bull; bits of gossip sandwiched between prayers.

“Three crows perched here at sundown, Luisa. Thou knowest what that means?”

“Si; they were devils come for a soul.”

“’Tis a pity that all gringos are doomed to the flame. The señor was a good master to us that had felt the iron fist of the Spaniard.”

“The señorita? She that is so sweet and good. Thinkest thou, Luisa, that she also will be cast into hell?”

“Not if my prayers can save, Pancha. Three great candles, at twenty centavos the candle, have I burned on the altar of Guadalupe for her soul’s sake. There is yet time for her. But the poor señor – ” her pause doomed him. Nevertheless, with greater vigor they returned to their prayers for his saving.

The dim beauty of the night with its spread of moonlit plain, loom of distant mountains, querulous supplication rising under cold stars, combined to produce that awful sense of infinity that shrouds the riddle of life. If Bull was incapable of philosophizing upon it, to translate the feeling in thought, he still came under its sway. While it weighed heavily upon him, there came a gasp and feverish mutter from the bed.

In a second he was there. As he removed the shade from the candle he saw Carleton’s face lit by the last flare. Recognition and intelligence both were there.

“Where is – Lee? Sleeping? Don’t wake her. Listen! She – must not – stay here. Tell William Benson – he’s rough and a bully – but honest and good. Tell him to get a permit – from the revolutionists – to drive my cattle and horses – across to the States. They will bring enough – to keep Lee for many – a year. Be sure – ”

The halting voice suddenly failed. Even while Bull was reaching for a stimulant the soul of the man passed out into the mystery beyond the moonlit plains.

For a while Bull stood looking down upon him. Then, very slowly, he made toward the door that led to the girl’s room. But as her tired face rose before him he stopped and shook his head. “Let her finish her sleep.” Tiptoeing, instead, out to the gallery rail, he leaned down and softly called the old women.

VII: THE RUSTLERS ARE ADOPTED

“Well, I reckon this about lets us out.”

The Three sat under the portales, heavily smoking. Bull puffed meditatively at a strong old pipe. Between lungfuls Sliver toyed absently with a cigarette. The necessities of dealing faro-bank had trained Jake in the labial manipulations of his fat native cigar. As all necessary readjustment could be made with the tongue or lips, his hands were thrust deep in his pockets, a proof of profound mental concentration. It was he who had spoken, and the “this” alluded to Carleton’s funeral, which had taken place the preceding day.

It had been a quiet affair. William Benson, the nearest white neighbor, happened to be in El Paso. Of a round dozen Mexicans of the better class, eleven were wearily waiting on the other side of the border till still another revolution should restore their territorial rights. The Icarzas, Ramon and his father, a bewhiskered hacendado, attended, with Isabel, the dusky beauty of the house. The Lovells, a small American rancher and his two pretty daughters, represented the hundreds ofgringos, miners, ranchers, engineers, smelter men, who would have come in normal times. So these, with Lee, Carleton’s peones, and the Three, had followed the rude ox-cart that bore him to the graveyard of a little adobe church in the hills. Their duty in the premises being thus consummated, the Three had resolved themselves into a committee on ways and means.