Part 7

Elbert was waiting in the reception room of the Finishing School. It was the summer season and only a few of the girls were staying over--those whose families did not live in Tucson, possibly. The place was shaded and flowery; blossoms on all the tables, and one great basket, shaped like a French hat of an old day, on the piano, filled with young pink roses. He heard laughter and whispering in the hallway. It wasn’t exactly clear to him what he must say or do. He felt his wound right now, a sort of general breakdown. The door he was looking toward--the direction the voices came from--didn’t open. Her step sounded from behind. He saw her first among the vines at the window, facing the porch. Her lips moved, her hand lifted, the door opened, but everything was stiller than one could imagine.

‘I would have known you--’

‘Of course--’

‘It’s probably because I saw you before--I mean before dark that night--’

He felt a vague surprise in himself that he caught the drift so readily. ‘At the barefooted woman’s--’ he finished.

‘Yes--’

‘It was different, after supper that night,’ she went on, ‘but I’m glad I would have known you, as you are to-day. Reading the papers was so confusing.’

‘They never know when to stop.’

‘They didn’t tell it nearly all, either--’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t have known it was the same story by reading it in the papers.’

‘I see--’

She was changed--less glitter somehow, as if her light came from deeper in, a light more delicate. She had on a creamy dress, no folds in it, but not tight anywhere. This meeting wasn’t like the first time in the Señora’s house; nor yet, was it like the sense of her which had come in the hospital, from so many hours of pondering over the separate sentences of her letter. Suddenly he knew he must never tie himself to any particular moment when with her, because she wasn’t going to be the same the next time. Tying to one meeting would keep him from catching on to all that the next held in store. His mind clung for a moment, however, to the memory of the alabaster bowl at home, while she was still going on about the newspapers.

‘They didn’t see you. They didn’t know what we did--what we tried to do. They sort of laughed at us, and talked of your great bravery, but there was something no one saw--’

She was standing at his left--a hush between the sentences. ‘... They didn’t know that somebody was helping us--’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean it wasn’t just your strength. Why, you were like one dead; and yet you still drove. It was only when we were safe that your hand relaxed--’

‘A case of knowing I had to, wasn’t it?’

‘More than that. That helped, of course, but there was something more--’

He said: ‘I didn’t know much of what was happening at the time--that is, to remember, but I had a feeling you were helping--’

‘Did you know that?’

‘Yes.’

‘Really, did you know that?’

‘I had the feeling you were helping,’ he repeated. ‘First I thought your hand--you know, I thought your hand would come up and help--’

‘It couldn’t.’

‘I didn’t know then.’

‘It was because it couldn’t, don’t you see?’

‘No. I don’t understand.’

‘When I found I couldn’t lift my hand, I knew I had to help another way!’

‘You mean you--you prayed?’

‘I never did before,’ she laughed. ‘Yes, it was like that--’

It was as if the windows were all thrust open into a wide silent summer, like the stillness of mountains, where there is not even the rustle of a wing. A clean perfume came in, and there was a clear seeing in Elbert’s brain, as if an arc-light were burning, where only candles had shone before.

‘It was so dreadful, because I had promised,’ she said.

‘How was that?’

‘You had asked me to help you, and I had promised. Then I found I could not even lift my hand. It was then I kept saying, “I have to help him, please. I have to help him, please--”’

‘I see,’ said Elbert.

‘And then it was as if I could see the car below--see right through into it, and I could see you and me, sort of little and broken inside, and I could feel _our_ pain, but we were really together outside and above, and we knew it would be all right--’

Now he could actually help carry out her picture. ‘I remember in the hospital,’ he said quickly, ‘when they gave me an anæsthetic, I could look down at myself like that. I wouldn’t tell anybody--if I were you.’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t for worlds! They’d call it being out of the head!’

So she had kept all this, until he came. Just now he turned to her, and there wasn’t a sound from the halls. The light was easy and flowing in the room. Everything was like a slow movement. His right foot raised to take the step toward her, but suddenly he knew if he took the step, it would be next to impossible to remember clearly that he must find Bart Leadley; quite plain, it was, that if he took this step toward her, he wouldn’t be able to go down into Mexico alone and keep his mind to the allegiance he had entered with Bart’s father. His foot settled back to the floor.

