Kitabı oku: «Over the Border: A Novel», sayfa 24

XLI: JAKE BETTERS THE “EXCHANGE”

By the time Jake caught up with the others that inner humane being, whose occasional appearances caused him so much disconcertion, had withdrawn within his usual cynical shell. His face, when Lee inquired for Sliver, expressed surprise that she should have thought it worth while to inquire.

“Him? Oh, he’s back there a-holding ’em off while we gain a spell.”

Though delivered with masterly unconcern, his explanation did not altogether relieve her anxiety. “But – how will he find us again?”

Jake’s shrug was fine in its indifference. “He’ll play a lone han’, Missy; plug straight for the border. Being alone that-a-way, he’ll likely beat us to it.”

“You really think so?”

“He’ll be there to meet us.”

Jake’s tone carried conviction even to Gordon. Only Bull was not deceived. After the other two had ridden on he looked at Jake. A lift of the eyebrow, slight shake of the head, touch of the forefinger to the knee – he knew all. Thereafter each burst of rifle-fire, long pause, explained itself. He saw Sliver waiting till the revueltosos came out in the open. The slow rhythm of later shots showed him firing along the ridge. A sudden burst of sharpshooting at sundown, following silence, explained themselves. His glance at Jake, the latter’s slow shake of the head, signaled then that all was over.

While they were traveling down the long slope toward the railroad the sun had lowered till they could see the telegraph-poles running, a sharp black fence, across the smoldering sky. Southward a toy station rose from the dead-flat plain under a velvet plume of smoke. Bull had laid his course to cross the tracks miles ahead of it. By traveling all night, they could then gain the mountains that bared iron teeth along the western sky-line; but they would be no nearer the border than when they began the fight that morning.

The thought was strong in their minds when Jake leveled his range glasses at the dark smoke plume. “Enjine an’ five cars.”

He handed the glasses to Bull, and before the latter’s keen sight the lenses laid the familiar outlines, of a revolutionary train, a-bristle on top with humanity. Even at the distance, the flash and flare of gayrebozos told they were mostly women, and that told all. “Nobody there but women and wounded. Belongs to the gang that’s chasing us.”

“A hundred miles to El Paso,” Jake spoke. “Three days’ horseback? Three hours with that old mogul?”

“Golly!” The idea fastened on Gordon. “Couldn’t we?” In place of their present plodding he saw the telegraph-poles, rocks, hills, flying past as they sped northward in the engine.

“On’y women and wounded?” Jake repeated it, musingly.

“Dark in half an hour?” Bull added: “They kedn’t tell us from their own. ’Course we should lose the horses.” With his accustomed caution he read the reverse of the shield. “If anything went wrong – we’d be left afoot on the desert.”

“No worse than we are,” Jake argued. “These beasts have been running sence daylight; are clean plugged out. Even if they carry us across to the mountains we’re not sure of feed nor water – an’ still a hundred miles from the border.”

“But Sliver?” Lee protested. “We can’t leave him.”

She was looking at Bull. He looked at Jake, who looked away, in his mind a picture of Sliver dead among the rocks. Then with that readiness and steadiness that had always filled poor Sliver with envy he lied to a good end. “The last thing he tol’ me, Missy, was not to wait. ‘’Twould hinder me an’ hinder you-all. I’ll make my run alone.’”

“Very well.” Her sigh would have fitted an anxious mother who felt that her boy would be safer under her own eye. “Very well, but I do wish he were here.”

Again Bull glanced at Jake, who once more looked away; but neither spoke.

While riding slowly forward Bull laid out their plan. “It ’ull be up to you an’ Missy,” he told Gordon, “to take care of the engineer while Jake an’ me stan’ off the crowd. She kin hold a gun to his head while you pitch the stuff aboard.”

The sun had now set. The dusk thickened as they advanced and through its warm curtain presently broke the distant gleam of cooking-fires. Some were down on the tracks; others on the car-roofs built on rude hearths of earth within stone circles. When Bull called a halt and surveyed the scene through the glasses it presented the familiar spectacle of arevueltosos’ train-camp: women bending over the fires; some on their knees at the metates, others stirring their clay cooking-pots, all gossiping at their work. Here and there a man’s face showed in the fire glow; but always an arm in a sling, crutch, or bandage explained his presence there. Unsuspecting, believing that in those wide spaces the railway presented the one avenue of attack, they kept no watch; were stricken dumb when, half an hour thereafter, a stern command to hold up their hands issued from the darkness beyond the firelight. Only one man raised a gun, and as Bull’s rifle spat he threw up his hands and plunged headlong from the top of the car to the ground.

