Over the Border: A Novel

“What are you crinkling your nose at?” he hotly demanded of Bull. “This ain’t no tainted money. I took it from some sports that had been buying horses from Mexican raiders. Mebbe some of ’em came from this very ranch. Anyway, in default of finding the real owners, who has a better right to their money than the little girl?”

“’Tain’t that.” Bull shook his head. “I was on’y thinking that I’d liefer you tried to give it her than me. She don’t look like she’d take easily to charity.”

“That so?” Jake regarded him cynically. “Now kain’t you jest hear me a-saying, ‘Please, Miss, will you please take this, you need it so bad?’ But is there any reason why she should object to us investing a couple of thousand in horses?”

“No; but she will.”

And Bull was right. When, next morning, Jake, speaking for the Three, made his proposition, Lee shook her head. “It’s only a question of time before the revolutionists run off all the stock. Then where would be your two thousand dollars?”

“In the same box with yours – stowed safely away where we can’t spend or lose it, till Uncle Sam makes Mexico pay our claims,” Jake argued. “The risk we’re willing to take, because we expect to buy cheap on that account.”

At that she wavered; with a little more pressing, acceded. And thus by devious ways did the blind god of chance atone for many a former error, turning evil to good, if only for once.

IX: A PARTY AND ITS CONSEQUENCES

“Lady-girl’s a-going to have a birthday.”

The remark issued from the blue tobacco reek that filled the bunk-house. So thick it was the lamp on the table sent forth a feeble golden glimmer that barely revealed the sketchy outlines of the Three stretched at ease on their catres. But the title “Lady-girl,” Sliver’s especial name for Lee, stamped the remark as coming from him.

“That so?” Bull and Jake spoke in chorus. “How’d you know?”

“She asked me to write a piece, t’other day, in her birthday-album, an’ looking through it I kem on her day.”

“She asked me, too,” Jake admitted. “What did you write?”

“‘Roses is red, violets is blue; sugar is sweet, an’ so air you.’”

“A real nice piece, too,” Jake commented upon this classic. “I like it better ’n mine.” Nevertheless, with the secret pride of your true poet, he gave his own:

Under pressure, Bull also admitted a descent into poetry. “I ked on’y think of a verse that a girl once wrote in my sister’s album when I was a kid. ’Tain’t near as good as yourn.

“My pen is dull, my ink is pale;
My love for you will never fail.”

“I think it’s pretty fine,” the others commended the effort.

After a thoughtful pause, consecrated by heavy smoking, Bull asked, “How old is she, Sliver?”

“Rising twenty, be the date.”

“Seems to me we orter raise a little hell in honor of the ’casion – if it’s on’y to keep her from feeling lonesome.”

“Little bit close on the funeral,” Jake tentatively suggested. “Jest about three months, ain’t it?”

“Yes, for a regular party. My idea was just to tip off the Lovells an’ have ’em drop in that day.”

“We might shoot things up a bit, too,” Sliver began, but Jake cut him off with utter scorn.

“This ain’t no cowman’s jamboree. Girls don’t like any shooting except what they do with their own pretty mouths. A cake with candles ’u’d be my idee.”

“‘Cake’?” Sliver now returned the scorn. “Kain’t you see these Mexican dames baking a real, sure-enough birthday cake made out of raisins an’ curran’s an’ cit-tron peel, an’ with spice fixin’s to it? An enchilada stuffed with store prunes ’u’d be the best they ked do.”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Bull poured the oil of quiet counsel on the troubled waters. “What about Mrs. Mills?”

He referred to the widow of an American rancher who, with the aid of her young daughter and a few peones, had kept their rancho going since her husband’s death. “If one of us was to ride over to-morrow I’ll bet you she’d fix up a cake, if ’twas only a three-layer chocolate. As for candles, candles an’ beer-factories are the main products of Mexico.”

Thus was the ball set rolling, not only for the party, but also toward consequences unforeseen; and it received a second fillip when Bull delivered his invitation to the Lovells at San Miguel midway of the following afternoon. It chanced that Phoebe’s fiancé, a young mining engineer, had arrived the preceding evening, bringing with him a friend, a smelter man from El Paso. With the enthusiasm of youth they proceeded to enlarge upon the plan after Bull rode on.

“It would be a shame to leave out Isabel Icarza,” Phyllis warmly declared. “She and Lee have always been such good friends.”

Accordingly, a mozo delivered an invitation at the Hacienda del Solabout the same time that Bull dismounted at the widow’s rancho.

The widow, a woman of thirty-five or six, whose comeliness indicated former real beauty, fell at once for the plan. While Bull was eating supper she began on the cake. Having met her but once before, he developed a certain shyness. But if his communications with her bordered on the formal, he yielded himself captive without reserve to Betty, her small daughter.

Though nearly thirteen, with the promise of being as pretty in her flaxen whiteness as Lee herself, isolation had conserved, if anything, the girl’s childishness. Sitting on a chair opposite Bull, she prattled happily while they both seeded raisins, questioning him with an artless directness that sometimes proved embarrassing.

