Over the Border Part 39

"I did my best to prevent Mr. Benson from going back, and thought I'd succeeded. If it hadn't been that he was seen going in, he would simply have disappeared. As it is, the cuartel general has given out several stories. First, that he tried to shoot Valles; which is absurd, for he carried no gun. Then that he was shot while trying to escape after being placed under arrest. Lastly-to satisfy me and give his murder the semblance of a military execution-that he was tried by drumhead court-martial and fusiladoed for his attempt on the life of the general.

But of one thing I can a.s.sure you, Mr. Perrin"-he went on from a heavy pause-"this does not end it. Already the particulars are entered upon my records, and the British government never forgets. It may be one year-it may be ten. But when peace is restored this business will come up again.

No matter how high the murderer may have risen, how low he may have fallen, the case will never be dropped till there appears opposite the name of William Benson in our archives, 'The murderer was brought to justice.'"

The quiet surety of his speech, based on a record of centuries among wild peoples, made it impressive. Outside, the correspondent commented thereon in his breezy fashion.

"That's Johnny Bull for you, dignified, slow in speech, but surer than h.e.l.l! One of his subjects is killed in a far corner of Afghanistan. Up goes a regiment and decimates the tribe-or a brigade, or an army, if necessary; in which case, to offset the expense, the country becomes a British province. Hombre! how long do you suppose it would take that fat old fellow to settle this Mexican affray? Humph! He'd make shorter work of these mushroom generals and sawdust presidents than he did of the Hindu rajahs."

In another way the scene at the American consulate was equally impressive. When they entered the single little stuffy room, twelve feet square and entered from an alley, that conserved the dignity of the United States the consul looked up, then handed the correspondent a letter.

"Hum! Last call for Americans to get out of Mexico!" He coughed ironically. "Know ye, all gringos, by these presents: Owing to the fact that four hundred of you have been murdered, ravished, or tortured, and in order to remove further temptation from the path of the gentle Mexican, you are hereby ordered, without regard to your financial ability, consideration for the lives you endanger in transit, or property left behind, to return to your own country and thereby save this department from further annoyance by your kicks and complaints!

Oyez! Oyez! Frankly," he turned to the consul, "what do you think of it?"

The consul shrugged his shoulders. "You wish to register?"

His pen scratched in the silence for a while, setting down the correspondent's name and commission. "Anybody else you wish to notify?"

The pen scratched on in silence the name of the San Francisco girl. Then he reached for the letter the correspondent handed.

"To be sent, in case of your death. Now, Mr. Perrin?"

The pen scratched Lee's name and address.

"Anything to send?"

"Nothing!"

"Very well, gentlemen!" His superficial cheerfulness was denied by his handshake-the sympathetic pressure of comrades under stress. "I shall observe your wishes-if possible. Well-" His shoulders rose again. "Hasta luego! Till we meet again."

"A brave man in a weak place!" The correspondent rightfully placed him, outside. "Now, Diogenes, for the front."

An hour later, after a heart-bursting run on foot for the last quarter-mile through small fountains of dust raised by shrapnel and rifle-bullets, the pair gained the uttermost outpost, a low wall of stones on the crest of a small hill that lay like a halved orange on the flat of the desert. A mile eastward, from the crest of the other half, a battery of French "threes" was spitting shrapnel with the feverish energy of an angry cat.

Between the hills ran a trench lined with thousands of revolutionists, whose incessant fire shrouded the front in bluish haze that was shot through and through with darting puffs. To the west and a quarter-mile in the rear, a second battery occupied a smaller elevation, protecting that flank.

Of the enemy, thirty thousand Carranzistas, out there on the plain were to be seen only lines of smoke that hung low over sand and chaparral in a great half-moon, the tips of which extended beyond the Vallista positions. But they could hear, too plainly, the twit! twit! of the ceaseless leaden rain pa.s.sing overhead. Now and then a bullet would strike the wall with the sharp ring of a hammer on stone. Slipping through an embrasure, one pierced the brain of a revolutionist.

Seizing the dead man's rifle, Bull stepped into his place.

It was not that he particularly desired to kill Carranzistas. He would have shot Vallistas with equal will. But besides wringing a moment's surcease from his black despair, the instant his eye fell to the sights and he felt the familiar pressure of the b.u.t.t, the old daredevil rustler spirit revived. As on the night he fought off Livingstone and his _vaqueros_ on the Little Stony, as on a hundred other occasions, every other feeling was drowned in a heady l.u.s.t for fight. Just as carefully as though his life depended on it, he drew his beads on the lighter puffs that peppered the distant smoke. Watching him load and fire, grimly earnest, the sweat trickling in pale runlets down through the dust on his face, the correspondent nodded his satisfaction.

"Poor old Diogenes! But if he keeps busy he'll soon get over it."

Drawing his own weapons, a pencil and pad, he sat down on a boulder and began to take notes. And surely there was no lack of material. The spitting guns, trenches crammed with brown, ant-like men, the crackling rifle-fire, the desert shining like bra.s.s under the intolerable glare of the sun beyond the smoke haze, formed the background for a queer mixture of dirty comedy and squalid tragedy.

