Over the Border Part 34

It was Lee that answered. She was wearing her man's riding-clothes, and the man's surprise when she spoke told that he had taken her for a boy.

Now, with exaggerated courtesy that was far more offensive than his first hardy insolence, he sprang up and offered her his chair.

"I did not know"-his bold glance wandered over her costume-"you will pardon me, senorita?"

Though she flushed, Lee returned the stare. It was not the first time that revolutionists had come with "requisitions" to Los Arboles. She answered from experience.

"You have a commission from General Valles?"

He had. It ran in the usual form, setting forth in grandiose language that the necessities of the revolution demanded all good citizens to contribute their uttermost to the cause, authorizing the bearer, _el capitan_ Santos, to seize and expropriate such goods, cattle, horses, or other chattels according to his judgment, and to settle therefor with his note of hand, payable after the revolution; signed in Valles's own illiterate, crabbed hand and attested with a prodigious seal.

Lee handed it back. "This seems to be in legal form. That being the case"-she returned to the attack with a directness that drew from Jake an appreciative nod "perhaps you will now answer why you attacked my people!"

"I know of no attack except"-the straight brows knit over a black flash at Gordon-"when this man killed one of my men."

Already Lee had gained the details from the women. She replied at once: "He shot in self-defense-to save one of my girls."

"Santa Maria!" His mustache drew up in a cynical grin. "What foolishness! As though a good soldier should be shot because he ruffled a dove. You Americanos take these _peonas_ too seriously, fill them with ideas above their station. On our haciendas they are proud to gain a soldado for a sweetheart."

Could the thoughts of, say, Gordon, Jake, and Sliver have been examined just then they would have shown, respectively, an intense desire on Gordon's part to break the officer in two across his knee; a cool calculation by Jake as to the possibility of "getting away with it"

should they find it necessary to kill the entire command. Sliver, still holding a bead on the file of men, from his gaze, was ardently wondering if he could send one bullet through all four heads.

If the thoughts of the _peonas_-now gathered in a murmuring, gesticulating mob that showed princ.i.p.ally as glistening eyeb.a.l.l.s rolling like foam in a sea of brown faces along the wall-a composite of their thought would have shown a mad pa.s.sion to rend and maim, mutilate and torture, bred of their natural savagery aggravated by centuries of mistreatment under Spanish-Mexican rule. Out of which chaos of thought and pa.s.sion, vibrant and sweet with the strength and truth of a fine nature aroused by base wrong, came Lee's voice:

"_You_ say that? _You_, a follower of a man who was once himself a _peon_, who boasts that his is the _peones'_ cause? _You_, his representative, sneer because we treat like human beings these poor creatures? If you _do_ represent him, then G.o.d help us, for we have little but violence to expect from your cause."

It was a fine chord, strongly struck, should have set in vibration the strings of sympathy in any normal human being. Though he caught but little of the Spanish, Gordon felt and glowed responsively. It aroused even Jake, the cold and crafty, born hater of the _peon_ in all his ways, to mutter: "You bet! they hain't got nothing coming from him!" But in the nature of the Mexican, warped and blackened forever both by training and by the vicissitudes of bandit war, it aroused only surprise. Though his eye lit up, it was only in secret appreciation of her beauty. It was to ingratiate himself, personally, in her favor that, with a sudden reversal, he ran off with despicable glibness the shibboleths of his "Cause." Surely they were fighting for the _peon_; to obtain his rights and restore the public lands alienated by the _hacendados_.

"If my hombre did as you say," he concluded, "he earned his death. My general would be the first to applaud it." With a gesture that dismissed the killing lightly, as if it were that of a fly, he added: "So let us say no more of that. My wish is to serve _you_!"

Though again he did not understand the words, the grin that accompanied them in its offensive mixture of conceit and admiration sent the angry blood flooding Gordon's face. He was standing behind Lee, and, hearing his quick breath, she put back her hand in a restraining gesture.

"Leave him to me," she whispered. Then, looking the other straight in the eye, she gave him his answer. "You wish to serve me? Very well, senor, you may do so very easily-by removing yourself and your men off my place."

For a moment he looked at her, the offensive grin wiped out by surprise.

In turn, surprise gave way to sudden viciousness. "Si, senorita-after you have produced two hundred horses, which is your share of the new levy for equipment and supplies. Also"-another black flash went to Gordon-"it will be my duty to take this man to my general."

"Perhaps I had better go," Gordon whispered. "It may save you-"

Lee cut him off without looking around. "And shoot him the moment you get him outside the gates?" She quoted the Mexican law of "The escape."

"No, senor, I will be responsible for his safe-keeping and deliver him with my own hands at your general's call." She added, after a significant pause, "Along with the evidence of your own neglect in permitting your men to attack my people."

For a moment he looked nonplussed. Now and then, for the sake of effect-especially upon meddlesome consuls-it was the fashion in the revolutionary armies to shoot a few men for just such offenses; and one could never be certain where the next lightning might strike. He blinked, tried to pa.s.s it with a shrug; but suppressed fury showed through his vicious look.

"Very well, senorita, the matter shall be left to my general. But the horses. These I must have at once."

