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His own gaze, overlooking the prospect, expressed the pride of accomplishment with which men survey their completed work; nor was his satisfaction less because the buildings themselves were not of his creation. Coming here, sixteen years ago, with a nest-egg of two or three thousand dollars, he had leased and let, bought and sold with Yankee shrewdness; added acre to acre, flock to flock, until, at last, he was in position to buy Los Arboles from a “land-poor” Spanish owner.
To a man without imagination the fact that its foundations had been laid almost four centuries ago by one of Cortés’s conquistadores might have meant little. With Carleton it counted more than its broad acreage. From a trove of old papers left by the former owner he had gathered many a story of siege and battle, scandal and intrigue, consummated within its massive walls. Instead of fairy-tales, he had told these to Lee during her childhood, so that medieval atmosphere had penetrated her very being.
They seldom overlooked the hacienda, as now, without making some observations anent its past. As in some vivid pageant, they saw the old Dons, their señoras, señoritas, savage brown retainers, in the midst of their fighting, working, loving, praying. By self-adoption, as it were, Carleton, at least, had allied himself with them, had come to think of himself as belonging to the family.
“Great old fellows they were!” Though he spoke musingly, now, without connection, she instantly caught his meaning, knew he was harking back. “Great old chaps! I was looking into one of our land titles the other day, and the records read in princely fashion. ‘Between the rivers such and such, of a width that a man may ride in one day,’ that was a favorite method of establishing boundaries. No paring of land like cheese rinds; everything done by wholesale; no haggling over a few square leagues.”
“And here comes one of them.” Lee pointed her quirt at a horseman who had just topped the opposite rise. “Doesn’t he look it?”
Surely he did. The charro suit of soft tanned deerskin with itsbolero jacket and tight pantaloons braided or laced with silver; the lithe figure under the suit; dark, handsome face, great Spanish eyes that burned in the dusk of a gold-laced sombrero; the fine horse and Mexican saddle heavily chased in solid silver; the gold-hilted machetein its saddle sheath under the rider’s leg, even the rope riata coiled around the solid silver pommel, horse, rider, and trappings belonged in that pageant of the past.
“It is Ramon Icarza,” Carleton nodded. “He hasn’t been here for a long time.” This he repeated in Spanish when the young man rode up.
“Attending to the herds and the horses, señor. As with you, the most of our peones have run away to the wars. We have left only a few ancianostoo feeble and stiff to be of much service. Still, with the aid of the women we manage. That last requisition for the” – his shrug was eloquent in its disdain – “cause. You paid it?”
“Had to – or be confiscated.” With a grin comical in its mixture of amusement and anger, Carleton went on, “I raked up five thousand pesos of Valles’s money and took it to him myself. And what do you think he said? ‘I don’t want that stuff. I can print off a million in a minute. You must pay me in gold.’”
Perhaps because humor has no place in the primitive psychology of his race, Ramon received the news with a black frown. “The devil take him! Yet you Americans are better treated than we, his countrymen. With us, he takes all. Those poor Chihuahua comerciantes!” His hands and eyebrows testified to Valles’s scandalous treatment of the merchants. “First he demands a contribution to the cause. Those who refuse are foolish, for first he shoots them as traitors, then confiscates their goods. But the poor devils who contribute, see you, fare little better; for with the money he runs off a newspaper press he buys up the goods they have left. In the old days we used to curse the locusts, señor; but they, at least, left us our beasts and lands. Who would have thought, four years ago, that you and the señorita here and my venerable father would be reduced to become herders of cattle?”
“Oh, but it’s lots of fun!” Lee’s happy laugh bespoke sincerity. “I love it out here. They will never be able to get me back in the house. And that reminds me that we’re almost due there for lunch.”
“You’ll stay, of course, Ramon?” Pointing to a couple of mares with foals they had brought in from a distant part of the range, Carleton added, “There’s still another over in the next valley. If you will take these along, I’ll get her.”
Left to themselves, the young man and girl headed the mares toward thehacienda, riding sufficiently in rear to check the sudden, aimless boltings of the foals. The helplessness of the little creatures touched the girl’s maternal instinct, and though their stilts of legs, wabbly knees, long necks, and big heads were badly out of drawing, she exclaimed like a true mother over their beauty.
“Oh, aren’t they pretty!”
