Over the Border: A Novel

“All right, señor, he’s your meat.” Bull’s grin, provoked by a sudden memory of the thwack with which the hotel clerk had hit the lobby floor, was veiled by tobacco reek that reigned beyond the lamp’s golden glimmer. “Only, don’t chew him. Kain’t afford to have his scenery damaged.”

“Nary a chew,” Sliver agreed. “Twon’t be necessary. I’ll take him in two swallows.”

In this wise was Gordon apprenticed to Sliver for the period of one day, to learn, in course thereof, such lessons in cow and other kinds of punching as it might bring forth. When they two rode out, armed cap-a-pie as it were, with rifles, saddle machetes, and a brace of Colt automatics, in addition to the usual cowman’s fixings, it is doubtful whether North America held a happier young man than he. Out of the thousand and one lovers who had awakened to the knowledge that this was their wedding-day, some might have been equally happy. But none more so, for Gordon was also espoused – to Adventure, the sweetest bride of real men. It may be safely stated that no bride ever surveyed her trousseau with more satisfaction than Gordon displayed in his “chaps,” spurs, guns, and riata.

This enthusiasm, however, he cloaked with a becoming nonchalance. He wasn’t in any hurry to tell all he knew. His few questions were to the point, and between them he maintained a decent reserve. Also he adapted himself quickly to new requirements. Sliver observed with satisfaction that, after one telling, his pupil abandoned the Eastern, high-trotting, park fashion in riding and settled down to a cowman’s lope. In fact, so quiet and biddable was he, Sliver began to feel secret qualms at the course he had marked out for himself; had to steel his resolution with thoughts of Lee.

“’Twon’t do to have no pretty boys pussy-footing around her,” he told himself. “He’s gotter show me, an’ if he don’t – out he goes.”

Opportunity soon presented itself in the shape of a momentary relapse, on Gordon’s part, into the old habit of riding. Sliver seized it with brutal roughness.

“Hey! that milk-shake business may go with missies in pants that ride the parks back East, but if you-all expect to work this range you’ll have to try an’ look like a man.”

Gordon stared. It wasn’t so much the words as the accent that established the insult. Just as Bull had seen in El Paso, his hazel eyes were suddenly transmuted into hard blue steel flecked with hot brown specks. Sliver felt sure he was going to strike; experienced sudden disappointment when he rode on.

“Santa Maria Marrissima Me!” He swore to himself in sudden alarm. “Is he a-going to swallow it?” But the next moment brought relief. Gordon was rising in his stirrups with the regularity of a machine.

With the quick instinct of sturdy manhood, Sliver sensed the motive, the wise hesitancy of a new-comer in starting trouble. “Calculated it would get him in wrong with Lady-girl. He’s putting it up to me!”

Even more loath, now, to push than he had been to begin the quarrel, there was nothing left but to go on. So, riding alongside Gordon, he began to deliver himself of a forcible opinion concerning his mode of riding. “Why, you blankety, blank, blank of a blank – ”

The rest of it was cut off by a crack between the eyes that toppled him out of the saddle. He was up again, hard eyes flashing, as Gordon leaped down, and as he rushed, broad round body swaying above his short hairy chaps, Sliver looked for all the world like a charging bear.

A clever writer once described a terrific combat between two sailors in two words, “Poor McNab!” Sliver was almost as terse in describing his defeat to Bull and Jake that evening.

“Gentlemen, hush! He leaned over as I took my holt, grabbed me round the waist from behind, straightened, an’ away I flew over his shoulder an’ kem down spread-eagled all over the grass, plumb knocked out.”

Returning to the combat: When Sliver gathered his shocked wits together and sat up, Gordon stood looking down upon him, hands on his hips, quiet, determined, yet with an inquisitive twinkle in his eye.

Sliver answered the twinkle. “Say, that was sure a lallapaloo. I’ve wrestled with bears an’ once choked a cougar till he was gol-darned anxious to quit. But I draw the line at earthquakes. If you-all ’ll please to tell how you done it, I’ll shake han’s an’ call it squar’.”

“Done!” Gordon broke out in a merry laugh. “And I’ll promise, on my part, never to ride like that again.”

“For which I’ll be greatly obliged; that hippity-haw, side-racking gait does sure get on my nerves.”

Striking hands upon it, they mounted and rode on.

