Kitabı oku: «Over the Border: A Novel», sayfa 14
XXVI: A SETTLEMENT
About the time Bull started, Lee and Gordon rose from the breakfast-table under the Los Arboles portales.
Perhaps with sympathetic intuition, for they exchanged an amiable grin, Sliver and Jake had already passed out. It is true that Maria and Teresa, the small brown criadas, were peeping from the crypt-like depths of their kitchen. But even had she been aware of their vast interest, Lee would not have withdrawn the hand which, as they rose, had somehow tangled with Gordon’s. Reflected and thrown up from the yellow wall, the strong morning lights bathed the flesh of her arms, face, and neck with suffused amber, wove a soft glow in the mesh of her hair. So different from her usual boyish activity, her gentle quiet, combined with the warm air, suffused lights, to create a dreamy spell. Goodness knows how long they would have stood if Maria had not come out to clear the table.
Then Lee spoke. “Such sloth! This will never do if I am to go to El Sol and return to-day. While I dress will you please get my horse?”
When Gordon reached the stable Sliver had already gone, but Jake had lingered to say a word. It was very much to the point. “Say! Bull tipped me off as how the young greaser was likely to show up an’ raise some hell to-day. Don’t you allow I’d better hang around?”
He nodded, however, when Gordon explained the situation. “Missy don’t know he’s coming, hey? – thinks she’s going over there. Then they’ll meet on the way. Mebbe I’d better tag along.”
But to this Gordon’s pride would not consent. “Don’t you think I can take care of her?”
“No one better,” Jake hastened to appease. “But, say! If he doesn’t show up, don’t you let her go on over there – not if you have to rope an’ drag her home.”
“Like we did before?” He smiled at the memory. “This time I’ll not leave her the saddle machete.”
“Little bit too smart for you that time,” Jake grinned in sympathy. “Take care she don’t spring a new one. She ain’t so very slow.”
Nevertheless, in the face of his apparent acquiescence, while apparently heading out on his usual beat, he whirled behind the first ridge and, proceeding at a fast lope, had covered five miles of the way to El Sol, the Icarzas’ hacienda, by the time Lee came out. Slowing down, then, he rode more leisurely, had covered another mile when, over the crest of a ridge, he sighted Ramon coming at a gallop down the opposite slope. A clump of mesquite and palo verde afforded convenient cover. Forcing his beast in, Jake stooped low and watched Ramon go by, so close that his stirrup whipped the bushes.
It had never been Jake’s habit to notice Mexicans. But now he noted with surprise the change in the young man’s face. The lines deeply plowed down the nose under the cheeks, the hardening of the red, womanish lips, the vindictive black sparkle that had contracted his great dusky eyes into burning black dots, added ten years to his age.
“The Mex is souring in him,” Jake inwardly commented. “That guinea’s liable to try an’ hurt some one. Glad I came.”
Allowing Ramon to pass on, Jake then rode after, and so, progressing from ridge to ridge, keeping always the height of land between them, was less than fifty yards behind when, peeping over the crest, he saw Lee and Gordon coming up the slope.
Another bunch of chaparral afforded cover, and after tying his horse in it, Jake crawled up to the ridge and looked over.
It was not without argument that Gordon had obtained Lee’s consent to accompany her. When she found him standing with two horses at the gate, her brows rose in a troubled arch.
He understood that she hesitated to accuse him of bad taste, and quoted Bull’s last orders to remove the impression. “He said that you were never to ride alone.”
The responsibility being thus shifted, she felt able to speak. “It is rather – Really, I don’t see how I can do anything else.”
“Why go at all? Why not write?”
She shook her head. “I’ve known him since childhood – and have treated him badly. I owe him an apology and it will have to come from my own lips.”
It was reasonable enough from her point of view, but not from his. If Ramon were an American he would have said, “Go, ahead; take your medicine!” Being Mexican, discretion bade him remain.
“At least let me ride with you part of the way. I will turn before you reach El Sol.”
“Oh, that will be all right,” she had conceded at once.