Ramon agreed – as he would had she called upon him to admire a Gila monster. Not that he had always followed her lead. Close neighbors – that is, as neighboring goes in range countries where distance is reckoned by the hundred miles – their childhood had compassed more than the usual number of squabbles. Until the dawn of masculine instinct had bound him slave to her budding beauty, they had upset the peace and dignity of many a ceremonial visit by fighting like cat and dog. Lee knew, of course, his mother and sister, and not until she had extracted the last iota of family gossip did she bestow a sisterly inspection on himself and clothes. Having passed favorably on the material, fit, and trimmings, she reached for his sombrero.
“You are quite the hacendado, now, Ramon, in that magnificent hat. Let me look at it. What a beauty!”
While she turned and twisted it, fingered the rich gold braid, examined it with head slightly askew like a pretty bird, the natural glow intensified in Ramon’s big dark eyes; a wave of color flowed through the gold of his skin. His mouth – too red and womanish for Anglo-Saxon standards – drew into a tender smile.
According to the cañons of fiction, this was wrong. A man with a black or brown skin must reserve his admiration for women of his race. Yet, with singular disregard, for writer’s law, Nature continued to weave for Ramon her potent spells. The sunshine snared in Lee’s hair, rose blush of her skin, her womanly contours, the fine molding of her limbs, the sweetness of youth, all the witcheries of form and color with which Nature lures her creatures to their matings, affected the lad just as powerfully as if he had been born north of the Rio Grande.
On her part Lee ought to have resented his admiration. But here, again, Nature utterly ignored “best seller” conventions. Brought up among Mexicans, counting Ramon’s sister her best friend, Lee felt no racial prejudice. Wherefore, like any other young girl possessed of normal health and spirits, she made the most of the situation. After sufficiently admiring the hat, she tried it on.
“How does it look?”
As she faced him, saucily smiling from under the enormous brim, there was no mistaking the “dare.” Whether or no the custom obtains in Mexico, Ramon caught the implication.
“Pretty enough to – kiss!”
With the word he reached swiftly for her neck, but caught only empty air. Ducking with a touch of the spur, she shot from under his hand.
The next second he was after her. Along the shallow valley for a half-mile she led, then, whirling just as he rode alongside, she shot back along the ridge. At the end he overtook her, and, anticipating her whirl, caught her bridle rein. Leaning back, however, flat on her beast’s back, laughing and panting, she was still out of his reach; and when he began to travel, hand over hand, along the bridle, she leaped down on the opposite side and dodged behind a lone sahuaro.
Sure of her now, he followed. But, dodging like a hare around thesahuaro, she came racing back for the horses; might possibly have gained them and made good her escape, if, glancing back over her shoulder, she had not seen Ramon stumble, stop, then clasp his right ankle.
“Oh, is it sprained?” she cried, running back. Then, as, reaching suddenly, he caught her, she burst out, “Cheat! oh, you miserable cheat!”
That all is fair in love and war, however, goes in all languages, and while she punctuated the struggle with customary objections whereby young maids enhance the value of a kiss, there was no anger in her protests. Wrestling her back and down, he got, at last, the laughing face upturned in the hollow of his arm; had almost reached her lips, when, with force that sent Lee to the ground, he was seized and thrown violently against the horse.
In the excitement of the chase they had completely forgotten Carleton, who had viewed its beginnings from the opposite ridge. By self-adoption he had almost, as before said, identified himself with the Spanish strain that had flowed for centuries through the patios and compound of Los Arboles. He had even come to think in Spanish; in custom and manner was almost Mexican. But in moments of anger habit gives place to instinct. The instinct that first formed and later preserved the tribe, pride of race, overpowered friendship. In one second the young Mexican, whom he had regarded for years almost as a son, was transmuted into the despised “greaser” of the border.
“You – you – ” Choking with anger, eyes bits of blue flame, he strode at Ramon, fist bunched to strike.
But the blow did not fall, for, scrambling up again, Lee seized his arm from behind. “Oh, dad! dad!” Despite his struggles, she clung like a cat, defeating his efforts to shake her off. “Oh, dad! It was only a bit of fun! all my fault! I put on his hat! Please don’t!”
If the young fellow had flinched, perhaps Carleton would have struck. But, head erect, he quietly waited, and presently Carleton ceased struggling.
