Over the Border Part 33

A little thoughtful gleam now explained itself. "That other girl? You never told me about her. Did you ever-kiss her?"

"Lots of times." Laughing, he held her as she tried to break away. "At parties, when I was a kid-and when we played 'post-office' and sich."

"Never since you grew up?"

"Never."

"Oh, well," she sighed, "I suppose I'll have to forgive you since you were so very small, and it's such a long time ago I'll really have to-make up."

Some of the arrears were paid right then. In fact, it was not until she had demurred at paying all that he tapped the letter. "And now-what about the date? Shall I tell that we will be married by the time they receive it?"

Her hair flew in a bright cloud under her vigorous shake. "Such impatience! Aren't you happy?"

"Happy?" His voice rang with sincerity. "Happier than I ever thought possible, but-"

"But-?"

"I want to be happier still."

He meant and thought it. But she with her woman's intuition knew this, their love time, for what it was-the flowerage of their lives. Later would come the ripe fruit-content mixed with the joys and sorrows that form the substance of life; but then this hour would have pa.s.sed forever. Like all women, with whom love is always the great end, she would have drained its last sweet essence. But like all women, she was not at all displeased by his impatience. Presently she yielded to it.

"After-after Bull comes home."

In the course of the argument she had coiled up on his knees, and the shy consent issued from the ambush of hair that hid her profile. Wrapped in his arms, soft and warm, she lay in blissful content for some time before he spoke.

"If Bull were here now, we could have gone up with Lovell and have made it a double marriage. Why, what's the matter?"

She had sat up with a little shiver. "Oh no! I could never be happy in one of those great hotels, huge human warrens!" Coiling up again, she allowed him a peep into her girlish dreamings. "I never saw him, he who was to be my all. His face was always dim, indefinite, as a bright moon behind a cloud, but he felt-like you. In my visions he always took me into the wilds-the hills, woods, canons, and it is there we must go.

"It would be lovely if we could have taken horses and a pack-mule and gone down the length of the Sierra Madres-at first alone, later traveling with the arrieros up the mule trails to the snow-line, then down on the other side through giant canons. We should have seen only the simple folk of the country. But the revolution has made that impossible. But this we can do-go to the priest and jefe of San Carlos, who are both old friends of my father's, to be married, then ride straight out to the mountain pasture and keep house there all by ourselves till-till we feel like coming home. I will cook while you look after the horses, and we can play that we are simple _peones_ and be-oh, _so_ happy!"

Nothing could have appealed to him more strongly. It was almost as good as a Java forest! He wondered at himself. "How perfectly lovely! Why didn't I think of that myself?"

"You would have, in time. Oh!" She sprang from his knee at a stir and tinkle of water. "Mr. Lovell is up. I must shoot up-stairs and dress."

"You'll go out with me to-day?" he called after her.

"No." She bent down over the rail to answer. "I promised Jake to go with him to Canon del Norte to look at the colts."

"Twice with him, twice with Sliver, and only once with me?" he protested. "'Tisn't fair."

But all that he gained was a little soft laugh that came floating out from behind the sheet.

From his third of the wide circle which he, Jake, and Sliver now described about the _hacienda_, Gordon came in at sundown to the rise from which he and the widow had looked down on Los Arboles. It had become his daily habit to pause there and look for Lee returning with Sliver or Jake-and to-night he saw all three, small dots on the crests of great earth waves-then to sit and muse while the declining sun washed the wide world with its resplendence.

As on that other evening, the hacienda lay with its walls, painted adobes, _patio_, and compound aglow and plumed with soft smoke. As then, the plains lay, an undulating carpet of crimson and violet away to the burning hills. But-in place of soft woman voices, laughter low and wild-there came floating up to him a frightened murmur broken by a cry.

"Beast! she is but a child!"

Startled, he looked more closely and now saw, first; half a dozen horses standing with trailing bridles in the center of the compound; then as a flash of bra.s.s caught the sunlight, their riders straggling among the adobes.

"Raiders!" he thought, then noting their khaki, he changed it to, "_Revueltosos!_"

A glance north and south would have shown him the others coming in at a fast lope. But at the cry, thrilling in its human anguish, wild in its panic, he was seized with excitement blind and savage as the blood fear which turns a band of peaceful cattle into a snorting, bellowing herd.

Digging in his spurs, he shot down the slope, in through the back compound gate just as a woman came staggering back through the doorway of the nearest adobe, felled by a blow on the mouth.