He had felt certain, of course, that they would meet Ramon. But the usual witcheries, sweep of the tawny earth-waves under the bright sun, satisfying thud of hoofs on the trail, creak and smell of hot leather, had combined to blind him to all but her presence. Now, before he could turn, Ramon reined in before them.
Like Jake, they noticed at once the sardonic furrows, set mouth, frown above the glittering eyes. With his youth had vanished that veneer of refinement which conceals natural Mexican grossness. Like veins in a stratum revealed by a landslide, selfishness, conceit, violence, revenge, lay exposed. With the natural instinct of good breeding, Gordon had half turned to withdraw. But even if one glance at the passion-torn face had not checked the impulse, it would have been killed when Lee backed toward him. Shocked and a little afraid, she gazed at Ramon before she spoke.
“Are you ill? You look so – ”
“So it was true, what the señora told me yesterday!” He spoke in low, strained tones. “It was true, though I did not believe; refused to believe. But now I see. It is true that you used me as bait for your fishing.”
“Ramon!” She raised her hand, but he switched suddenly from denunciation to appeal.
“No! it is not true! It cannot be! She lied! I will not believe it even though you tell me yourself!”
From this he ran on with an appeal, hysterical and disconnected, which reflected as in a clear glass the nature of his love. In it was no appreciation of the feminine personality with its delicacies of feeling, refinements, inconsistencies, helplessness, all the illogicalities that render it charming, as much or more than its faith and love. In terms of blind egotism, it expressed only his passion and jealousy, fatuous conceit. As in a clear glass, under a powerful light, he revealed himself so that even a woman blinded by love could not have failed to see. In the middle of it Gordon heard Lee take a long breath, and knew it for thankfulness. Yet her relief did not kill her poignant regret for the part she had played.
She spoke softly, pityingly, when he stopped. “Ramon, I’m sorry. It was wicked of me to draw you on. But to marry you would be far worse. What can I do to make up?”
He told, with anger and offense. She had promised to be his wife! It was a betrothal! as binding in Mexican eyes as marriage! He had announced it to his father, mother, sister, friends! His conceit cropped out again as he pictured himself, jilted, in their eyes. Angered by his own imaginings, he was growing abusive when she cut him quietly off.
“I was on my way when we met, to own and ask pardon for my fault. I had counted on our old friendship and your generosity to make it less difficult. But I see, now, my error. There is nothing left but to bid you good-by.”
Now came the ultimate revelation, that passion of furious jealousy which drives the Mexican peon to cut off the hands, slash the face and breast, of his love. His eyes narrowed to shifting, insane sparks. Hand raised, as though to strike, he spurred his beast forward.
“You – you – ”
He got no further, for one hard dig of the spur shot Gordon’s horse in between. From English to Spanish the argument had run, but from Lee’s answers Gordon had gathered enough. Though slower, his beast was heavier than Ramon’s, and while forcing horse and rider sideways with a steady pressure he issued his orders:
“That’s about enough for you! Get!”
Ramon’s hand flew to his saddle machete, but he did not draw, for Gordon’s had gone to his gun. Leg pressed against leg, they manœuvered their plunging beasts; without drawing a weapon fought the old fight of the brown man and the white; the struggle which began when Cortés imposed his will on the Aztec emperors; was continued by the Puritan forefathers against the American Indian; which has been fought to the same conclusion all over the world. And from the two faces – Gordon’s cold, hard-eyed, Ramon’s distorted with black fury – the cause of that inevitable ending might have been read.
So close they were Gordon could see the palpitation of light from the insane waverings of the other’s eyeballs steady under a doubt. He felt rather than saw the Mexican’s sudden swift reach for his knife. Even more swiftly he snatched, and with a sudden wrench of the other’s wrist sent the knife flying and bore him back flat in the saddle. For a moment he held him, then with a powerful shove his horse sent Ramon’s beast stumbling sideways and broke the grip. Wheeling in a circle, Ramon faced them again.
So far Lee had looked on distressed. Now she spurred forward and caught Gordon’s arm. “Let him go! – please!” Her anger gone now, sorrow quivering in her voice, she added, “You will, won’t you, Ramon?”
