Part 25

And so it was. When, after a half-mile détour through limestone and sage chaparral, the halves of the raiders' party showed in the open two rifles opened in concert at points a mile apart; two more riderless horses went scampering away before the others gained back to cover. From the wide base of their triangle Jake and Sliver then came galloping back and joined Bull at its apex; and thus they moved back and back, as the nature of the country permitted, with no more danger than that of an occasional bullet, fired at long range, singing overhead.

While they retreated the sun blazed up in the east, rolled on around its southerly course, superheating the dreary prospect till it glowed like an oven. All that time Bull was looking anxiously for a cross-ridge behind which they might swing their course to the north and east. But with the regularity of the waves of the sea the ridges rolled on back in unbroken succession toward the railroad. With the enemy spread widely upon their flanks a turning movement was impossible. They could only roll back with the limestone waves, trusting that the railroad would bring forth no new enemy.

Unfortunately the desert was growing rougher. Dry watercourses crosscut the sage that now rose tall as a mounted man. The going was rendered more difficult by outcroppings of limestone that sometimes raised an impassable barrier, forcing a détour. Worst of all, the denser growths permitted closer pursuit. At the last stand made by Jake and Sliver, midway of the afternoon, bullets came spitting out of the sage less than two hundred yards away.

"If 'twas on'y black powder they was using," Sliver bitterly complained, "we'd stan' some chance. A feller could bust into the middle of their smoke."

"You're onreasonable," Jake answered. He went on, sarcastically, quoting from an editorial in the last American paper that had come to Los Arboles: "In order that these here bandits kin exercise the 'sacred right of revolution to reg'late their own internal affairs' your Uncle Samuel has kindly supplied 'em with the latest smokeless cartridge. Thanks to his benevolence, some one's going to get hurt pretty soon."

He was right. A scattering volley, fired from that very ridge after they evacuated it, overtook them in the hollow below and brought down Sliver's horse. Hanging on to Jake's stirrup leather, he made the next ridge, but one of the pack-animals had to be given to him and its load abandoned.

"An' this is on'y the beginning." Jake continued his remarks from the next ridge. "The railroad's not far away, an' as I remember the country hereabouts, she runs right out in the open, with nary a snitch of cover for over twenty miles. There'll be nothing to stop 'em from shooting us down by volleys at long range. So it all boils down to this--some one's got to hold 'em at the next good stand while the others make their getaway."

They had been carrying two rifles apiece. Now Sliver quietly appropriated Jake's extra weapon. "With three rifles I orter be good for two hours."

"When I said 'some one'"--Jake quietly repossessed himself of the weapon--"I naterally allowed his name was Jake Evers. Git! before I bust you over the head."

"If 'twasn't for them"--Sliver's hard glance went out to the chaparral--"there's nothing I'd like better 'n to take time to rub your long hoss face in the dust."

The threat, however, produced from Jake only his wolf grin. "You damned fool! D'you know what's going to happen to the man that stays behind? He's a-going to be what the society columns call 'the piece de resistence' at a Mexican barbecure. There ain't a thing in the line of torture that them bandits won't do to you."

"You ked never stan' it." Sliver displayed great solicitude. "You're getting along, Jake, an' your nerve ain't what it used to be."

"You've said it." Jake's cold eye warmed. He placed a friendly hand on Sliver's shoulder. "You're dead right, Son. I'm getting on. What's more, I'm that dyed-in-the-wool with deviltry 'twon't hurt anybody when I pinch out. But you're young yet. You'll--"

"--hit El Paso an' go straight to the devil. You know it darned well. We'll gamble for it." He spat on a pebble and threw it up. "Wet or dry, which? Wet! I win!"

"Jest my luck!" Jake's complaint was sincere as though, instead of death or torture, life and fortune had been the hazard. "I don't have no chance at all except with cards. What did I wanter go an' do that for, anyway, an' me with a deck right here in my pocket?"

"Too late!" Sliver pressed his triumph. "Now git!"

But with his usual sagacity Jake had already picked the spot for the stand. The next ridge rose so precipitously that Bull, Lee, and Gordon were having difficulty in getting up its face. North and south, too, it loomed even more inaccessible.

