Kitabı oku: «Over the Border: A Novel», sayfa 19

XXXII: TRAVAIL

The instant she passed from Gordon’s sight Lee’s smile went out, quenched by mortal fear. For years tales that defied by their black horror exaggeration by even the fervid peon minds had filtered into Los Arboles, and, more vividly than Gordon, she realized her danger.

It was not so much Ramon. At San Carlos she would have a fighting chance; stood ready to match her woman’s wit against his man’s strength. Her fear centered on the men.

As, overtaking them, he rode by on the narrow path, Ilarian pressed close against her. “Cheer up, little one! ’Tis the fighting cock that wins his hen. ’Tis the way of the world, and what matter it so long as she be won? ’Tis his turn now, but later ’twill be for thee to keep him itching.”

Laughing hoarsely, he rode on, but in passing his rude fingers searched the softness of her arm and she caught the bold look into her eyes of his grinning fellow. Thereafter she felt their glances touching, plucking at her like fumbling fingers. Now glowing with shame, again frozen with terror, she endured it – to her it seemed hours before she spoke to Ramon.

“I’m afraid of those men. Can’t you – send them away?”

He shrugged. “You have more reason to be afraid of me.”

“You?” In spite of the deadly chill at her heart she managed a little laugh. “That is impossible.”

“Why?”

“Fear one’s oldest friend?” Already, with intuitive guile, she was laying the foundations of her defense. Though he looked at her with quick suspicion, she returned the innocent eyes nature has given woman for her chief protection. “For you – a man of whom I have known only good? But these men fill me with fear.”

Suspicion clouded, for a moment, his eyes. Passing, it left his gloom lighter. Reassurance softened his tone. “Don’t be afraid. They will leave us at San Carlos.”

“But, Ramon, it is now noon. If we ride hard we cannot get there before dark.” She shuddered at the thought.

“You would rather we were alone?”

“A thousand times.” She returned to his gaze the same innocent eyes – and once more his gloom lightened a shade.

“They are going to San Carlos anyway, so I can hardly send them away. But I am armed, and there is no necessity for you to be afraid. Also – you said that the jefe and priest at San Carlos would refuse to marry us. If so, these are the men who can help me compel.”

“Ramon!” she spoke with dread earnestness, “look quickly behind you!”

He did, and his quick frown told that he was not pleased. Dismounting under a pretext of cinching up his saddle, he motioned for the two men behind to pass ahead.

“You saw!” she said, riding on. “You are armed, but they are four to one; may take you unawares. I ask only one thing. Keep my feet bound, take any other precaution you choose, but unfasten my hands and – lend me your knife.”

“To use on me, if you get the chance?”

“Not on you nor them!” Her steady look carried her meaning.

His glance went forward to the revolutionists, who broke out, just then, in uproarious laughter.

“If I thought – ” His hand went to his gun, then fell again. “No! they are rough and coarse, but they know well that my father is Valles’s friend; that if they lifted a hand against me he would flay them alive. Really, there is no danger, yet – if it will make you less fearful. But you promise – to return it, the knife, at San Carlos?”

“I promise.”

“I never knew you to lie, and I – ” His face lost a little of its hardness. “I would prefer to be gentle.”

Leaning over, he unbound her arms, then gave her the case-knife that hung at his hip. “I suppose I’m a fool,” he said as she slid it under her belt inside her shirt.

“Indeed you are not!” she began, in a flush of relief. Then, as a picture of Gordon lying bound on the trail rose to her mind, she turned her head in fear that he might read the sudden impulse to slash the lead rope and go galloping back.

The certain knowledge that she would be overtaken checked the impulse. Also, with a woman’s self-abnegation, she comforted herself with the thought that every mile she traveled lessened his hazard. She rode on till certain whisperings between the revolutionists ahead brought her again under fear that grew and reached its climax when, later in the afternoon, they swung at right angles on to the San Carlos trail and rode, now along the flank of a mountain, again through a wooded valley, thence up and over a great hill, while the sun slid down behind them. While they traveled dusk quenched the flaming peaks. The long shadows drew together, enwrapping hill and valley in a thick veil through which men and horses loomed as dark, sinister shapes. When they stopped, suddenly, where a stream emerged from a wood, she shook with apprehension.

“The beasts are tired, señor, and this is a good place to camp,” a voice came back.

“Oh, don’t! Let us keep on!” she pleaded.

“The animals are tired and must be fed,” Ramon answered. “After they are rested we will go on.”