Squatted, at supper, with his women by a fire under the lee of the mogul, the Mexican engineer proved easy game. A poke in the side from Gordon’s gun emphasized his command to cut the engine off the train. Trembling, the fellow obeyed and stood mute, shaking with fear, with Lee’s gun pressed into the nape of his neck, while Gordon pitched their stuff into the cab. When, moreover, after firing a few warning shots along the length of the train, Jake and Bull climbed aboard he opened wide the throttle and sent the mogul spinning northward.

The instant they started Gordon grabbed the fireman’s shovel. “Here’s where I fulfil one of my kid ambitions.”

Looking back from the seat where she had climbed beside Bull to watch the tracks ahead, Lee saw his face focused in brilliant red light as he shoveled and raked the clinker off the bars. Jake, with his usual caution, sat with the engineer; from whom he prodded valuable information with the muzzle of his gun.

His strident repetitions thereof carried above the roar and rattle of the speeding engine across the cab. “He says the half of Valles’s army is scattered like pin feathers afore a north wind!.. With what’s left he’s making a las’ stan’ north of Chihuahua!.. He still bosses all the country from here to Juarez!.. This outfit was out raiding haciendas to supply the new base!” The next item of news he delivered with a cheer. “Hooray! the line’s open clean to the border! He don’t know of any trains being run to-night! Thinks we’ll have a clear track!”

Just then lights and the ruddy glow of fires flashed out as the engine came spinning out of a cut through low hills. It was merely a section gang, and as they sped past they obtained a glimpse of curious brown faces.

They suggested Bull’s question, “Ask him if there’s any revueltosos on the way.”

“At La Mancha!” Jake yelled back. “About thirty miles this side of the border!.. Half of the brigada Gonzales is holding the town for Valles!”

The brigada Gonzales! The command that had furnished the murderers of Mary Mills. A spasm of hate writhed over Bull’s dark face. His big hands clenched. He turned and looked out of the cab window till he regained control of his voice.

“Does he allow we kin run through there?”

Jake nodded. “If we douse the headlight and race by afore they have time to block us.”

Looking back, just then, at Gordon, now stripped to his undershirt and growing sootier every minute, Lee heard the answer. She did not, however, give it much thought. The hills and rocks that took on queer shapes in the dim light of a rising moon, giant sahuaros that went slipping past like huge ghosts, the occasional fires and lights, glimpses of strange brown faces, the rush and roar of the engine speeding through mysterious night, held her senses. Yet it stuck in her mind, came popping out when, as the engine rounded a sharp curve, the headlight beam struck full on a sheaf of glittering wires.

“Oh!” she called out in sudden alarm. “We ought to have cut the wires!”

It was a vital error. Gordon’s whistle expressed their joint dismay; but Jake, with his intense practicability, recovered first. “Well, what’s to do – stop an’ cut them?”

Bull shook his head. “Too late! We’ve been running over an hour. Nothing left but to take a chanst.”

Jake nodded. But presently he spoke again. “Chanst? If they pull up a rail an’ ditch us at La Mancha, I’d hardly call it a chanst with half of the brigada Gonzales shooting us up from all around. We’d be pickled for keeps.”

During their “rustler days” it had always been Jake’s craft that pulled them out of tight places. Habit held Bull silent till, after he had spoken to the engineer, Jake went on: “He says the track runs two per cent. down into La Mancha. We kin shut off steam an’ pussy-foot it the last few miles. So here’s the dope. We drop you-all” – his glance took in the others – “a mile this side of the station, give you two hours to go around, then shoot ahead. If we get through, you-all strike a light an’ we’ll stop and pick you up. If we don’t – we don’t. But you’ll be less ’n thirty miles from the border an’ have all night to make your getaway.”

“But – ”

Gordon’s objection, however, was nipped by Bull. “It goes.”

