The Night-Born

“I need the money, and I need it now,” he replied doggedly. “It’s not for myself, but for that friend I told you about. He’s in a peck of trouble, and he’s got to get his lift now or not at all.”

“I can find you a position,” she said quickly. “And – yes, the very thing! – I’ll lend you the money you want to send to your friend. This you can pay back out of your salary.”

“About three hundred would do,” he said slowly. “Three hundred would pull him through. I’d work my fingers off for a year for that, and my keep, and a few cents to buy Bull Durham with.”

“Ah! You smoke! I never thought of it.”

Her hand went out over the revolver toward his hand, as she pointed to the tell-tale yellow stain on his fingers. At the same time her eyes measured the nearness of her own hand and of his to the weapon. She ached to grip it in one swift movement. She was sure she could do it, and yet she was not sure; and so it was that she refrained as she withdrew her hand.

“Won’t you smoke?” she invited.

“I’m ‘most dying to.”

“Then do so. I don’t mind. I really like it – cigarettes, I mean.”

With his left band he dipped into his side pocket, brought out a loose wheat-straw paper and shifted it to his right hand close by the revolver. Again he dipped, transferring to the paper a pinch of brown, flaky tobacco. Then he proceeded, both hands just over the revolver, to roll the cigarette.

“From the way you hover close to that nasty weapon, you seem to be afraid of me,” she challenged.

“Not exactly afraid of you, ma’am, but, under the circumstances, just a mite timid.”

“But I’ve not been afraid of you.”

“You’ve got nothing to lose.”

“My life,” she retorted.

“That’s right,” he acknowledged promptly, “and you ain’t been scairt of me. Mebbe I am over anxious.”

“I wouldn’t cause you any harm.”

Even as she spoke, her slipper felt for the bell and pressed it. At the same time her eyes were earnest with a plea of honesty.

“You are a judge of men. I know it. And of women. Surely, when I am trying to persuade you from a criminal life and to get you honest work to do…?”

He was immediately contrite.

“I sure beg your pardon, ma’am,” he said. “I reckon my nervousness ain’t complimentary.”

As he spoke, he drew his right hand from the table, and after lighting the cigarette, dropped it by his side.

“Thank you for your confidence,” she breathed softly, resolutely keeping her eyes from measuring the distance to the revolver, and keeping her foot pressed firmly on the bell.

“About that three hundred,” he began. “I can telegraph it West to-night. And I’ll agree to work a year for it and my keep.”

“You will earn more than that. I can promise seventy-five dollars a month at the least. Do you know horses?”

His face lighted up and his eyes sparkled.

“Then go to work for me – or for my father, rather, though I engage all the servants. I need a second coachman – ”

“And wear a uniform?” he interrupted sharply, the sneer of the free-born West in his voice and on his lips.

She smiled tolerantly.

“Evidently that won’t do. Let me think. Yes. Can you break and handle colts?”

He nodded.

“We have a stock farm, and there’s room for just such a man as you. Will you take it?”

“Will I, ma’am?” His voice was rich with gratitude and enthusiasm. “Show me to it. I’ll dig right in to-morrow. And I can sure promise you one thing, ma’am. You’ll never be sorry for lending Hughie Luke a hand in his trouble – ”

“I thought you said to call you Dave,” she chided forgivingly.

“I did, ma’am. I did. And I sure beg your pardon. It was just plain bluff. My real name is Hughie Luke. And if you’ll give me the address of that stock farm of yours, and the railroad fare, I head for it first thing in the morning.”

Throughout the conversation she had never relaxed her attempts on the bell. She had pressed it in every alarming way – three shorts and a long, two and a long, and five. She had tried long series of shorts, and, once, she had held the button down for a solid three minutes. And she had been divided between objurgation of the stupid, heavy-sleeping butler and doubt if the bell were in order.

“I am so glad,” she said; “so glad that you are willing. There won’t be much to arrange. But you will first have to trust me while I go upstairs for my purse.”

She saw the doubt flicker momentarily in his eyes, and added hastily, “But you see I am trusting you with the three hundred dollars.”

“I believe you, ma’am,” he came back gallantly. “Though I just can’t help this nervousness.”

“Shall I go and get it?”