From within issued a wild, hysterical sobbing. At first Gordon's sight, blinded by the bright sun, showed him only a convulsive movement in the half-gloom, but as they swung back into the light of the doorway he saw a slim brown girl struggling in the arms of a _revueltoso_. The elder sister of his little playmate, she herself was but a child, but this helped her no more than her heartbroken sobbing.

"Senor! Senor! Pity of Mary!"

At sight of the girl a cold shiver went down Gordon's spine. Blind, breathless, choking, conscious only of a savage impulse to rend and tear, he rushed in, tore the girl out of the man's arms, and threw him violently against the wall.

So savage was the impulse he had never thought to use a weapon till the fellow reached for his long gun. Then, suddenly aware of death looming imminent there in the half-gloom, he grabbed his automatic and fired, aiming with the natural intuitive precision with which one points a finger. He felt the rush of a body past him through the smoke. Then, stepping to the door, he saw the man run a few steps, fall, and roll over.

Suddenly aware that he, Gordon Nevil, had killed a man, intensely surprised at his lack of emotion, commonplace acceptance of the fact, he stood with the smoking pistol in hand until, with a sudden rush, the mother pushed him back in, then slammed and barred the door behind them.

The next moment came a scurry of feet, and the door quivered under a heavy shove. But it was not the varnished leaf of civilization, designed to keep out conversation. Barred top and bottom and three inches thick, it withstood a violent hammering.

The instant she was released the girl had dived like a scared rabbit under the canvas cot in the far corner and lay there, still as a mouse.

But, picking up the knife which the dead man had wrenched from her hand, the dark mother ranged herself alongside Gordon. Though he understood very little of her whispered Spanish, the gleaming intelligence of the burning eyes, eloquent gestures, carried her meaning.

"They say to bring fire and burn down the door." Her quick motion simulated the lighting of a match, followed by the upleap of flame.

Whispering: "Tira! senor, tira! Shoot! Shoot!" she pointed at the window.

It was merely a square hole, flush with the thick wall on the outside, and barred with heavy oaken staves, and the _revueltosos_ were hugging the wall. Nevertheless, with a quick thrust of his weapon between the bars Gordon fired two shots along the wall. Though the bullets flew at random, there followed a quick scurry of feet.

Watching from one side of the window, Gordon now saw the men working, in swift rushes, around the corrals to the stables, from behind which they could command his window. Indeed, he had no more than moved back before-zip, plug! zip, plug! zip, plug! the bullets began to stream in through the window and plump in the back wall.

Presently, with a sharp, splitting ping! one pierced the door just above the woman's shoulder. Reaching hastily, Gordon pulled her close against him; then, standing against the thick wall between the door and window, they waited-in deadly silence, for the fire had suddenly stopped. So still it was, he could distinctly hear the woman's excited breathing and an occasional sob under the bed.

"Tempting me to look out," he read the silence.

But he was wrong. A minute thereafter came a soft patter of nude feet and the voice of Maria, the little _criada_, called through the bars:

"It ess good now, senor, for you to come. Don Jake say for you help with those evil ones."

The instant he stepped outside the situation explained itself. Warned, first by the firing, then by women who came running out to meet them, "Don" Jake and Sliver had quietly made their dispositions. At the back gate Sliver and two _ancianos_ now stood with leveled rifles. Two more poked deadly snouts over the low _patio_ wall, Lee and Jake behind them.

And now they had leadership the women were swarming like brown hornets out of the adobes, brandishing knives, cleavers, _machetes_, a hysterical, dangerous mob.

In accordance with their outlaw tactics, Jake and Sliver had both aimed at the leader, and, cut off from escape, with still another enemy behind him, he had taken the hint. Arms reversed, rifle muzzle resting on the ground, he stood with his four companions. To give them their due, they showed no fear. Half or whole bandit, ugly, black-browed, one of them villainously pock-marked, the others with unhealthy erupted skins, they rolled cigarettes while urging the excited women to greater frenzy with evil jokes.

"Drive back those women!" Jake called the moment Gordon appeared. "Then bring the captain, or colonel, or general, whichever is what, over here."

Nodding in reply to Gordon's gesture, the leader followed him across the compound. Of medium height, well formed, features aquiline and cleanly cut, he was a perfect specimen of that tailor-made, detestably handsome Mexican middle-cla.s.s type. Conceit, insufferable vanity, bristled at the ends of his curved mustache. How it could be a.s.sociated with such reckless hardihood as he now displayed must remain one of Nature's mysteries, for, entering the patio, he took a seat under the portales and addressed Jake with an authoritative air:

"Now, senor, will you please explain why you have attacked a command of General Valles?"

"Yes, if you will explain, on your part, why a command of General Valles attacked my people!"