Lee, however, was not so easily silenced. Climbing down, she crossed the wabbling cab with unsteady steps and caught Jake’s arm. “Oh, don’t take the risk. We’ll abandon the engine. Come with us!”

Looking down into her face, Jake’s bleak eyes were almost soft. He gently patted her hand. “Now don’t be jumping at conclusions, Missy. We need the enjine to go on, but I ain’t a-going to commit suicide. If the tracks are blocked we’ll back right off. Then I’ll take to the bushes an’ follow you round.”

With that she had to be content. But, realizing the danger, she climbed up and sat beside him while the mogul rolled and racked and plunged forward through the night. She was still sitting there when, an hour later, a headlight flashed up far away.

“They’ve wired ahead!” Bull yelled across the cab. “Make him stop, Jake! We’ll take to the bushes here.”

“Oh! now you come with us!” Lee cried.

But Jake’s answer wiped out her happiness. “No, Missy, I’ll pull ’em along for a few miles while you-all make your getaway afore I drop off.”

Already the throttle was closed. Slowing under the brakes, the mogul glided to a stop. Leaping down, Gordon caught the provisions, ammunition, and rifles as Bull threw them down. Meanwhile Lee stood looking up at Jake with wide, distressed eyes.

“Come on, dear!” Gordon called up from below.

“No time to waste.” Bull touched her shoulder.

Still she stood. “Oh, I hate to leave you. Do come!”

“Oh, shore!” Jake laughed, patting her cheek. “I’ll jine you in a few hours – or at El Paso, if I miss you here.”

Because of his cynical outer crust, she had given him, perhaps, the least affection of the Three. But in the last few weeks she had sensed beneath it his loyal human feeling. Now, trembling, she put out her hand, then, reaching suddenly, she pulled down his head and kissed his cheek. The next second she leaped from the cab into Gordon’s arms.

Bull had already jumped. Left alone, Jake stood still while the engineer threw the reversing lever and opened the throttle. As the mogul began to glide slowly backward he raised his hand and touched the spot her lips had pressed. Perhaps it revived some memory of his boyhood, some reverent memory of the days when other women than wantons had held him in love and respect. His face was very soft; so soft and tender it would never have been recognized by his dance-hall flames.

The engine had moved back a hundred yards with increasing speed before he even moved. Then just as ice spreads its frozen mask over pleasant waters so the outer crust that hid the real Jake from the undiscerning spread again over his lantern features. In sudden shame at being caught by himself in such softness, he turned furiously upon the engineer.

“What are you grinning at?”

The man was not. He was far too much afraid. But though he asserted his seriousness with profuse apologies, it made no difference to Jake.

“The trouble with you, Alberto, ain’t that you Mexicans are a dirty, lying, thieving, murdering lot so much as you’re too plumb ignorant to know your betters when they chanst around. In that brown pudding you call a face there ain’t a gleam to show you’re sensible of the honor you’ve jest been paid. You don’t know it, Alberto, an’ you probably never will, but take it from me that if you was president of this rotten country ’twouldn’t come near it. If I don’t blow the top of your head off during the next hour – which I likely will – you’ll be able to tell it to your descendants that a white girl once rode in your cab. If they’re smart they won’t believe you. But it’s the closest to fame you’ll ever get, so play it for all it’s worth. Now listen, Alberto” – he shook his finger in the engineer’s frightened face – “if you ever expect to hand it down to them descendants aforesaid, cut out them grins and get down to business.”

Delivered in English, the harangue flew high over the Mexican’s head. But it did Jake lots of good. Having, as it were, palliated his shameful emotions, he followed his own advice and turned to the business in hand.

“How far is that enjine, Alberto?” He poked the question in with his gun.

“Five miles, señor.”

“Jest an enjine?”

“No, señor, it rides too steadily. It draws two cars; no more or it could not take the grade at this speed.”

“How long afore they catch us?”

“Ten more miles, señor. They travel two to our one.”

“All right, slow up a bit.”

With hollow clank of drivers the mogul moved on at slackened speed until less than half a mile intervened. It was running, of course, reversed, and across the intervening space the headlights stared. When, obedient to Jake’s order, the throttle was thrown wide again the two engines ran like giant insects through the night, one in chase of the other, thundering across bridges, whizzing around curves, shooting through cuts, chimneys spitting smoke and flame, headlights flashing defiance like fiery eyes.

