Over the Border Part 35

He was pointing at a shriveled old woman who, with bony fingers, was clawing the horse manure that had been pitched out of a car.

"She's picking out the undigested corn to grind for her tortillas. Man!"

Eyes flashing to the inspiration, he ran on in a flush: "If our wise men in Washington could only see that! Do you know what these armies are doing? Riding the brood mares, eating the seed corn! _The seed corn and the brood mares!_ You know what that means-famine! If I were a poet I'd take her, that old hag scratching her living from the offal of Valles's war horses-I'd take her for the symbol of Mexico-Mexico bleeding and bludgeoned, ravished, outraged, oppressed.

"It was hard to swallow, what your friend said last night, but it's true. While the Washingtonians prate of principles, this country is fast returning to its original condition of nomadic tribes warring perpetually upon one another. Already-oh!" He descended to a homely but vital conclusion. "They make me sick. G.o.d send us a _man_! A man with sympathy and insight; understanding of this people's failings and necessities. G.o.d send us another Lincoln!"

"You bet it's h.e.l.l!" In spite of the profanity Bull's laconic comment was reverent in its essence as the most profound "Amen!"

With a shrug Naylor threw off his earnestness; became again his cheerful self. "I hear the Chinaman stirring. Come on down to breakfast."

Stepping from the ladder, Bull's glance went, in spite of himself, to the table. It was still there, just as he had pictured it, a squat stone jug with gla.s.ses; and though, seating himself on a locker, he turned his back, he was still acutely conscious of its presence. He did not look when the Chinaman carried it back into the kitchen. But he knew, and his sigh expressed more than relief. Moreover, both while he was eating and when, later, he walked with Benson and the correspondents into the town, it went with him, occupied always a corner of his mind.

From the adobe outskirts the soldiers and their women were moving in dirty streams of khaki and _peon mantas_ splashed with the flash of bra.s.s, vivid reds, violets, and blues of soiled calico skirts, the loot of a hundred towns. From a hundred painted streets the streams poured into the plaza, the heart of the town, there to move and ma.s.s and melt and ma.s.s again, a sweating, sweltering jam of brown humanity topped with a sc.u.m of evil eyes, dark, unhealthy faces. In dribbles and trickles its evil tide had flowed in from all over the land, and Benson's remark as they came from a side street into the plaza was fully justified:

"If you could just sink it for half a day a mile under the sea, this would be a safer, cleaner land."

Overpowering the stenches natural to a desert town, the sickening sweet odor of carrion hung thick in the air.

"More Mexican efficiency," the dean shrugged. "After the last sc.r.a.p out here in the hills they made a stab at burning the bodies. They'd pile twenty or thirty in a heap, pour a bottle of kerosene over it, light the soaked clothing, then walk off swelling with the consciousness of hygienic duty well performed. Now when the wind blows this way-it's hard on a white man, though the Mexicans don't seem to mind. Appeals to the natural vulture in them, I suppose."

While they stood watching before crossing to the shaded promenade, the crowd opened behind them to permit the pa.s.sage of a dozen men under guard. All Spaniards, they ranged in age from the threescore and ten years of a hawk-nosed old man to the twelve of his grandson. But one thing they had in common, the dull, blue hue of mortal fear. In the extremity of his terror the boy repeatedly stumbled and fell-to be picked up and prodded on by a rifle-barrel. Heads hanging, fearful, and hopeless, they shuffled through the crowd.

"Ole, Enrico!" As they came opposite, Bull's friend hailed the officer in command.

After walking a few feet with him, he came back. "They're Spanish storekeepers on the way to 'the place designated,' which is a revolutionary euphemism for being shot. 'The place' is the cemetery where they will be stood up against the wall. A nice little Mexican refinement, eh, making a man's legs carry him to his own funeral? Their crime? Respectability, most likely. They have either dallied in contributing to the 'Cause,' been caught hiding their goods, or perhaps have unreasonably refused some officer access to their daughters' beds.

Even in this country"-he spoke with bitter irony-"there are still men to be found who draw the line at that. Or it may be simply that they are Spanish. G.o.d knows, it's enough. Valles never forgets that he is a _peon_. After the lapse of centuries he is visiting on their children's children the violences offered by the Spanish conquerors to his Aztec forebears. It may be poetic justice. A philosopher might find some justification for it-if it were only a cause and effect. But"-his pitying glance followed the stumbling boy-"it is rotten hard to watch."

It was only the beginning of a series of sights and events that, while running the gamut from acute tragedy to grim humor, revealed in flashing glimpses the bandit tyrannies that were masquerading as government. As the Spaniards disappeared, there came marching in their wake a group of Carranzista prisoners, mostly women, captured and brought in from an interior town. As they filed through the jeering crowd, a _revueltoso_ would reach and s.n.a.t.c.h away a woman that pleased him without a protest from the guards. Always she raised an outcry. But always she ceased at the flash of a knife or as a heavy fist closed her mouth. Whereafter, quietly sobbing, she would be dragged away by the hair or hand.