Had he a father, mother, sister? Where did they live? What was his business? Married? Why not? And when he returned the usual answer that no one would have him she brought him to sudden and utter confusion.

“Oh, I’m so glad! Mother would take you, I’m sure. I’d just love to have you for my father. Will you please marry her, then she will never be anxious or fearful again?”

Her mother’s merry laugh helped to cool Bull’s blushes. “Don’t be specially insulted. She says that to every one.” Then, brave little soul though she was, she lifted a corner of the curtain that veiled an ever-present fear. “It’s true that I get sometimes terribly anxious. Mexicans are lovely people when they’re kept in their place. But since Diaz was overthrown they’re like a school of naughty children, let loose without morality, discipline, or guidance to protect them from themselves. Sometimes I think we ought to leave, but if we did the place would be sacked and burned before we reached the railroad. So I’d rather take the risk than be a pauper in the United States. But there, I’m ungrateful talking this way instead of thanking Providence we’ve got along so well.”

“That’s the way to look at it, ma’am,” Bull encouraged her. While a wicked flash shot from under his black brows he added, “If any one bothers you jest send for us.”

“Oo-oh, but you looked fierce then!” the child gave a delighted shudder. “Do it again.” Though a humorous twinkle sterilized the rehearsal, she consoled herself with the reflection: “’Tisn’t the same. But I’ll bet you’re muy malo when you fight.”

“It’s a good thing if he is.” From the sink, where she was washing currants, her mother surveyed with approval Bull’s imposing bulk. “It was a great relief when we heard that you and your friends were staying with Lee.”

Later, when Bull’s shyness had somewhat abated, she spoke more intimately. From Ramon himself she had learned of his expulsion from Los Arboles. “Ramon is a nice boy, yet no one could blame Mr. Carleton,” she said. “Yet what is Lee to do? Before the revolution she could have taken her pick from scores of young Americans, but now they’re all gone.” Laughing, she finished with a remark which was destined, later, to produce unexpected results. “I guess we’ll have to import her a husband.”

Bull’s heavy rumble echoed her laugh. It broke out again when Betty cried out: “While you’re at it get one for me. I simply won’t marry a greaser.”

Because of the unusual proceedings she was allowed to sit up. Caught yawning while the cake was baking, she fled to Bull’s knee, from which strategic position she defeated her mother’s best efforts to coax her to bed. Whereafter she promptly celebrated her victory by falling asleep. Curled against him in trustful comfort, she slept with her fair head pillowed on his mighty chest till, the cake finished, he carried her to bed. A catre had been moved out for him under the portales. But after silence and sleep descended on the house he sat for a long time on its edge, softly musing, the warmth of the child’s body enwrapping his heart. Even Jake, whose sharp eyes had detected many an alien expression on that scarred visage of late, would have wondered at its tenderness.

Betty was still asleep when he mounted to leave next morning, but at the beat of hoofs she came running, bare feet and legs flying under her nightdress. Stooping, he swung her to the saddle before him. The pressure of her warm arms around his neck, soft lips on his cheek, put a thrill of earnestness into his farewell.

“Remember, ma’am, we’ll come whenever you call.”

A quarter-mile away he drew rein and looked back. Though smaller than Los Arboles, the rancho buildings grouped picturesquely in a pocket of the foot-hills. The rich purple and crimson blossoms of a bougainvillea vine that almost buried the house made a fine splash of color against the golden adobe walls and tawny pastures. Drenched in sunlight, roofed in by fleecy clouds sailing across the deep blue vault above, it seemed the abode of peace. But not so did Bull see it. It loomed through a dread mirage that squirmed with ugly fighting shapes.

Shaking his big head, he spoke aloud. “’Tain’t safe for them here, ’tain’t safe!”

So vivid was that dread feeling, presage of evil, the sweat broke on his brow. Into his mind shot a vivid picture of the miner hanging limply from the sahuaro, face turned up to the torrid sun. Around it, as in a whirling nightmare, revolved all of the horrors, outrages, and murders of three awful years. Turning, he shook his big fist at the northern horizon in fierce rebuke of the political lethargy and executive indifference on the other side of the border that had not only made the long list of outrages possible, but almost set the seal of approval upon it. Anger choked him. With the growl of a furious dog he turned again and rode on.

It may be laid down as a general principle that a woman never forgets and a man seldom remembers anniversaries. These tendencies are due to the fact that a woman lives principally in the past and present, a man in the future; while she observes past occasions, he creates new ones. Whether she be looking forward with youthful joy, or looking back with increasing regret, a woman specializes upon her birthdays. But, accustomed to her father’s bad memory, Lee had not expected any one to remember; was accordingly astonished and pleased when, coming to breakfast that morning, she found the table decorated with trailing vines and a bouquet of wild flowers at her plate that had been picked by Sliver.

“Why – ” she gave a little gasp. Then her shining glance accused the Three, whose sheepish grins loudly proclaimed their guilt. “How didyou know? What’s this?”