All the while Jake timed the distance. “Cut her off a notch,” he ordered when the mogul began to gain. “I wanter draw ’em on as far as I kin.”

But out of the dim smoke that trailed behind the pursuing engine broke, just then, a series of red flashes in furious staccato. The drumming reports were drowned in the roar and clank of the racing engines; but the hail of bullets that rattled and glanced from the mogul’s side was unmistakable.

“Machine-guns!” Jake exclaimed. “Chuck her into high, Alberto!” As, under a full head of steam, the engine picked up and ran through the night like a frightened girl, he added: “Sheer accident, they hit us, anyway. They kain’t do it again.”

Proving his words, the next burst of firing went wide. Only one bullet struck the cowcatcher, and, leaping like a horse from the spur, the mogul launched in dizzy flight down grade; had drawn two miles ahead by the time she took the next sharp curve.

“Hold her at that,” Jake ordered.

But again he had failed to reckon with the wires, which, after blocking their advance, now cut off retreat. Shortly thereafter came a flash of light as the engine shot from a cut through the first of the series of stations they had passed on their way up.

In accordance with the inscrutable law which governs the location of Mexican stations, it stood a half-mile from the little adobe town that dragged its unclean, brown skirts across the tracks. If the inhabitants thereof had been content to obey telegraphed orders to build an obstacle and let it go at that, the mogul would probably have gone into the ditch without a second’s warning. But, desiring to see the smash, they had lighted a huge fire alongside the tracks, and under its glare the pile of ties, earth, and stones stood out plain as by day. Wheels grinding, blue sparks shooting from the sanded rails, the mogul stopped within a hundred yards.

After he had closed the throttle and thrown on the brakes the engineer’s eye had gone to the cab door. Then it switched to the ugly, black muzzle of Jake’s gun. Releasing the brakes, he reversed and opened the throttle.

A sputter of musketry had followed the first yell of disappointment that went up from the rabble of peon watchers. Fired from ancient pieces, however, the bullets fell short or rebounded like peas from the mogul’s sides. Picking up her stride, she outran their feeble pursuit in a hundred yards.

It was then that the engineer’s voice rose in protest: “But, señor, we shall run into the other train! Mira! Mira! it is now only a mile away!”

Jake’s eye measured the distance. Then, in dry soliloquy that, even if it had not been couched in English, would still have gone over the other’s head, he spoke. “Do you know what a maquina loca is, Alberto? You don’t? You s’prise me.” Scared out of his small wits, the poor devil had not even answered. “It’s the one great invention your pais has produced. ’Twas first used by Mr. Orozco shortly after he graduated from a mule’s tail to be commander-in-chief of Madero’s army. He designed it for the extirpation of Huertistas that got to tagging after him like these gents is trailing us. ’Twas very simple. He’d load up half a ton of dynamite on an enjine cowcatcher an’ turn her loose with the throttle wide open jest where she’d catch a troop-train in a blind cut. Mighty effective, it was, too. Some o’ them Huertistas was so elevated above their normal they hain’t finished raining down yet. Of course we’re shy on the dynamite. But a forty-ton mogul careering along at sixty miles an hour ain’t to be despised. Anyway, we’ll try it. At this gait we orter catch ’em in the cut beyond the station. Hit her up.”

While talking he had not been idle. First he laid his rifle by the cab door, ready to jump; then slipped over his head and shoulder the bandoliers of cartridge-clips Gordon had left for him. Meanwhile the Mexican’s frightened glance swung between him and the tracks which were slipping faster and faster under the mogul. Beyond the station a faint glow, reflection from its headlight, marked the entrance of therevueltosos’ train into the cut. In his mind the engineer’s horror, burning, mangling, scalding, fought for supremacy with his fear of Jake – and won. Selecting the moment that the latter’s two hands were engaged with the bandoliers, the engineer crossed the cab in one leap and plunged down and out.

“You son of a gun!” Grabbing his rifle, Jake jumped after.

