Part 17

Watching from one side of the window, Gordon now saw the men working, in swift rushes, around the corrals to the stables, from behind which they could command his window. Indeed, he had no more than moved back before--zip, plug! zip, plug! zip, plug! the bullets began to stream in through the window and plump in the back wall.

Presently, with a sharp, splitting ping! one pierced the door just above the woman's shoulder. Reaching hastily, Gordon pulled her close against him; then, standing against the thick wall between the door and window, they waited--in deadly silence, for the fire had suddenly stopped. So still it was, he could distinctly hear the woman's excited breathing and an occasional sob under the bed.

"Tempting me to look out," he read the silence.

But he was wrong. A minute thereafter came a soft patter of nude feet and the voice of Maria, the little _criada_, called through the bars:

"It ess good now, señor, for you to come. Don Jake say for you help with those evil ones."

The instant he stepped outside the situation explained itself. Warned, first by the firing, then by women who came running out to meet them, "Don" Jake and Sliver had quietly made their dispositions. At the back gate Sliver and two _ancianos_ now stood with leveled rifles. Two more poked deadly snouts over the low _patio_ wall, Lee and Jake behind them. And now they had leadership the women were swarming like brown hornets out of the adobes, brandishing knives, cleavers, _machetes_, a hysterical, dangerous mob.

In accordance with their outlaw tactics, Jake and Sliver had both aimed at the leader, and, cut off from escape, with still another enemy behind him, he had taken the hint. Arms reversed, rifle muzzle resting on the ground, he stood with his four companions. To give them their due, they showed no fear. Half or whole bandit, ugly, black-browed, one of them villainously pock-marked, the others with unhealthy erupted skins, they rolled cigarettes while urging the excited women to greater frenzy with evil jokes.

"Drive back those women!" Jake called the moment Gordon appeared. "Then bring the captain, or colonel, or general, whichever is what, over here."

Nodding in reply to Gordon's gesture, the leader followed him across the compound. Of medium height, well formed, features aquiline and cleanly cut, he was a perfect specimen of that tailor-made, detestably handsome Mexican middle-class type. Conceit, insufferable vanity, bristled at the ends of his curved mustache. How it could be associated with such reckless hardihood as he now displayed must remain one of Nature's mysteries, for, entering the patio, he took a seat under the portales and addressed Jake with an authoritative air:

"Now, señor, will you please explain why you have attacked a command of General Valles?"

"Yes, if you will explain, on your part, why a command of General Valles attacked my people!"

It was Lee that answered. She was wearing her man's riding-clothes, and the man's surprise when she spoke told that he had taken her for a boy. Now, with exaggerated courtesy that was far more offensive than his first hardy insolence, he sprang up and offered her his chair.

"I did not know"--his bold glance wandered over her costume--"you will pardon me, señorita?"

Though she flushed, Lee returned the stare. It was not the first time that revolutionists had come with "requisitions" to Los Arboles. She answered from experience.

"You have a commission from General Valles?"

He had. It ran in the usual form, setting forth in grandiose language that the necessities of the revolution demanded all good citizens to contribute their uttermost to the cause, authorizing the bearer, _el capitan_ Santos, to seize and expropriate such goods, cattle, horses, or other chattels according to his judgment, and to settle therefor with his note of hand, payable after the revolution; signed in Valles's own illiterate, crabbed hand and attested with a prodigious seal.

Lee handed it back. "This seems to be in legal form. That being the case"--she returned to the attack with a directness that drew from Jake an appreciative nod "perhaps you will now answer why you attacked my people!"

"I know of no attack except"--the straight brows knit over a black flash at Gordon--"when this man killed one of my men."

Already Lee had gained the details from the women. She replied at once: "He shot in self-defense--to save one of my girls."

"Santa Maria!" His mustache drew up in a cynical grin. "What foolishness! As though a good soldier should be shot because he ruffled a dove. You Americanos take these _peonas_ too seriously, fill them with ideas above their station. On our haciendas they are proud to gain a soldado for a sweetheart."