They were heading for a mountain valley, enormous green bowl hemmed in on all sides, that could only be reached by a single rough trail. Watered by a running stream and knee-deep in lush grass, the difficulty of approach and sequestration rendered it almost raider-proof. But as it afforded pasture for barely a third of Lee’s stock, it was their habit to send the animals out in relays to remain under charge of an ancianofor a week at a time.

As they rode along, Sliver’s secret satisfaction revealed itself in many a stealthy glance. At first they expressed that feeling alone, but presently there entered into them a leaven of doubt. Their way now led along the foot of the hog’s back from the crest of which Sliver had obtained his first view of the fonda on the other side, the discovery of which caused his first lapse from grace. The slight doubt was explained by the thought that accompanied his glance upward at the ridge.

“He’s a fine upstan’ing lad an’ kin take his own part. But that ain’t all. Supposing he drinks? We-all jest kedn’t stan’ for any young soak around Lady-girl.”

In view of his own shortcomings, his grave shake of the head was rather comical. Nevertheless, it was quite sincere; likewise his emendation: “’Course we wouldn’t have him no canting prig. He orter be able to take his two fingers like a gentleman, then leave it alone.”

Reining in suddenly, he asked, “D’you ever take a drink?”

Gordon looked surprised. “Why, yes, on occasion. But you don’t mean to say – ”

“Come on!” Sliver’s manner was quite that of the “mysterious stranger” of melodrama who demands absolute faith in those he is about to befriend. It is feared, however, that both it and his thought, “It’s a fine chance to try him out,” cloaked certain strong spirituous desires.

Quarter of an hour’s heavy scrambling up and down rutted cattle tracks brought them out in the fonda dooryard. From above Gordon had noted its golden walls nestling beside the stream in a bower of foliage. His eyes now went, first to the two ancianos, a wrinkled old man and woman, who dozed in the shade of the ramada; then to the girl who knelt by the stream pounding her soiled linen on its smooth boulders. Though he knew Spain only through pictures, the tinkling bells of a mule-train going up the cañon added the last touch, vividly raised in his mind the country inns of the Aragonian mountains. But for her darker colors the girl with her shapely poundage might easily have been one of their lusty daughters. She had risen at the sight of Sliver. With unerring instinct she now walked inside, let down the wooden bar window, and set out a bottle of tequila.

Through all, her big dusky eyes never left Gordon. With what would have been brazenness in a white girl she studied him. But her gaze was wide and curious as the stare of a deer, and caused him no offense. When their eyes met, she smiled, but, unskilled in the ways of her kind, he missed both its invitation and question till Sliver put it in words.

“She wants to know who you are an’ all about you,” he translated her rapid Spanish, in which her small hands, satin arms and shoulders played as large a part as her tongue. “She says her father an’ mother are about ready to cash in. If you’ll stay here an’ be her man, you’ll stan’ right in line for the fonda.”

It was sprung so suddenly, Gordon gasped. “Cash in? – the fonda? Say! You’re fooling?”

Sliver raised his right hand. “Take my oath!”

“Then she’s fooling.”

“Nary!” Sliver grinned. “She’s serious as a New England housewife in chase of a bedbug.”

Now Gordon’s merry laugh rang out. “Is this leap year, or does this sort of thing go all the time down here? Her proposal calls for a priest, I suppose, and a marriage license?”

“Nary.” Sliver grinned again. “Ladies of her class get along very nicely without them artificial aids to marriage. All she wants is for you to settle down here with her to housekeeping.”

“Why – but – ” He still half believed that Sliver was joking; but, looking at the girl, he saw for himself the smoldering flame in her dusky eyes. This time his laugh was a little confused. “Please tell her that I’m dreadfully sorry, that I appreciate the high compliment, and if it wasn’t for the fact that I don’t expect to stay long in this country I would give her nice offer my most distinguished consideration.”

Any further doubts that he might have entertained would have been effectually dispersed by her dark disappointment when Sliver translated. A touch of pity mingled with his amusement; moved him to add, “I hope that you put it nicely.”

“Sure,” Sliver breezily answered. “I told her that you said for her to go to hell.”

“Oh, well” – Gordon recovered his breath again – “at least that puts the whole business beyond further doubt.”

“Don’t you believe it.” Sliver gave a third and last grin. “She says that you-all kin always find her here if you happen to change your mind.”