But before she could receive consent, a slight muffled jar from the distance came to her ear. She knew it for the swing-door of the butler’s pantry. But so slight was it – more a faint vibration than a sound – that she would not have heard had not her ears been keyed and listening for it. Yet the man had heard. He was startled in his composed way.

“What was that?” he demanded.

For answer, her left hand flashed out to the revolver and brought it back. She had had the start of him, and she needed it, for the next instant his hand leaped up from his side, clutching emptiness where the revolver had been.

“Sit down!” she commanded sharply, in a voice new to him. “Don’t move. Keep your hands on the table.”

She had taken a lesson from him. Instead of holding the heavy weapon extended, the butt of it and her forearm rested on the table, the muzzle pointed, not at his head, but his chest. And he, looking coolly and obeying her commands, knew there was no chance of the kick-up of the recoil producing a miss. Also, he saw that the revolver did not wabble, nor the hand shake, and he was thoroughly conversant with the size of hole the soft-nosed bullets could make. He had eyes, not for her, but for the hammer, which had risen under the pressure of her forefinger on the trigger.

“I reckon I’d best warn you that that there trigger-pull is filed dreadful fine. Don’t press too hard, or I’ll have a hole in me the size of a walnut.”

She slacked the hammer partly down.

“That’s better,” he commented. “You’d best put it down all the way. You see how easy it works. If you want to, a quick light pull will jiffy her up and back and make a pretty mess all over your nice floor.”

A door opened behind him, and he heard somebody enter the room. But he did not turn his bead. He was looking at her, and he found it the face of another woman – hard, cold, pitiless yet brilliant in its beauty. The eyes, too, were hard, though blazing with a cold light.

“Thomas,” she commanded, “go to the telephone and call the police. Why were you so long in answering?”

“I came as soon as I heard the bell, madam,” was the answer.

The robber never took his eyes from hers, nor did she from his, but at mention of the bell she noticed that his eyes were puzzled for the moment.

“Beg your pardon,” said the butler from behind, “but wouldn’t it be better for me to get a weapon and arouse the servants?”

“No; ring for the police. I can hold this man. Go and do it – quickly.”

The butler slippered out of the room, and the man and the woman sat on, gazing into each other’s eyes. To her it was an experience keen with enjoyment, and in her mind was the gossip of her crowd, and she saw notes in the society weeklies of the beautiful young Mrs. Setliffe capturing an armed robber single-handed. It would create a sensation, she was sure.

“When you get that sentence you mentioned,” she said coldly, “you will have time to meditate upon what a fool you have been, taking other persons’ property and threatening women with revolvers. You will have time to learn your lesson thoroughly. Now tell the truth. You haven’t any friend in trouble. All that you told me was lies.”

He did not reply. Though his eyes were upon her, they seemed blank. In truth, for the instant she was veiled to him, and what he saw was the wide sunwashed spaces of the West, where men and women were bigger than the rotten denizens, as he had encountered them, of the thrice rotten cities of the East.

“Go on. Why don’t you speak? Why don’t you lie some more? Why don’t you beg to be let off?”

“I might,” he answered, licking his dry lips. “I might ask to be let off if…”

“If what?” she demanded peremptorily, as he paused.

“I was trying to think of a word you reminded me of. As I was saying, I might if you was a decent woman.”

Her face paled.

“Be careful,” she warned.

“You don’t dast kill me,” he sneered. “The world’s a pretty low down place to have a thing like you prowling around in it, but it ain’t so plumb low down, I reckon, as to let you put a hole in me. You’re sure bad, but the trouble with you is that you’re weak in your badness. It ain’t much to kill a man, but you ain’t got it in you. There’s where you lose out.”

“Be careful of what you say,” she repeated. “Or else, I warn you, it will go hard with you. It can be seen to whether your sentence is light or heavy.”

“Something’s the matter with God,” he remarked irrelevantly, “to be letting you around loose. It’s clean beyond me what he’s up to, playing such-like tricks on poor humanity. Now if I was God – ”

His further opinion was interrupted by the entrance of the butler.

“Something is wrong with the telephone, madam,” he announced. “The wires are crossed or something, because I can’t get Central.”

“Go and call one of the servants,” she ordered. “Send him out for an officer, and then return here.”

Again the pair was left alone.

“Will you kindly answer one question, ma’am?” the man said. “That servant fellow said something about a bell. I watched you like a cat, and you sure rung no bell.”