Could the thoughts of, say, Gordon, Jake, and Sliver have been examined just then they would have shown, respectively, an intense desire on Gordon's part to break the officer in two across his knee; a cool calculation by Jake as to the possibility of "getting away with it" should they find it necessary to kill the entire command. Sliver, still holding a bead on the file of men, from his gaze, was ardently wondering if he could send one bullet through all four heads.

If the thoughts of the _peonas_--now gathered in a murmuring, gesticulating mob that showed principally as glistening eyeballs rolling like foam in a sea of brown faces along the wall--a composite of their thought would have shown a mad passion to rend and maim, mutilate and torture, bred of their natural savagery aggravated by centuries of mistreatment under Spanish-Mexican rule. Out of which chaos of thought and passion, vibrant and sweet with the strength and truth of a fine nature aroused by base wrong, came Lee's voice:

"_You_ say that? _You_, a follower of a man who was once himself a _peon_, who boasts that his is the _peones'_ cause? _You_, his representative, sneer because we treat like human beings these poor creatures? If you _do_ represent him, then God help us, for we have little but violence to expect from your cause."

It was a fine chord, strongly struck, should have set in vibration the strings of sympathy in any normal human being. Though he caught but little of the Spanish, Gordon felt and glowed responsively. It aroused even Jake, the cold and crafty, born hater of the _peon_ in all his ways, to mutter: "You bet! they hain't got nothing coming from him!" But in the nature of the Mexican, warped and blackened forever both by training and by the vicissitudes of bandit war, it aroused only surprise. Though his eye lit up, it was only in secret appreciation of her beauty. It was to ingratiate himself, personally, in her favor that, with a sudden reversal, he ran off with despicable glibness the shibboleths of his "Cause." Surely they were fighting for the _peon_; to obtain his rights and restore the public lands alienated by the _hacendados_.

"If my hombre did as you say," he concluded, "he earned his death. My general would be the first to applaud it." With a gesture that dismissed the killing lightly, as if it were that of a fly, he added: "So let us say no more of that. My wish is to serve _you_!"

Though again he did not understand the words, the grin that accompanied them in its offensive mixture of conceit and admiration sent the angry blood flooding Gordon's face. He was standing behind Lee, and, hearing his quick breath, she put back her hand in a restraining gesture.

"Leave him to me," she whispered. Then, looking the other straight in the eye, she gave him his answer. "You wish to serve me? Very well, señor, you may do so very easily--by removing yourself and your men off my place."

For a moment he looked at her, the offensive grin wiped out by surprise. In turn, surprise gave way to sudden viciousness. "Si, señorita--after you have produced two hundred horses, which is your share of the new levy for equipment and supplies. Also"--another black flash went to Gordon--"it will be my duty to take this man to my general."

"Perhaps I had better go," Gordon whispered. "It may save you--"

Lee cut him off without looking around. "And shoot him the moment you get him outside the gates?" She quoted the Mexican law of "The escape." "No, señor, I will be responsible for his safe-keeping and deliver him with my own hands at your general's call." She added, after a significant pause, "Along with the evidence of your own neglect in permitting your men to attack my people."

For a moment he looked nonplussed. Now and then, for the sake of effect--especially upon meddlesome consuls--it was the fashion in the revolutionary armies to shoot a few men for just such offenses; and one could never be certain where the next lightning might strike. He blinked, tried to pass it with a shrug; but suppressed fury showed through his vicious look.

"Very well, señorita, the matter shall be left to my general. But the horses. These I must have at once."

"Well, think you've got 'em, an' let it go at that!"

While Jake muttered behind her, Lee stood thinking. Then out of her meditation flashed a sharp question: "Were you at the hacienda of the señor Benson last week?"

The man's dark brows rose. "No, señorita. If there was a requisition served there it must have been by el coronel Lopez."

"When did you leave the cuartel general?"

"Ten days ago. We have been working among the haciendas on the other side of the railroad. But what difference does it make--"

"A great deal." She gave a little nod. "Since you left headquarters the señor Benson, with my manager, the señor Perrin, has gone with an offer of all our horses on favorable terms to General Valles. So that matter may also be left with him."