“Now that’s very nice.” Really pleased under his amusement, Gordon brought the little comedy to a graceful end. Unsnapping the leather watch-fob that bore his initials worked in gold, he laid it in the girl’s hand. “A fellow doesn’t get a proposal of marriage every day. Tell her for a little remembrance.”

“And now for another drink.”

But as Sliver reached for the bottle Gordon seized his arm, and any doubts as to his sobriety were removed then and there from the cowman’s mind. “You’ve had two already, and I’m not going to stand by and see you burn your stomach out. Come on, gol darn you! or I’ll hand you one.”

His smiling good humor removed the offense. Nevertheless, the curious brown specks were floating again in the blue of his eye.

Sliver knew the threat was real. “Just this one?”

“Well, if you’ll down it quick and come on.”

With feelings that had hovered between gratification at Gordon’s sobriety and regret for his own, Sliver drank, bade the girl “Adios,” and mounted again. Standing in the doorway, her glance followed them, enwrapping Gordon’s upright figure with its dark caress. Just as they crossed the stream at the foot of the path, her face lit with sudden remembrance. Turning at her call they saw her coming at a breathless run.

“Kain’t bear the parting,” Sliver interpreted the action.

But his grin faded as he listened to her voluble talk. “She says that four strange Mexicans stayed here last night. They didn’t belong to this country, an’ they questioned her closely about the different haciendas. They were ’specially curious about our horses. Us being gringos an’ her Mex, they naturally concluded she’d be ag’in us, and they would have been right but for the fancy she’s taken to you. So they opened right up; asked all about the mountain pastures an’ whether we kep’ a close guard. She says they was heading for there. While I go after ’em, you ride like the mill tails o’ hell an’ bring out Bull an’ Jake.”

That crude but strong expression accurately described Gordon’s progress homeward. While his beast scrambled like a cat up one side of the ravine, slid like a four-footed avalanche down the other, and streaked like a shooting star up and down the long earth rolls, he learned more of horsemanship than during all his previous years. Lee, who saw him coming from the upper gallery above the patio, nodded her approval. Such haste, of course, had but one interpretation – raiders; and by the time Gordon dashed into the compound she was already mounted and a fresh beast waiting for him.

“They are up in the Cañon del Norte,” she answered his inquiry for Bull and Jake. “Come on!”

“You are surely not thinking of – ”

Before he could finish, however, she shot under the gate arch; was off at a speed that kept him galloping his hardest to keep her in sight. Not until she slowed down on the rough trail that led into the cañon, within sight of Bull and Jake, who had just roped a foal for branding, did he catch her. But it was just as well, for that which he would have said came with more authority from the lips of Bull.

“All right, Missy. There’s on’y four, so you don’t need to be skeered. You kin go right back home with Gordon an’ leave us to take keer of them.”

“Indeed I won’t!” she exclaimed, hotly. “I’m going, too! I am! I am!” She cut off his remonstrance. “I am! I am! I am!”

It was the first time their wills had clashed. Bull glanced at Jake, who shook his head – not that he required support or intended to waste time in fruitless argument. “You mean that?” His glance, grave with stern disapproval, came back to Lee.

It hurt her. But though her lips quivered, she answered, doggedly: “I do! I won’t go back.”

“Very well. We’ve no time to waste. Ride on while I cut this foal loose.” But as she obeyed, with one flick of the wrist he roped her above the elbows from behind. Then, in spite of angry protests that ended in tears, he cinched her little feet from stirrup to stirrup.

“Now take her home.” Handing the lead rope to Gordon, he leaped into the saddle and galloped after Jake.

Till they disappeared, Lee looked after, wavering between anger and tears. Tears won. Bowing her fair head, she wept unreservedly for fully a minute. Realizing then that she was gaining nothing but swollen eyes and a red nose, she stopped crying and turned to Gordon with a little laugh.

“Isn’t this ridiculous? Please untie me.”

But now she found herself gazing into the sullen face of a young man who, through her, had been cut out of a real fight. He shook his head.

“You won’t?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“You’d go after them.”

They looked at each other. Her eyes were now gleaming brightly above two red spots; but he met their gaze with stubborn obstinacy.

“You mean to say that you are going to take me home tied up like a veal calf?”

He nodded.