But in the few seconds that elapsed between their leaps the mogul carried Jake a hundred yards. A second to a bump and each roll as he struck rebounded and turned over and over lost more time. A few more were required before he picked himself up. Then his glance went after the mogul, now shooting like a comet toward the cut from which therevueltosos’ train had just emerged. In the glare of the headlights each vividly illuminating the other, like two dragons breathing fire and smoke, they flew at each other’s throats.

Came a yell! a crash! Then darkness, hazy with steam, wiped out all but screams and agonized curses.

“God!” It burst from Jake. “If Bull could on’y have been here!”

Both while in the air and rolling over and over he had an impression that he must have jumped almost on top of the engineer. But now, looking around, he became aware – first, that he was standing directly opposite the station; second, of a dark figure in the lighted doorway; third, of a flash, pistol-crack, of a bullet singing by his ear; lastly of a baker’s dozen of other dark figures rushing at him from all around.

In a pinch – how well Sliver and Bull had known it! – Jake could always be counted upon to do the unexpected. Behind him stretched an open, moonlit plain where he would be easily shot down or overtaken. Grabbing the bull by the horns, he rushed straight at the figure in the doorway. Into its dark midst went the butt of his rifle. Bang! he slammed the door, a heavy, three-inch affair of oak that fitted against stone jambs and lintels; was secured by iron swing-bars. As he dropped these in place the panels quivered under the impact of many shoulders. Leaving the man he had overthrown writhing and holding his middle, Jake crossed quickly to the window.

In readiness for just such contingencies, its iron grill had been set out six inches to permit a raking fire along the wall, and shooting at ten feet into the convulsive movement at the door Jake’s first shot dropped a man. As the others dodged around the corner a yell told of another wounded.

A smaller window commanded that side, and, crossing over, Jake raked the fugitives in their flight with a galling fire till the last dim figure disappeared in the brush. Then, after he had noted with satisfaction that the window rose high above the ground, he turned to his captive, who still lay groaning on the floor.

“Git up!”

Steel eyes and ugly pistol muzzle enforced the order.

The man, a fat Mexican with a yellow, bilious face and small, beady eyes, arose. “If you will only let me live, señor – ”

“Shut up!” Jake cut him off. “You’re the station agent?”

“Si, señor!”

“What’s in those boxes?”

“Powder, señor, giant powder that was brought in by revueltosos from a gringo mine. It is to be shipped on the train to-morrow to Valles, who will have it made into bombs for use in his trenches.”

“Thought so.” Jake grinned at the pile of boxes. “’Tain’t no trick to tell gringo dynamite. The markings fairly scream, ‘Made in America!’ So Valles is going to make bombs of it? Well, well!”

“Señor, you will – ”

“Now, Alberto, cut that out.” Having thus transferred the cognomen from the engineer to his present captive, Jake went on. “That precious existence o’ yourn depends altogether upon your paisanos outside. The longer I hold ’em off the longer you live. Get it? Bueno! Now trot over to the window. The second you see any one – yelp! If you don’t – ” He tapped his gun significantly.

The agent thus placed, he looked around the room, The blackened stone of the walls told that it had already been burned in one or other of the revolutions. He grinned again, noting that the original roof had been replaced with laminated iron. “Kain’t roast us out, anyway, Alberto.”

On the rough table a one-wick lamp shed light over the usual litter of a small freight-office. These days there was little real business. Only a few barrels and bundles stood with the dynamite against the back wall. Crossing the room, Jake pried off the lids, then, while the agent watched him with fearful eyes, he carried and piled the boxes in a solid block close to the table. That done, he returned to the larger window.

Beyond the tracks the plains ran off and away under the moonlight. Northward a cloud of steam hung over the cut, cloaking the salvage of dead and wounded from the wreck. From it issued an occasional cry, command, mutter of voices. Raising his rifle, he sighted into the midst, then dropped it again.

“’Tain’t square, shooting wounded.” But there was no pity in his eyes. His mouth drew into a hard grin as he muttered: “I’d like to know jest how many I got! Must have been a tidy mess. Well, well! look who’s here!”

It was a bullet that had flattened against the stone lintel. His quick eye had picked the flash out of a bunch of chaparral a couple of hundred yards away, and he searched the patch with sweeping muzzle emptying the chamber along its front. Then he waited. But came no answer.

