Part 9

A rush past the small closed huts of Arecibo, women’s voices uttering prayers--guttural tones of frightened men--the signal from the hollow, where other horses were waiting. Elbert saw their pricked ears in the whitish light--nine or ten horses apparently, three men in charge. The released prisoners mounted at random, but Bart cleared from the tangle on a leaping wheeling mount that looked ashen-colored in the moonlight. A cracking of rifles from behind, the soldiers now having broken out the lower door. The rurales quartered across the town, couldn’t have gained the road so soon. Mamie had forged to the lead; at least, she was now abreast with the hound-bodied runner Bart sat.

‘That’s some horse you’re sittin’, Mister!’ the big fellow called. ‘Some more to her, too--she just can’t help it, can she? And handles with a light hand!’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Elbert.

He felt the strangest lift in his chest--Mamie beneath, Bart and the ashen runner at his side--a sorrel, to show that color in the moonlight--scatter of shots from behind, the deep whimsical voice again from his side:

‘I say, amigo mio--did you hold up a race-track special, too? They tell me I’m riding a stake-horse--old Mallet-head, here--but your mare isn’t asking any odds!’

‘She belonged to your father,’ Elbert answered throatily.

XXI

THE RIO MORENO BRIDGE

THEY were out of the town, riding west through open country--ten men, including himself, Elbert counted, one led-horse trailing. Bart had fixed the pace of the sorrel at a full run, but still Mamie had to be held in, not to forge ahead. Finally the words from Bart:

‘I don’t hear much American--but that didn’t sound so cheerful--“belonged,” you said?’

Elbert had to stop to recall his last words. He had said the mare he rode ‘belonged’ to Bart’s father.

‘Yes, that’s what I meant,’ he called back. ‘I came down from him--at the last--’

For a full minute, only the drum of hoofs; then from Bart, as steadily as before:

‘Some night for news--Monte Vallejo and this about Dad--same night.’

‘But I’ve got a lot to say to you from him!’ Elbert answered above the roar. ‘In case anything happens to separate us--I want you to know he has left you some money--quite a lot of money.’

‘Struck gold at the last?’

‘Yes, the mine’s rich, too--a gold tooth, he calls it,’ Elbert went on, absurdly. ‘Only filed the top off her so far. If I don’t get a chance to tell you all about it--you go to Mort Cotton, the cattleman at San Forenso--’

‘Say, amigo mio, aren’t you expecting to live?’

‘Yes, but I’ve been carrying this message all summer. Been down here looking for you--long time. Remember--Mort Cotton at San Forenso--he’ll fix you up, and I want to tell you, your father never forgot--but kept thinkin’ about you--ever since Red Ante--’

His relief was inexpressible for a minute. He had made good, if there was not another word spoken. ‘One of the finest men I ever knew!’ he added.

No answer from Bart.

Now gradually Elbert began to realize he was running with what was left of Monte Vallejo’s band. There hadn’t been any time to think or choose back in el cuartel. He had jumped at the chance to ride out with Bart; that meant he had cast his lot with the bandits; identified once and for all with a fragment of the outlaws, now hunted from all quarters of Sonora. Still, a kind of freedom throbbed in him, his nostrils dilated to the smell of dust in the night--a man beside, a horse beneath. Finally above the thud of hoofs, Bart’s voice again:

‘What did they lock you up for?’

‘My mare, Mamie here, I guess. They thought she was one of the race-horses--’

‘Thought you were one of us,’ Bart chuckled. ‘How long have you been locked up?’

‘Last night--or night before last--if it’s getting on toward morning.’

‘Two hours to daybreak yet.’

In the silence after that, Elbert became queerly aware that Bart wanted to ask more about his father, but couldn’t get his voice to working. The words reached him:

‘So they kicked off Monte yesterday morning?’

‘Day before yesterday--’

‘You weren’t there then?’

‘No, but they told me he had the nerve--that Bistula of the rurales, himself, finished the job. The soldiers wouldn’t shoot straight!’

‘I sure wanted to get to Monte in time,’ Bart said, queerly. ‘The game’s up, with him gone--’

Did he mean he regarded their own capture as inevitable? After another pause, Bart asked: ‘And what do you get, Mister, for coming down here and mixing up in this?’