"Well, think you've got 'em, an' let it go at that!"

While Jake muttered behind her, Lee stood thinking. Then out of her meditation flashed a sharp question: "Were you at the hacienda of the senor Benson last week?"

The man's dark brows rose. "No, senorita. If there was a requisition served there it must have been by el coronel Lopez."

"When did you leave the cuartel general?"

"Ten days ago. We have been working among the haciendas on the other side of the railroad. But what difference does it make-"

"A great deal." She gave a little nod. "Since you left headquarters the senor Benson, with my manager, the senor Perrin, has gone with an offer of all our horses on favorable terms to General Valles. So that matter may also be left with him."

"Which lets you out!" Jake, who had been fuming all this time in the background, now burst out. "Now git! That's what I said-an' take your dead hombre along."

From his cold, bleak face, so dangerous in its vitriolic quiet, the man's glance pa.s.sed to Gordon, whose hand was on his gun, then to the peonas who were now crowding the _patio_ gates. Everywhere his glance fell amid a small sea of hot, brown faces flecked with a sc.u.m of glittering, dangerous eyes. Accustomed to be met always with fawning fear, defiance was a new experience, not easily a.s.similated. As his glance returned to Jake and he felt the danger that loomed imminent behind his cold truculence, the instinct of defiance wilted. With a shrug he pa.s.sed out into the compound through the lane the _peonas_ opened.

While he was a.s.sembling his command Jake leaned casually across the _patio_ wall, his rifle in the hollow of his arm, beside him Lee and Gordon, the latter now with a rifle. At the back gate Sliver and his _ancianos_ still stood, wary and watchful. Wherefore, in spite of secret mutterings, the intruders made quick business of it.

As, with the dead man tied in his saddle and leading the horse, they pa.s.sed out under the _patio_ arch, the leader paused, bowed ironically, then followed his men.

"Saddle a fresh horse an' go after them," Jake ordered, when Sliver came up. "Don't let 'em see you, but keep them in sight. After this we'll have to keep one man circling the hills while the _ancianos_ keep watch an' watch at the gates."

With Lee, Gordon had moved out to the stage and stood watching the men ride away. "I am sorry to have brought this on you," he said, in low tones. In his ignorance of Mexican habits and treachery, he added, "Perhaps it would have been better if I had gone with him."

A hasty glance through the arch showed Sliver on his way to the stables.

Jake was shooing the _peonas_ back to their quarters with much language and little ceremony. There was no one to see when, with a quick movement, she threw one arm around his neck, pulled down his head, and planted a swift kiss on his cheek.

"I don't want to be widowed-before I'm married."

At midnight Sliver brought in his report. "They've gone on to El Sol.

After dark I drew up so close that I almost ran into 'em when they stopped suddenly at the other side of a ridge. Luckily my horse stood quiet an' the air was so still I heard every word of their wrangling.

The captain he was fer coming back, but the others wouldn't hear of it.

"'The d.a.m.ned gringos shoot straight,' I heard one of 'em say. 'Already have they killed one of us, an' now they be ready. Also the horses are tired an' we hungry. Let us go forward to Hacienda El Sol.' Then, after some jawing, they moved on."

"An' they won't come back," Jake commented on the report. "Not so long as they kin find something that looks easier."

Which was only half of the truth!

XXIX: TEMPTATION

Bull's eyes opened at dawn on a cloudless sky that lay like an inverted pink bowl over desert so level and vast that the customary bordering mountains showed only blue tips up above the horizon. He had been half conscious of the cessation of movement during the night. Now silence, the cool quiet of dawn, lay over the hot and drowsy earth.

Sitting up, he saw on each side the brown adobe skirts of a desert town enwrapping in their squalid embrace miles of troop-trains which stood in the yards twelve deep and blocked the main line. Twenty thousand _revueltosos_, at least, heaped the roofs. As yet the men lay huddled in their bright serapes. But already the women were astir, lighting the scene with a flash of brilliant skirts. From rude hearths built of earth within a circle of stones a myriad thin, violet columns uprose and hung straight as strings in the crystal air.

"'Morning, Diogenes!" The correspondent's cheerful face poked up from under the edge of the car. "Some picturesque, heigh? Who'd think, to look at them sleeping so peacefully, that they were bent on the destruction of another outfit like this less than ten miles away? But that's your Mexican. With us war is a stern necessity to be shoved to a quick conclusion. With him it is a pleasure. Day is to fight in, night for sleep, noon for siesta, and he arranges his warfare accordingly. A night attack would be considered discourteous; not at all according to the Mexican Hoyle. At noon they quit, on the advanced posts, even visit each other and exchange gossip and cigarettes. Whereafter, with a cheerful, 'Adios, senor, it is time to begin fighting!' they return to their respective lines and go to it again. A cheerful people in the midst of their dirt and disorder." He added, thoughtfully, "I never see them like this without thinking of them as a band of careless children shrieking with laughter over the destruction they are wreaking with the powerful weapons we placed in their hands."

"Picturesque? Yes," he went on, from a pause. "But it's mighty hard on the common people. Look at that!"