"'Twill take them hours to go around it with you planted square in the middle."

Sliver's glance had gone to Lee, scrambling up the steep face of the ridge, leading her horse. His hard face softened. "Don't tell Lady-girl--that is, not jes' now. Let her think I'll make my getaway to the northward. But some day, after she's safe in El Paso, you kin tell her--that Sliver was on'y too damn glad to give his life for her'n." He went on, dreamily: "'Course I knew it 'u'd be all off after I'd hit the city. But I'd sorter thought, now an' then, that if the rangers didn't get me too quick, some day I'd come back to Arboles, when her kids was about hip-high, an' teach 'em to ride an' shoot. But that was jes' a dream."

Jake's glance had gone back to the cover that sheltered the _revueltosos_, and, judged by the casuality of his nod, Sliver's request might have concerned the purchase of a silk handkerchief or other trifle. But he swallowed hard, spat viciously several times before he could command speech; blushed, even then, at the softness of his tone.

"Funny, ain't it? But that's just what I'd often thought myself. Sure I'll tell her--if them devils don't down me on the next run. They're damn close now, and they'll be up here before we're half-way across. Against that limestone front we'll make some mark, an' with fifty of 'em cracking at us it 'ull be the luck of hell if they don't down one or both."

Again he was right. While, ten minutes later, they struggled among the boulders and brush at the foot of the ridge, the rifles began sputtering behind them. Right and left, above and below, bullets chipped the rocks or plumped in the dust; and just as their beasts rushed on a breathless scramble up the last steep two found their mark--one through Sliver's knee, the other dropped Jake's horse.

Almost fainting from shock and pain, Sliver still clung to the neck of his beast while, with Jake hanging on to a stirrup leather, it carried him to safety. Lee, with the pack-animals, had already moved on, was a full quarter-mile down the slope that fell easily to the great plain traversed by the railroad. Miles away they could see--not the tracks; it was too far away for that--a dark-velvet plume, smoke from an engine. Bull and Gordon still lay answering the _revueltosos'_ fire. But Sliver and Jake had ascended up a watercourse a hundred yards to the right, in which the dead horse lay out of sight.

"Hey!" Sliver hastily stopped Jake from calling Bull. "Let 'em go! You'll never be able to tear Lady-girl away if she knows I'm hurt. You kin take my horse; on'y lift me down first an' prop me up among the rocks where I kin lie comfortable an' pump a gun."

Having complied, Jake stood looking down upon him. For once in his rough, hard life he was shaken out of his cold, gray self. Sliver, well and hearty, fighting his lone fight was one thing. To leave him, painfully wounded, was quite another. The memory of many a wild ride with the dogs of the law hard on their heels; of desperate stands, shoulder to shoulder, the rifle of each protecting the other; of daring raids in the dark; of midnight diversions shared together; ay, even the memory of many a drunken quarrel in which they had beaten each other beyond identification and awakened next morning just as good friends; all that had gone into the making of the rough loyalty which had bound the "Three Bad Men of Las Bocas" closer than brothers--all this combined in an emotion that revolted at desertion.

"My _God_, hombre!" he broke out in protest. "I kain't leave you here, wounded, to fall in the han's of them wolves!"

"You kain't do nothing else!" Hard eyes flashing, Sliver went on: "Didn't we gamble, jest now, for who was to stay? An' didn't I win? Now you're trying to renig?" As he noted the sweat standing out on Jake's brow, he went on more quietly: "Look at it sensible. What ked you-all do with a wounded man? You'd on'y sign Lady-girl's death warrant. And don't worry about them wolves. They ain't a-going to light no fires on my belly nor burn my feet. If I don't get done up in the scrap--the last bullet will be for myself."

Also he turned an adamant face to a proposal that Jake should stay too. "No, hombre, it's still over a hundred miles to the border, an' they need you. There's nothing left for you but to take my horse an' git."

It had all been said and done without strain, effort, or self-consciousness; was entirely the expression of his hardy, careless soul that had never known the vice of self-pity. But when Jake still stood, his long, lean face working lugubriously in his attempts to hide his grief, Sliver did that which, for him, was a miracle in divination--entered into and felt the pain of another soul.