“It was under the table, you poor fool. I pressed it with my foot.”

“Thank you, ma’am. I reckoned I’d seen your kind before, and now I sure know I have. I spoke to you true and trusting, and all the time you was lying like hell to me.”

She laughed mockingly.

“Go on. Say what you wish. It is very interesting.”

“You made eyes at me, looking soft and kind, playing up all the time the fact that you wore skirts instead of pants – and all the time with your foot on the bell under the table. Well, there’s some consolation. I’d sooner be poor Hughie Luke, doing his ten years, than be in your skin. Ma’am, hell is full of women like you.”

There was silence for a space, in which the man, never taking his eyes from her, studying her, was making up his mind.

“Go on,” she urged. “Say something.”

“Yes, ma’am, I’ll say something. I’ll sure say something. Do you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to get right up from this chair and walk out that door. I’d take the gun from you, only you might turn foolish and let it go off. You can have the gun. It’s a good one. As I was saying, I am going right out that door. And you ain’t going to pull that gun off either. It takes guts to shoot a man, and you sure ain’t got them. Now get ready and see if you can pull that trigger. I ain’t going to harm you. I’m going out that door, and I’m starting.”

Keeping his eyes fixed on her, he pushed back the chair and slowly stood erect. The hammer rose halfway. She watched it. So did he.

“Pull harder,” he advised. “It ain’t half up yet. Go on and pull it and kill a man. That’s what I said, kill a man, spatter his brains out on the floor, or slap a hole into him the size of your fist. That’s what killing a man means.”

The hammer lowered jerkily but gently. The man turned his back and walked slowly to the door. She swung the revolver around so that it bore on his back. Twice again the hammer came up halfway and was reluctantly eased down.

At the door the man turned for a moment before passing on. A sneer was on his lips. He spoke to her in a low voice, almost drawling, but in it was the quintessence of all loathing, as he called her a name unspeakable and vile.

THE MEXICAN

NOBODY knew his history – they of the Junta least of all. He was their “little mystery,” their “big patriot,” and in his way he worked as hard for the coming Mexican Revolution as did they. They were tardy in recognizing this, for not one of the Junta liked him. The day he first drifted into their crowded, busy rooms, they all suspected him of being a spy – one of the bought tools of the Diaz secret service. Too many of the comrades were in civil an military prisons scattered over the United States, and others of them, in irons, were even then being taken across the border to be lined up against adobe walls and shot.

At the first sight the boy did not impress them favorably. Boy he was, not more than eighteen and not over large for his years. He announced that he was Felipe Rivera, and that it was his wish to work for the Revolution. That was all – not a wasted word, no further explanation. He stood waiting. There was no smile on his lips, no geniality in his eyes. Big dashing Paulino Vera felt an inward shudder. Here was something forbidding, terrible, inscrutable. There was something venomous and snakelike in the boy’s black eyes. They burned like cold fire, as with a vast, concentrated bitterness. He flashed them from the faces of the conspirators to the typewriter which little Mrs. Sethby was industriously operating. His eyes rested on hers but an instant – she had chanced to look up – and she, too, sensed the nameless something that made her pause. She was compelled to read back in order to regain the swing of the letter she was writing.

Paulino Vera looked questioningly at Arrellano and Ramos, and questioningly they looked back and to each other. The indecision of doubt brooded in their eyes. This slender boy was the Unknown, vested with all the menace of the Unknown. He was unrecognizable, something quite beyond the ken of honest, ordinary revolutionists whose fiercest hatred for Diaz and his tyranny after all was only that of honest and ordinary patriots. Here was something else, they knew not what. But Vera, always the most impulsive, the quickest to act, stepped into the breach.

“Very well,” he said coldly. “You say you want to work for the Revolution. Take off your coat. Hang it over there. I will show you, come – where are the buckets and cloths. The floor is dirty. You will begin by scrubbing it, and by scrubbing the floors of the other rooms. The spittoons need to be cleaned. Then there are the windows.”

“Is it for the Revolution?” the boy asked.

“It is for the Revolution,” Vera answered.

Rivera looked cold suspicion at all of them, then proceeded to take off his coat.

“It is well,” he said.

And nothing more. Day after day he came to his work – sweeping, scrubbing, cleaning. He emptied the ashes from the stoves, brought up the coal and kindling, and lighted the fires before the most energetic one of them was at his desk.

