Over the Border Part 48

An hour later saw them all placed-Gordon in the chaparral at the top of the trail; Bull, Sliver, and Jake at intervals of quarter of a mile down the zigzag trail.

"No shooting as they go down," Bull cautioned them. "Coming back, they'll be among the horses without a chance to turn."

The arrangement, while wise, was not altogether to Sliver's taste; he grumbled to Jake as they moved on down to their places: "Fat chance for us. He'll pick half of 'em off going up between him and Gordon, then turn and plug the others. Any maverick that gets by to us will be that riddled a bullet 'ull slip through him without t'eching."

"Ain't it coming to him?" Jake scornfully questioned. "He's welcome to my share-if it's any comfort. But listen, hombre-let me tell you that the killing of every _revueltoso_ in Mexico ain't a-going to cure his hurt."

Leaving Sliver at his post, Jake moved on down, and after he also disappeared in the chaparral silence spread a warm spell over valley and mountain; golden, sunlit silence that was emphasized rather than broken by the wild screech of a hawk.

From above Gordon looked right down into the amber heart of the Bowl.

Almost beneath him, the _jacal_ rose like a doll's house out of the vermilion splash of Pedro's ripe peppers. From it the green veining of the stream ran through the tawny pastures that were spotted with black dots, the feeding horses. Far down, just where the stream slipped out of the Bowl, he could see the giant oak that marked their camp; and though even his strong young eyes were unequal to the distance, imagination supplied the ashes of their fire, the bed of leaves under the spreading branches.

Instantly he began reliving, tenderly reliving that happy day so absorbed that he forgot for the moment the tragedy that had brought it to a close. He did not notice a slight rustle in the chaparral nor catch the gleam of peering eyes. Were it a raider, he had proved an easy prey.

But the eyes were soft; the hand that presently stole out of a bush and shook his foot was small and white. Whirling, he came face to face with Lee.

"What are you doing here?"

She placed her finger to her lip. "Hus.h.!.+ they are coming! I just couldn't stand it, up there in the chaparral all alone. So I tied the horses and-here I am."

There was nothing that could be done-except to look stern. Reaching, he pulled her down beside him, shook her a little, then spoiled the effect by a kiss. Then, lying flat on their stomachs, they kept a joint watch till the sc.r.a.pe of a hoof, rumble of voices, broke on the trail.

Peeping cautiously, they saw a motley procession file on to the plateau.

Like the soldiers of Las Bocas, their clothing ran the gamut of the service uniforms of Porfirio Diaz's army; the silver and gray of _rurales_, red and blue of the infantry, variations from these of cavalry and artillery, fatigue linen mixed in varying quant.i.ties with _charro_ and _peon_ costumes. Accentuating this motley, their loose gross mouths, blunt animal noses, lewd eyes in the midst of faces swollen by last night's debauch, fully justified Gordon's judgment:

"Gos.h.!.+ what a gallows crew!"

Weary and footsore after two days of heavy marching, neither their appearance nor their spirits were improved by the fact that half of them limped. Their voices had been raised in strident altercation. One fellow's angry complaint carried across to Gordon and Lee.

"The two gringo senoritas at the Lovell _rancho_, where were they?-fled to El Paso. At the second we got what?-one woman, a child, and three horses-and lost three men. At Los Arboles there were to be women, a score at least, young and pretty; also a gringo girl with golden hair and a skin of milk? And horses by the hundred, blooded beasts of fine breeding? What got we?-an empty house! Thou art a pretty leader, Filomena."

"Si!" came a second growl. "And the _fonda_? 'Courage, senores,' he says but two hours ago. 'In the barranca we shall find a _fonda_ with liquors and a girl, none prettier in all Chihuahua.' And-"

"Again an empty house!"

By one and another it was kept up. "We limp like lame cats," the first man spoke again. "If this business go like the first and there be no horses-I know of one throat that will be cut."

"And I of another!" The guide, an ugly, squat _peon_, turned on him with a snarl. "Was it I that sent up the warning smoke? No? Then fasten your tongue with your teeth. If you want women, they are to be had at San Carlos, a few hours away, a fine town untouched by war."

"Si, more marching," the first grumbler was beginning, when the other cut him off. He had advanced to the edge of the plateau and stood pointing down into the Bowl.

"And horses, say you? There they are-scores! Si, hundreds! enough to make us all rich when sold at the border."