"That isn't quite so bad." The correspondent nodded at one struggling desperately with her captor. "She'll soon give in and dry her tears. In one battle we took over five hundred women prisoners, and within twenty-four hours they had all settled down to housekeeping with Valles's soldiers. Four years of war whose fluctuations are recorded by a change of husbands is bound to breed philosophy. For their kind it doesn't matter so much. They have ceased to care. But the others-daughters of the upper cla.s.ses, reared in luxury, refined, many of them educated in Europe-well, during the sack of Durango forty girls of the upper cla.s.ses committed suicide."

After crossing the plaza, Benson and Bull left the correspondents and turned down a side street where stood the British consulate. An old Spanish mansion, with a great _patio_ and interior garden, its high walls shut out even the murmur of the swarming humanity without. The gla.s.s doors of the office opened upon a wide, tiled veranda beyond which flowery paths ran under great trees that let down the brilliant sun blaze in a greenish rain of light. Its peace and beauty accentuated by contrast the drama of human misery that was in course in its quiet demesne.

As they sat waiting for the consul, they saw in the garden two nuns in earnest conversation with an old, black-robed priest.

"More victims of the 'Cause.'" After he had greeted them, the consul, a bluff Englishman, nodded toward the group. "Valles has robbed churches, seized their lands, shot the priests. He crowns it with-this. Last spring he quartered one of his regiments in the nunnery of the order to which these poor women belong. Now they are about to become mothers, and came here to-day to ask the priest-who is himself a refugee whom I saved from a mob that was stoning him to death outside-to ask permission for themselves and others to end their desecration by suicide. One would think that such experiences would kill in any human being the belief in a righteous G.o.d. But the old fellow is made of good stuff. Sticks right to his guns."

Through the open doorway, in confirmation, the voice of the priest came just then out of the quiet garden. Old and quavery it was with the burden of his sorrow and years, yet firm in the faith: "The life He gave none but He may take away. Why this terrible thing has befallen it is not for us to say. His purposes are closed in mystery, beyond our sight.

It may be that we had grown proud; were swollen with self-righteousness; puffed up with the vanity of good works. Or it may be your sacrifice was necessary to scandalize the world of good people and bring these wicked ones to their proper end? It may be"-he paused, shaking his old head, tears coursing down his furrowed cheeks-"but it is not for us to attempt answer when He chooses to put our faith to the test. I have wished that He had seen fit to take me as I lay there under the stones of the mob.

But that was impious, a wicked thought. We can only wait till His brightness pierces the veil of our mortal vision."

Poor brides of Christ! condemned to bear into that wicked world the children of furious l.u.s.t! Yet, under their bitter sorrow, the leaven of mother love had been at work. The younger, a sweet-faced girl of twenty four or five, raised her pale, olive face. "And may we love them, our babes, when they come?"

The humanity set its reflection in the smile that overflowed the wrinkled face with sympathy and understanding. "G.o.d is love, Sisters. He would not wish otherwise."

In their hope and consolation their quick looks at one another were wonderfully revealing. Bending, they took his blessing, and walked slowly away down the garden while he went back in the house.

Bull had looked and listened with sympathy so acute as to be almost pain. And yet-even while his gaze followed the nuns slowly down the garden, he was conscious of a tray of liquors and gla.s.ses that stood on a small side-table. On their way they had pa.s.sed _cantina_ after cantina, all thronged with half-drunken _revueltosos_, all exhaling a thick reek of spirits that filled his thirsty nostrils, inflamed the drink desire. Now, after refusing the consul's invitation, he walked out on the veranda, and not till the bottles were recorked did he return in time to hear the consul's conclusion on Benson's business.

"As you say, he needs the horses, never more badly, but, again, he was never in worse humor than he has been since his defeat. It wouldn't help any for me to go with you, for I've been fighting him on other accounts all this week. You know him, and I will provide you with a letter that will secure your admittance."

On the way back Bull ran again the gantlet of the _cantinas_. With invisible hands they reached out to throttle his resolution. So powerful was the temptation, he walked like a man in a dream, blind to externals; seeing, hearing nothing till they brought up on the edge of the crowd that blocked always the gates of Valles's headquarters-simple _peones_ who waited patiently through the long, hot hours on the chance of obtaining a glimpse of their hero, a _peon_ like themselves who had abased the great _hacendados_, their taskmasters, confiscated their lands, beaten their generals, trampled their pride in the dust. Though he shouldered a path through for himself and Benson, he scarcely saw them; had only a dim vision of a guard in the patio, of officers coming and going up a wide stone stairway. Not till they were met by a secretary, seated in an anteroom, and Benson spoke, did he awaken to what was going on.