‘Your father arranged all that. We were friends, you know--’

‘Don’t you know you’re in bad, ridin’ with this outfit?’

‘I took the job--’

‘Better if I’d left you locked up in that cell. You’re along with what’s left of a losing game--’ Bart’s laugh sounded forlorn as he added: ‘Why, they’re after us from every town--’

Elbert cleared his throat ‘You see, I took the job--’

His eye had fastened on the north star as he spoke. It was over his right shoulder, so they were riding west. He could see the mountains lying northward there in the moonlight. A sudden passion mounted in him to turn north right now; to ride straight north, crossing the Border with Bart, yonder in the mountains where there were no roads; to find himself in the States with Bart, asking the way to San Forenso; after that, the trail west to the cabin, his mind finishing the picture in a flash--with Mamie and the sorrel safe in the corral. The deep laughing voice at his left:

‘I guess when you take a job, you try to see it through, don’t you?’

‘Yes,’ said Elbert in fainter tone. He was deeply drawn to the man he had come for. Sometimes it was as if Cal Monroid were riding at his side; sometimes a feeling of Mr. Leadley’s presence.

‘I’d like to get you out of this, Mister, but it’s a sort of tight web--’

Silence and hard riding after that; finally Bart called a halt for a few seconds to listen or get his bearings. There was a scratching of matches in the outfit as he pressed on again--the interminable little boxes and sheaves of tobacco.

‘Don’t hear ’em behind. The town of Alphonso is about five miles ahead, I figure. Another squad of rurales stationed there--’

‘Telegraph in between?’ Elbert asked.

‘I’m not sure; not along this road, anyway. May be a roundabout wire. I’m taking the chance to reach the bridge of Rio Moreno. Two miles yet.’

They galloped on. The moon was tilting over toward the west. It must have been after three. He saw the lather on Mamie’s neck, yet he was still holding her in. A wooden bridge loomed ahead. Bart pulled up, and turned off the main road to a parallel sandy track at the right, leading down to the water. He didn’t mean to cross the bridge, Elbert perceived. The arroyo was broad and filled with stones, but the horses smelled water ahead. Mamie was whipping her head up and down, trying to take the bit. Now Elbert saw the mare’s ears cock suddenly, and knew she had caught something in the wind. His hand shot down to shut off her breath, but the nicker broke out in spite of him.

An answer in kind from under the bridge. Then a volley from the same source, Elbert’s second experience under rifle fire that night--venomous roaring of slugs in the air. He never could have dreamed how utterly malignant the sounds. That instant at his right hand (Bart was still at his left) it was as if the picture unfolded for his eyes alone--an upturned face, then a crumpled, falling body, horse leaping aside--empty saddle--one of the four released from the prison at Arecibo. In the midst of the shots, a yell from Bart:

‘We split right here, men!’

Elbert heard certain names shouted--those who were to turn back, those to ride north. Then Bart’s face jerked around to him. ‘This way for us, Mister, we ride together.’

Their horses were at full run, along the river-bed, where the clear sand showed at the edge of the stream--shots still peppering after.

‘Your mare!’ Bart laughed. ‘Why, they’d have gotten all of us, if she hadn’t given warning! We’d have gone right into their gun-barrels under the bridge!’

‘She’s one more listening mare,’ Elbert called back.

XXII

FRAMED IN A DOBE GATEWAY

NORTH, they were riding straight north, though the going for a way was a bit heavy through the sand and stones.

‘Not so fast quite!’ Bart warned. ‘The other three can’t keep up--’

Elbert was bending forward because the rurales were following, their shots still in the air. His heart was filled with elation that Mamie had given the warning, and that their course had turned north. He had forgotten the three of Bart’s men still riding with them. More shots from behind, a queer gulping cough from Bart.

‘Are you hurt?’ Elbert called.

‘Yes, one of ’em got me. I’ve--been--hit--before--but not so close in--’

Elbert’s hand tightened; his eyes still held to the north star. ‘Can you ride a ways?’

‘Sure. Long as you do--’

‘Don’t forget to give me a warning, if you’re going to--’

‘I’m not going to fall, amigo mio! They’ll never get us now, but our three behind--we’re ridin’ too fast for their ponies!’

Elbert did not look back; nor did he check Mamie’s speed. This was the instant he realized he was in command of affairs, if anybody was. His momentary concern wasn’t with the three bandits, whipping their ponies to hold the pace, but with the one who called him “amigo mio” and bent forward now as if pushing the saddle from him.

