Part 24

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 señoritas 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, señores,' 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 shibboleth 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 assumed the airs and authority of real leadership. "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 horsemen downhill, yelling and hooting, raising the echoes with snatches 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 massed 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 passed, "your black soul 'u'd be a-busting now on its way to hell!"

High above, Gordon waited with equal impatience, his hazel eyes transmuted 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 passed 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 passed 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. Passing 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 passed 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 hoarse 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. Crash! 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 passed. 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 space. 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."

XL: SLIVER "MAKES GOOD"

By the time Sliver and Jake returned the sun hung like a red-hot ball in the smoke of the horizon. Even if the horses had not been tired, it was too late to start that night. Accordingly, after loading the raiders' provisions, they rode on down into the ravine and used the glowing embers of the _fonda_ for their camp-fire.

To them, sitting there, by ones and twos and threes the refugees came straggling in to gather for the night around their own fires. Going from one to another, Lee and Gordon dealt comfort and advice. They were to reap the standing corn and sow again for their own use in the secret places of the mountains. The _hacienda_ cattle they could herd in the cañons of the lower hills. Thus, with plenty of milk for butter and cheese, corn, and beans, their own chickens, goats, and pigs, they would be able to live in rude comfort till the coming of peace permitted Lee's return.

"The knowledge that they will not suffer makes it easier to bear."

Lee spoke, looking back at the brown faces enlivened by the ruddy glare of the fires. But when, next morning, they crowded around her, old men, women, young girls, and little children, mixing prayers, blessings, and lamentations with their good-bys, she was less philosophical. She was still weeping when she looked back at those that had followed her as far as the mouth of the ravine.

"Oh, if our government could only see them! Surely they would help."

Gordon looked for another outburst when, later, they sighted ruined Arboles from the very spot he and Mary Mills had overlooked it. How well he remembered it! The walls and courts, _patio_, rainbow adobes, a small city of gold magnificently blazoned by the red brush of the sinking sun; the cottonwoods flaming a deep apricot under a sky that spread a canopy of saffron and cinnabar, purple and umber and gold, down to the far horizon; the soft smoke pennons trailing violet plumes off and away into the smoldering dusk of the east; the cooing of woman voices broken by laughter, low, sweet, infinitely wild. Now, roofless, windowless, its blackened walls upreared in the midst of a wide, blurred smudge. Yet though the contrast brought stinging tears to her eyes, Lee took it calmly.

"What does it matter? It can be rebuilt. But there are other things"--her voice lowered and trailed away--"that can never be replaced."

They were both sad and sick at heart. Yet youth may not permanently be cast down. When, riding on, they left the smoke-blacked ruin behind them and passed from the dreary waste of burned pasture into golden plains she began restoration. A native carpenter could replace every loved beam; rebuild the massive old furniture just as it was. The _peones_ would lime-wash the exterior in its usual rainbow color! Also, restoration would give opportunity for remodeling and improvement.

As she ran on Gordon sensed another motive; perceived that she was striving to draw Bull out of his sorrow. Not a plan that did not include him! A great fireplace, for use during the rains, was to have a comfortable settle at one side, on which the Three could lounge and smoke while basking in the blaze. Each was to have his own room. Thus and so! Nor was her prattle without effect. Always sensitive where she was concerned, Bull divined her motive, and, albeit with an effort great as a physical strain, he responded, listened, and nodded acquiescence, occasionally forced a smile.

Only Sliver was fooled. "Say," he remarked to Jake, who rode with him in the rear, "did you allow she'd have taken it so light?"

But Jake, the keen, discerning critic, quickly opened his eyes. "Take it light, you ----! ----! ----! ----!" The epithets, if printed, would scorch a hole in the page. "Kain't you see she's grieving her little heart out? She's doing it all for Bull."

At any other time one of those epithets would probably have produced a retort that would have tumbled Jake out of his saddle. But, conscience-stricken, Sliver accepted all. With humility that was almost pathetic, he actually put into words feeling that was, for him, quite subtle. "'Tain't that I'd set in jedgment on Lady-girl, on'y--I reckon it's so with all of us--I jes' kain't bear to see her say or do anything that don't jes' fit."

After a pause he went on: "About these plans o' her'n? If there warn't no revolution, an' we ked stay along here without a break, an' they'd destroy all the licker in the world an' forgit the art of making it, I don't know but that we might live up to 'em. But I'm telling you, hombre, it's been awful wearing an' I jes' know what a spell in El Paso 'ull do for me--I'll be that swinish I'll never dare to come near her ag'in."

When Jake had admitted like feelings Sliver continued: "Sure, under them conditions, licker an' its makers being, so to say, put on the hog-train an' run off the aidge of the earth, I'd hev' one chanst to make good. But as 'tis, an' seeing that she's now settled with a fine young husband an' kin get along very nicely, I'm sorter allowing that El Paso 'ull let me out." While his eyes blinked guiltily and his lips quivered with anticipatory thirst, he concluded, "Sure I'm that dry 'twon't take much temptation for me to tell my troubles to a barkeep an' have him drown 'em in drink."

"Nor me," Jake seconded. "Besides, my fingers is jes' itching to get into a game."

"Drink, cards, flat broke--back to rustling." Sliver laid down the law of their being. "With me it runs like, the A-B-C."

"I drink, you drink, he drinks, we drink," Jake chanted it _sotto voce_. "If folks wasn't so onreasonable a feller might make an honest living. But the best tinhorn that ever turned a card from the bottom is bound to make a slip, an' when he does--whoosh! if he's lucky enough to make his getaway, rustling's all that's left."

"Bull?" Sliver nodded at the broad back ahead. "D'you allow he's a-going to stay put?"