‘... And the later part--all different--I’ll never forget!’ she was telling him. ‘It was when the dawn came--the time we were in the awful cold--and they found us, and you were hanging forward on the wheel--your face was like stone--eyes open, but no life. Oh, I’ll never forget! It was as if the skin of your face were pulled back over the bones from behind ... and they lifted me out to an ambulance, before they lifted you, and I saw your left side--all wet and stained dark ... and then I knew I wasn’t helping--so frightened from your look--and I knew I must not fall into fears, nor pay any attention to your wound, but help more--from higher up, and never stop--’

It was getting harder and harder to think of the work ahead. Elbert plunged into the inevitability of it right now.

‘I’ve got a work to do,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to go away. I’m glad I came to-day. About all this--I won’t forget any of it. I’ll know more about it--when I come back--’

The most astonishing thing of all, she seemed to understand even that--no resistance whatever from her, as there had been none from his father. Was it always like this--when one was sure of himself?

‘I have work to do, too,’ she told him at the window. ‘We’ll know all about everything, when the time comes.’

XVI

THOROUGHBREDS ENTER

‘Cuando sali de la Habana, Valgame Dios--’

WEEKS afterward in old Mexico. He hadn’t moved straight down toward Nacimiento and San Pasquali, where Monte Vallejo was last heard of, but had followed the Border west, leaving the main highway, sinking himself into the country. He was taking it easy, learning the language from the voices in the daytime and his Spanish book at night. Days of learning--getting to know the feel of the people, learning Mamie, and that was not all--learning himself. No more leather-store; he wasn’t dreaming. An old fear that something was wrong about him, even anatomically wrong, in relation to a saddle, had pretty well died out. Sometimes he even fancied that Mamie answered his rein, as if it were old man Leadley’s velvety touch.

‘Era la que me miraba Diciendo adios’

That song was like an ever-continued story. A woman’s voice with guitar, this time, and the old wistfulness came over Elbert--the same that he had felt in the Plaza of Los Angeles. Here he was in a little native plaza--far from travel-lines, not even sure of the name of the town, yet he had to stop and think that all he had wanted so restlessly a while back, had come to pass. At least, he was working out the old dream day by day, Sonora at her sleepiest and dustiest now, days interminably long and changelessly hot.

Though the fierce daylight had faded out the shine from her bright bay coat, Mamie was hardening to the road, and the man was coming to know some of her movements and whims, if not all. Gradually Elbert perceived also that she was aware of many of his. He never tethered her at night, yet she never strayed. He hadn’t been able to learn the lip-and-finger call, the way Bob Leadley had shown him, but there was a whistle in the handle of the sheath-knife he carried, and a blast from that brought the mare in from the sweetest herbage.

He liked the nights in the open, Mamie grinding at her forage the last thing--drowsiest sound in the world to him. And her early call; out of the deepest sleep he would hear that. But by the time his eyes were open, the mare was merely to be seen feeding at a distance, her head turned away. If he dozed again, a more peremptory summons would sound, but Mamie was apparently calling to the hazy hills, her farthest concern to do with him.

One morning he didn’t doze a second time, but covertly watched. About ten minutes after first call, the mare stopped feeding and came toward him, her hind feet lifting high and quickly, like a race horse, under the big blanket. Suddenly she stopped, blatted her loudest toward Elbert’s partly covered head, but wheeled on the instant and was cropping again.... Fearless and winsome, a walk-trot mare, ready to go, ready to keep on, invariably increasing the pace as his hand idled at the reins, or his thoughts roamed away. Often Elbert would come to himself finding Mamie in a full ten-mile trot, when he had not been paying attention for several minutes. The pace seemed to steal upon her, and would end in a run if he did not bring her down.

One day it occurred to him that she never dropped into a walk from a trot, or back into a trot from a gallop, unless pulled up. There was no exception that he could remember. But the black night at San Pasquali had left a double-died complex at the core of Mamie’s emotional self. The sound of a motor car made her unreasonable at once. She would have been glad to do the day’s work over again any night, to get away from a town where machines had penetrated. Her one other deranging influence was an oil derrick. One of these attenuated triangles spoiled her whole horizon, like a finger of doom.