As, dismounting, he began to untie her feet, she was seized again with a wild impulse to turn and dash away in the dark. But even had it been possible, just then a heap of dried grass and leaves flared up from a match illuminating the woods and stream. Reaching up, Ramon lifted her down and seated her close to the fire.

Sitting there, she watched him unsaddle and hobble their beasts. Her swift, uneasy glances showed the revolutionists doing the same. Yet – all the fears of that long afternoon now concentrated in a cold horror. Intuitively, she knew. When, his hands full of food he had unpacked from his saddle-bags, Ramon came walking past the revolutionists toward her, she broke out with a sudden scream:

“Take care!”

Too late! A pair of sinewy arms locked like brown snakes around him, pinioning his arms to his body. As he went down, fighting madly, Lee leaped up and ran. But already Ilarian and another man had started toward her. Running her swiftest, straining madly with the beat of his pursuing feet, like a drum in her ears, she had gained the edge of the wood, was almost within its safe blackness, when she was seized and pulled back with a wrench that tore the shirt away from one white shoulder and threw her to the ground.

She rose instantly on one knee, then paused at the sight of the brutish face above. One hand clutching the torn shirt at her neck, eyes dark lamps in a face of white horror, she crouched like an animal at bay till, with a sudden snatch, he stooped and lifted her bodily.

“No, no!” The snatch of the second man loosened the other’s grip so that she fell between them to the ground. “No, hombre, fair play between compañeros. We shall gamble for her. The winner, if he choose, can then sell his chance.”

The fighting, writhing mass at the other side of the fire now straightened out, and as they rose, leaving Ramon securely bound on the ground, the other two added their protests. “Si, hombre, we will not stand for that. She goes first to the winner, according to our custom. Bring her back to the fire.”

To avoid their handling, she rose and walked herself. As she came where the light fell on Ramon she saw that he had managed to struggle up on his knees. Now he began to speak, pleading, arguing, threatening his captors with the displeasure of their general.

But he drew only jokes and laughter. “Valles?” Ilarian answered him. “He was defeated by the Carranzistas, and has trouble enough to care for himself. The requisition el capitan showed was made out months before the battle. Had the señor, your father, been fool enough to fill it, we should have taken the horses for ourselves.” With a shove that sent Ramon flat on his back, he added: “Lie down, hombre! For these many years thou and thy fathers laid the whip on our backs. While we starved they fed fat and made free with our women. Now it is for thee to watch us at the eating and loving.”

Laughing, he caught Lee again with a sudden snatch, was forcing her head back, when Rafael again interfered. “Hands off, hombre, till the cards say she is thine!”

“Si, muddle not the waters for our drinking,” the others added. “Let us eat, then get to the cards.”

“The bride? She must not go hungry at the wedding feast.” The fourth man offered her food. “Here, little one.”

Weak and faint, she was backing away, but stopped with a sudden inspiration. “If I may share it with him?”

“Seguro.” Rising, the man dragged Ramon a few feet away and set him up, back propped against a tree. “Only take care he bite not thy pretty fingers.”

Laughing, he went back to the fire, leaving her to sit and watch their feeding of meat and tortillas, with gulps of liquor from clay bottles.

Between her and them yawned a gap in time wider than the centuries that intervened between herself and her wode-stained ancestors running wild in the woods of Britain. Their low, sloping foreheads, unbalanced heads with all the weight below; their loose mouths, brute jaws, dark skin, nature’s infallible stigma of inferiority, pronounced them half a million years behind her, the last-bloom of a higher race.

In her a solitary youth had intensified the delicate fancies, sensitiveness, timorous imaginings, shrinkings, and retreats that mark a young girl’s first reachings toward love. And now – her idealizations were suddenly confronted with the caveman’s brutal practice. Sitting there, she endured a thousand tortures. Worse than their coarse jests were their glances. She shrank under them in hot shame; to escape them took the food they offered, moved over and knelt beside Ramon.

He was sitting, head hanging, but as, now, he looked up the firelight showed the sweat in beads on his brow. “You bring me food?” His accent carried more than a thousand self-reproaches.

She did not attempt consolation she did not feel. “Pretend to eat.” She spoke in English. “They are watching, now. But soon they will gamble” – she shuddered, thinking of the stake – “will see only the cards. I still have your knife. When the time serves I will cut you loose. Their rifles are piled behind us with the saddles. They may shoot you down from the fire. But to reach them is our only chance.”