His fury, passion, wild jealousy had settled in dark calm. “Yes, I am going now. But the next time – .” He wheeled and galloped off.
Till the tip of his sombrero vanished behind the ridge Lee watched him go, distress and relief mingling in a wintry smile.
“Don’t give him too much of your pity,” Gordon consoled. “One disappointment doesn’t make much of a dent in such egotism as that. After a while he’ll find some pretty señorita to take him at his own valuation.”
“I hope so.” Her smile brightened. “Though I still feel guilty. But if he hadn’t behaved so ridiculously I should feel much worse.”
Gordon nodded toward the ridge. “You heard his threat. Do you suppose he’ll – ”
“Oh no!” Her hair flew in a cloud under her vigorous shake. “After he’s had time to cool off he’ll forget and forgive. But just to think” – her glance displayed an even mixture of mischief and reproach – “just to think that all this trouble was caused by you kissing that horrid girl!”
“Why – ” he gasped, under the sudden attack. “Well, I’ll be – Say! Who drove me to it with her disgraceful flirting?”
“Did it make you feel awfully bad?”
“Did it?” The thought of his miserable unhappiness was still powerful enough to cloud his face, and she noted it with a little quiver of satisfaction. “Let’s forget it.” Snatching her hand, he worked his horse in against hers and tried to draw her to him. “There’s a momentous question I wish to consult you about; one you refused to consider yesterday. Will you – ”
But she pulled away. “Not yet. First there’s something I want settled. Was it really pique that – made you kiss her?”
He wanted to laugh, but refrained, for under her smile he felt her earnestness. “Nothing else.”
“You’re sure?”
“Sure!”
“Cross your heart to die?”
He performed that solemn and ancient function, and if she still entertained a doubt she stuffed it away down in consciousness.
“Very well.” With a little sigh of content she let her head fall back on his shoulder and a whisper escape from her upturned lips, “Now – you may.”
From his covert on the ridge Jake had observed the meeting, talk, struggle, Ramon’s retreat, also something which was hidden from the lovers in the valley below – the fact that, after crossing the ridge, Ramon had dismounted, pulled his rifle from the saddle slings, and crawled back on hands and knees to the edge of Jake’s covert. By that time the little tilt concerning Felicia was over, and as Lee’s head went to Gordon’s shoulder Ramon raised the rifle.
A shot at that short distance would have pierced them both, but as Ramon’s eye dropped to the sights a sharp order issued from the covert, “Throw up your hands! damn quick!”
A quick, startled glance showed Ramon the lean, grim face through a break in the chaparral. Not for nothing had the peones named Jake “The Python.” In moments such as this his lean personality, deadly eye, conveyed that very impression – of a snake coiled to strike. As Ramon’s hands went up, he stepped out and, crouching behind the ridge, took the other’s rifle and drove him downhill to his horse.
Having extracted the cartridge both from the rifle and from the revolver in Ramon’s holster, he threw the weapon at his feet. “I reckon I orter plug you, an’ I would for two cents. It’d be set down to raiders, which fixes it very nice. Sure, I reckon I orter do it, but if you’ve got a few thinks to the contrary spit ’em out.”
It was no idle threat. The vicious gleam of the cold gray eye told that. But in place of fear Ramon’s face showed almost relief. “Very good, señor. There is nothing you could do that would suit me better.”
The cold eye flickered. “Hell! you’re too anxious. I couldn’t make up my mind to do it that quick – an’ there’s a few things I wanter find out. For one, what’s your idee in wanting to drill them young folks?”
Ramon told – this time without the fireworks.
Jake summed it briefly. “Promised you, then threw you down. That’s hard luck. But there’s one thing you Mexes can never get into your hot heads – the right of our little American queens to change their pretty minds as often as they damn please without any gent’s consent. You was damn lucky that she ever give you a smile. If I conclude to change my mind on plugging you, have it writ up large in your family tree that oncet an American girl let herself be engaged to you for nearly five minutes. Now supposing I refrain from my desire to make you into a corpse, d’you reckon you could keep a promise and not make any attempt on their lives?”