“All right! I’ll let him go – this time. But, remember” – bringing his clenched fist in a heat of passion into the palm of the other hand, he glared at the young man – “remember! when this girl is kissed – it will be by a man of her own breed. Get off my land!” After helping Lee to mount, he vaulted into his own saddle and rode away, driving the mares and foals before them.
In accordance with before-mentioned precedents, Ramon ought to have folded his arms and hissed a threat through gritted teeth. Instead, he stood very quietly, his face less angry than sad, watching them go. His little nod, in its firmness, would have become any young American; went very well with his thought.
“We shall see.”
Mounting, he rode away to the northward, and not till he had covered many miles did he rein in his beast, so suddenly that it fell back on its haunches. His dark face expressed vexation mixed with alarm. “Maldito! I forgot to warn them that Colorados had been seen east of the railroad. I must go back.”
On their part, Lee and her father rode on toward the hacienda. Though he glanced at her from time to time, it was always furtively, for with a man’s dislike of scenes he made no reference to that which had just passed. Nevertheless, it filled his mind. Man-like, he had watched her develop into womanhood with scarcely a thought for her future. If he had given the subject any consideration he would probably have concluded that, sooner or later, she would choose a suitable mate from the hundreds of American miners, railroad men, ranchers, and engineers that had swarmed in the state of Chihuahua before the revolution.
But with the clear vision of after sight he now saw that he had unconsciously depended on the race pride which had just manifested itself in himself to prevent her from contracting a mésalliance. Now, with consternation, he faced the truth that racial pride is masculine; contrary to both the feminine instinct and nature’s scheme of things.
“I was a fool!” he berated himself. “A damned fool! She will have to go north – live in the States for a while.”
These and similar thoughts were whirling through his mind when they came on a band of his horses at pasture under charge of an anciano, a withered old peon, whose age and infirmities had estopped him from joining the exodus to the wars. After cautioning the old fellow not to allow the animals to stray too far, Carleton plunged again into deep meditation.
Had he not been thus preoccupied he would probably have long ago discovered the five horsemen who were following at a distance, using the natural cover afforded by the rolling land; for he always rode with a powerful binocular in his holster, and often swept with it the prospect. Several times the glass would have shown him a row of heads behind the next ridge in rear. As it was, he had ridden to the crest of the rise from which they had looked down on the hacienda before habit asserted itself. He had no sooner leveled the glasses than an exclamation burst from his lips. “My God!”
“What is it, dad?” Lee swung in her saddle, looking back at him.
“Raiders! They are attacking Francisco! He has nothing but his staff! He’s fighting them like an old lion! My God, they’re chopping him with their machetes.” It came out of him in staccato phrases. “Race in and send out Juan, Lerdo, and Prudencia with rifles! Stay there! Don’t dare to follow!”
Digging in his spurs, he galloped away. For a moment the girl hesitated. Her eyes went to the hacienda, still half a mile away, then back to her father racing madly down the slope. There was no time to go for help! Loosening the pistol in her holster, she drove in her spurs and galloped after.
From Carleton’s first appearance till the girl screamed all had passed so quickly that the Three could only sit and gape. From their original intent to rob Carleton it was a far cry to the reconstructed impulse to succor and save him, and it speaks well for them that they accomplished the revolution as soon as they did.
The scream had not passed unnoticed by the Colorados. The leader, who had turned to ride on, swung his beast, looked, then, as the girl dropped from the saddle to her knees beside the wounded man, drove in his spurs and galloped toward her. Heedless of her own danger, Lee was trying to stanch with her handkerchief the bloodflow from Carleton’s chest, so lost in her agonized grief that she did not look up till the Colorado leaped down and seized her.
In this world there are savages who would have respected, for the time at least, her white grief. But this was the man who had tortured the miner and his peones; driven the latter naked through spiky cactus after he had cut the soles off their feet. She sprang up when he seized her, and as she fought bitterly, beating away his black, evil face with her little fists, his strident laughter mingled with her wild sobbing and carried to Bull behind the ridge.
For three days this man’s boast had rung in his brain: “We’ve killed your men, outraged your women!” But though anger blazed within him, his tone was icy cold. “Look after the others. I’ll ’tend to him!”