"Which lets you out!" Jake, who had been fuming all this time in the background, now burst out. "Now git! That's what I said--an' take your dead hombre along."

From his cold, bleak face, so dangerous in its vitriolic quiet, the man's glance passed to Gordon, whose hand was on his gun, then to the peonas who were now crowding the _patio_ gates. Everywhere his glance fell amid a small sea of hot, brown faces flecked with a scum of glittering, dangerous eyes. Accustomed to be met always with fawning fear, defiance was a new experience, not easily assimilated. As his glance returned to Jake and he felt the danger that loomed imminent behind his cold truculence, the instinct of defiance wilted. With a shrug he passed out into the compound through the lane the _peonas_ opened.

While he was assembling his command Jake leaned casually across the _patio_ wall, his rifle in the hollow of his arm, beside him Lee and Gordon, the latter now with a rifle. At the back gate Sliver and his _ancianos_ still stood, wary and watchful. Wherefore, in spite of secret mutterings, the intruders made quick business of it.

As, with the dead man tied in his saddle and leading the horse, they passed out under the _patio_ arch, the leader paused, bowed ironically, then followed his men.

"Saddle a fresh horse an' go after them," Jake ordered, when Sliver came up. "Don't let 'em see you, but keep them in sight. After this we'll have to keep one man circling the hills while the _ancianos_ keep watch an' watch at the gates."

With Lee, Gordon had moved out to the stage and stood watching the men ride away. "I am sorry to have brought this on you," he said, in low tones. In his ignorance of Mexican habits and treachery, he added, "Perhaps it would have been better if I had gone with him."

A hasty glance through the arch showed Sliver on his way to the stables. Jake was shooing the _peonas_ back to their quarters with much language and little ceremony. There was no one to see when, with a quick movement, she threw one arm around his neck, pulled down his head, and planted a swift kiss on his cheek.

"I don't want to be widowed--before I'm married."

At midnight Sliver brought in his report. "They've gone on to El Sol. After dark I drew up so close that I almost ran into 'em when they stopped suddenly at the other side of a ridge. Luckily my horse stood quiet an' the air was so still I heard every word of their wrangling. The captain he was fer coming back, but the others wouldn't hear of it.

"'The damned gringos shoot straight,' I heard one of 'em say. 'Already have they killed one of us, an' now they be ready. Also the horses are tired an' we hungry. Let us go forward to Hacienda El Sol.' Then, after some jawing, they moved on."

"An' they won't come back," Jake commented on the report. "Not so long as they kin find something that looks easier."

Which was only half of the truth!

XXIX: TEMPTATION

Bull's eyes opened at dawn on a cloudless sky that lay like an inverted pink bowl over desert so level and vast that the customary bordering mountains showed only blue tips up above the horizon. He had been half conscious of the cessation of movement during the night. Now silence, the cool quiet of dawn, lay over the hot and drowsy earth.

Sitting up, he saw on each side the brown adobe skirts of a desert town enwrapping in their squalid embrace miles of troop-trains which stood in the yards twelve deep and blocked the main line. Twenty thousand _revueltosos_, at least, heaped the roofs. As yet the men lay huddled in their bright serapes. But already the women were astir, lighting the scene with a flash of brilliant skirts. From rude hearths built of earth within a circle of stones a myriad thin, violet columns uprose and hung straight as strings in the crystal air.

"'Morning, Diogenes!" The correspondent's cheerful face poked up from under the edge of the car. "Some picturesque, heigh? Who'd think, to look at them sleeping so peacefully, that they were bent on the destruction of another outfit like this less than ten miles away? But that's your Mexican. With us war is a stern necessity to be shoved to a quick conclusion. With him it is a pleasure. Day is to fight in, night for sleep, noon for siesta, and he arranges his warfare accordingly. A night attack would be considered discourteous; not at all according to the Mexican Hoyle. At noon they quit, on the advanced posts, even visit each other and exchange gossip and cigarettes. Whereafter, with a cheerful, 'Adios, señor, it is time to begin fighting!' they return to their respective lines and go to it again. A cheerful people in the midst of their dirt and disorder." He added, thoughtfully, "I never see them like this without thinking of them as a band of careless children shrieking with laughter over the destruction they are wreaking with the powerful weapons we placed in their hands."