While he was talking Ramon’s face had stiffened in defiance. He shook his head. But instead of anger, a small gleam of admiration lit Jake’s hard eyes. Raising his gun, he aimed full at the other’s breast.
“You have just two minutes to make up your mind.”
“One minute!”
For a time it seemed as though he would have to shoot. But just before the time expired, Ramon spoke. “For myself, I do not care. But I have an old father and mother, whom my death would surely kill. I promise.”
“All right.” Jake dropped the rifle in the hollow of his arm. “I allow that I’m foolish for trusting a Mex, but the little Missy allus liked you. On her account we’ll take one chance. Here’s your cartridge – only don’t load till you’re off this range. An’ remember” – a cold flash emphasized the order – “after this our boundary is your dead-line. Cross it again – you’ll be shot like a panther, coyote, or other varmint.”
Returning to his horse, he watched the other mount and ride away. A glance in the opposite direction showed him Lee and Gordon, going hand in hand up the opposite slope. Till they had gained across to the next valley he remained where he was. Then, riding in their rear, with a sharp eye always behind, keeping the width of a valley between them, he followed home.
XXVII: AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE
Riding steadily and hard, Bull made the railroad just as the sun dipped and hung like a smoky lamp on the smoldering horizon. From a distance he had spied Benson leaning in the doorway of the box-car which served the Mexican agent for a telegraph station. The Englishman called to him across the tracks.
“There’s a battle pending down the line. Troop-trains have been streaking through all day carrying Valles’s reserves from Chihuahua. Don Pedro, here, says another is due to stop for water in half an hour. If we hand the comandante a few compliments, he may take us along.”
“Half an hour?” Bull snorted. “That means half the night an’ then some. We’ll have time for supper an’ a sleep.”
But for once the railroad went back on all precedents. Just as the crimson tip of the sun slid down behind a black-velvet mountain, the train came puffing in loaded with the usual picturesque rag-and-bobtail of brown soldiers, women, and children clustered like hiving bees on top.
“Must be yesterday’s train a bit overdue,” Bull defended his theory, as the cars clicked by with slowing rhythm. “The comandante’ll be in the passenger-coach ahead. We’d better to mosey along an’ brace him.”
But their passage was much more easily gained. A man who sat with legs dangling from the open doorway of a box-car emitted a whoop.
“Ole! Diogenes! Como le va! What of our matrimonial venture? How did it pan out?”
It was Naylor, the correspondent, Bull’s friend and Cupid’s aide. As his car rolled slowly up, there hove in sight placards that announced the titles of certain American papers in dignified Spanish that their oldest subscribers would never have recognized. But there was nothing foreign in the half-dozen of friendly faces that filled the doorway. From the dignified visage, with its short, gray beard and trim mustache, of their dean, down to the boyish face of a field photographer, all joined in a composite welcoming grin.
“Weekes, Mason, Martin, Roberts, Cummings.” The correspondent breezily ran off the names. “There were more before Santos-Coy, Valles’s chief of staff, stuck us all up against a wall the last time our government clapped one of its hit-and-miss embargoes on munitions. Valles saved us, but after that most of the fellows skipped out. So we have lots of room. Come right up.”
A partition divided the car into kitchen and living-quarters. Bunks rose in a tier of four at the end of the latter. Four more could be slept on long lockers at each side of the table which was being set for supper by the Chinese cook. From the oldest to the youngest, the correspondents were on edge for the approaching battle. At supper their talk ran on its possibilities.
“If Valles is beaten again,” Weekes, the gray-haired dean, summed the conversation, “our government will throw another of its silly flip-flops and turn him down. And then – ”
“ – this corresponding job won’t make good insurance.”
“And then – ” the dean began again.
“We’ll hit for El Paso before Santos-Coy grabs us again.”
“And then” – the dean triumphed over interruptions – “God pity the poor gringos in northern Mexico.”
Bull’s friend nodded. “Valles’s army will scatter into bands that will rake the country with fine-tooth combs for the least bit of plunder. You had better get your girl and her fellow, Diogenes, and come out with us.”
