Part 19

Really anxious, he watched her go slipping and sliding, most of the way on her beast's haunches, but at every stumble she picked it up with skilful use of the bridle.

"Come on!" she called back, laughing.

But before he could move, before she could even turn to look back, the noose of a _riata_ writhed like a smoke ring out over the chaparral and was drawn with a swift, hard pull around her arms. At the same moment a man leaped and seized her bridle while the leader cinched her feet under her horse's belly.

"Run!" From above Gordon saw her white, desperate face turned over her shoulder. "Run! Oh, _run_!"

He could not--had he wished it. It happened so quickly that he had barely time to use the spur, and if Ramon's cast had been made a second sooner he would have been roped before his beast moved. As it was, the loop settled diagonally across his left arm and right shoulder. The next second he went flying backward out of the saddle and landed heavily. While he was still in the air, however, his hand had gone to his gun. Now he turned it loose downhill.

That it would shoot nine shots in eight seconds was its maker's boast, and the weapon proved it. Aware that he might kill Lee, but conscious through his blind confusion that it might be worse, he emptied the clip, shooting close to the ground.

His aim, erratic enough, was rendered more so by the desperate tugging of the revolutionists on the rope. Like spray from a swinging nozzle, the bullets flew right and left, all but one, which went through the leader's head. Then, a couple of whips of the rope caught the free arm in against his body.

At the foot of the hill the men were examining their fallen leader. "He has killed him, el capitan! Cut his throat, the gringo swine!"

Eyes glittering in his villainous, pock-marked face, one of them snatched out his knife and came rushing uphill.

Gordon knew it for the end, felt the chill of death. If he could only have risen and fought them! But to lie there, bound and impotent, while the knife was drawn across his throat! To pass out into the blackness and leave Lee to face her fate! He struggled fiercely, striving to break his bonds. As he relapsed in cold despair, Lee's voice, shrill in its mortal terror, rang out:

"If he is hurt, Ramon, I shall hate you forever!"

To give him due, Ramon was already stepping forward. A sudden writhing, like the first quiver of boiling water, passed over his face. He looked, but without answer raised a warning hand. "The gringo is not to be harmed, hombre."

"But he has killed el capitan. Also he shot Tomas, our compañero."

"The fortune of war, amigo. I passed my word to one that held my own life in the hollow of his hand."

Gun in hand, he faced the revolutionist who stood fumbling his knife. Out of the situation it appeared that only tragedy could issue. But in all the world there is nothing more mercurial than the moods of a _peon_. Behind them rose a coarse laugh.

"Santisima Trinidad! why quarrel over a dead man, Ilarian? Hast thou forgotten the ten strokes with the flat of his saber el capitan gave thee for wasting rifle cartridges on rabbits before the fight of El Ojo? As for Tomas--I owed him ten pesos. Also, there are now but four of us to divide this señor's money."

The argument reached down to their bandit instincts. "Bueno, Rafael, bueno!" Another called: "Trust thee to see a peso through a dead man's shirt. Put up thy knife, Ilarian. It was Tomas's throat it flashed at last when he took Catalina, the pretty mestiza, away from thee."

The fellow still stood, undecided. He had drawn the knife. Dislike to back down kept him muttering and bristling like an angry dog till Ramon pulled a roll of notes from his breast.

"Here, hombre."

The man's huge mouth split in a grin. In his eagerness to secure his share, the fourth man came running uphill, dragging Lee's horse by the bridle, and while they argued over the division and gambled for the last odd note, she spoke in English.

"I would never have thought to find you in alliance with bandits against me. Why did you do it? It can only bring disaster." From which she ran on, touching with all her strength and skill on the chords of memory--their childhood, budding youth, incident, fond reminiscence, her own faith in his goodness, pride in his honor. "And now would you destroy it all? The respect and affection I have always had for you? And what have you to gain by it? Surely not my love."

She thought he was shaken. Looking into his face, she had been shocked and astonished at the change wrought in a few days. Like mountain slopes stripped of their verdure, burned down to the hard slag by volcanic fires, so its softness and youth were gone, leaving in bold relief the hard lines of passion and hate. For one moment a quiver shook its grimness. But there was no softening of the burning eyes, for it took out of bitter anger.