Jake's shake of the head mixed doubt with concern. "If we meet up with any Mex--we'll never get him away. He'll run amuck among 'em."

Sliver's reckless eye lit with a fighting gleam. "An' the country's jes' lousy with _revueltosos_? Hombre, it's a cinch! Not that I'd want it," he hypocritically added, "Lady-girl being along. But if we do chance on a few--hum! what's the exchange, jes' now, in Valles's money? Seven to one, heigh? Well, we've three rifles apiece, counting the extras on the pack-horses. One man with three rifles is as good as two men. Twice four of us makes eight. At current exchange, one gringo for seven Mex, we orter account for fifty-six."

"There or thereabouts," Jake agreed. "But, as you say, Missy being along, it's up to us to dodge 'em."

"Five days?" Sliver hopefully repeated. "We'd jes' as well look out for trouble."

Not till the morning of the third day did the "trouble" loom up over the horizon.

To avoid raiders along the railroad, Bull laid a course that would strike the American border a hundred miles or so east of El Paso. Confirming his judgment, they had seen during the first two days only a few _peon_ herders, who scampered like rabbits at their approach. But while it made for safety, the course he had laid out also carried them away from water, the first necessity of desert travel.

From the Los Arboles pastures they had passed, first, into a sparse grass country dotted with _sahuaros_; thereafter into sage desert sprinkled with limestone boulders and bounded by arid hills of the same; a dry, inhospitable land, lifeless, without sign of human habitation, its heated silence unbroken by the cry of animal or bird, tenanted only by the dreary yucca that threw wild arms about like tortured dwarfs. Toward the middle of the second day they had been forced to head almost due west in search of the water that was to be had only near the railroad.

Dusk was falling when they--more correctly, the horses--found a small _arroyo_. It was so late, and the animals tired, and in order that they might drink their fill Bull took a chance and camped by the water. They did not light a fire. They ate cold food in darkness. Before dawn, too, they were in the saddle, by sunrise had placed nearly ten miles between them and the water which, just there and then, was another name for danger. As a matter of fact, Bull had not expected to get it without fighting. He had not yet ceased marveling at their luck when the "trouble" showed up in form of a line of _sombreros_ behind the peak of a limestone ridge--unfortunately, to the eastward.

Jake saw them first. At his sharp hiss Bull looked, and, driving the pack-horses ahead, rode headlong for the next ridge. Looking back as they rode, Gordon saw the line of _sombreros_ rise in correspondence as the land fell off. Soon a head showed; then, almost simultaneously, the ridge bristled with mounted men, a hundred at least, in bold relief against the sky-line.

"They've seen us!"

As he called it a yell, strident, raucous, pierced the clatter of their galloping hoofs. "Gringos! Mueran los gringos! Kill them!"

A volley followed. But, fired from the saddle in movement, the bullets chipped only a few twigs off the scenery. Scattering shots, too, flew overhead; but, intent on overtaking them, the Mexicans in the main wasted no time in shooting. They were only a couple of hundred yards away when the four men dropped from their horses behind the crest of the ridge.

Differing speed had strung the pursuers out in a scattering column, and Sliver grinned his delight at the arrangement. "Like bowling at the county fair. Miss one, you've still a chance at the next behind. Set 'em up again!" he yelled as, following their volley, two men and a horse plunged forward on the ground.

"A bit lower, Son," Bull quietly admonished Gordon. "Aim at the jine of man an' horse. That gives you a seven-foot target."

"One cigar, one baby down!"

Sliver's second yell marked the fall of two more horses and another man--shot by Bull out of his saddle. Aiming and firing with the deadly accuracy bred by years of just such fighting against more sagacious foes, they dropped the leaders as fast as they came on; in three minutes had drawn a dead-line of men and horses across their front. And that deadly practice told. Brave enough, after their lights, the raiders were not accustomed to such shooting. In the revolutionary wars their own practice, like that of their opponents, was to spring up out of a trench, yell "_Viva Mexico!_" fire in the enemy's direction, and drop back again, trusting to the god of war to find a billet for the bullet. Turning, they raced back for the opposite ridge, spurred on by the galling shooting that emptied two more saddles.

Bull's black glance following them with longing that confirmed Jake's diagnosis--he would have "run amuck among 'em" if left to himself. The more steadily, perhaps, for his deadly thirst to kill, he had aimed and fired with automatic precision. Withal, he had found time to note Gordon's steady shooting.

"You done fine, lad," he commented. "If there was only ourselves, I'd be in favor of carrying it to 'em. But"--his glance went to Lee, who was holding the horses--"we'll have to fall back. They've had their lesson an' ain't a-going to try any more fool charges. Now they'll try an' flank us. While Sliver an' Jake hold 'em, we'll run back to the next ridge."

But Gordon, flushed with his taste of battle, rebelled. "What's the matter with me staying? You fellows care for me like three hens scratching for an orphan chicken. I'm tired of this sheltered life."

"'Sheltered life'?" Communing with himself, Jake glanced at the grisly dead-line. "'Sheltered life,' an' him with two stretched out down there."

"Comes o' being married," Sliver added. "No married man has a right to run with batchelders."

"That's right," Jake approved. "It's up to you to look after your wife."

"Well?" Gordon protested. "How can I do it better than by staying here?"

"What?" Sliver looked scandalized. "Us take a chanst of her being widowed after all the trouble we had getting her married? No, sir-ree! Git out."

"Come on, Son, you're delaying the game." Bull had already joined Lee. His heavy command came floating up from below. Albeit with a shrug, Gordon obeyed.

The next commanding ridge lay nearly a mile away, and after the others had started back toward it Jake nodded toward the enemy. "Bet you they've split already an' are moving around us. Now if we do the same, keeping well out of sight, we'll mebbe get another crack at 'em."