Later, when they had all climbed up on the roof and sat watching the oil-smoke from the laboring locomotive whirl and twist, then float away and lay its great sable plumes against the rich reds and golds of the evening sky, they gave expert opinion on Benson’s mission.
“If Valles wins, so do you,” the dean opined. “He needs horses worse than money, and, as you say, has slathers of it in the El Paso banks. But if he loses – hit for the border at once. I saw him the other day after the first defeat, and hell couldn’t produce his equal. He was crazy; a maniac; a tiger gone stark, staring, frothing mad.
“And lose he will. How do I know?” He answered a challenge. “It’s a mere problem of mathematics, the first equation of which was worked out in the battle the other day. Given two men of equal military ability, the one with a trained mind is bound to win. The other fellow, as you know, is a college man – a college man against a bandit.” He turned to Bull and Benson. “It’s a cinch that he’ll win. If I were you, gentlemen, I’d wait the event.”
Benson shook his head. “If we see Valles now and strike a bargain, we can get our cattle across the border before he’s all in.”
“Good enough reasoning,” the dean admitted. “But – ever since the first defeat he’s been in one of his towering rages. Even his own generals hardly dare go near him.”
Benson shrugged; with British obstinacy he clung to his point. “It won’t be the first time I’ve seen him in his rages. He may be dangerous – to Americans, but John Bull looks after his people and even Valles is careful of how he flies in the old fellow’s face. I shall go to see him at once, and if he refuses – well” – his voice grew harsh and menacing – “he’ll hear the truth about himself.”
Not knowing him, the correspondents received it in silence. While they smoked Benson went on in his hard, rough voice. “I tell you, amigos, that your people have made a sad mess of this whole Mexican business. For three years, now, you have been trying to apply the principles of your Declaration of Independence to a race which won’t have evolved to a point where it has the faintest understanding of them for a thousand years to come. You stand on your Monroe doctrine, but refuse to take up its obligations and give alien nationals the protection you will not allow their own government to extend. While your statesmen prattle about the sacred right of revolution and Mexico’s ability to settle her own affairs, the country is overrun with bandits and mobs of pelados who are killing off the decent people and destroying billions in property they never created.
“Bah!” he snorted his disgust. “Don’t talk to me of republics. Do you suppose that either England or Germany would have stood for the anarchy which rules here? For centuries John Bull has been ruling brown peoples and he knows his job. ‘Be good and you’ll be happy!’ he tells them. If they’re not – they get it, hot and heavy, on the spot where it will do most good. The brown man is all right in his place – which isn’t on top of the white man – but your government, so far, has failed to perceive it.”
He went on from a pause: “Republics are incapacitated by nature in any case for the job. They are too divided in their counsels – swayed to-day by capital that will accept any dishonor rather than jeopardize its revenues; to-morrow by sentimentalists who hold up hands of horror at the very thought of war; governed most of the time by a ridiculous yellow press. Individually, you Yanks are good people, but taken collectively, as represented by your government and papers, you are hypocritical, weak, hysterical, sentimental, without dignity or force. You are grown fat with wealth, soft with luxury, too lazy and indifferent to undertake your responsibilities abroad, and if you were not, you lack the first essentials – centralized federal authority and military strength to enforce your will. If you do anything here it will be accidental – such as when the blowing up of the Maine aroused one of your periodical brainstorms, stung you into action. But in the mean time the destruction of Mexico will be complete. There will be nothing left of the civilization built up at such enormous pains by Diaz and which it was your duty to maintain.”
Silence followed, the uncomfortable silence that attends the digestion of unpalatable truth. While they talked, the cars had resolved into dim masses that swayed and swung through hot dusk that was splashed, here and there, with the red glow of charcoal cooking fires. On those immediately ahead and behind, dim sombreroed figures still loomed in half-gloom. The flash of a match occasionally set a dark face out in startling relief. The tinkle of a guitar accompanying a high, nasal peonchant, mingled with the roar and rattle of wheels. For some time its whine rose under the stars before the voice of the dean broke the silence.