"Picturesque? Yes," he went on, from a pause. "But it's mighty hard on the common people. Look at that!"

He was pointing at a shriveled old woman who, with bony fingers, was clawing the horse manure that had been pitched out of a car.

"She's picking out the undigested corn to grind for her tortillas. Man!" Eyes flashing to the inspiration, he ran on in a flush: "If our wise men in Washington could only see that! Do you know what these armies are doing? Riding the brood mares, eating the seed corn! _The seed corn and the brood mares!_ You know what that means--famine! If I were a poet I'd take her, that old hag scratching her living from the offal of Valles's war horses--I'd take her for the symbol of Mexico--Mexico bleeding and bludgeoned, ravished, outraged, oppressed.

"It was hard to swallow, what your friend said last night, but it's true. While the Washingtonians prate of principles, this country is fast returning to its original condition of nomadic tribes warring perpetually upon one another. Already--oh!" He descended to a homely but vital conclusion. "They make me sick. God send us a _man_! A man with sympathy and insight; understanding of this people's failings and necessities. God send us another Lincoln!"

"You bet it's hell!" In spite of the profanity Bull's laconic comment was reverent in its essence as the most profound "Amen!"

With a shrug Naylor threw off his earnestness; became again his cheerful self. "I hear the Chinaman stirring. Come on down to breakfast."

Stepping from the ladder, Bull's glance went, in spite of himself, to the table. It was still there, just as he had pictured it, a squat stone jug with glasses; and though, seating himself on a locker, he turned his back, he was still acutely conscious of its presence. He did not look when the Chinaman carried it back into the kitchen. But he knew, and his sigh expressed more than relief. Moreover, both while he was eating and when, later, he walked with Benson and the correspondents into the town, it went with him, occupied always a corner of his mind.

From the adobe outskirts the soldiers and their women were moving in dirty streams of khaki and _peon mantas_ splashed with the flash of brass, vivid reds, violets, and blues of soiled calico skirts, the loot of a hundred towns. From a hundred painted streets the streams poured into the plaza, the heart of the town, there to move and mass and melt and mass again, a sweating, sweltering jam of brown humanity topped with a scum of evil eyes, dark, unhealthy faces. In dribbles and trickles its evil tide had flowed in from all over the land, and Benson's remark as they came from a side street into the plaza was fully justified:

"If you could just sink it for half a day a mile under the sea, this would be a safer, cleaner land."

Overpowering the stenches natural to a desert town, the sickening sweet odor of carrion hung thick in the air.

"More Mexican efficiency," the dean shrugged. "After the last scrap out here in the hills they made a stab at burning the bodies. They'd pile twenty or thirty in a heap, pour a bottle of kerosene over it, light the soaked clothing, then walk off swelling with the consciousness of hygienic duty well performed. Now when the wind blows this way--it's hard on a white man, though the Mexicans don't seem to mind. Appeals to the natural vulture in them, I suppose."

While they stood watching before crossing to the shaded promenade, the crowd opened behind them to permit the passage of a dozen men under guard. All Spaniards, they ranged in age from the threescore and ten years of a hawk-nosed old man to the twelve of his grandson. But one thing they had in common, the dull, blue hue of mortal fear. In the extremity of his terror the boy repeatedly stumbled and fell--to be picked up and prodded on by a rifle-barrel. Heads hanging, fearful, and hopeless, they shuffled through the crowd.

"Ole, Enrico!" As they came opposite, Bull's friend hailed the officer in command.