Success! the s.h.i.+bboleth of the modern world! Even among these scoundrels it wrought the customary effect; turned malcontents into enthusiastic friends. "Bueno!" He who had issued the sinister hint of cut throats was the first to clap the guide on the back. "Bueno, amigo! thou art a leader indeed. 'Twas no fault of thine that the white-skinned girl escaped. I will slit the gizzard of the next that says it."

On his part the guide swelled and ruffled in the flattering sunlight. "I told ye. 'Leave it to Filomena,' said I. 'Leave it to him to show ye fat booty.' Behold!"

Also he a.s.sumed the airs and authority of real leaders.h.i.+p. "The horses we shall need to rope fresh mounts. Hide the stuff in the bushes till we return. 'Twill be only for a couple of hours."

Fired by the sight of the horses, the raiders fell feverishly to work unloading their loot, which-Gordon noted it with satisfaction-was largely provisions. Then, lameness and blisters forgotten, unaware of the cold, fierce eyes watching from the bushes, they followed the hors.e.m.e.n downhill, yelling and hooting, raising the echoes with s.n.a.t.c.hes of ribald song.

A thin wisp of smoke above the _jacal_ followed by an explosive flash as the dry thatch took fire announced their arrival at the bottom. From above Gordon and Lee saw them move down the valley in a long line that presently came sweeping back in a half-circle with the horses in its belly.

There followed half an hour of confusion at the corrals while mounts were being roped. Yells, wild laughter, vile oaths, rose like a fetid vapor out of the Bowl, fouling the clear sunlight, sweet warm air. Then the ma.s.sed animals began to move from the corrals and thin out to single file at the foot of the trail. Just as Bull had foreseen, a raider sandwiched in at intervals to keep them moving. As before, the watchers looked down upon the thin file wriggling like a slow, black snake up and around the trail's yellow convolutions.

After an interminable time, it seemed to them, the head of the file rose to Jake's post. Lying there, his long, thin body stretched at length in the sage, narrowed eyes fixed on the first raider, Jake had never looked more like "The Python" he appeared in _peon_ eyes. And he had the serpent's patience. Though his finger played impatiently with his rifle trigger, he watched man after man go by, waiting, waiting, for Bull's shot above. Always cool, he did not give vent, like Sliver, to inward grumblings as the file rose to him.

"If 'twasn't for orders," he mentally harangued the first raider that pa.s.sed, "your black soul 'u'd be a-busting now on its way to h.e.l.l!"

High above, Gordon waited with equal impatience, his hazel eyes trans.m.u.ted once more into blue steel flecked with hot, brown lights. But his imagination revealed to him much that was hidden from the prosaic vision of the cowman. The clear, clean air that flowed like tawny wine across the Bowl; dry whisper of the wind in the sage at his side; drift of white cloud across the blue above; the hum of busy insects; slow winding upward of the herd; it was all pastoral; stirred in his mind a vagrant recollection of the peace and quiet of Gray's "Elegy." In place of the thunders and lightnings, murky night, black rains with which man's imaginings clothed, tragedy, nature had set the stage in sunlight and flowers; invested it with Sabbath calm. Yet, the more powerfully for that peaceful contrast, he felt-felt with savage joy-Death, the grim angel, hovering above.

With her girl's strong intuition, Lee shared his feeling. Just as the wriggling black line rose up to Bull's station she leaned forward and broke off a twig that might have interfered with Gordon's sighting. Yet, in spite of a deep desire for vengeance, the retribution earned by a black deed, she shuddered. As, propping himself on his elbow, Gordon drew a bead on the leading raider she covered her eyes with her hands.

And Bull? As the raiders had pa.s.sed him on the way down every brute line of their evil visages had seared itself on his brain-the beast mouths, blunt noses, conical ears, gross cheek-bones; the sloping foreheads, in the center of which his imagination placed a small, round, purplish spot. Now, as they returned, his dark face in its implacable hate was the face of Death itself-the Death Gordon and Lee felt hovering near.

In the most tense moments, while the being is under shock of a tragic emotion, the brain will sometimes play strange tricks, register trifles too light for notice in normal times. As the first horse rounded the bend below Bull recognized it for a mare that Lee sometimes rode; a flighty, brainless creature, that would shy at its own shadow when nothing better offered.