"Oh, shore, hombre!" His face lit up with sympathy. "You orter be glad. Ain't it better to die clean, this-a-way, than to choke slowly at the end of some ranger's rope? Go on, now, an' catch up to 'em an' keep 'em moving till night. With the least bit of luck, you'll pull through all right."

As before said, not one iota of self-pity entered into Sliver's consciousness. Apart from a heavy fever and dull ache, the broken knee was behaving itself as well as could be expected and, after Jake's departure, Sliver settled down to the business in hand; _i.e._, to inflate to the limit the current exchange of one _gringo_ for seven _revueltosos_. Reckless, hardened scamp that he was, his remark, addressed to himself, had no reference to water, a canteen of which Jake had left at his elbow.

"Gosh, but I'd like a drink!"

His grin and following chuckle were natural and unaffected. "You're going to be a good boy from now on, Sliver. You've taken your last."

Pulling his Colt's .45 from his belt, he laid it with the water-bottle. "Handy for the funeral." He uttered a second grim chuckle.

The two extra rifles he placed within easy reach on his left. Then he lay quiet, hard blue eyes fixed on the opposite ridge--so quiet that a lone vulture poised above swooped down, alighted, then hopped mournfully away and stood poised on one leg, hopeful if disappointed. In recent history so much firing had invariably brought food.

From the first severe lesson when, from points a mile apart, the deadly rifles picked them off, the _revueltosos_ had learned caution, only advancing when they were certain the two had retired. Riding away, Jake had exposed himself along the ridge; but, suspecting a trap, the _revueltosos_ remained in hiding. Ten minutes elapsed before a couple of _sombreros_ rose cautiously out of a clump of sage.

"Stuck up on sticks." Sliver criticized their wabbly motion.

After a real head appeared under them he waited. When the ridge suddenly broke out in a rush of mounted men he waited. While they rode down into the valley he waited. Not until they were involved in the labyrinth of sage, watercourses, pit-holes, brush, and boulders beneath him, did he draw his first bead. Then, so swiftly that it seemed to the _revueltosos_ that they were facing the fire of several men, he emptied the three rifles into the kicking, struggling, plunging line of horses and men. Four saddles he made vacant there and then. He picked off two more as the _revueltosos_ raced back over the opposite ridge.

"Six added to three I got makes nine!" Sliver grunted. "A few more an' I kin afford to cash in."

He could see from where he lay for miles along the ridge, and as he noted its front rising more steeply in both directions he chuckled his satisfaction.

"You ain't a-going to try an' pass through me ag'in," he addressed the invisible foe. "An' you ain't going to leave me here. It'll take you an hour to come around. Be that time Lady-girl will be ten miles away, with night fast coming on. Jest to encourage you--"

The shot he threw into the brush opposite was the first of a series designed to keep the _revueltosos'_ attention upon himself, and when, half an hour later, he glimpsed men without horses scaling the steep face of the ridge nearly a mile away he knew that he had succeeded.

"They reckon we're all here, trying to stick it out till night," he correctly interpreted the movement. "It 'ull take 'em another half-hour to find out."

A glance in the other direction showed a second party emerging from the brush beyond rifle-shot. While it crossed the valley and scaled the face of the ridge he watched quietly. A little later he began throwing shots in both directions along the ridge.

"Not that I'm expecting to bag any of youse," he addressed the unseen enemy. "But just to slow you up a bit an' let you know I'm here. When you get there"--his glance took in scrub-clothed elevations that commanded his post on both sides--"good-by an' _good_ night."

Of all ordeals, there can be none more severe than to be called upon to wait, wait, wait while an unseen enemy is closing in around. Yet Sliver stood the test. If he felt the passage of time, it was because he counted each minute, each second in yards--the hundreds, scores of yards Lee and his friends were gaining on the pursuit. He had fought all day in heat and dust and smoke; the grime of battle added to his grimness. While he waited the sun rolled down the west, transmuting the scorched slopes into a wonderland of cinnabar, sienna, crimson, ocher; a huge oven aglow with the hot slag of creation. But its rich lights showed neither fear nor softening in Sliver's face when, from the spot he had long noted, a rifle spoke.