After walking a few feet with him, he came back. "They're Spanish storekeepers on the way to 'the place designated,' which is a revolutionary euphemism for being shot. 'The place' is the cemetery where they will be stood up against the wall. A nice little Mexican refinement, eh, making a man's legs carry him to his own funeral? Their crime? Respectability, most likely. They have either dallied in contributing to the 'Cause,' been caught hiding their goods, or perhaps have unreasonably refused some officer access to their daughters' beds. Even in this country"--he spoke with bitter irony--"there are still men to be found who draw the line at that. Or it may be simply that they are Spanish. God knows, it's enough. Valles never forgets that he is a _peon_. After the lapse of centuries he is visiting on their children's children the violences offered by the Spanish conquerors to his Aztec forebears. It may be poetic justice. A philosopher might find some justification for it--if it were only a cause and effect. But"--his pitying glance followed the stumbling boy--"it is rotten hard to watch."

It was only the beginning of a series of sights and events that, while running the gamut from acute tragedy to grim humor, revealed in flashing glimpses the bandit tyrannies that were masquerading as government. As the Spaniards disappeared, there came marching in their wake a group of Carranzista prisoners, mostly women, captured and brought in from an interior town. As they filed through the jeering crowd, a _revueltoso_ would reach and snatch away a woman that pleased him without a protest from the guards. Always she raised an outcry. But always she ceased at the flash of a knife or as a heavy fist closed her mouth. Whereafter, quietly sobbing, she would be dragged away by the hair or hand.

"That isn't quite so bad." The correspondent nodded at one struggling desperately with her captor. "She'll soon give in and dry her tears. In one battle we took over five hundred women prisoners, and within twenty-four hours they had all settled down to housekeeping with Valles's soldiers. Four years of war whose fluctuations are recorded by a change of husbands is bound to breed philosophy. For their kind it doesn't matter so much. They have ceased to care. But the others--daughters of the upper classes, reared in luxury, refined, many of them educated in Europe--well, during the sack of Durango forty girls of the upper classes committed suicide."

After crossing the plaza, Benson and Bull left the correspondents and turned down a side street where stood the British consulate. An old Spanish mansion, with a great _patio_ and interior garden, its high walls shut out even the murmur of the swarming humanity without. The glass doors of the office opened upon a wide, tiled veranda beyond which flowery paths ran under great trees that let down the brilliant sun blaze in a greenish rain of light. Its peace and beauty accentuated by contrast the drama of human misery that was in course in its quiet demesne.

As they sat waiting for the consul, they saw in the garden two nuns in earnest conversation with an old, black-robed priest.

"More victims of the 'Cause.'" After he had greeted them, the consul, a bluff Englishman, nodded toward the group. "Valles has robbed churches, seized their lands, shot the priests. He crowns it with--this. Last spring he quartered one of his regiments in the nunnery of the order to which these poor women belong. Now they are about to become mothers, and came here to-day to ask the priest--who is himself a refugee whom I saved from a mob that was stoning him to death outside--to ask permission for themselves and others to end their desecration by suicide. One would think that such experiences would kill in any human being the belief in a righteous God. But the old fellow is made of good stuff. Sticks right to his guns."

Through the open doorway, in confirmation, the voice of the priest came just then out of the quiet garden. Old and quavery it was with the burden of his sorrow and years, yet firm in the faith: "The life He gave none but He may take away. Why this terrible thing has befallen it is not for us to say. His purposes are closed in mystery, beyond our sight. It may be that we had grown proud; were swollen with self-righteousness; puffed up with the vanity of good works. Or it may be your sacrifice was necessary to scandalize the world of good people and bring these wicked ones to their proper end? It may be"--he paused, shaking his old head, tears coursing down his furrowed cheeks--"but it is not for us to attempt answer when He chooses to put our faith to the test. I have wished that He had seen fit to take me as I lay there under the stones of the mob. But that was impious, a wicked thought. We can only wait till His brightness pierces the veil of our mortal vision."

Poor brides of Christ! condemned to bear into that wicked world the children of furious lust! Yet, under their bitter sorrow, the leaven of mother love had been at work. The younger, a sweet-faced girl of twenty four or five, raised her pale, olive face. "And may we love them, our babes, when they come?"

The humanity set its reflection in the smile that overflowed the wrinkled face with sympathy and understanding. "God is love, Sisters. He would not wish otherwise."