A few yards away, behind a second short wall, a brown girl sat on her heels patting out _tortillas_ while she gossiped with another girl, in complete indifference to the bullets flying overhead. At least she was indifferent until, glancing from the top stones, one upset her coffee-pot and quenched her little cooking-fire. Then, pretty face convulsed with rage, she shook her fist at the distant smoke-line while screaming frightful curses.

"d.a.m.ned dogs of Carranzistas!" she finished with her last, spent breath.

"Wait! Wait for the Valles riders! Then there will be a scampering with tails between the legs!"

Her mishap had drawn a roar of laughter from the revolutionists. The fellow that stood next to Bull now turned his grinning, sweaty face.

"Ole, Amalia! Bring me a drink and thou shalt have the knifing of my first prisoner."

Her coa.r.s.e answer drew a second roaring laugh. Nevertheless, while making it, she picked up her water-bottle. Less than a score of yards separated the two walls, yet it afforded stage room for the tragedy that burst in the middle of the comedy. For as she ran with a swift, shuffling step across it, the bullet of an invisible enemy found its mark; she collapsed in a heap.

Bull, also, had looked around. Now, heedless of the correspondent's yell: "Come back, you fool! She's dead! shot through the head!" he ran out, picked up the poor creature and brought her behind the wall.

As he laid her down the other girl came running across the bullet-swept s.p.a.ce and threw herself on the body with cries and lamentations. She was not dead! She could not be dead, Amalia! the friend of her soul! For a while she ran on in a pa.s.sion of grief. Then, springing up, eyes flashing white in her furious, distorted face, she flung her frantic curses at the distant line.

"Kill them, the d.a.m.ned Carranzistas! He who kills the most this day shall be my lover!"

"And here comes he that will do it!" The man on Bull's left touched his shoulder.

Up the hill behind them a battery was coming, stretched on a scrambling gallop. Alongside the guns, urging the drivers on, a man rode a great black stallion at the head of a cavalry detachment. Even at a distance the harsh, monotonous voice rose above the rattle of the limbers, rifle-fire, booming guns.

"It's Valles!"

As the correspondent pointed, looking back at Bull, the great black horse launched out and shot up the hill.

"Make way, hombres, for the guns!"

Amber eyes aflame, brute mouth working, face quivering like shaken vitriol, he was herding the men aside when his glance fell on the correspondent. Then, though his face drew into a grin, comprehension flashed in his hot eyes.

"Ole, companero!" His wave of the hand took in all. "Hot work! but nothing to that which is to come. Mira!"

Following his pointing finger, they saw to the westward a great cloud of dust, long, thick, and low, rolling in upon their right flank.

"Carranzista cavalry! But-look again!"

Looking always to their front, they had seen nothing of the cavalry, brigade after brigade, which was forming under cover of the hill to the west and behind them. Ten thousand wild hors.e.m.e.n were in the ma.s.s.

Thousands of others were streaming out of the town. Big hands clutching as though he had them already in his grasp, eyes again aflame, Valles shook his fist at the distant dust.

"Wait, my dear amigos los Carranzistas! Wait!"

The guns just then topped the hill, and, sitting the great black horse with reckless hardihood out in the open, indifferent to the whistling bullets, he directed their emplacement. "To the left, hombres! a little more! To the right! easy! not quite so much!" The last one set, he rasped out a last command: "Bueno! Now shoot into the dust!" Then followed by his staff he went galloping down the hill.

"He bears a charmed life!" The man next Bull spoke again. "Out of a hundred battles he has come with never a hurt." He added, with a wink, "An' it was not always from his front the bullets came."

Bull had looked on, brows bent in a heavy glower. Now the coal eyes lit with a sudden inspiration. The man had turned again to his shooting. The artillerymen were laying their guns. They fired just as Bull threw up his rifle and drew a bead on the black horse and rider. Sweeping back, the smoke blotted all out. As it cleared, and his eye dropped again to the sights, the correspondent struck up the muzzle.

"What are you trying to do?"

"Justice on that grinning devil."

"Good job no one saw you." A quick glance around showed the artillerymen and revolutionists absorbed in their own work "Do you know what they would have done to both of us-skinned us alive, boiled us in oil, or something equally nice. Have a heart! If you don't care yourself, just think what nice reading it would make for my San Francisco girl, 'Having toasted him on one side, they then proceeded to fry the other.'"

"I hadn't thought of that. But if I'd been alone-"

He sent a black flash after the receding figure, then turned again to his loophole.

On his part the correspondent watched till Valles disappeared in the ma.s.sed cavalry below. Shortly thereafter it began to move, a huge, brown blanket embroidered with the flashing gold and silver of guns and sabers, _machetes_, accoutrements. For a while it was in full view. Then the impalpable desert dust enveloped it in rolling clouds from which, like the roar of distant surf, issued the thunder of pounding hoofs.