The sorrel galloped at Mamie’s side with great easy leaps. To keep going with Bart was Elbert’s game, not with this remnant of Vallejo’s band; to keep going north with Bart at any price; to turn loose the horses faster and faster, their heads to the north--if only Bart could stay in his seat! The river road running north assumed clearer outline--wheel-tracks, a hardening pebbled way. Again from his companion:

‘We’re ridin’ too fast for the others, Mister--’

‘I think we’d better not wait for anybody now, Bart. This is a running match right now, while you’re in the saddle. Who’s got the stuff--that’s what we’re going to find out--Mamie here or your Mallet-head!’

A chuckle in answer. ‘You’re the doctor!’

Elbert bent forward. ‘I say, Mamie, we’re off!’ She knew that tone--a wide-open throttle, it meant, and the big sorrel settled lower at the left, his fish eye fixed on her nose.

Now part of Elbert’s private reaction to the headlong pace was the sense that he had been fixing for this race all his life--a sort of climax of all days, and his eyes glanced often up to old Polaris, as if the north star were a silver cup for the winner. A distance-course, seconds pounding on into minutes, the minutes into tens, dusk of earliest morning blent with the low moon’s rays; only two horses in the finish, silence as deep from behind now as from the desolate foothills ahead--a friend to stick by at his left--white smile, two slits of black for eyes, body hanging forward.

Every little while: ‘Don’t fall, Bart! Give me a word if you’re slipping!’

‘I’m not going to fall, Mister--’

The river had narrowed to a creek; the road to a path; the blowing horses pelted forward on rising ground--

Then it was all as queer as a dream. Breaking day, a face framed in a dobe gateway, a face by the side of the road. Just a glimpse--girl or child or woman, he did not know--but a face in the ashen light--oval beauty in the gateway of a dobe wall! Elbert’s head flung back as they passed, but the face was gone. That instant thickly from Bart:

‘Pull up, pardner!’

Elbert’s hand went out to the left, as he drew Mamie sharply in with the other. The look of death was on Bart’s face; his lips moved.

‘Big town ahead--Fonseca--three miles or so. Rurales--they’ll be waitin’ for us there--’ The gamy head rocked back, the spine drooping sideways.

‘We’re not going there,’ said Elbert, leaping down. ‘God, how you’ve sat it out! You can fall now--I’m underneath!’

‘I’m not goin’ to fall--’ Bart mumbled, but his hand relaxed on the pommel.

Elbert looked forward and back; not a sign of life either way, but the face at the dobe gate was strangely before his inner eyes. Something queerly to do with the song of the corn-dust maiden in that far doorway, it seemed to have for him. His face lifted to the cold gray of the dawn-lit sky. Rurales still following possibly ... ‘mere formality’ ... blank wall ... oval beauty.

Now he was carrying Bart back, leading both horses.

‘I’m taking a chance to get you a berth,’ he gasped, coming in sight of the dobe gateway, now empty.

An aperture in a dobe wall for a gate--face gone. Over the gate as he led the horses into the yard, his eye caught the letters formed of faded tile, ‘El Relicario.’ He fancied the movement of a dress through a low arbor ahead. Still with his burden, he moved toward it.

She was there--in the doorway of a broad low dobe ruin. He seemed at first to see only her wide eyes. And then his Spanish came to him and words inspired by another’s need--pressure he had never felt back of an effort before.

‘Look, Señorita--he must have shelter and care--my companion! Will you not give help to him? I will pay a great price!’

The girl made no sound, her eyes fixed on Bart’s back, where Elbert’s hands pressed a dark saturation.

‘May I take him into your house for shelter, Señorita?’ he panted.

She led the way indoors, halting in a large, all but empty room.

‘There are those who want his life,’ Elbert said unsteadily under his burden. ‘May I not take him farther in?’

She turned instantly toward an inner door.

XXIII

FENCELESS FOOTHILLS OF SONORA

THERE was a room in which he saw a full-sized harp in its shroud; there was a trellised patio, two great ollas standing on the heaved tiles and jasmine vines very thick and ancient. At the far corner, in the gray morning light, stood an elderly man with bared head. To him, the señorita gave the signal of silence with her finger touching her lips, and also to an old woman in the latticed kitchen.... Ruin of an old plantation house, very large, some of the windows unglazed; El Relicario--the name ran through Elbert’s brain which throbbed from the stress of his burden--all this a matter of seconds only.