“What you say is true – most of it. We have been tried in the balance and found wanting. We’ve neglected our duty to the Mexicans and our own people – that’s the hell of it! But nations, like individuals, learn their lessons through painful mistakes. We’ve had bad leadership and worse counsels – so much of it that it would almost seem that we were irrevocably stamped as incapable. But it’s only a phase. Under it all the heart of the people still beats sound and true. Sooner or later its voice will be heard. And when it is – the bleating of the sentimentalists will be drowned in the tramp of marching men.”
“You bet you!” It rolled out in chorus.
“In the mean time,” a voice added, “what’s the matter with a little drink?”
Instantly the recumbent figures rose in a shadowy mass, and as its units made their way down over the edge of the swaying car, the correspondent jogged Bull’s elbow. “Come along, Diogenes!”
But though a flame, sudden and fierce, had leaped within him; though he trembled under the intensity of his desire, he shook his head. “Thanks, I’m not drinking.”
“Why – Diogenes? Whatever is the matter? If parental responsibilities do this, damned if I know whether I’ll ever dare to hook up – providing my San Francisco girl ever consents. Is this straight?”
“Straight.”
Warned, perhaps, by a certain earnestness, the other answered: “All right, old man – only – if you change your mind, come on down.”
Bull made no answer, could not, for as he lay there, huge bulk stretched out on the running-board, face turned up to the stars, every ounce of his energy, even the bit that would have been used up in speech, was consumed in the fight against the furious desire that brought the sweat starting on his brow, shook him like a leaf. Out of the rack and bang of the swinging cars, click and roar of the wheels, his ear presently picked the clink of glasses. Out through the lamp-lit doorway floated Benson’s rough voice.
“Well, here’s to Uncle Sam! wishing him better counselors and quicker understanding!”
Bull heard no more, for he had rolled over, buried his face in his arms to hide from his snuffing nostrils whiffs of spirits. Once he half rose, looking toward the ladder. But, strengthening his resolution, there rose in his mind just then a picture of Betty and her mother as he had seen them at parting – her hands on the child’s shoulders, stooped in slight dejection, yet radiating faith and trust.
Lying down again, he lay, hands clasped under his head, gazing up at the fire of stars, while his mind traveled back to the rancho, lived over and over again the slow, sweet hours of last night. Below, an undertone to the roar of the speeding train, he now caught the hum of talk. But he took no heed – even when it ceased. He dreamed on till a hand shook his foot.
“Aren’t you coming down to bed?”
“No; I reckon I’ll lay out here. It’s cooler.” He did not acknowledge to himself his fear of sniffing the spirituous odors.
“All right, only don’t roll off.” The correspondent paused on his way back to the ladder. “Say! did your friend mean what he said? Or was it just talk?”
When Bull answered with a sketch of Benson’s violent temper, illustrated by a few instances, the correspondent shook his head. “Well, don’t let him see Valles alone.” Going down the ladder, he called back, “If you should change your mind about the drink, you’ll find the jug on the table.”
Instantly it materialized in Bull’s vision, a round stone jug and glasses, as solid and real as though it stood within the reach of his hand. Nor could he shut out the vision, as he had the odor, by burying his face. With the cars swinging and swaying through the night, shut out, it stood forth clearer than ever. He saw himself snatching out the cork; felt the burning liquid coursing down his throat.
“My God! why did I come? I’ll never be able to stan’ it!”
The thought of the temptation, ever present, growing more powerful through the coming days, gaining in strength while he grew weaker, brought out of him a cry of dismay: “I’ll never be able to stan’ it!” Then, very quickly, “I’ll have to! If I don’t – then I’m no fit man for her!”
The thought brought her face again in all its sweet wholesomeness. Through the warm dusk, as it were beside him, he saw her hand fluttering like a homing dove into his. He felt it lifting, raising him above his temptation. The memory of its soft pressures strengthened and comforted. Presently his fingers relaxed their convulsive grip on the running-board. Exhausted, he fell asleep.