"What have I to gain?" He threw up his head in defiance. "You! with love or without it!"

By its very unnaturalness his quiet was more ominous than his violent outpourings of the other day. She took her breath in sudden fear.

"Ramon, what are you going to do?"

Danger inhered in a light shrug, with its defiance of consequences. "Take you to San Angel--to be married, hard and tight, by jefe and priest."

"Oh, but they will not do it! They were friends of my father; have known me from childhood--"

"They are Mexican--would love to see you mate with me, a Mexican like themselves. They will do as I say. If not"--his nod carried a sinister significance--"so much the worse for you."

Unable to believe, she stared down at him; as she looked into the brilliant, hard eyes there was borne in upon her understanding of his insane egotism. The veneer of softness, courtesy, lip service, burned away; there was left only the animal fighting for the possession of its mate.

She bent her head in sudden shame. "Ramon, please take me home."

"Yes, to _ours_." He snatched her bridle. "Come! already we have wasted too much time."

As they had spoken in English, Gordon heard all. Now he spoke. "You stopped them killing me, but that would have been less wicked. Remember she is no _peona_, but an American subject. For any mistreatment you will be called to account by our government."

"Your government?" Turning his head, Ramon spat aside in the dust. "Your government? The Germans harried us for three years till we ran down and hanged the murderers of their countrymen at Covodonga. In Guerrero a villageful of people were shot for the murder of one Englishman. For the massacre of its citizens at Torreon even the Chinese demanded and obtained an indemnity of five million dollars. But your government--for the murder of hundreds of its men, dishonor of scores of its women, it has lodged--complaints. One more or less will not embarrass us--nor help _you_. Come on, hombre!"

As he moved off, leading Lee's beast, Gordon writhed in a last effort to break his bonds. For the moment he was blinded by the rush of blood to his straining eyeballs, but as his sight cleared he saw Lee looking back. That womanly pity which transcends fear had lifted her for the moment above her own terrors. Like a light filtering through a storm, her smile gleamed wanly through the pale window of her distress. Then the chaparral swallowed her, and he settled back in black despair.

Though it was only a few seconds, it seemed an hour passed before a foot swinging into his line of vision caused him to look up. The revolutionists had finished dividing the money and were looking down at him.

"Going to cut my throat, now he's gone," Gordon read it--and did not care.

But he had failed to count on the streak of good humor that crosscuts even a bandit nature. "We are the richer by a hundred pesos by him." Ilarian, the fellow who had tried to cut his throat, grinned at the others. "Let us lift him over there in the shade."

"'Tis hard on thee, amigo," the fellow went on, after they moved him. "'Tis hard to have thy girl snatched thus away. But have no fear"--though he caught only an occasional word of Spanish, the gestures, helped out by a gross leer, threw light brilliant as lightning on his meaning--"we will avenge thee. These days the pretty ones go to the strong. He has not got her yet. Adios--and better luck!"

As, laughing loudly, they left him, all the romance that had colored, for him, the Mexican revolutions, drained away, leaving him with clear, cold vision to face its dread facts--the tragic realities even then in course where the smoke columns rose, far away, under brazen skies. In agony of fear for Lee that transcended physical torture he watched them go.

XXXI: "BRAINS WIN"

Two days later Bull awoke from a wild nightmare through which drunken faces, infuriated faces, maudlin women faces, had whirled in a mad phantasmagoria, devil's dance of singing, drinking, swearing, fighting. As though it were another, he dimly saw himself hurling men through a window while glass crashed and furniture crumbled around him. More clearly, a second picture stood out--of a big black rustler--to wit, himself--set up against a wall before a firing-squad. He even saw the rifles aimed, and yet--his brain cool and that enormous desire gone, he lay in a little cell-like adobe room. Light streamed over the sheet across the doorway, and as, rising, he looked out into the _patio_ of the German Club he heard far off the boom of cannon punctuating the staccato pulsations of rifle-fire.

"The battle's on!"

As the thought passed through his mind it was killed by sudden agony, poignant, though mental, as physical pain. His great hands went up and covered his face, but could not shut out despair. "My God! I've fallen down!"