Then a corridor and a little room to the left--queer warmth rising in Elbert’s heart, as he placed Bart upon a cot that had recently been slept in. The sense came to him that this was a kind of sanctuary--a cross upon the wall, a white flower beneath, the girl standing against the wall, her arms slightly lifted, her hands toward the long booted figure on her own cot. Elbert bent over Bart now--a rush of memories of the day he had brought his father to the cabin and set him down like this. The eyes were looking up to him; the lips moved with hardly audible words.

‘Back at the gate--as we turned in--the tracks of our horses!’

‘Yes, sure, I’ll fix them.’ Then he added: ‘Listen, can you hear me, Bart?’

‘Yes, sure--’

‘I’m going to ride on and leave you here. I’m taking both horses--so the rurales won’t stop, but follow me on. I’ll hide in the foothills to-day, and circle back here to-night or to-morrow night.’

‘I hate to see you go, but you’re--you’re the doctor!’ Bart laughed. ‘About the sorrel--he knows the whip, but goes mad under a spur--just a pointer in handling him--but you know a horse.’

Elbert’s jaw hardened. ‘Thanks, I’ll remember,’ he said.

The voice went on faintly: ‘I didn’t miss how you handled the mare!’

‘You didn’t miss--anything!’ Elbert replied, fearing the other was delirious from his wound.

‘Sorry--you go--’

‘It’s the only way. Adios, Bart--and to you, Señorita, this--’

He placed two gold pieces on the table, but saw her hurt and troubled look, as she came forward from the wall.

‘You see, I’m leading them away from him!’ he said, as if the point were of great moment to her.

Bart’s hand lifted; but his face was cut off by the girl’s bending profile. Queer joy lived in him from Bart’s recent words about his handling of the mare, but a sudden weariness came over him, too, as he turned away. A nicker outside answered his step as he hastened across the broken stonework of the patio. Mamie had never before been left unceremoniously to cool in a yard--in company with a stranger.

He led the horses out to the road; no sight or sound so far at least, from the direction he had come. Leaving them standing on the highway, he reëntered the gate and began fanning out the hoof-marks in the yard, using his broad hat. Out through the gate again, he worked until all was clear; then mounted and pushed on, leading the sorrel.

Day was brightening among the foothills. The big range he had ridden toward through the night was now intimately uncovered on his right hand; Fonseca, three miles straight ahead, Bart had said. Both horses were pulling toward the creek. They were too hot for a deep drink, but might have a few draughts without harm. Besides, he must replenish his pack-canteen.

The sorrel fought to drink his fill. Elbert had to climb into Bart’s saddle to get the big fellow out of the stream. Back on the road again, he followed for about a quarter of a mile, toward Fonseca, before turning eastward to the mountains. He had left a clear trail so far, and now off the road, he began to weave back and forth along the stony waste, following a vague idea to confuse and delay pursuit, being well past the old dobe house. Bart would have done all this better, he thought, recalling how the other, half dead, had not forgotten to tell him to wipe out the tracks leading from the road in through the dobe wall.

Many minutes afterward, he came to a halt upon an eminence and looked down, at a frail low smoke pattern of the town to the north. Also he glanced back to familiarize himself with the lay of the land around El Relicario. The hills shut him off from much of the road; he caught no glimpse of possible pursuit. Still later in full sunlight he halted in a rift between the hills and forked out a few mouthfuls of breakfast from a glass jar of frijoles, packed in his saddle-bags at San Isidro three days before.

Now in a rush it closed upon him--the heaviness, the coldness, the blur of fatigue. Languidly, he set to work upon the horses. They were sweated out, cakes of dust and salt at the cinchlines and blanket-edges, both restlessly athirst, but apparently not lastingly hurt by the long gallop of the night. He took off only one saddle at a time; holding the other ready instantly to mount and be off at the first sight or sound, working meanwhile with wisps of grass and cloths from his kit. Strange, it seemed, to play the groom to another than Mamie; unfamiliar, the bones and textures of this rangy gelding; no curiosity or particular affection from the sorrel runner such as Elbert was accustomed to. Running was what this one knew, but Mallet-head was presently adapting his taste, nevertheless, to the scant sun-dried grass with better grace than the mare. She couldn’t see why a stop should be made in this waterless, fenceless wilderness. Standing by, she nudged the man’s arm repeatedly for light on the subject.