Gradually his rides took him farther south and west. Plenty to hear of Monte Vallejo, the bandit, of whom the peons of some districts were passionately fond. But never a word of a possible white man who rode with him. It would be a matter of luck, Elbert often thought, that would bring him up with Bart, if that ever happened. What he needed now, more than knowledge of Spanish, or anything else, and he came to know this very well, was sheer patience to carry on. It wasn’t possible to ask questions about Monte Vallejo, without the people becoming suspicious at once. They thought he was somehow interested in helping the rurales, who did much of the hard work in keeping the districts in order, and yet were disliked as a matter of course by the people. Elbert often wondered what he could ever do single-handed, when the rurales for years had failed to bring in the bandit. Also General Cordano, who commanded the military of the whole country-side, was Vallejo’s sworn enemy for political reasons, and yet with all his soldiers had been unable to put a stop to the activity of the bandit.

Everywhere it was related that the notorious Monte had the best horses in Sonora. Elbert was in a way to hear much of this, because the people seemed inevitably reminded of the point by his own coming to their different towns. It wasn’t himself who attracted the people, however, nor held their eyes. It was Mamie whom they gathered to see, looking her over, even bringing lanterns in the evening, ever drawing near and saying to each other:

‘Monte Vallejo would like that mare,’ or, ‘Monte Vallejo rides a horse like that.’

Many weeks passed before his task became actual. He had been as far as a hundred and fifty miles southwest, and had made a big circle north again toward the Border, when word sped from town to town that Monte Vallejo had held up a westbound Yuma Pacific train in the San Isidro Gorge, not primarily to loot the passengers--that was incidental--but to relieve two express coaches of a string of thoroughbreds en-route to the running meeting at Tia Juana.

At this very time, Elbert was in the little town of San Isidro, less than twenty miles from the scene of the hold-up.

Southwest with his new saddle-stock, the master of the road and his band were said to be galloping with three troops of rurales beating the trail behind--the latter stung and aroused as never before. Gold bar couldn’t have challenged the mounted police like this theft of bang-tails.

Elbert got it all as straight as he could in his mind that night, and the next morning before full light, he filled his saddle-bags with what provisions he could procure in San Isidro and rode out, following the trail which a northern squad of rurales had taken after the bandit. He tried not to appear in too much of a hurry, but Mamie unquestionably felt the force of this fresh clue and the excitement in the air. Sonora was really wrought up. The entire body of rurales had taken the road to make a sure job of it this time. Meanwhile the people kept it a secret where the bandit’s picket lines were stretched, and fixed their faces for a great laugh at the expense of the mounted police.

But the hour had evidently arrived for an astonishing turn of affairs. The second day out from San Isidro, Elbert became aware of a persistent rumor to the effect that Monte Vallejo was having trouble covering ground with his new string of horses. They were sprint-bred, but few of them took to steady distance work, so important in the present flight. On the third day, the most incredible of all announcements shocked Sonora--that Monte Vallejo and seven of his men had been captured a few miles beyond Arecibo; that they had been brought back to that town, and were being held there under a guard of rurales, as well as watched over by the little garrison of Cordano’s soldiers located at that point.

No trial; only an order from General Cordano was awaited, it was said. Upon the receipt of this, Monte and his seven, without reservation, would be put to death in el cuartel at Arecibo. ‘A mere formality,’ the natives moaned, intimating that supplying the paper would be a pleasant task for General Cordano. This ‘mere formality’ sunk into Elbert’s head. Later the news reached him that another wing of Monte’s band had been taken. The rurales were having their turn of luck at last.

XVII

THE ART OF DYING WELL

ARECIBO was thirty-five miles away, when Elbert received this news. He did fifteen miles more that day, and the next mid-afternoon when he was close to the town where Monte Vallejo was said to be held, a most inviting level stretch of turf showed ahead. Mamie did not miss the fact. She had been well rested in San Isidro; her fitness brought to a fine point, which two full days’ work had not dulled. She was teasing at the man’s arm, at this very moment, and rising under him, as a small boat in open sailing after the drag of a breakwater. She took the gallop and Elbert wasn’t so hard to persuade, as she stretched out, loosening her mouth from the restraint of his hand.

