Part 11
A curious look came into Bart’s eyes--a trace of deep rest. ‘You see, a horse knows when a man’s afraid. He smells fear, or feels it. He gets afraid, too, or confused--loses what little head he’s got. He begins to look out through a sheet of blood, if you drive him deeper into fear. If pushed far, he goes crazy, and that’s what they call a bad horse. Sometimes they are ten times as strong as a horse in his right senses--just like a man-maniac--’
Elbert had so much to say it was hard to keep still.
‘You see, I wanted that old gray so badly for my own,’ Bart went on. ‘They told me how bad he was, but I couldn’t believe it. He let me get up to him--let me climb on his back. But when I got him back to Bismo, everybody remembered him bein’ an outlaw. Dad tried breakin’ him again--and they took him back to the Cup Q.’
Bart chuckled. One would think he had been telling some amusing boyhood experience. His voice was easy, almost careless--Bob Leadley all over again--not a sign for the listener that a deep misery of life was being discussed. Suddenly Elbert realized that it was not only with horses, but with men like Bob Leadley and his son--one had to trust his feelings, or else miss a lot. And with women--
‘But your father knew better afterward,’ Elbert finally said.
‘How’s that?’
‘He knew you had something on the rat-tail, he didn’t have--’
‘How’s that?’
‘He told me. Everybody in Bismo kept warning him that the gray would kill you. He got afraid _for you_, but he knew better afterward. Your father came to understand what you meant about not wanting a ‘broke’ horse. He told me he thought about that one thing for years. It was from him and some things from Mort Cotton--that I got any idea about handling Mamie--’ Deep relief, Elbert knew as he halted a moment, the same that he had known that night, as they rode away from el cuartel in Arecibo. He was making it all clear at last. He got a queer feeling, as if Bob Leadley were resting easier, too.
‘One of the squarest men anywhere, your father,’ he went on. ‘He knew you had something on Rat-tail that he didn’t. He knew that “breaking” a horse is old stuff. He said he had belonged to the old school that thinks a horse is ruined if it ever gets its own way. One of the things he liked to say best was that there are a whole lot of good riders, but only once in a long while a good horseman--’
‘But he didn’t understand about Palto.’
‘Oh, yes, Bart. Even Mort Cotton did.’
‘They didn’t think I did right, did they?’
‘Yes,’ said Elbert.
‘Foolin’, aren’t you, amigo mio?’
‘Not on your life! He and Mort Cotton were crazy-tired, all shot to pieces--that night in Red Ante. Of course, Letchie Welton only had his idea of law. Why, your father thought it out for years, never got over it--his part--or rather, what he didn’t do. Kept saying at the last that a man can’t “wash his hands.”’
‘Took it hard?’
‘Rather, but he understood it all at the last. Mort Cotton did, too. It was Mort who said at the hearing back in Bismo--that the most merciful shot he ever heard fired was yours that night before you rode out of Red Ante.’
‘I’m sorry Dad took it so hard.... You see--you see, I couldn’t get Palto loose. He might have lived for days--until they got him to a place where they could string him up--’
The next day alone in the mountains, Elbert found that the old story of Red Ante was slipping out from him--that it didn’t hurt any more, that it would be difficult, and likely unnecessary, ever to talk about it again.
XXVIII
‘LIKE THE VIRGIN SPEAKING--’
FINALLY came the night when Bart said he would be ready to ride within a week, but just then they heard a light step in the next room, and Elbert’s voice became very hushed.
‘I’ve been looking for a way north through the mountains. My idea is to take it easy, riding nights--keeping our eyes on--’
‘On what?’ Bart asked.
‘On the north star,’ in embarrassed tone.
‘Why, we’re not thirty miles from the Border right now. We can do it in a night.’
‘But I’ve been thinking we’d better not enter Arizona on any of the regular roads--and there’s quite a ride west after that--’
Señorita Valencia was in the doorway.
‘You’re the doctor!’ Bart laughed.
* * * * *
Two nights later Elbert made Mamie fast in an old lane about three hundred yards from the Fonseca road directly back of El Relicario. This was his next to last trip from the mountains down, according to the plan. He was to bring both horses next time, two or three nights later. Then north and west with Bart through the high range, which he had explored so many days with the one single thought of ending his mission.