He lowered his head to hide a sudden flash of hope. “I will do anything, take any chance. Greater punishment no man could suffer than I am enduring. But it has made me think – realize my blind selfishness. I can only ask your forgiveness.”

“Now, compañeros, the cards! Cut and shuffle for love!” A hoarse voice came from the fire.

While the first hand of a game she did not understand was being dealt she watched the flying cards with dread interest; was still watching when Ramon whispered:

“I know that game. Five minutes will see it finished. By leaning a little to one side, your body will cover my elbows. One cut will set them free. I will still sit as I am, and when I whisper slash the riata at my feet, then run! run into the depths of the woods. From here to San Carlos is but a couple of leagues. Once there – with the jefe, you will be safe.”

Ilarian’s bellowing laugh rang out, just then, marking the close of the first hand. “One to me, little one! Be not impatient. The luck is with us. Soon we shall take a little pasear together.”

“If he wins again it will be over in a minute,” Ramon whispered, while the cards were fluttering around again. As the men bent over them, thumbing their hands, he gave the word, “Now!”

With two slashes she did it, one at his arms, the other at his feet. But swift as was the movement, Rafael caught it in the tail of his eye. When he turned she had dropped the knife in the grass and, though her heart stood still, she resumed her pretense of feeding Ramon. As he watched her the suspicion died out of the man’s stare. He was just about to turn again to the game when, as Ramon leaned forward to take the bite she was offering, the severed riata fell from his elbows.

Given two men in a sudden juncture, the one with a definite plan wins the lead. As the man jumped up, pointing, Ramon sprang, reached the rifles, aimed and shot him down. The others looked up, startled, and as he aimed again they pulled and fired.

“Run, querida, run!” Ramon had called it, leaping up. As he collapsed on the heap of saddles it issued again on his last dry whisper, “Run!”

It had all happened while she was scrambling up. Naturally she turned when Ramon fell and paused, horror-stricken. Not till the others were almost upon her did she turn and run – too late.

As, heart fluttering like that of a frightened quail, she ran for the wood Ilarian seized her. Wildly beating the brutal, pock-marked face, she writhed helplessly in his arms.

XXXIII: THE DEATH IN THE NIGHT

During the rest of the day, while the train rolled and rattled and jolted its slow way over the heated face of the desert, the correspondents stewed with Bull in their own juices in semi-darkness. At intervals there would come a stop. With the mad, blind selfishness of panic the brigada Gonzales had burned the watering-tanks as they passed. So those that followed had to draw for the engine with buckets from wells. Also there were occasional rails to be replaced which, with equal selfishness, they tore up again the moment the train passed over.

When the sun finally set in a fiery conflagration and dusk brought some cess of the heat the conductor came in with tales of wholesale desertions from the brigada Gonzales, and shortly thereafter began the dispersion of their own men. As they approached familiar country, or tempted by tales of rich loot to be taken from near-by haciendas, they began to drop off in fives, fifties, tens. Of those that had kept the corrugated-iron roof beating like a drum with their stampings and shufflings throughout the afternoon, there remained only a single solitary figure when, after dark, Bull climbed up on top to air his choked lungs.

As he sat down on the running-board the figure looked up, then moved closer. “It is thee, señor?”

Peering, Bull made out the face. It was the sentry who had spoken to him at Valles’s door. As his mind associated what the “dean” had said with the recognition he spoke quickly. “The señor Benson? Didst thou see – ”

“Si, señor.” His head moved in the gloom. In the rambling peon fashion he ran on: “‘The close mouth admits no flies,’ said Matador. ‘Keep thine shut and we shall make thee a captain to-morrow.’”

“A captain of what, señor? Of ghosts? For I was not deceived. He that was sentry when they killed the German? He became a captain? Also they that helped to roast the Spaniard till he told where he had hidden his gold? And the three that killed el presidente for Huerta? Captains and majors and colonels were they – of the dead. Si, among the revueltosos it is become a saying, ‘Be not a captain till thou hast grown lieutenant’s spurs.’ Si, I knew that I should be dead before the eve of another day, so I fled my guard, señor, and came straight to thee.”

Though he was on fire to hear, Bull knew better than to bring his crude thought into confusion by interruption. While the train ambled along he let the narrative take its own course.

“‘A captain?’ said Matador!” His eloquent shoulders quivered in the gloom. “Better to be a live mozo at the tail of Don Miguel’s horses in Las Bocas.”