There was a laugh on his lips, as he let her go. These were some of their best moments together, and this particular dash promised to be a jewel among them--only in the lee of a big boulder as he flicked round a bend, stood one of the rurales at ‘raise pistol,’ and a snapping bark to halt from his throat.

It took nearly a hundred yards for Mamie to slow down. Elbert turning her about at length, perceived the native trooper riding his way--one of Sonora’s finest--gunned, spurred, saber-sheathed on one side, carbine-booted on the other, a heavy cartridge-belt flung over left shoulder and under right arm. Around the mustacios was a restless, uncertain look.

‘Magnificent horse you ride, Señor.’

‘She’s a good mare--just trying her out.’

‘Had her long?’

‘Oh, yes--’ but that didn’t seem to go with ‘just trying her out.’

The rurale was sizable for a Mexican; not so tall, but thick in proportion; heavy wrists, bulging forearms, thick, straight back. His pony looked small and desperate compared to Mamie, but kept going with outstretched head.

‘And where does the Señor travel?’

‘The next town--Arecibo.’

‘I also go to Arecibo.’

Mamie was now being regarded with even more than customary interest, back and forth, up and down, the rurale’s eye roving, so that it was with difficulty that he kept his mind upon conversation at this time. Still Elbert was used to this sort of thing, having frequently found himself judged as a caballero of some great and elaborate house by the horse he rode.

‘I have heard that the notorious Vallejo is being held in Arecibo,’ he began with sociable impulse.

‘Yes?’ questioned the trooper in return.

Elbert wondered at the curious tone. This man had reservations.

‘I have been on the road for two days and possibly am misinformed,’ Elbert added carefully.

‘On the road--from where, Señor?’

‘From San Isidro--’

The other’s hand jerked at his bridle-rein.

Now Elbert began to realize that San Isidro was hardly a town to mention--so close to the gorge of the same name where the recent hold-up had taken place.

The Mexican slowly pulled himself together to reply. ‘Monte Vallejo is not being held in Arecibo. In purgatorio, at this hour, so I trust. Ah, it was magnificent!’

Mamie was now forgotten. Transformation in the rurale was to be witnessed, moreover, at this point. The man seemed higher, rising in his saddle with enthusiasm. Here was one of the pride of the Republic, indeed, having banished all present care, in the thought of the recent exploits of his troop, and especially of the light-hearted and inimitable courage of his chief, Ramon Bistula, el capitan, to whom the bandit’s capture was largely due.

Tributes, dithyrambs, even--but no news.

‘You say Monte Vallejo is dead--already put to death?’

‘To-day. This very day, Señor.’

‘And by the hand of this famous captain of your troop?’

‘Si, Señor.’

‘Where is your captain now?’ Elbert asked at random.

‘In Arecibo--have no fear. The Señor will be welcomed by el capitan Ramon, himself, who put the bullet in the head of the chief of the bandits, Monte Vallejo!’

Elbert struggled with his own composure.

‘I do not understand about your captain’s bullet--if Monte was already taken captive--surely he--’

‘This very day!’ exclaimed the rurale. ‘It was so, Señor--a most charming thing! The great Vallejo had many wounds at the time--many wounds, but would not fall. Laughing, he stood unbound--his head uncovered, trying to light with wet fingers a second cigarette that would not burn--’

‘I did not hear about the first. Please, not so fast,’ said Elbert. ‘My Spanish is of the book--not so fast, please--’

‘Ah, Señor, your Spanish is quite--Castillano, quite. The Spanish of el capitan Ramon is like that, also--’

And this was the story that Elbert heard, through many repetitions, as they rode forward toward Arecibo:

‘... At daybreak this very day, seven men put to death in the patio of el cuartel in Arecibo by the limping idiots of Cordano who call themselves soldiers. Seven prisoners, bound and blindfolded, shot down by the soldiers of Cordano, while Monte himself and el capitan, Ramon Bistula, laughed and smoked and chatted together, until there were no more prisoners standing, and it became time for Monte himself to stand against the wall.