Nearing the old ranch house, he moved around in front to approach by the road, but heard Mexican voices before reaching the gateway. Stealing closer he saw three ponies standing just within--carbine-boots and saber-sheathes! Only the rurales carried that outfit. He moved back and circled among the scented vine-tangles of the grounds, at length drawing near an unglazed window of an empty room, which was just across a corridor from the little room where Bart lay. Faint reflection of the candle-light came from there, careless strumming of a guitar and laughter of the Mexicans from the front of the house.
A light step at his left, a movement of white, visible as he turned--Valencia, alone in the grounds. Softly he called her name.
‘Oh, I prayed you would come, Señor! The rurales are here. They have seen him! I have left them but a moment--saying I must dress--’ She was all in white, her face held close to his, the breath of her whispering part of the perfume of the dark.
‘You must take him away to-night--now, while they wait--or he will have to go with them! You see, they are not quite sure yet, it is he, but have sent for others in Fonseca who will know. Before the others come, while I keep the ones here in the front of the house--you must take him to the mountains--to your country!’
‘Have they got Bart in front with them?’
‘No, he’s still lying in there--but one of the men is watching in the corridor. I have told them how ill he is!’
Elbert spoke swiftly: ‘I’ll go and bring the mare closer in, Señorita, and be back to this window in ten minutes. Get word to Bart that I’m coming back!’
‘I will try--or perhaps my mother. They are waiting for me in there now. I must keep them in the front!’
He heard the Mexican voices. ‘In ten minutes--’ he hastily whispered.
He was running back toward Mamie’s tether. No moon, but a few great stars, fireflies in a near low tree--a perfumed, humid night. Thoughts ran with him. It was like the mystery of life--her pale upheld face in the dark, with an untellable meaning for his heart, having to do with a corn-dust maiden. Even as he ran, he marveled that she could help him get Bart away ‘to the mountains, to your country!’ ... the breath of her whispering--
Mamie was dancing, as his hands ran over the cinches. ‘The job of our lives!’ he panted. ‘You’re fit, little one. Won’t be your fault if we don’t make it! It’s for him--for old Bob Leadley, Mamie!’
He was riding back. He could not bring the mare too near to the ranch house, lest she signal to the rurales’ horses standing in front. He reached the unglazed window of the unused room. Perhaps she had been unable to get Bart word, for he had not come. Perhaps, the full ten minutes had not passed.
He waited a moment, then climbed into the empty room, crossing softly toward the faint sheen of light in the corridor. Reaching the door, he could look across the corridor into the little room where a single candle burned. Only the foot of Bart’s cot was visible.
Now a step sounded down the corridor at his left. He drew back into the dark. A Mexican approached, glanced into the little room, then turned back toward the patio--the rurale pacing his post.
Elbert craned forward as far as he dared; this time he saw the covering of the cot flung back, a single booted leg beneath. Something familiar in the way it jerked that second, made him know that Bart was drawing a boot on the other leg. How could he let Bart know he had come? The slightest whisper was as impossible as it was for him to cross the corridor while the sentry moved back and forth.
At this instant a liquid shower of chords sounded through the house--the great harp in the front room coming to life--Valencia’s voice lifting above her accompaniment:
‘Cuando sali de la Habana, Valgame Dios!’
A heart-break in itself--that song.
At the same time, another voice from the patio--quavery tones of the old señora offering the sentry a glass of wine. Was she trying to hold him at the far end of his post? Now in the opposite doorway, tipping a little weakly, hatless, without coat, but fully booted, Bart Leadley showed himself, a cool laugh on the dark face. Elbert darting a glance down the corridor, saw the back of the rurale’s head. He thrust out his hand to steady Bart across the corridor.
‘... Era la que me miraba Diciendo adios--’
They had crossed the empty room; Elbert outside the window, was helping Bart through--the rurale still held to the patio-end of the corridor by the señora--or was it by the song? Even in the fierce drum of his excitement, words of old Bob Leadley flashed to Elbert’s mind: ‘... like the Virgin speaking to them.’ Yes, he could understand being held by that song; a wonder above everything, that Bart could leave at all.