“Afraid I’ve spoiled another of your colleagues.” He turned to the agent. “They ain’t very keen, anyway. You Mexes like a sure thing. It’s a cinch they’re not a-going to try anything till the moon goes down, an’ I simply kain’t waste any more of my valuable time on them. You kin keep watch, Alberto.”

Seating himself at the table, he produced the pack he always carried and laid out the first cards in a game of solitaire. As he played game after game Jake’s brow puckered, the corners of his mouth loosened and tightened again in accordance with the fluctuations of his luck. He could not have been more interested, absorbed if, instead of playing with fate on the edge of the grave, he were cleaning out cowboys in a frontier bunk-house.

In the eyes of the Mexican, watching fearfully, the cold, grim face loomed in the yellow lamplight, a mask of terror. Yet his fright held him the more closely to his work. Not a leaf stirred in the brush, puff of dust raised under the night wind, without his notice; and while he watched the darkening plains one second, the grim, hard face under the gold of the lamp the next, Jake played steadily on, played till, having compassed her circle, the moon rolled down to the horizon and hung poised, a huge silver ball, on the tip of a far-off peak.

Rising, then, he walked to the large window, threw the shutters and looked out over the plains, dim and mysterious in the fading light. A stir of movement, buzz of voices, told of the attack that was preparing in the chaparral behind the station. The hard line of his mouth curled in derision, but as his gaze traveled northward to where the black peak now pierced the bright face of the moon its contempt faded.

Lee’s face, whitely anxious for him, was in his mind, the thrill of her arms around his neck, when he murmured, “On’y thirty miles to the border, a clean getaway.”

Ranging southward again, his glance brought up on the dim, dark range that marked Sliver’s last stand. Once more Jake saw him lying, face turned up, among the rocks. But the vision brought no grief. His small nod expressed merely approbation. Till the moon went out and darkness settled over the plains he stood there, thinking; stood till, with a sharp ping! a bullet whistled past his ear. Then, after closing the shutters, he returned to the table – not any too soon; for as he sat down and picked up the cards came the crash of a volley fired at short range, the splitting and splintering of bullet-pierced shutters.

Through all, as a rat in a corner might watch a cat, the agent had watched him with deadly fascination. From the north window where he stood it was but a step to the door. Apparently Jake did not notice him take it, for he did not look up – even when the agent’s hand touched the upper bar.

“If I was you, Alberto, I’d come away from there.”

The agent froze. But Jake had spoken in English. The hand went again to the bar, was slowly lifting it when, following a second splintering crash, he fell forward on his face with a hollow cough.

“Through the lungs, I reckon.” Jake looked down at the gross body, writhing in its death agony. “I told you to keep away, Alberto.”

The man’s last convulsive clutch had swung the upper bar clear of its sockets, but Jake did not move. The lower bar still held and, standing up, he watched the oaken panels quiver and split under heavy blows. With rhythmic regularity came the crash of volleys fired point-blank into the shutters. Bullets, too, were spitting through the side window – to strike and flatten on the opposite wall. Over all, above the crash of rifle-fire, thud of the beam they were using on the door, rose the roar and howl of a blood-mad peon rabble.

“The hull town has come to the funeral,” Jake muttered. “Well, they’ll see some wake.”

As the door crashed in he stooped and blew out the light. Darkness fell through the room – darkness that pulsed with convulsive movement. Over the body of the agent the leaders tripped and fell. Upon them others piled in a heap, yet under the pressure of the howling crowd outside still others streamed in. Above the oaths, curses, mad howls, rose yells for some one to bring a light.

Presently it came, a piece of engine waste soaked in alcohol at the end of a stick; and when it did, the rolling eyeballs, furious faces, vicious mouths, stood out for a second, writhing in murderous lust, then set in sudden horror.

For the bluish flare fell full on a grim figure, tall, lean, topped with a hard face, steel-point eyes. The muzzle of Jake’s gun touched the top layer of powder. Cold, weird, satanic, he must have loomed in their vision as the Evil One in whose existence they all believed. Paralyzed by the impending doom, some stood staring. Others, screaming hoarsely, fought in vain to beat back through the crowd. Till the last moment, yes, till one hardier scoundrel raised a gun, Jake held them in torture, then —

Both shots were wiped out by the tremendous explosion whose thunder and red sky-flash were heard and seen by Bull fifteen miles away.