‘No bandage for the eyes--ah, no, not for such as he! No thongs for his hands--he waved them away; then stepping carefully to avoid the dead and shaking ones of his band, Monte took his place against the blank wall--lighting another cigarette.’

Elbert felt a frightful closeness about it all--this very day, under this very sun, the town where it happened, looming just ahead, the man at his side, having witnessed it all. Moreover Elbert was enduring a positive strain to know if one of the bodies Monte Vallejo stepped over, as he took his place at the wall, was Bart Leadley. Not without great difficulty, his pressure was so keen, did Elbert follow the details of the trooper’s story, but the telling was folded over and over again on itself. It appeared that as Vallejo lighted his cigarette, taking his place against the wall, Ramon Bistula called to the soldiers not to fire for a moment, until the chief of bandits had taken one or two deep breaths of smoke.

‘... Such courtesy!’ exclaimed the enraptured rurale, pouring out the rest. ‘And then it was, in a moment more, with a gesture of thanks to my captain, Señor Vallejo bowed his head for death, but there was not one of the soldiers who cared to put an end to such courage, and none could fire straight in any case; so “boom-boom” from the volleys and Monte Vallejo did not fall.’

Now the trooper swung his shoulders to the right and left--unsettling the gait of his pony--in the way of portraying the manner the doomed bandit kept his feet.

‘Several times--in the arms and legs, struck, Señor--yet smiling still and trying to light his tobacco from which the fire had dropped--’

The trooper’s speech had become very rapid; his bridle-rein changed from hand to hand, the ears of his mount cocking with the gestures. Here, manifestly, was the climax of his narrative. Once he dropped the bridle-rein entirely, needing both hands:

‘... Then it was that my captain, Ramon Bistula, hastened forward, beckoning the soldiers back. He caught the reeling Vallejo in his own hands. He held him still. From his own case he drew a cigarette. He struck the match, lit it in his own lips. He placed it in the lips of the other. This I heard, “I have the honor in a moment to end the work of these frightened butchers. You are a brave man, Monte Vallejo! Speak, when you would have me fire!”

‘And with that, such a beautiful look came into the eyes of the bandit chief, as he said, “Gracias, Capitan, your words and your tobacco are of one excellence!” And after that, “I will thank you now to put me to sleep, Brother Ramon--”

‘It was then with his own hands--’

* * * * *

Florid life was closing in upon Elbert a bit too fast. Riding in silence into Arecibo, he reflected upon the quiet life of the leather-store, and upon the manner of life he was entering upon right now. He couldn’t have chatted and smoked like Monte Vallejo. He couldn’t have done the elegant butchery part of el capitan Ramon. It was like the story of Red Ante--there just wasn’t the stuff in him to endure certain phases of that, nor the sort of thing pulled off in el cuartel, Arecibo, this very day.

In so many cases in this country, he reflected, one but arrived to the estate of manhood, when he met death in violent form. And out of all this death, what hope for Bart Leadley, and the rounding-out of that old bitter tale?

Elbert felt very confused and inadequate.

The little plaza, with only one building of more than one story surrounding, and that el cuartel, looked cold and forbidding to his eyes that late afternoon; the little shops with dirt floors, where old cheese and new rum struggled together to reproduce the flavor of by-gone Spain, had lost their accustomed romance. It was not until Mamie was safely cared for in a clean corral by herself; not, in fact, until her master sat down to tortillas and huevos rancheros (the flavor of garlic coming in from the open fireplace of the little fonda)--that a certain wistful zest of life really began to stir again in his veins once more. Black tobacco in the air, black coffee sweetened to a syrup.

‘If one could only live to enjoy all this,’ he reflected, leaning back.

Dusk was already in the room--candle-lights across the plaza, the first strum of guitars. At this moment a young Mexican officer appeared; elegantly dressed, and quite as Elbert might have pictured such an entrance--whipping a riding crop against his polished boot.

‘May I humbly present myself, Señor--I, Ramon Bistula?’

XVIII

ONE SANG WITH GUITAR