Outside people were moving and talking. But he paid no heed; just stood, face buried in his hands, till he recognized the "dean's" voice.

"Well, come on, fellows! They're going to it again. Let's get out where we can see."

"I'll take a look at Diogenes first," came the voice of his friend. "You chaps go on. I'll catch up."

Bull dropped his hands, revealing bleared eyes and swollen face to the correspondent's gaze. "Well! well! Up and bright as a cricket! You went it some in El Paso, Diogenes; but--last night!" He shook his head in mock reproof.

"What did you do? What didn't you do? Drank up all the whisky here, then went out and tried to dry up the cantinas. A few are still in business--those you didn't break up. It took a troop to round you up. They had you stuck against a wall when Enrico, my amigo, happened along. Remembering that he had seen you with me, he brought you over here."

"Well, I'm sorry! damned sorry that he did!" Bull shrugged. "On'y to be shot, like a soldier, would be too good a death for me. My kind smother in the gutter."

His bitterness touched the other. "Look here, old man, don't take it so hard. We all of us have our slips. The only thing to do is to get up and go on again."

Underneath his first lightness and present sympathy a heavier feeling had made itself felt. Bull had stretched out again on the cot, and now, as he stood looking down upon him, the correspondent's face grew grave. Once he opened his lips; then, unconsciously, Bull opened the way.

"Where's Benson?" He looked up. "Did he go again to Valles?"

"Unfortunately, yes. His consul warned him against it--without avail. What happened we can only guess. You know his temper; remember what he said on the train. Perhaps he threatened Valles. He could not have done much more, for he left his guns in the car with the Chinaman. 'So if the son of a gun kills me,' he told him, 'the boys will know it for murder.' He must have had a hunch, for he never came back."

"Dead?" Bull broke a shocked silence.

The other nodded. "They acknowledge it--say he tried to kill Valles, which is, of course, all rot."

Bull had leaped up. "Dead! And I did it! Drunken swine that I am! It's no use." He waved away expostulations. "You yourself warned me not to let him go alone!" He started out the door.

"Here!" the correspondent seized him. "Where are you going?"

"Out--to get drunk--get killed if I kin!"

Though he waved like a blown leaf at the end of the club-like arm, the correspondent stuck. "All right! all right! But what's your hurry? You'll be a long time dead, old man. If you must get killed, come with me."

Through Bull's black despair flashed a sardonic gleam. "Humph! Stand on a hill with a pair of glasses five miles off?"

"Not on your life, hombre! When we interviewed him yesterday that's exactly the crack Valles made about 'gringo correspondents' and 'long-distance reporting.' I'm going to show the beggar. It's me for the outposts where folks get killed."

Now, in his turn, Bull showed no concern. "Don't be a fool! You're paid to get the news, not to do Valles's fighting."

The change of positions was so swift, the correspondent could not repress a grin. "What's sauce for Diogenes is sauce for me. If you have a right to get yourself killed, so have I."

The black shadow again wrapped Bull. "I've good reason. If I kin git myself shot, like a man, I'm just that much ahead. But you--"

"Aw, shut up! Do you think I am going to let that greasy bandit get away with a crack like that? We're doing too much talking. Come on!"

"I'd--" Bull hesitated. "I'd like to see--_his_ consul first. His wife--she'd naterally like to know. She's in El Paso, just now, an' I know her address."

"We go past there. Then I want a minute with our consul. In case I don't turn up, I wouldn't want my San Francisco girl to be wearing weeds too long."

Going out, Bull stopped at the bar. "You needn't to be scairt." He answered the other's look. "My thirst's over--for a while. But I need a bracer." Yet the half-glass of raw brandy he swallowed had a deadlier significance. It marked the utter abandonment of hope, sealed his return to the old life.

Shortly thereafter the two entered the British consulate. With the quiet of despair he listened while the consul talked.