It was the signal for a leaden rain that began to spatter the rocks about him. It was now only a question of time. He knew it. But till that time came he replied to the fire. He was aiming into the heart of a puff of smoke when the death he had gambled so recklessly with these many years claimed the stakes.

He turned slightly sideways as his head collapsed on his outstretched arm, and through the grime and powder smoke, in the rich evening lights, his face showed with its hard lines all sponged out.

Sliver, the outlaw, gambler, drunkard, horse-thief, turned up to the low sun the quiet, peaceful face his mother had looked down upon as a child.

XLI: JAKE BETTERS THE "EXCHANGE"

By the time Jake caught up with the others that inner humane being, whose occasional appearances caused him so much disconcertion, had withdrawn within his usual cynical shell. His face, when Lee inquired for Sliver, expressed surprise that she should have thought it worth while to inquire.

"_Him?_ Oh, he's back there a-holding 'em off while we gain a spell."

Though delivered with masterly unconcern, his explanation did not altogether relieve her anxiety. "But--how will he find us again?"

Jake's shrug was fine in its indifference. "He'll play a lone han', Missy; plug straight for the border. Being alone that-a-way, he'll likely beat us to it."

"You really think so?"

"He'll be there to meet us."

Jake's tone carried conviction even to Gordon. Only Bull was not deceived. After the other two had ridden on he looked at Jake. A lift of the eyebrow, slight shake of the head, touch of the forefinger to the knee--he knew all. Thereafter each burst of rifle-fire, long pause, explained itself. He saw Sliver waiting till the _revueltosos_ came out in the open. The slow rhythm of later shots showed him firing along the ridge. A sudden burst of sharpshooting at sundown, following silence, explained themselves. His glance at Jake, the latter's slow shake of the head, signaled then that all was over.

While they were traveling down the long slope toward the railroad the sun had lowered till they could see the telegraph-poles running, a sharp black fence, across the smoldering sky. Southward a toy station rose from the dead-flat plain under a velvet plume of smoke. Bull had laid his course to cross the tracks miles ahead of it. By traveling all night, they could then gain the mountains that bared iron teeth along the western sky-line; but they would be no nearer the border than when they began the fight that morning.

The thought was strong in their minds when Jake leveled his range glasses at the dark smoke plume. "Enjine an' five cars."

He handed the glasses to Bull, and before the latter's keen sight the lenses laid the familiar outlines, of a revolutionary train, a-bristle on top with humanity. Even at the distance, the flash and flare of gay _rebozos_ told they were mostly women, and that told all. "Nobody there but women and wounded. Belongs to the gang that's chasing us."

"A hundred miles to El Paso," Jake spoke. "Three days' horseback? Three hours with that old mogul?"

"Golly!" The idea fastened on Gordon. "Couldn't we?" In place of their present plodding he saw the telegraph-poles, rocks, hills, flying past as they sped northward in the engine.

"On'y women and wounded?" Jake repeated it, musingly.

"Dark in half an hour?" Bull added: "They kedn't tell us from their own. 'Course we should lose the horses." With his accustomed caution he read the reverse of the shield. "If anything went wrong--we'd be left afoot on the desert."

"No worse than we are," Jake argued. "These beasts have been running sence daylight; are clean plugged out. Even if they carry us across to the mountains we're not sure of feed nor water--an' still a hundred miles from the border."

"But Sliver?" Lee protested. "We can't leave him."

She was looking at Bull. He looked at Jake, who looked away, in his mind a picture of Sliver dead among the rocks. Then with that readiness and steadiness that had always filled poor Sliver with envy he lied to a good end. "The last thing he tol' me, Missy, was not to wait. ''Twould hinder me an' hinder you-all. I'll make my run alone.'"

"Very well." Her sigh would have fitted an anxious mother who felt that her boy would be safer under her own eye. "Very well, but I _do_ wish he were here."

Again Bull glanced at Jake, who once more looked away; but neither spoke.