“Can I sleep here?” he asked once.

Ah, ha! So that was it – the hand of Diaz showing through! To sleep in the rooms of the Junta meant access to their secrets, to the lists of names, to the addresses of comrades down on Mexican soil. The request was denied, and Rivera never spoke of it again. He slept they knew not where, and ate they knew not where nor how. Once, Arrellano offered him a couple of dollars. Rivera declined the money with a shake of the head. When Vera joined in and tried to press it upon him, he said:

“I am working for the Revolution.”

It takes money to raise a modern revolution, and always the Junta was pressed. The members starved and toiled, and the longest day was none too long, and yet there were times when it appeared as if the Revolution stood or fell on no more than the matter of a few dollars. Once, the first time, when the rent of the house was two months behind and the landlord was threatening dispossession, it was Felipe Rivera, the scrub-boy in the poor, cheap clothes, worn and threadbare, who laid sixty dollars in gold on May Sethby’s desk. There were other times. Three hundred letters, clicked out on the busy typewriters (appeals for assistance, for sanctions from the organized labor groups, requests for square news deals to the editors of newspapers, protests against the high-handed treatment of revolutionists by the United States courts), lay unmailed, awaiting postage. Vera’s watch had disappeared – the old-fashioned gold repeater that had been his father’s. Likewise had gone the plain gold band from May Setbby’s third finger. Things were desperate. Ramos and Arrellano pulled their long mustaches in despair. The letters must go off, and the Post Office allowed no credit to purchasers of stamps. Then it was that Rivera put on his hat and went out. When he came back he laid a thousand two-cent stamps on May Sethby’s desk.

“I wonder if it is the cursed gold of Diaz?” said Vera to the comrades.

They elevated their brows and could not decide. And Felipe Rivera, the scrubber for the Revolution, continued, as occasion arose, to lay down gold and silver for the Junta’s use.

And still they could not bring themselves to like him. They did not know him. His ways were not theirs. He gave no confidences. He repelled all probing. Youth that he was, they could never nerve themselves to dare to question him.

“A great and lonely spirit, perhaps, I do not know, I do not know,” Arrellano said helplessly.

“He is not human,” said Ramos.

“His soul has been seared,” said May Sethby. “Light and laughter have been burned out of him. He is like one dead, and yet he is fearfully alive.”

“He has been through hell,” said Vera. “No man could look like that who has not been through hell – and he is only a boy.”

Yet they could not like him. He never talked, never inquired, never suggested. He would stand listening, expressionless, a thing dead, save for his eyes, coldly burning, while their talk of the Revolution ran high and warm. From face to face and speaker to speaker his eyes would turn, boring like gimlets of incandescent ice, disconcerting and perturbing.

“He is no spy,” Vera confided to May Sethby. “He is a patriot – mark me, the greatest patriot of us all. I know it, I feel it, here in my heart and head I feel it. But him I know not at all.”

“He has a bad temper,” said May Sethby.

“I know,” said Vera, with a shudder. “He has looked at me with those eyes of his. They do not love; they threaten; they are savage as a wild tiger’s. I know, if I should prove unfaithful to the Cause, that he would kill me. He has no heart. He is pitiless as steel, keen and cold as frost. He is like moonshine in a winter night when a man freezes to death on some lonely mountain top. I am not afraid of Diaz and all his killers; but this boy, of him am I afraid. I tell you true. I am afraid. He is the breath of death.”

Yet Vera it was who persuaded the others to give the first trust to Rivera. The line of communication between Los Angeles and Lower California had broken down. Three of the comrades had dug their own graves and been shot into them. Two more were United States prisoners in Los Angeles. Juan Alvarado, the Federal commander, was a monster. All their plans did he checkmate. They could no longer gain access to the active revolutionists, and the incipient ones, in Lower California.

Young Rivera was given his instructions and dispatched south. When he returned, the line of communication was reestablished, and Juan Alvarado was dead. He had been found in bed, a knife hilt-deep in his breast. This had exceeded Rivera’s instructions, but they of the Junta knew the times of his movements. They did not ask him. He said nothing. But they looked at one another and conjectured.

“I have told you,” said Vera. “Diaz has more to fear from this youth than from any man. He is implacable. He is the hand of God.”