He had already pulled his rifle from the sling under his leg. Raising it now, he lined the sights, the same sights that had directed a ball through the brain of Livingstone’s horse. While Lee writhed and twisted in the Colorado’s arms, he dared not shoot. He waited until, at the double crack of his companions’ rifles, two of the other Colorados pitched headlong from their saddles. Then, as their leader paused to look and, with a swift wrench, Lee tore loose and let daylight between them, the rifle spoke, sent its bullet whistling through his brain.
“Keep after them!” Bull called back as he rode on over the ridge.
But already Jake and Sliver’s rifles were barking like hungry dogs. Trained to a hair in guerrilla warfare, the remaining Colorados had spurred their beasts behind the horse herd. At the first shot the band had stampeded, and now, urged on by the yells of the fugitives, who rode crouched on their horses’ necks, the scared animals coursed swiftly down the valley.
“The gall of them! Our horses!” Repeating his former observation, Sliver would have ridden after.
But Jake caught his bridle. His bleak eyes were scintillating like sunlit icicles. His lean, avid face quivered with subdued ferocity. “Don’t be a damn fool! They’re only using ’em for cover! We’ll shoot along this side of the ridge an’ catch ’em at the end of the valley!”
Meanwhile Bull rode on down the slope. After a surprised stare that showed her rescuers to be Americans, Lee had knelt again beside her father. As before said, Bull was no beauty. His black beard, bushy brows, hot red eyes, drink-blotched face, were of themselves sufficient to frighten a woman. Yet when she looked up sympathy illumined his countenance till it shone in her distressed sight as a clear lamp radiating human feeling. Without fear or doubt she turned to him for help.
“It’s my father! I’m afraid – Can’t you do something?”
So far Carleton had lain with his eyes closed. Now he opened them and spoke in detached whispers as Bull knelt by his side. “You’re – American. I told her not to follow. Don’t bother – with me. I’m shot – through lungs and stomach – bleeding inside. Get Lee – back to the house.”
“Plenty of time,” Bull soothed him. As a crackle of rifle-fire turned loose in the distance, followed by sudden silence, he added, “That ’ull be the last o’ the Colorados. I’ll fix you a bit, an’ when my fellows come back we’ll jest pack you home.”
With a plainsman’s skill in crude surgery, he tore up Carleton’s shirt to make a pad and bandage which he twisted with a stick till the blood-flow stopped. This was no more accomplished before Jake and Sliver rode up, driving the horses ahead.
“They won’t cut no more soles offen people’s feet,” Jake answered Bull’s questioning look.
“Fine and dandy.” Bull nodded. “You, Jake, rope a fresh horse outer the band an’ ride like hell to the railroad an’ wire El Paso for a doctor.”
“No!” Lee eagerly suggested. “Wire the American Club at Chihuahua. These dreadful days all gringos help one another.”
Freshly horsed, five minutes thereafter, Jake galloped away – but not before, cold, crafty, laconic, dissolute gambler as he was, he had left a comforting word in the girl’s ear. “Don’t you be skeered, Miss. I’ll bring out a doctor, if I have to ride inter El Paso an’ raid a hospital.”
As he went out of sight over the next roll Sliver, with the girl’s aid, lifted the wounded man up to Bull in the saddle. So for the second time within three days did the giant rustler bear like a child in his arms agringo victim of the Mexican revolution. To the leaven that had been working within him was now added the most powerful influence that can be brought to bear on a man – a woman’s heartbroken sobbing.
VI: BULL TURNS NURSE
Passing over into the next valley, they came on the body of old Francisco, hacked almost to bits. So far Lee had kept a strong grip on herself. But now she burst out crying.
“The poor fellow! He was faithful as a dog. We saw them cut him down, and that caused dad to lose his head. Otherwise he would never have tried to pursue them alone.”
“He was old – an’ died a man’s death,” Bull offered her rough comfort. “You couldn’t wish him a better ending.”
It was man’s reasoning, therefore contrary to her woman’s feelings, yet it helped to control her grief. She acquiesced at once when Bull suggested that she ride ahead and prepare a room.
By her departure Sliver was afforded an opportunity to get something off his mind. After a glance at Carleton, who had relapsed again into unconsciousness, he nodded at the horses. “Don’t you allow I’d better leave ’em here? After we get through with him we kin come back an’ – ” He stopped, shuffled uneasily, under Bull’s stare.