From a second pause he ran on: “He came to the cuartel general, the señor Benson, while I was sentry of the second watch at the door of my general. He was in there, Valles, with a girl. I had seen her go in – such a girl! tall and straight, with eyes misty as twin nights, teeth white as bleached bone, hair thick and black as the pine forests that clothe the Sierra Madras! Santisimo, señor! such a girl as one may have when he has combed a country and taken first pick of its women! I could hear her laughing in there when the señor Benson came striding up the stairs.

“I saw, when he drew near, that his face was flushed, but there was no smell of liquor upon him. ’Twas the red of the great anger that burned in his veins, kept his head shaking like that of a tormented bull. When I barred the way he looked at me with eyes that snapped like living sparks, shoved me aside into the corner with one sweep of his arm, before I could stop him had opened the door and walked in – walked in, señor, through the anteroom into the private office where Valles was at play with the girl!

“El Matador himself had warned me, ‘Let no man pass!’ But when I had picked myself out of the corner and followed in, there he stood in front of Valles, who had dropped the girl and leaped to his feet. Surprise and fear showed on his face – the fear of bullet, knife, and poison that dogs him everywhere. But it changed at once to a grin – the terrible grin his people fear. His glance at me said, ‘Stay!’ and as I stood, waiting in fear and trembling, he spoke with a voice that cut like a knife.

“‘It is my amigo, the señor Benson.’

“Señor, I have seen his generals tremble when he spoke like that. Even el Matador, tiger that he is, would slink before him like a whipped cat. For all the pesos in all the world I would not have taken his place. Yet that great Englishman stood before him solid and square as a stone; answered with a voice of a hacendado in speech with a peon.

“‘I came to tell you, Valles’ – just like that he spoke, señor, without even a ‘my general’ – ‘I came to tell you that I do not take my answers from secretaries. The offer I made you this morning was fair and square and good business for both of us. It deserved more than a threat of ‘requisitions.’ You’ll never get my horses that way – if I have to cut their throats. If you want them, say so – yes or no.’

“He got it, the ‘no,’ quick and hard. Then the great anger that was in him burst forth like a river in flood. Like bear and tiger they quarreled, the señor threatening Valles with the power and vengeance of his government, Valles snarling defiance, their passions feeding each other as brands burn together in a fire.

“One other thing, and you will have a picture of it, señor – the two at their furious talk, the girl against the wall behind Valles, one hand held out, fear in her great eyes, and a fourth; for as they wrangled there came a stir behind me. So quietly that I, whom he touched in passing, did not hear, el Matador came into the room. One second he stood, watching them from narrow eyes, then, slowly and quietly as a snake slipping through grass, he drew up behind the señor. I have shot men in this war. At home in Las Bocas I have drawn the knife in passion. But the cold glittering of his eyes, slow snake crawl, chilled the blood of me.

“He had gained knifing distance when the señor roared in disgust. ‘Bah! Why do I waste words on a peon? My general, is it? I have had such generals whipped on my place! General? A bandit peon who steals horses in place of the chickens with which he began his thieveries!’

“‘Bandit peon? Stealer of chickens?’ This, señor, to Valles that had killed a hundred men with his own hand before the wars ever began? The yellow eyes of him seemed to leap out of his face. At the sight of him, frothing like a mad tiger in lust to kill, the girl screamed, hiding her face! At his belt hung pearl-jeweled pistols, the best of their kind. But with the instinct of his old trade the hand of the butcher flew to his knife.

“They say that the señor tried to kill him. It is a lie! Even when the knife flashed in his eyes he still stood at his distance, shaking his big fist, growling his threats, angry but unafraid; so big, strong, masterful, that Valles, even in his fury, hesitated. But not el Matador! Looking back as she ran out of the room, the girl saw as I saw; screamed aloud as the knife passed, once! twice! with a hiss and ’heigh! splitting the backbone, piercing the heart.”

With that strong sense of the dramatic which makes the peon a born story-teller he stopped. For a moment the flash of a match lifted the brown, hard face from the gloom under a tattered sombrero, lighting the faded red of his blanket serape. Then they faded again into a dim, huddled figure that swayed with the rack and swing of the cars.

Bull had unconsciously suspended his breath. Now it expired in a sigh. “His disposal. Know you aught of that?”

The shrug quivered again in the darkness. “There is little more that I saw. Across the body el Matador looked at me, and I chilled with the sure knowledge that I should never see my niñas again. He even stepped, then Valles spoke.

“‘This is a good hombre. He will help thee with – that!’ He followed the girl into the next room.

“Between us, el Matador and I, we rolled the señor in serapes, binding them with cords so that the face should not be seen by them that carried him out to the secret place; and it was then that he spoke of my captaincy.

