Over the Border Part 14

With the quick instinct of st.u.r.dy 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 gra.s.s, 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 gra.s.s, 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 _anciano_ for 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 canon 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 l.u.s.ty 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 cla.s.s 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 amus.e.m.e.nt; 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 h.e.l.l."

"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 amus.e.m.e.nt, 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' h.e.l.l 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 Canon 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 canon, 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.