"I did my best to prevent Mr. Benson from going back, and thought I'd succeeded. If it hadn't been that he was seen going in, he would simply have disappeared. As it is, the cuartel general has given out several stories. First, that he tried to shoot Valles; which is absurd, for he carried no gun. Then that he was shot while trying to escape after being placed under arrest. Lastly--to satisfy me and give his murder the semblance of a military execution--that he was tried by drumhead court-martial and fusiladoed for his attempt on the life of the general. But of one thing I can assure you, Mr. Perrin"--he went on from a heavy pause--"this does not end it. Already the particulars are entered upon my records, and the British government never forgets. It may be one year--it may be ten. But when peace is restored this business will come up again. No matter how high the murderer may have risen, how low he may have fallen, the case will never be dropped till there appears opposite the name of William Benson in our archives, 'The murderer was brought to justice.'"

The quiet surety of his speech, based on a record of centuries among wild peoples, made it impressive. Outside, the correspondent commented thereon in his breezy fashion.

"That's Johnny Bull for you, dignified, slow in speech, but surer than hell! One of his subjects is killed in a far corner of Afghanistan. Up goes a regiment and decimates the tribe--or a brigade, or an army, if necessary; in which case, to offset the expense, the country becomes a British province. Hombre! how long do you suppose it would take that fat old fellow to settle this Mexican affray? Humph! He'd make shorter work of these mushroom generals and sawdust presidents than he did of the Hindu rajahs."

In another way the scene at the American consulate was equally impressive. When they entered the single little stuffy room, twelve feet square and entered from an alley, that conserved the dignity of the United States the consul looked up, then handed the correspondent a letter.

"Hum! Last call for Americans to get out of Mexico!" He coughed ironically. "Know ye, all gringos, by these presents: Owing to the fact that four hundred of you have been murdered, ravished, or tortured, and in order to remove further temptation from the path of the gentle Mexican, you are hereby ordered, without regard to your financial ability, consideration for the lives you endanger in transit, or property left behind, to return to your own country and thereby save this department from further annoyance by your kicks and complaints! Oyez! Oyez! Frankly," he turned to the consul, "what do you think of it?"

The consul shrugged his shoulders. "You wish to register?"

His pen scratched in the silence for a while, setting down the correspondent's name and commission. "Anybody else you wish to notify?"

The pen scratched on in silence the name of the San Francisco girl. Then he reached for the letter the correspondent handed.

"To be sent, in case of your death. Now, Mr. Perrin?"

The pen scratched Lee's name and address.

"Anything to send?"

"Nothing!"

"Very well, gentlemen!" His superficial cheerfulness was denied by his handshake--the sympathetic pressure of comrades under stress. "I shall observe your wishes--if possible. Well--" His shoulders rose again. "Hasta luego! Till we meet again."

"A brave man in a weak place!" The correspondent rightfully placed him, outside. "Now, Diogenes, for the front."

An hour later, after a heart-bursting run on foot for the last quarter-mile through small fountains of dust raised by shrapnel and rifle-bullets, the pair gained the uttermost outpost, a low wall of stones on the crest of a small hill that lay like a halved orange on the flat of the desert. A mile eastward, from the crest of the other half, a battery of French "threes" was spitting shrapnel with the feverish energy of an angry cat.

Between the hills ran a trench lined with thousands of revolutionists, whose incessant fire shrouded the front in bluish haze that was shot through and through with darting puffs. To the west and a quarter-mile in the rear, a second battery occupied a smaller elevation, protecting that flank.

Of the enemy, thirty thousand Carranzistas, out there on the plain were to be seen only lines of smoke that hung low over sand and chaparral in a great half-moon, the tips of which extended beyond the Vallista positions. But they could hear, too plainly, the twit! twit! of the ceaseless leaden rain passing overhead. Now and then a bullet would strike the wall with the sharp ring of a hammer on stone. Slipping through an embrasure, one pierced the brain of a revolutionist.

Seizing the dead man's rifle, Bull stepped into his place.

It was not that he particularly desired to kill Carranzistas. He would have shot Vallistas with equal will. But besides wringing a moment's surcease from his black despair, the instant his eye fell to the sights and he felt the familiar pressure of the butt, the old daredevil rustler spirit revived. As on the night he fought off Livingstone and his _vaqueros_ on the Little Stony, as on a hundred other occasions, every other feeling was drowned in a heady lust for fight. Just as carefully as though his life depended on it, he drew his beads on the lighter puffs that peppered the distant smoke. Watching him load and fire, grimly earnest, the sweat trickling in pale runlets down through the dust on his face, the correspondent nodded his satisfaction.