‘Qui es mir persona Cuentale tus amores--’
They had crossed the grounds to Mamie’s tether; Bart’s left ankle was in his hand for a lift. He swung up behind on the spacious saddle-tree; Mamie darting off in the dark toward high country with her double burden. Hauntingly from behind:
‘Me la han matado Me la han matado--’
And from Bart:
‘That there song, Mister, has followed me all the way!’
* * * * *
Miles back among the hills, they picked up the sorrel; still no sound of pursuit. Then it was northward among the foothills--the north star for Elbert’s eyes. At any moment he half expected to hear, ‘No, I’m not going to fall, Mister,’ but to-night it was: ‘Don’t worry about me. I’m sittin’ easy.’
Before daybreak they followed a little stream up higher--less volume but more noise all the way, and came to rest in the deep privacy of a sunless ravine.
The second night, long after midnight, they heard the far scream of a train from the north.
‘The Mexican Pacific,’ suggested Elbert.
‘Where?’ said Bart.
‘That train--’
‘The Mexican Pacific cuts north through San Isidro Gorge ten miles southeast of here. Ask old Mallet-head, that’s where we dragged him out of his Pullman--’
‘You think we’ve crossed the Border--that this is a U.S. Transcontinental?’
‘The States is a large place, but I sure thought you’d know home when you got there, Doc.’
But Elbert could hardly believe. A little later they caught a glimpse of the crawling serpent of coaches, faint lights for scales. Finally in the first daylight the two horses crossed the tracks--‘Safety First,’ authoritative like an Eleventh Commandment on a big water tank in the dusk of morning.
XXIX
HIGH COUNTRY
THEY found the highway north of the railroad and turned their horses west.
Bart looked a bit white and shaky but made no sign to stop.
‘Don’t you think we’d better lay up for a day or two in one of these towns, so you can rest, Bart?’ Elbert asked.
‘I’m not sleepy,’ said the other. ‘I’m gettin’ what I need outdoors, and aboard old Mallet-head. I always did need the outside of a horse to pull myself together.’
As it began to get hot in the morning, they veered into the hills and found shade, resting several hours.
‘How far west of Nogales do you think we are right now?’ Elbert asked.
‘About a hundred miles, I’d say. You see Fonseca lay a long ways west of the main road south from Nogales, and we’ve kept pushin’ west through the mountains since then. We can find out by askin’ along the railroad--’
‘I’m figurin’ we might not have to go to San Forenso first to get to the cabin,’ Elbert said. ‘You see, San Forenso is still farther west from here than your father’s mine--’
All through the recent weeks in Mexico, Elbert had felt his mission would end when he safely crossed the Border with Bart, but now he knew a secret restless urge actually to reach the cabin, before letting even Mort Cotton know.
‘You see, everything we need is there,’ he added.
‘Lead the way, Doc.’
The second morning afterward, Elbert looked up into a range of hills, remarking that he thought the Dry Cache was up there. ‘San Forenso is twenty miles ahead, and we’d have to circle back, if we went there. The mine must be straight up from here. Yes, I think those are our mountains, all right,’ he added. ‘I remember your father said you could look over into California and back into Sonora from just above the mine--’
‘It’s giddap with me. Persuade yourself--’
But the mountains that had looked so feasible from the railroad turned sinister and rebellious as they climbed. Forty miles around would have been simple to the twenty they had made before sundown that day--a waterless fight all the way. They were in the big timber of the altitudes again in the lengthening shadows, and Elbert looked at the man beside him, riding on hard gray nerve; then at the drooping head of his own mare in front. He had given in to a sort of mania to get into high country. It had been getting clearer for hours that he should have gone straight to San Forenso, from where he could have been sure of his way to the claim. It might be best to turn back to the railroad now--while there was a bit of light.... Just at this instant Mamie’s ears pricked; her body came to life under the saddle. The sullen eye of the gelding caught a flash of her new fire.
She broke into a trot, starting down-grade. They crossed a sloping bench of big timber and checked down into a valley open to the western light.
‘I don’t see any trail, but she’s sure got an idea!’ Elbert called.
‘She sure has,’ Bart panted, ‘and I’m for it--’
In the open, she veered swiftly to the left, making for a cañon mouth, and then in letters writhing a little before Elbert’s dazed eyes: ‘Are You Doomed?’ on its white rock! The living fact of the Flats broke upon him.
‘Why, we’re home, Bart!’ he gasped. ‘The cabin’s back a ways. She’s makin’ for the last water--’
‘First water I’ve seen in some time,’ came from the other, as Elbert helped him down.