The bad temper, mentioned by May Sethby, and sensed by them all, was evidenced by physical proofs. Now he appeared with a cut lip, a blackened cheek, or a swollen ear. It was patent that he brawled, somewhere in that outside world where he ate and slept, gained money, and moved in ways unknown to them. As the time passed, he had come to set type for the little revolutionary sheet they published weekly. There were occasions when he was unable to set type, when his knuckles were bruised and battered, when his thumbs were injured and helpless, when one arm or the other hung wearily at his side while his face was drawn with unspoken pain.

“A wastrel,” said Arrellano.

“A frequenter of low places,” said Ramos.

“But where does he get the money?” Vera demanded. “Only to-day, just now, have I learned that he paid the bill for white paper – one hundred and forty dollars.”

“There are his absences,” said May Sethby. “He never explains them.”

“We should set a spy upon him,” Ramos propounded.

“I should not care to be that spy,” said Vera. “I fear you would never see me again, save to bury me. He has a terrible passion. Not even God would he permit to stand between him and the way of his passion.”

“I feel like a child before him,” Ramos confessed.

“To me he is power – he is the primitive, the wild wolf, the striking rattlesnake, the stinging centipede,” said Arrellano.

“He is the Revolution incarnate,” said Vera. “He is the flame and the spirit of it, the insatiable cry for vengeance that makes no cry but that slays noiselessly. He is a destroying angel in moving through the still watches of the night.”

“I could weep over him,” said May Sethby. “He knows nobody. He hates all people. Us he tolerates, for we are the way of his desire. He is alone… lonely.” Her voice broke in a half sob and there was dimness in her eyes.

Rivera’s ways and times were truly mysterious. There were periods when they did not see him for a week at a time. Once, he was away a month. These occasions were always capped by his return, when, without advertisement or speech, he laid gold coins on May Sethby’s desk. Again, for days and weeks, he spent all his time with the Junta. And yet again, for irregular periods, he would disappear through the heart of each day, from early morning until late afternoon. At such times he came early and remained late. Arrellano had found him at midnight, setting type with fresh swollen knuckles, or mayhap it was his lip, new-split, that still bled.

II

The time of the crisis approached. Whether or not the Revolution would be depended upon the Junta, and the Junta was hard-pressed. The need for money was greater than ever before, while money was harder to get. Patriots had given their last cent and now could give no more. Section gang laborers-fugitive peons from Mexico – were contributing half their scanty wages. But more than that was needed. The heart-breaking, conspiring, undermining toil of years approached fruition. The time was ripe. The Revolution hung on the balance. One shove more, one last heroic effort, and it would tremble across the scales to victory. They knew their Mexico. Once started, the Revolution would take care of itself. The whole Diaz machine would go down like a house of cards. The border was ready to rise. One Yankee, with a hundred I.W.W. men, waited the word to cross over the border and begin the conquest of Lower California. But he needed guns. And clear across to the Atlantic, the Junta in touch with them all and all of them needing guns, mere adventurers, soldiers of fortune, bandits, disgruntled American union men, socialists, anarchists, rough-necks, Mexican exiles, peons escaped from bondage, whipped miners from the bull-pens of Coeur d’Alene and Colorado who desired only the more vindictively to fight – all the flotsam and jetsam of wild spirits from the madly complicated modern world. And it was guns and ammunition, ammunition and guns – the unceasing and eternal cry.

Fling this heterogeneous, bankrupt, vindictive mass across the border, and the Revolution was on. The custom house, the northern ports of entry, would be captured. Diaz could not resist. He dared not throw the weight of his armies against them, for he must hold the south. And through the south the flame would spread despite. The people would rise. The defenses of city after city would crumple up. State after state would totter down. And at last, from every side, the victorious armies of the Revolution would close in on the City of Mexico itself, Diaz’s last stronghold.

But the money. They had the men, impatient and urgent, who would use the guns. They knew the traders who would sell and deliver the guns. But to culture the Revolution thus far had exhausted the Junta. The last dollar had been spent, the last resource and the last starving patriot milked dry, and the great adventure still trembled on the scales. Guns and ammunition! The ragged battalions must be armed. But how? Ramos lamented his confiscated estates. Arrellano wailed the spendthriftness of his youth. May Sethby wondered if it would have been different had they of the Junta been more economical in the past.