“You’re dead right! Don’t trouble to say it. I’d steal the horses offen a hearse.”
Bull’s glance dropped again to the unconscious man. Then, very slowly, he voiced his opinion, formed on frontier code: “Wait till he’s well enough to fight for his own. Till then – we leave him alone.”
Stepping at a lively gait, they passed in half an hour under the patiogateway. Within, arched portales ran around three sides, supporting the gallery of an upper story. From the red-tiled roof above a wonderful creeper poured a cataract of green lace, so dense, prolific, that only vigorous pruning kept it from burying the portales beneath. In the center rose a great arbol de fuego, “tree of fire,” contrasting its flaming blossoms with the rich greens of palms and bananas.
They were met at the entrance by a flock of frightened brown women, house servants, and peonas; for of the scores of men who had worked for Carleton before the wars there were left only three witheredancianos to bear his body up the wide stone stairway to a room that caught the fresh breeze from the mountains.
Here Bull redressed the wounds. His skill, however, was only of the surface. As it would require at least four days to bring a doctor even from Chihuahua, he felt that unless Jake materialized one out of the dry desert air Carleton would surely die. Nevertheless, he stoutly denied the possibility to Lee during the two days that he shared her watch.
Sliver, on his part, also did his best to cheer and comfort, relating marvelous tales of accidents and illnesses that, by contrast, made shooting through the lungs and stomach look smaller than a toothache.
“You she’d have seen Rusty Mikel, Miss, the time his Bill-hoss turned a flip-flop onto him. Druv’ the pommel clean through his chest, it did. Yet he was up an’ around, lively as a bedbug by candle-light, in less ’n five weeks.”
Surely without them the girl would not only have broken down, but her father could never have survived to see the doctor, whose arrival was announced by a rapid beat of hoofs the following evening. For Jake had achieved the impossible, grabbed him, if not from midair, at least from a revolutionary-hospital train that had stopped at the burned station to bury its dead.
The doctor was American. But even as he dismounted at the gate Bull picked him for a “colonist.” Just how, he himself could not have said. His premature grizzle, unhealthy pallor, might have been due to overwork. But a certain brooding quiet, seen only in those who have been cut off for long periods from communication with their fellows, impressed even Sliver. He remarked on it while they sat with Jake under the portales while he ate.
“Say! but he’s whitish. Looks like he’d done time.”
“He has,” Jake nodded. “I had it from a Yankee machine-gunner in Valles’s army that had got himself shot through both arms an’ was being taken back to the base hospital with about a hun’red others. When I landed at the burned station he was a-setting with his legs dangling out of a box-car door, watching ’em bury his compañeros that had died on the way.
“‘Gotter do it quick,’ he says. ‘They don’t keep worth a darn in this clime.’
“He’d met Carleton once in Chihuahua, an’ ’twas him that sent the doctor an’ tol’ me about him while he was packing his grip. Seems that he’d belonged to a gang that worked insurance frauds on American companies. They’d insure some peon that was about ready to croak, paying the premiums themselves an’ c’llecting the insurance after he cashed in. If he lingered ’twas said that they hurried him. That was never quite proved, most of ’em being too far gone to testify when they was resurrected. But the doc had furnished the death certificate, an’ as the Mexicans ain’t so particular about technicalities as our courts, he was sentenced to be shot along with his pals. If he’d been Mexican they’d have done it, too. But Diaz, who liked a bad gringo better than a good greaser, commuted the sentence to life imprisonment. He’d actually served twelve years – think of it, hombres! twelve years in a Mexican jail before the revolutionists let him out to serve on their hospital-trains.”
“Twelve years!” Sliver echoed it. “An’ just for croaking a few Mex? He orter ha’ practised in New Mexico. They’d have give him a medal up there.”
After Jake had eaten, the Three sat and smoked till the doctor came down. While eating he made his report. “If I could do any good I’d stay. But he will surely die to-night. It’s going to be mighty hard on that poor girl. Like most of us” – his glance took in all Three – “Carleton didn’t come down here for his health. It’s bad form in Mexico to inquire about a man’s past. Nevertheless, it’s pretty well known that he killed the seducer of his wife and came here with the child when she was four years old. She’s never been away since, and has no kin that she knows of. To run a hacienda, these days, is too big a job for a girl.”