* * * * *
There was dusk and wood-smoke; the grinding of the coffee-mill, the sputter of bacon oil for flapjacks, a deadlock on the matter of whether a can of Michigan pears should be opened or Hawaiian pineapple--finally both, for it was a fiesta night at the Dry Cache mine, and the stores were endless. They had fared slim for some days and ridden hard. Few words, because Elbert felt a bulge in his throat from the pressure of unfamiliar joys. After supper, he left Bart and led the two horses, in their ‘cooling’ blankets, down to the last water to finish their deep drink for the night, also to refill canteens. Bart came out of the cabin, as he returned, and they sat down in the clean straw when grain was fed, leaning their backs against the fence.
That astonishing sense of unity crept over Elbert that he had known once or twice before. He remembered Bob Leadley’s story of when he was a little chap, leaving the supper table where there was a fight on between his father and mother, and going out into the barnyard where the cattle ruminated, and there was peace. Yes, he must have listened deeply to all Bob Leadley’s words. It was almost as if he had been that little boy; almost as familiar to him as that night of tequila in Cienaga, in his own experience, when he had sat with Cal and Slim (Chester and the Indian and Mamie grinding at their sun-parched corn). A warm breeze fanned his face now with a smell of sunlit rocks and pine bark and that carried him back to the night of that warm wind at Heaslep’s ranch, when Cal and Slim asked him to join them in a ride south, where he was going anyway. Exquisite ease in the very fatigue that closed in, delight of relaxation complete for the first time in his life.
The next day they didn’t stir far from the claim, only moving about the different patches of sun and shade to stretch out in the deep languor that followed days of strain.
‘Pretty near everything a man could want here--don’t you think?’ said Bart.
‘Pretty near,’ said Elbert.
‘The old man made it all to suit himself, didn’t he?’ the voice drawled on. ‘Always a great hand for keeping things up, Dad was. Left his mark on everything. I can see it now. A kid wouldn’t--’
‘I think he was making it for you all the time,’ Elbert said, ‘just as if he was writing a letter to you, when he built those cabinets and stored them. I know he was--always thinking you would come back like this.’
‘A lot of work in that tunnel for one man to do alone,’ said Bart. ‘Must have taken him a year--’
‘More,’ said Elbert.
The next morning at breakfast a curious quiet settled between the two men. The spell was breaking, a different gleam in the eyes of the big fellow across the table. In a wordless fashion, Elbert sat for a time. Another sentence of old Bob Leadley’s cleared with deep meaning. ‘I’d get lonesome for him when he was right in the same room--’
‘We’d better not wait any longer before letting Mort Cotton know,’ Elbert finally said. ‘I’ll ride down to the Slim Stake and get him on the telephone--’
He was back within four hours and Mort reached the claim before sundown. It took two days for everything to be settled, and Elbert was tired in an altogether different way at the end. He had done more talking in those two days than in all the weeks in Sonora.
‘Bart,’ he said, when they were finally alone once more, ‘there’s nothing I’d like better than to work that gold tooth with you, but I’ll have to be away for a few weeks.’
‘Which way you headin’, Doc?’
‘East. Been away from home for a long time. I’ve got to see my father--’ Elbert caught that strange gleam again in the eyes of the other. ‘And my sisters,’ he added.
‘I’m ridin’, too, Mister. For a while--’
‘You’re not going--you’re not going back?’
‘Back into Mexico?’ the other laughed.
‘I thought, perhaps--’
‘Why, you don’t seem to believe I like it here,’ Bart chuckled. ‘Pretty near everything a man could want--’
Just words, perhaps, Elbert thought. He didn’t see how Bart could forget. He couldn’t have, if he had been in Bart’s place.
‘Oh, yes, I like to look and listen around here,’ the big fellow went on, ‘and back in that tunnel there’s a message for you and me all right, but no hurry, as you say. We’ll wait a little longer for that. A whole lot of times down in Sonora I’ve wondered just how it would feel to turn loose in an American town--Tucson, for instance.’
‘I’ll be stopping off in Tucson,’ Elbert allowed.
* * * * *
That day they rode down to San Forenso and left the horses at Mort Cotton’s ranch. Elbert planned to take the night train.