While riding slowly forward Bull laid out their plan. "It 'ull be up to you an' Missy," he told Gordon, "to take care of the engineer while Jake an' me stan' off the crowd. She kin hold a gun to his head while you pitch the stuff aboard."

The sun had now set. The dusk thickened as they advanced and through its warm curtain presently broke the distant gleam of cooking-fires. Some were down on the tracks; others on the car-roofs built on rude hearths of earth within stone circles. When Bull called a halt and surveyed the scene through the glasses it presented the familiar spectacle of a _revueltosos'_ train-camp: women bending over the fires; some on their knees at the _metates_, others stirring their clay cooking-pots, all gossiping at their work. Here and there a man's face showed in the fire glow; but always an arm in a sling, crutch, or bandage explained his presence there. Unsuspecting, believing that in those wide spaces the railway presented the one avenue of attack, they kept no watch; were stricken dumb when, half an hour thereafter, a stern command to hold up their hands issued from the darkness beyond the firelight. Only one man raised a gun, and as Bull's rifle spat he threw up his hands and plunged headlong from the top of the car to the ground.

Squatted, at supper, with his women by a fire under the lee of the mogul, the Mexican engineer proved easy game. A poke in the side from Gordon's gun emphasized his command to cut the engine off the train. Trembling, the fellow obeyed and stood mute, shaking with fear, with Lee's gun pressed into the nape of his neck, while Gordon pitched their stuff into the cab. When, moreover, after firing a few warning shots along the length of the train, Jake and Bull climbed aboard he opened wide the throttle and sent the mogul spinning northward.

The instant they started Gordon grabbed the fireman's shovel. "Here's where I fulfil one of my kid ambitions."

Looking back from the seat where she had climbed beside Bull to watch the tracks ahead, Lee saw his face focused in brilliant red light as he shoveled and raked the clinker off the bars. Jake, with his usual caution, sat with the engineer; from whom he prodded valuable information with the muzzle of his gun.

His strident repetitions thereof carried above the roar and rattle of the speeding engine across the cab. "He says the half of Valles's army is scattered like pin feathers afore a north wind!... With what's left he's making a las' stan' north of Chihuahua!... He still bosses all the country from here to Juarez!... This outfit was out raiding haciendas to supply the new base!" The next item of news he delivered with a cheer. "Hooray! the line's open clean to the border! He don't know of any trains being run to-night! Thinks we'll have a clear track!"

Just then lights and the ruddy glow of fires flashed out as the engine came spinning out of a cut through low hills. It was merely a section gang, and as they sped past they obtained a glimpse of curious brown faces.

They suggested Bull's question, "Ask him if there's any revueltosos on the way."

"At La Mancha!" Jake yelled back. "About thirty miles this side of the border!... Half of the brigada Gonzales is holding the town for Valles!"

The _brigada_ Gonzales! The command that had furnished the murderers of Mary Mills. A spasm of hate writhed over Bull's dark face. His big hands clenched. He turned and looked out of the cab window till he regained control of his voice.

"Does he allow we kin run through there?"

Jake nodded. "If we douse the headlight and race by afore they have time to block us."

Looking back, just then, at Gordon, now stripped to his undershirt and growing sootier every minute, Lee heard the answer. She did not, however, give it much thought. The hills and rocks that took on queer shapes in the dim light of a rising moon, giant _sahuaros_ that went slipping past like huge ghosts, the occasional fires and lights, glimpses of strange brown faces, the rush and roar of the engine speeding through mysterious night, held her senses. Yet it stuck in her mind, came popping out when, as the engine rounded a sharp curve, the headlight beam struck full on a sheaf of glittering wires.

"Oh!" she called out in sudden alarm. "We ought to have cut the wires!"

It was a vital error. Gordon's whistle expressed their joint dismay; but Jake, with his intense practicability, recovered first. "Well, what's to do--stop an' cut them?"

Bull shook his head. "Too late! We've been running over an hour. Nothing left but to take a chanst."

Jake nodded. But presently he spoke again. "Chanst? If they pull up a rail an' ditch us at La Mancha, I'd hardly call it a chanst with half of the brigada Gonzales shooting us up from all around. We'd be pickled for keeps."