"Poor old Diogenes! But if he keeps busy he'll soon get over it."

Drawing his own weapons, a pencil and pad, he sat down on a boulder and began to take notes. And surely there was no lack of material. The spitting guns, trenches crammed with brown, ant-like men, the crackling rifle-fire, the desert shining like brass under the intolerable glare of the sun beyond the smoke haze, formed the background for a queer mixture of dirty comedy and squalid tragedy.

A few yards away, behind a second short wall, a brown girl sat on her heels patting out _tortillas_ while she gossiped with another girl, in complete indifference to the bullets flying overhead. At least she was indifferent until, glancing from the top stones, one upset her coffee-pot and quenched her little cooking-fire. Then, pretty face convulsed with rage, she shook her fist at the distant smoke-line while screaming frightful curses.

"Damned dogs of Carranzistas!" she finished with her last, spent breath. "Wait! Wait for the Valles riders! Then there will be a scampering with tails between the legs!"

Her mishap had drawn a roar of laughter from the revolutionists. The fellow that stood next to Bull now turned his grinning, sweaty face. "Ole, Amalia! Bring me a drink and thou shalt have the knifing of my first prisoner."

Her coarse answer drew a second roaring laugh. Nevertheless, while making it, she picked up her water-bottle. Less than a score of yards separated the two walls, yet it afforded stage room for the tragedy that burst in the middle of the comedy. For as she ran with a swift, shuffling step across it, the bullet of an invisible enemy found its mark; she collapsed in a heap.

Bull, also, had looked around. Now, heedless of the correspondent's yell: "Come back, you fool! She's dead! shot through the head!" he ran out, picked up the poor creature and brought her behind the wall.

As he laid her down the other girl came running across the bullet-swept space and threw herself on the body with cries and lamentations. She was not dead! She could not be dead, Amalia! the friend of her soul! For a while she ran on in a passion of grief. Then, springing up, eyes flashing white in her furious, distorted face, she flung her frantic curses at the distant line.

"Kill them, the damned Carranzistas! He who kills the most this day shall be my lover!"

"And here comes he that will do it!" The man on Bull's left touched his shoulder.

Up the hill behind them a battery was coming, stretched on a scrambling gallop. Alongside the guns, urging the drivers on, a man rode a great black stallion at the head of a cavalry detachment. Even at a distance the harsh, monotonous voice rose above the rattle of the limbers, rifle-fire, booming guns.

"It's Valles!"

As the correspondent pointed, looking back at Bull, the great black horse launched out and shot up the hill.

"Make way, hombres, for the guns!"

Amber eyes aflame, brute mouth working, face quivering like shaken vitriol, he was herding the men aside when his glance fell on the correspondent. Then, though his face drew into a grin, comprehension flashed in his hot eyes.

"Ole, compañero!" His wave of the hand took in all. "Hot work! but nothing to that which is to come. Mira!"

Following his pointing finger, they saw to the westward a great cloud of dust, long, thick, and low, rolling in upon their right flank. "Carranzista cavalry! But--look again!"

Looking always to their front, they had seen nothing of the cavalry, brigade after brigade, which was forming under cover of the hill to the west and behind them. Ten thousand wild horsemen were in the mass. Thousands of others were streaming out of the town. Big hands clutching as though he had them already in his grasp, eyes again aflame, Valles shook his fist at the distant dust.

"Wait, my dear amigos los Carranzistas! Wait!"

The guns just then topped the hill, and, sitting the great black horse with reckless hardihood out in the open, indifferent to the whistling bullets, he directed their emplacement. "To the left, hombres! a little more! To the right! easy! not quite so much!" The last one set, he rasped out a last command: "Bueno! Now shoot into the dust!" Then followed by his staff he went galloping down the hill.

"He bears a charmed life!" The man next Bull spoke again. "Out of a hundred battles he has come with never a hurt." He added, with a wink, "An' it was not always from his front the bullets came."