"That's 'Matador' Fero, Valles's killer." Benson nudged him as a man looked in through the open double doors of the next room and gave them a suspicious stare. "He shot two hundred Federal prisoners, one afternoon, in files of five, one bullet to a file, trying out a new high-power rifle. Looks it, doesn't he?"

He did. The hulking figure, gross jaw and mouth, small eyes, black, piercing, cold as ice, all bespoke cruelty that was accentuated by his colorless olive skin. Strolling back to his post behind Valles, whom they could see sitting at a desk in the next room, he stood there closely watching, both the American correspondents who were ranged before the desk, and also the _revueltoso_ officers who lounged on the window balconies. Not a hand stirred, foot moved, without his notice.

Fierce beast that the "Matador" was, Bull's keen knowledge of men, developed by years of hazard to an instinct, still set him down as less dangerous than his master. In the latter a towering forehead, ma.s.sive upper head, indicated genius of the highest constructive order. But his thick lips, repulsive mouth, great amber eyes that were never at rest, sent always their sharp, suspicious glances darting hither and thither, told why it had been perverted to destructive ends; proclaimed the bandit _peon_, military dictator. He had stopped speaking when they entered. Now he began again, and as he talked the heel of his hand nervously tapped the table. Now and then, with a gush of savage feeling, it would rise and fall with a bang.

"You may tell your papers, senores, the reverse of the other day was sustained by one of my generals. But to-morrow-you have seen my reinforcements, twenty thousand brought down from Chihuahua?-to-morrow I shall command. We shall drive the Carranzistas like dust before a hot wind. And you can tell them"-he observed a sinister pause-"you may tell them that I am not pleased with the countenance your government is now giving the Carranzistas. So far I have been careful of American lives and property in the country I control, but if your government allies itself with my enemies-" His big fist struck the table with force that emphasized the threatening flash of the darting eyes.

Yet, pulsing with vindictive anger, the exhibition paled by contrast with his furious attack on one of his own officers who came in as the correspondents filed out. The fact that he had been wounded and had gone on, alone, when his command refused to face a galling fire, made no difference. Beast mouth stretched to a gorilla grin, every line of his face writhing in an awful smile, Valles scored him with coa.r.s.e insult and seething invective while his hand toyed thirstily with the hilt of his knife.

Flushing and paling, the man stood with hanging head till an order issued from the last furious burst. "Go, now, and shoot every tenth man in your command. I will teach them that I am more to be feared than the d.a.m.ned Carranzistas!"

In the midst of it Bull nudged Benson. "Don't you allow we better leave him cool for a while?"

But the Englishman's obstinate jaw set hard. "I'm not afraid of him.

Besides"-the secretary stood again in the doorway-"it is too late."

A curt nod marked Valles's recognition of Benson as they followed in.

Then, as his tigerish eyes took in Bull, they lit with quick appreciation of his bulk, then went off again on their suspicious questing. While Benson talked, he beat again a soft tattoo with the heel of his hand; then, rising, he walked off into another room.

The secretary followed, and through the closed door they caught the harsh, throaty monotone. When it ceased the secretary came out.

"My general says that all of your property is subject to requisition to be paid for in legal currency issued by him as the chief of the republican armies."

"And he thinks we'll stand for that?" His eyes flashing under bent brows, harsh face burning with anger, Benson stepped toward the door.

"I'll-"

But as he moved the "Matador" stepped in between. Half a dozen lounging officers, too, came hurrying from the balconies.

"It would do no good, senor." The secretary's shoulders rose in a shrug.

"Wait a more favorable time."

Benson stared down upon him, big fists clenched, face purple with furious pa.s.sion. Thinking he was about to strike, Bull put out his hand.

But, turning suddenly, Benson strode out of the room, throwing his defiance back over his shoulder.

"He can't bluff a British subject that way! He'll give me his answer _himself_-and he'll give it _to-day_."

As Bull followed out a hand touched his shoulder. Thinking it was the secretary, he turned-then stood staring at the sentry on guard at the door, who returned a sheepish grin. Though the face seemed familiar, he did not recognize the man for one of the raiders Lee had saved from hanging till he spoke.

"Ah, senor, 'tis fine to see an old face. The senorita, she that saved us from your just anger, she is well? Tell her that fine mercy was defeated by the _revueltosos_ who took us from her servants. Ask if she will in her great kindness have the general set us free that we may return to our wives and babes in Las Bocas."

In spite of his own stress, Bull could not but grin. "Was the jefe of Las Bocas a better master than Valles?"

"A master is always a master." The man shrugged. "But one's pais is one's pais and the ninas, the flesh of one's body, blood of his blood, cannot be forgotten. Thou wilt speak to her, senor?"

The tear that trickled down his villainous face earned him a civil answer. Though he knew the futility of it, Bull nodded. "Si, I will speak."