‘I’ll stay on with Mort for a day or so,’ Bart said. ‘I might hunt you up in Tucson, if I get there before you leave. They say there’s a hotel there--’
‘The Santa Clara,’ said Elbert.
He looked back toward Mort’s corral, as the old cattleman was bringing the rig to take him to the station. He moved to the gate and let himself in. Mamie walked toward him, but halted with lifted head, in the afternoon light, as he had seen her the first day, only now her coat was faded by many sweats and suns. Her head lifted higher. She was listening for something no one else could possibly hear--
‘One more listening mare,’ Elbert whispered.
Her forehead presently bumped his shoulder. Farther off the sorrel stake-horse was sniffing at the cracks in Mort’s hay-shed.
‘I’ll be coming back, Mamie. Oh, yes, I’ll be coming back--’
XXX
TUCSON AGAIN
IT wasn’t a dappled gray this time, but one of the same breed. Elbert was abroad in the streets of Tucson, long before the city was astir, his train having set him down at an unseemly hour. He passed a harness shop and peered in through the window, where his eye encountered the cocked ears and pointed head of a wooden horse. Evidently its place was the sidewalk, daytimes, being wheeled into the shop at closing-hour on castors.
It was as if he were in the Plaza at Los Angeles again. It was more: like a man coming back to find his old nursery unchanged. Elbert’s lips moved.
‘Wouldn’t Mamie shy if she passed that palfrey on a lonely road?’
* * * * *
His hand pained. He was clutching the arm of a rocking-chair. He had left a network of invisible foot-tracks over two sections, at least, of the city of Tucson. The day was now advanced to eight-thirty in the morning, and he was back in his room at the Santa Clara. His strong, blackened fingers relaxed on the oak. He arose and pulled down both outer windows. He went to the hall-door to feel that it was locked. He took off coat and vest, wiped the sweat from his forehead, called a number at the telephone.
‘May I speak with Miss Gertling?’
‘Miss Gertling--why, she doesn’t live here any more--’
‘Does she--where?’
‘She’s only here part of the day--some days--’
‘Could you give me her address?’
‘Who is it, please?’
‘Mr. Sartwell--’
‘Oh.’
‘Elbert Sartwell--’
‘Oh,--you’re--wait a moment, please!... Yes, Mr. Sartwell, you may call--’ the snappy tone had softened.
Elbert’s mind fumbled the number, but he got it down.... His second call was entered. A man’s tone advised him respectfully not to disconnect. Then out of the smothering stillness:
‘Hello?’
‘Mary Gertling!’
‘Yes.... Oh, I know ... and where are you?’
‘At the Santa Clara.’
‘Will you come over?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh, wait! I know better. I’ll come for _you_! In the street in front of the hotel--in ten--fifteen minutes.’
He bathed a third time. He was below watching the street both ways. Crowds were passing, by this time--on the way to work. Elbert’s feelings were torturingly divided. Sometimes he pitied all these people going to work; sometimes he envied their calm matter-of-fact seizure of life. As for himself, he seemed dangling in space, having lost his clutch entirely.
The crowd jostled him back against the entrance. It must be a half hour. Could there have been a mistake? His eye verified the fact that it was the Santa Clara hotel he was standing against. Many faces coming from the right, as many more from the left. He would hold his eyes one way, until he felt she must be standing at his back. Yet it was from neither right nor left that her call came--from the throng of cars in the street, a roadster pressing in toward the curb. She was alone. She had opened the door. Like that day in the flowered room, he had been listening and watching toward the hall and she had come from the porch.
‘I gave you a ring at the Finishing School,’ he said, as if he had been waiting months to say just that.
‘I finished last June, but stayed on part-time for other work there.’
‘Post-graduate work?’
‘I’ve been learning to ride a horse. I thought you might come there first.’
Any one could see she had driven a car for a long time--queer ease of her own, no thought. She straightened her dress and thrust her wrap back from her shoulders, as if ready for all day. The small boot poured gas with mathematical accuracy and steadiness.
They were out of heavy traffic now; passing through an end of town increasingly familiar to Elbert.
‘Everything has seemed tangled and lonesome during this last week,’ she was saying. ‘But before that, it all grew clearer and clearer.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘For three weeks, just before this last, everything seemed to get clearer and clearer.’