Biting her lips, she looked at him again. “Do you realize, sir, that you never set eyes on me till a week ago?”

“Sure!”

“Also that you are my hired man?”

He nodded again.

“Very well, you’re fired! Now untie this rope, then get off my land!”

But even this was turned against her. “I don’t have to. I’m no longer your servant. I’ll get off your land, yes – after I’ve delivered you at your home.”

If looks could kill, to use that hackneyed but still expressive term, he would have died there and then. But they don’t, and, masking his own disappointment with a hypocritically cheerful whistle, he turned his beast and rode down the cañon, towing her behind.

It was dreadfully humiliating, and, being a girl, she cried some more – this time for sheer anger. But soon her tears dried and she fell into deep musing. Soon a small smile restored its softness to her mouth. Her voice, seductively pleasant, mingled with the tramp of hoofs. “Won’t you please untie me? The rope is hurting my arms.”

He stopped, pulled her horse up alongside, and as he began to fumble with the ropes she turned her head so that he could not see her smile. It was transmuted into a flash of fury when, finding the rope a little loose, he drew it tighter.

“I thought you were a gentleman!” she shot it viciously at his back as he rode on. “Gentlemen don’t tie up ladies!”

“Ladies don’t fire men for obeying orders. You needn’t think I’m enjoying this. Just because you shoved in where you were not wanted, I have to go back.”

She did not like that, either. What girl would? Once more she bit her lip, yet, for all her anger, a touch of respect mingled with her resentment. Concerned principally with his own disappointment, he rode on without looking back and so missed the little persistent wriggles by which she gradually freed one hand. Soon she was able, by leaning forward, to reach and draw her saddle machete. Indeed, she worked with such caution that he got his first warning when, with one slash, she cut the rope between them. By the time he had swung his beast around she was going like the wind back up the cañon.

Her mocking laughter came floating back.

XIII: AMERICAN RUSTLERS VS. MEXICAN RAIDERS

Shoving rapidly into the mountains, Sliver ascended with the trail in a couple of hours through upland growth of piñon and juniper to the height of land, a pass riven by earthquake or subsidence between twin jagged peaks, from where he overlooked the valley pasture.

Like a great jade bowl, bisected by the silver line of a stream, its wide green circle, miles in diameter, lay within a broad ring of purple chaparral. Over its surface black dots were scurrying toward the corrals at the northern end, and under Sliver’s glass these resolved into horses that were being rounded up by four Mexicans; for he could see their peaked sombreros, tight charro suits, even at that distance. Turning the glass on the jacal, a rude hut of poles and grass thatch near the corrals, he looked for Pedro, the anciano.

“Poor old chap! they’ve sure got his goat.” While clucking his commiseration, however, he shifted the glass to a patch of white on a near-by tree, and it immediately resolved into the old fellow’s blouse and calzones. “No, they’ve just tied him up. Then these ain’t no Colorados. It’s Felicia’s gang, all right, all right.” He added, chuckling, “Four nice little raiders in a pretty trap, along comes Jake and Bull, then there was none.”

And trapped they were. Except where the stream slipped out over a precipice between two narrow walls, the mountains rose sheer around the Bowl, unscalable save where the trail rose by precarious zigzags to where Sliver held the pass a thousand feet above. At few places was it possible for two horsemen to ride abreast. At that point there was barely room for one; if necessary, he could have held it, alone, against a score. But it was not. Watching closely, he saw the raiders first drive the horses into the corrals, then settle down for a siesta in the shade of the jacal.

“Going to bring ’em up at sundown,” he muttered, “in time to make the first run by night.”

So certain he was of it that he did not scruple to take a sleep himself; cat-napped, with occasional squints down into the valley up to the moment that he was awakened by the hoof-beats of Jake and Bull’s beasts. The glass then showed the raiders working the horses out of the corrals. As the herd thinned out to single file at the trail, one man took the lead; a second and third fell in at even distances; the last brought up the rear.

“They know their business,” Bull commented on the manœuver. “It’s easier to keep ’em moving.” He grimly added: “And easier for us. The line will string out for a quarter-mile, so I’ll go down that distance an’ hide in the chaparral. Let the last man pass me before you hold up the first. Then, while one of you keeps him covered, t’other can take away his tools. I’ll keep ’em moving on up till you’ve got the other three.”