About fifteen pa.s.sed him before the head of the first raider showed below. Instantly Bull's rifle flew up; the rifle that never missed, its sights lined true on the spot, the purple spot of his imagination. But the trigger did not fall. Pa.s.sing on down, his glance had shown him that the last two raiders were still below Jake's station.

He lowered the rifle again, intending, as Sliver had divined, to let three or four of the raiders go on up toward Gordon; and, with the action, vengeance pa.s.sed out of his hands. If there was anything in the world the flighty mare preferred to shy at, it was a snake. Perhaps a haunting memory of a bitten fetlock in her colthood was responsible for the preference. Be that as it may, when with a dry staccato warning a fat rattler raised its deadly head from bunched, glistening coils on the edge of the path the mare whirled and darted madly downhill, leader in a mad stampede.

A hoa.r.s.e yell marked the first raider's realization of his danger. With spur and quirt, he tried to force his mount against the bank. But a hatchet head intervened, the wedging body forced in between sent man and beast sideways over the cliff.

Springing up as the mare whirled, Gordon saw laid out directly beneath the course of the stampede down and around the stony staircases. At first it stood out clearly as in those cinema pictures of galloping men taken from a height. Following the first man's cry came the wild yells of the second and third. One! two! three! he saw them squeezed out over the cliff; saw them strike the next level and bound off and over on a longer leap; saw them turn, slowly in midair till the horses showed like fat slugs above the men; saw the final crash and disappearance in the chaparral below. But when his glance came back the crystal clearness was gone, obscured by yellow dust cloud from the bowels of which men and horses were ejected sideways as the stampede whirled on down.

Of the thirty raiders, but one had a chance-he who brought up the rear.

But as he turned to run he came face to face with Jake, who had sprung up to see. Instantly Jake raised his gun, but there came a roar and rattle of stones and hoofs. Before he could fire the dust cloud swallowed the man. Three minutes later it rolled down the last night to the pastures.

Over the Bowl silence fell again, golden, sunlit silence broken only by the screech of the hovering hawk. As before, the wind whispered in the sage, the clouds marched slowly across the blue fields above, the bees went busily upon their ways; but in the mean time-when the dust settled there remained, of the two hundred horses and thirty men, only the few animals that spread out fanwise as they galloped across the level bottoms.

With the swiftness, sureness of a lightning stroke in the night it had come, the doom-so swiftly that Lee and Gordon above, Jake and Sliver below, could only stand and stare, doubting their eyes. And Bull-

The instant the mare turned his mind leaped to the inevitable conclusion. With a roar, bellow of rage, inchoate, wild as the snarl of a balked tiger, he threw his hands on high, rifle waving like a reed in one great fist. Cras.h.!.+ lock, stock, and barrel, it flew in a thousand pieces as he brought it down on a rock! From the bank he leaped down to the trail, in his hot mind some mad idea of stopping the rush. But already the stampede had pa.s.sed. He ran a few yards, as though to overtake and pull it back. But it swept on and down beyond his speed.

Stopping, then, arms raised skyward, fists clenched, teeth bared, eyes glaring in the midst of his swollen, purple face, he stood, a towering figure of furious despair.

Into those few minutes were compressed all the agonies he had endured in the last few weeks-his trial, temptations, failure, bitter disappointment, tragic grief, crowned by this, the robbing of his just revenge. Swelling with a sense of vast injustice, the injustice that created the world on a scheme of struggle and pain, he turned maniacal eyes to the sky; stood shaking his bunched fists while a terrible blasphemy rose to his lips. But it never issued. For in the moment that it seemed his reason must crack there came slipping into his hot mind, like a cooling breath, the old vision-of Mary and Betty as on that last night.

In the sunlight that wrapped the valley, just as in the vast world loneliness under the quiet stars, he sensed her presence. His arms dropped, the mad light died. Bowing his dark face in his hands, he shook again with the throes of silent grief-but only for a short s.p.a.ce.

Presently he looked up, the old humility restored, its expression on his lips.

"'Twasn't for me. I wasn't fit. 'Twas taken out of my hands."

Quiet now, he watched the horses careering over the bottoms. When at last Sliver joined him he gave quiet orders: "Go down, you an' Jake, an'

collect up their guns-an' ammunition. Bring up fresh horses for all of us an' a couple for the packs. We'll have to light out for the border at once."