‘Night-running’s all right with her,’ he mused, ‘but she doesn’t get the inconveniences of being a bandit’s mare.’

His thoughts were running queerly from so many shocks and tensions. The sun was well above the eastern mountains, but not yet nine in the morning--just about the time he used to be getting to the leather-store. Fenceless foothills of Sonora, a wearing grind of thoughts and questions. Little inner room--cross and white flower and cot so recently slept in. Did the señorita always get up so early? Were the old people her parents? How had it all been arranged with so few words, as if some power intervened to help in a pinch? Was Bart going to live, or would it be as it was with his father? Had the rurales by this time stopped at that open dobe gateway? Had it been yellow of him to run away from the other three bandits?

He began to think he had done rather poorly. If Bart had held the lead, he wouldn’t have run away from his men. Bart had spoken of the matter three or four times after his wound, and then given up--‘You’re the doctor!’ In the thick bruised feeling of his brain, Elbert’s depression deepened. He recalled his bad judgment in letting Mamie out--so close to Arecibo, and in telling the rurale that he had come from San Isidro.

The sickish smile came again to his lips. He wasn’t much for this sort of life; he ought to be driving a car, a truck, possibly. He recalled his funk in the prison at Arecibo, even before he was locked up, and afterward in the cell--and how the bandits had given themselves to death. ‘... peaceful to be with like cattle. I don’t mean they’re cattle, only that they loll around and ruminate like ’em,’ old Bob Leadley had said, summing up the whole matter in the remark that he wished he had treated the Mexicans as well as they treated him.

Moreover, the old man had found out that there were times when a man couldn’t wash his hands. ‘Wasn’t that just what I did about the other three?’ Elbert questioned, squinting up at the sky. Now a painful rush of pictures went through his brain--the wall in the prison patio, the corner of the wall--only yesterday morning--standing at the bars of the cell.

He caught himself rubbing his right cheek.

No, there was something in him that didn’t belong to this sort of life. As for Red Ante, he couldn’t have done the thing Bart did--he couldn’t have lived through it, as Bart’s father did.

All day the horses kept their heads turned down hill. They snipped the sparse grass--eyes and ears and muzzles stretched toward distant hollows--all instincts fixed upon unseen water. Elbert didn’t trust the sorrel, not even to tether him, but kept a hand on his bridle-rein. Once he dozed and was awakened from a thirst dream by the sound of horses sucking in water from a stony stream.

... Mexico with her quaint, gentle ways--a plaintive singing voice ‘carved out of starlight’--but underneath--violence. Men fell to killing each other. Just so much of all this killing a man could stand, and no more. How had Bart stood it for so long? Bart wasn’t like that, himself. He hadn’t even roughed it with the soldier of the keys in the Arecibo prison--not even in that moment of fierce danger and haste! ... and that easy flowing voice of coolness and laughter and daring, but how had Bart dared to put Palto out of his misery?

Elbert pondered a long time, finally remembering how he had felt the need of carrying Bart deeper and deeper into the house, as if he had known all the time there was an inner room. When he reached there and had laid his burden down--a sudden sense of peace had come over him. What was the meaning of that? With his eyelids closed he saw a light shining through alabaster. Yes, he had met one who would know the meaning and could answer this.... But what was the meaning of the power that had seemed to come to him to make the señorita understand with so few words?...

Cross and white flower--Spanish-faced girl standing back against the wall... Elbert dozed again, and the inner room of El Relicario and the still flowered room of Tucson softly, magically folded into one. It seemed quite easy and natural.

A grim day, his nerve at lowest ebb, nothing of the lift or glow he had known in moments of last night’s riding with Bart. Would they ever ride together again? Was Bart lying dead now in that inner room?

Fenceless foothills of Sonora--ages in a day! He didn’t feel quite sane, riding down to the creek in the dusk at last. He couldn’t hold his mind to thought of danger, but to water only. Mamie smelled it and could scarcely be held in; the sorrel plunged at her side.

XXIV

SHEATH-KNIFE