While Jake took away and tied their horses, Bull gained his position. By that time the leading raider had gained a like distance uphill and, peeping, Bull watched the thin file of animals wriggling like a slow black snake up the yellow trail. So clear was the air he could hear, above the thud and scrape of hoofs, the raiders calling to one another. Now they were directly beneath him; so close that he could plainly see the leader’s face, ugly, pock-marked. As he withdrew into the chaparral Bull carried with him an irritatingly haunting remembrance. Somewhere, though he could not place it, he had seen the man before! He was still puzzling over it when Jake’s command rang out in Spanish:

“Hands up!”

The leader looked and complied, persuaded by the black muzzles, wicked eyes, that looked down from the rock above. The second and third men did try to turn, but were blocked by the file of animals. An attempt to pass would have sent them down, bounding from level to level to the floor of the valley below. The fourth man swung his beast around only to find himself looking into Bull’s rifle. So while Jake covered the operation from above and Bull from below, Sliver disarmed and bound the raiders.

After the captives were arranged in line under a copal tree upon a little plateau, where the trail began to fall downhill on the other side, Bull stood frowning down from his height on the man whose face had aroused that haunting memory. “I’ve a hunch that I’ve seen this chap afore.”

He would have been more certain of it had he noticed the fellow’s look of recognition and fear only a moment before. But now his ugly countenance was veiled in that ox-like stolidity which a Mexican peoncan so easily assume. He shook his head in dull negation to all of Bull’s questions. He did not come from any of the neighboringhaciendas! They had never met before! His pais was far – it might have been anywhere in a thousand-mile circle implied by the wave of his hand.

“Yet I could swear to him.” Bull looked musingly at Sliver. “Pock-marked, too. Where have I seen him afore?”

Sliver shook his head. “Can’t prove it be me. All peones look like so many peas in a pod; some mebbe a bit uglier than others; an’ pock-marks ain’t no distinction with two-thirds of ’em pitted like a nutmeg-grater.”

“That ain’t the question before the house, neither,” Jake put in. “All I’m bothering about is whether to hang or shoot ’em. Hanging is what I was brought up to, but shooting’s more fashionable down here. I’d allow they’d likely prefer it.”

“Shooting’s too good for ’em.” In a spasm of virtuous indignation, Sliver shook his fist at the captives. “Hanging’s slower an’ hurts a heap, an’ if it gets about that the gent that meddles with our stock is in for a slow, choking they ain’t a-going to be near so careless.”

“There’s something in that,” Jake conceded. “An’ this copal’s got nice stout limbs. We kin use their own riatas, an’ that’ll be what the Tombstone editor used to call ‘poetic justice.’ Hanging goes.”

Bull was still staring at the raider, but, taking his consent for granted, they proceeded to fit the riatas around the prisoners’ necks. Jake had, indeed, thrown the slack of the last over a bough when there came a rattle of stones and scrape of hoofs on the trail below. Grabbing his rifle, he slid with Bull and Sliver, each behind a tree. One second thereafter their guns were trained on the spot where the trail debouched on the plateau.

Meanwhile, with Gordon in pursuit, Lee had led the race into the hills. Her blood mare was the fleetest animal she owned and, had she chosen, Gordon would have soon dropped out of sight. But she contented herself with just holding a lead.

Unaware of this, Gordon made repeated attempts to catch her with sudden bursts of speed. Perfectly aware of it, on her part, she would wait till his horse’s head almost touched her leg, then shoot ahead with a little laugh. Her face, looking back at him, was hard as her laugh – eyes bright and shining, nose contemptuously tilted, mouth one scarlet line.

To be defied, drawn on, mocked, and teased with low, derisive laughter is not a situation that any man loves. But if thoroughly angry, mad clear to the bone, Gordon’s face revealed only dogged hope. For Chance was riding with him. If Lee’s beast slipped or tired. If she were a second late with the spur. One of the three was fairly certain, and the belief set a gleam in his eyes that caused her a quiver of apprehension.

“Oh, he’s mad enough to beat me!” she told it to herself. “I wonder if he would.”

Nevertheless, every time she looked back at that dogged face she felt a sense of security. With raiders at large, it was just as well to have him around! The thought was in her mind when, with him only a few feet behind, she shot over the edge of the last steep out upon the plateau.