“‘Go now to thy quarters, señor.’ He clapped me on both shoulders. ‘And dream of the stars the morning sun will see flashing here.’

“But lest I sleep too well, señor, I came from the cuartel here.”

For a full minute, while Bull chewed the bitter cud of remorse, the cars racked on through the night. Then he spoke. “There is one in El Oro, the consul Ingles, that would have given many pesos – not the currency of Valles, but real pesos of silver and gold – for thee to set thy name to this!”

“Si!” His cigarette glowed in the midst of a shrug. “Of what use pesos, even silver and gold, when the sight is darkened and the mouth shut? When one may no longer see the niñas at play, watch the dancing of girls? When the taste of good food is gone from the mouth, the feel of warm liquor from the throat? He that betrays Valles will have no more use of these.”

“But in El Paso,” Bull urged, “one would be beyond the reach of his hand. There, also, is a consul Ingles.”

“One’s pais? The rise and set of sun across the desert beyond Las Bocas; the chatter of the women at their washing by the stream; the soft laughter of girls; one’s children watching at dusk for the return – these are not to be bought with pesos. One’s pais is one’s pais. To it one always returns.”

“Si,” Bull acknowledged the call, the most powerful in the feeling of a Mexican. “But from El Paso one could go by the ferrocarril Americano. In one day he could cross from El Paso to Nogales, thence south to Las Bocas and live in plenty beyond the reach of Valles. And one’s woman and niñas – would smile the sweeter at the sight of a bulging pocket.”

The cigarette glowed again, this time without the shrug. “There is something in that. Si, señor, I will do it! – go to the consul Ingles in El Paso.”

Just then the Chinaman called for Bull to come down to supper. He was not hungry, but he had food handed up for the man, who, after eating it, rolled up in his serape and went to sleep. Then, while he snored and the train racked slowly along the chain of fires, each a station that lay like red beads on the desert’s dark breast, Bull lay suffering agonies of shame and remorse that grew more vivid as the miles lessened between him and home.

It was long after midnight before he fell into troubled sleep. When he woke, at gray dawn, the revolutionist was gone.

“Homesick and scared out!” Bull shrugged – and what did it matter? That which was done was done!

Nor was he the only deserter. All through the night the train had dribbled away its evil freight in trickles that would spread through the land till it was inundated with a flood of carnage, robbery, rape. Of the clustering brown swarm on the roof there remained only a few dozens scattered in heavy sleep throughout the train’s length.

Across the brightening east the mountains now laid a familiar pattern. Beyond – the patio and compound of Los Arboles were lying still and gray under the dawn. Bull saw, with the distinctness of vision, the sheet across Lee’s doorway quiver under the breath of dawn. Then it faded, gave place to the Mills rancho, equally still, equally silent; its warm gold walls pale gray, the clustering bougainvilleas dark as clotted blood.

That feeling analogous to the chill of death which envelops a sleeping house held him in thrall. While he gazed, there appeared on the veranda the familiar vision. But he shut it out, tightly closing the eyes of his mind. He turned his face to a dark dot, walls of the burned station, that appeared to be moving toward him across the desert’s grays. Climbing down over the end, he passed through the Chinaman’s kitchen into the car.

It was still dusk in there, but he could hear the deep breathing of correspondents, sleeping heavily after the exhaustion of the hot night. Quietly he gathered his belongings, had shoved open the door sufficiently to pass out, when a whisper came from behind:

“Adios, Diogenes!”

Turning, he saw the correspondent leaning out of his bunk.

“Don’t take that little slip too seriously, old man,” he whispered as they shook hands. “Try again. If it wasn’t for this” – he tapped his knee – “I’d have helped you to get out your girl. But you’ll make it all right. Only don’t dally. There’s going to be hell to pay.”

The engine was whistling for the station. Though it did not stop, Bull jumped and, if a bit shaken, landed unhurt. He was watching the train recede, his hand still tingling, heart warmed by the strong pressure of his friend’s hand, when his name was called.

“It is you, señor Perrin?”

Drowsy and heavy-eyed from lost sleep, the Mexican agent stood in the doorway of his box-car station. Anxiety and fear shadowed his face.

“Wicked times, señor. Up and down the line they are robbing and murdering, Valles’s defeated soldados. Many gringos have been slain. Early in the night a company of fifty dropped off here and are gone, mad with hate, to loot the gringo haciendas.”

Appalled, Bull stared at the distant mountains.