His deep concern showed an underlying goodness. Genuine sadness weighted his words when he gave his last orders from the saddle. “I’ve left an opiate in case he suffers. He may regain consciousness, but don’t be deceived. It will be the last flare before the dark.”
It happened at midnight. An hour before, Bull had put Lee out of the room with gentle force to take needed rest. He had then moved his chair to the door, which opened out on the corredor, to secure the free air his rustler’s lungs demanded. Across the compound he could see the moon’s pale lantern hanging in the branches of a yucca that upraised its maimed and twisted shape on a distant knoll. Northward the mountains loomed, dim and mysterious, in tender light that reduced the vivid chromes and blues of lime-washed adobes in the compound to pale violet and clear gold.
Gringo as he was, his people had lived under Carleton’s hand fuller, freer lives than their forebears had ever known under the Mexican overlords, and, day or night, the patio had never lacked a dozen brownpeonas on their knees at their prayers to the saints. Under thearbol de fuego in the center of the patio below three old crones had erected a small altar, and its guttering candles now threw splashes of gold up through the crimson dusk of the tree. Adding the human note which, by contrast, accentuated the infinite mystery of that still night, their mutterings rose up to Bull; bits of gossip sandwiched between prayers.
“Three crows perched here at sundown, Luisa. Thou knowest what that means?”
“Si; they were devils come for a soul.”
“’Tis a pity that all gringos are doomed to the flame. The señor was a good master to us that had felt the iron fist of the Spaniard.”
“The señorita? She that is so sweet and good. Thinkest thou, Luisa, that she also will be cast into hell?”
“Not if my prayers can save, Pancha. Three great candles, at twenty centavos the candle, have I burned on the altar of Guadalupe for her soul’s sake. There is yet time for her. But the poor señor – ” her pause doomed him. Nevertheless, with greater vigor they returned to their prayers for his saving.
The dim beauty of the night with its spread of moonlit plain, loom of distant mountains, querulous supplication rising under cold stars, combined to produce that awful sense of infinity that shrouds the riddle of life. If Bull was incapable of philosophizing upon it, to translate the feeling in thought, he still came under its sway. While it weighed heavily upon him, there came a gasp and feverish mutter from the bed.
In a second he was there. As he removed the shade from the candle he saw Carleton’s face lit by the last flare. Recognition and intelligence both were there.
“Where is – Lee? Sleeping? Don’t wake her. Listen! She – must not – stay here. Tell William Benson – he’s rough and a bully – but honest and good. Tell him to get a permit – from the revolutionists – to drive my cattle and horses – across to the States. They will bring enough – to keep Lee for many – a year. Be sure – ”
The halting voice suddenly failed. Even while Bull was reaching for a stimulant the soul of the man passed out into the mystery beyond the moonlit plains.
For a while Bull stood looking down upon him. Then, very slowly, he made toward the door that led to the girl’s room. But as her tired face rose before him he stopped and shook his head. “Let her finish her sleep.” Tiptoeing, instead, out to the gallery rail, he leaned down and softly called the old women.
VII: THE RUSTLERS ARE ADOPTED
“Well, I reckon this about lets us out.”
The Three sat under the portales, heavily smoking. Bull puffed meditatively at a strong old pipe. Between lungfuls Sliver toyed absently with a cigarette. The necessities of dealing faro-bank had trained Jake in the labial manipulations of his fat native cigar. As all necessary readjustment could be made with the tongue or lips, his hands were thrust deep in his pockets, a proof of profound mental concentration. It was he who had spoken, and the “this” alluded to Carleton’s funeral, which had taken place the preceding day.
It had been a quiet affair. William Benson, the nearest white neighbor, happened to be in El Paso. Of a round dozen Mexicans of the better class, eleven were wearily waiting on the other side of the border till still another revolution should restore their territorial rights. The Icarzas, Ramon and his father, a bewhiskered hacendado, attended, with Isabel, the dusky beauty of the house. The Lovells, a small American rancher and his two pretty daughters, represented the hundreds ofgringos, miners, ranchers, engineers, smelter men, who would have come in normal times. So these, with Lee, Carleton’s peones, and the Three, had followed the rude ox-cart that bore him to the graveyard of a little adobe church in the hills. Their duty in the premises being thus consummated, the Three had resolved themselves into a committee on ways and means.
