Over the Border Part 41

"You saw!" she said, riding on. "You are armed, but they are four to one; may take you unawares. I ask only one thing. Keep my feet bound, take any other precaution you choose, but unfasten my hands and-lend me your knife."

"To use on _me_, if you get the chance?"

"Not on you nor them!" Her steady look carried her meaning.

His glance went forward to the revolutionists, who broke out, just then, in uproarious laughter.

"If I thought-" His hand went to his gun, then fell again. "No! they are rough and coa.r.s.e, but they know well that my father is Valles's friend; that if they lifted a hand against me he would flay them alive. Really, there is no danger, yet-if it will make you less fearful. But you promise-to return it, the knife, at San Carlos?"

"I promise."

"I never knew you to lie, and I-" His face lost a little of its hardness. "I would prefer to be gentle."

Leaning over, he unbound her arms, then gave her the case-knife that hung at his hip. "I suppose I'm a fool," he said as she slid it under her belt inside her shirt.

"Indeed you are not!" she began, in a flush of relief. Then, as a picture of Gordon lying bound on the trail rose to her mind, she turned her head in fear that he might read the sudden impulse to slash the lead rope and go galloping back.

The certain knowledge that she would be overtaken checked the impulse.

Also, with a woman's self-abnegation, she comforted herself with the thought that every mile she traveled lessened his hazard. She rode on till certain whisperings between the revolutionists ahead brought her again under fear that grew and reached its climax when, later in the afternoon, they swung at right angles on to the San Carlos trail and rode, now along the flank of a mountain, again through a wooded valley, thence up and over a great hill, while the sun slid down behind them.

While they traveled dusk quenched the flaming peaks. The long shadows drew together, enwrapping hill and valley in a thick veil through which men and horses loomed as dark, sinister shapes. When they stopped, suddenly, where a stream emerged from a wood, she shook with apprehension.

"The beasts are tired, senor, and this is a good place to camp," a voice came back.

"Oh, don't! Let us keep on!" she pleaded.

"The animals are tired and must be fed," Ramon answered. "After they are rested we will go on."

As, dismounting, he began to untie her feet, she was seized again with a wild impulse to turn and dash away in the dark. But even had it been possible, just then a heap of dried gra.s.s and leaves flared up from a match illuminating the woods and stream. Reaching up, Ramon lifted her down and seated her close to the fire.

Sitting there, she watched him unsaddle and hobble their beasts. Her swift, uneasy glances showed the revolutionists doing the same. Yet-all the fears of that long afternoon now concentrated in a cold horror.

Intuitively, she knew. When, his hands full of food he had unpacked from his saddle-bags, Ramon came walking past the revolutionists toward her, she broke out with a sudden scream:

"Take care!"

Too late! A pair of sinewy arms locked like brown snakes around him, pinioning his arms to his body. As he went down, fighting madly, Lee leaped up and ran. But already Ilarian and another man had started toward her. Running her swiftest, straining madly with the beat of his pursuing feet, like a drum in her ears, she had gained the edge of the wood, was almost within its safe blackness, when she was seized and pulled back with a wrench that tore the shirt away from one white shoulder and threw her to the ground.

She rose instantly on one knee, then paused at the sight of the brutish face above. One hand clutching the torn shirt at her neck, eyes dark lamps in a face of white horror, she crouched like an animal at bay till, with a sudden s.n.a.t.c.h, he stooped and lifted her bodily.

"No, no!" The s.n.a.t.c.h of the second man loosened the other's grip so that she fell between them to the ground. "No, hombre, fair play between companeros. We shall gamble for her. The winner, if he choose, can then sell his chance."

The fighting, writhing ma.s.s at the other side of the fire now straightened out, and as they rose, leaving Ramon securely bound on the ground, the other two added their protests. "Si, hombre, we will not stand for that. She goes first to the winner, according to our custom.

Bring her back to the fire."

To avoid their handling, she rose and walked herself. As she came where the light fell on Ramon she saw that he had managed to struggle up on his knees. Now he began to speak, pleading, arguing, threatening his captors with the displeasure of their general.

But he drew only jokes and laughter. "Valles?" Ilarian answered him. "He was defeated by the Carranzistas, and has trouble enough to care for himself. The requisition el capitan showed was made out months before the battle. Had the senor, your father, been fool enough to fill it, we should have taken the horses for ourselves." With a shove that sent Ramon flat on his back, he added: "Lie down, hombre! For these many years thou and thy fathers laid the whip on our backs. While we starved they fed fat and made free with our women. Now it is for thee to watch us at the eating and loving."

Laughing, he caught Lee again with a sudden s.n.a.t.c.h, was forcing her head back, when Rafael again interfered. "Hands off, hombre, till the cards say she is thine!"

"Si, muddle not the waters for our drinking," the others added. "Let us eat, then get to the cards."

"The bride? She must not go hungry at the wedding feast." The fourth man offered her food. "Here, little one."

Weak and faint, she was backing away, but stopped with a sudden inspiration. "If I may share it with him?"

"Seguro." Rising, the man dragged Ramon a few feet away and set him up, back propped against a tree. "Only take care he bite not thy pretty fingers."

Laughing, he went back to the fire, leaving her to sit and watch their feeding of meat and _tortillas_, with gulps of liquor from clay bottles.

Between her and them yawned a gap in time wider than the centuries that intervened between herself and her wode-stained ancestors running wild in the woods of Britain. Their low, sloping foreheads, unbalanced heads with all the weight below; their loose mouths, brute jaws, dark skin, nature's infallible stigma of inferiority, p.r.o.nounced them half a million years behind her, the last-bloom of a higher race.

In her a solitary youth had intensified the delicate fancies, sensitiveness, timorous imaginings, shrinkings, and retreats that mark a young girl's first reachings toward love. And now-her idealizations were suddenly confronted with the caveman's brutal practice. Sitting there, she endured a thousand tortures. Worse than their coa.r.s.e jests were their glances. She shrank under them in hot shame; to escape them took the food they offered, moved over and knelt beside Ramon.

He was sitting, head hanging, but as, now, he looked up the firelight showed the sweat in beads on his brow. "_You_ bring _me_ food?" His accent carried more than a thousand self-reproaches.

She did not attempt consolation she did not feel. "Pretend to eat." She spoke in English. "They are watching, now. But soon they will gamble"-she shuddered, thinking of the stake-"will see only the cards. I still have your knife. When the time serves I will cut you loose. Their rifles are piled behind us with the saddles. They may shoot you down from the fire. But to reach them is our only chance."

He lowered his head to hide a sudden flash of hope. "I will do anything, take any chance. Greater punishment no man could suffer than I am enduring. But it has made me think-realize my blind selfishness. I can only ask your forgiveness."

"Now, companeros, the cards! Cut and shuffle for love!" A hoa.r.s.e voice came from the fire.

While the first hand of a game she did not understand was being dealt she watched the flying cards with dread interest; was still watching when Ramon whispered:

"I know that game. Five minutes will see it finished. By leaning a little to one side, your body will cover my elbows. One cut will set them free. I will still sit as I am, and when I whisper slash the riata at my feet, then run! run into the depths of the woods. From here to San Carlos is but a couple of leagues. Once there-with the jefe, you will be safe."

Ilarian's bellowing laugh rang out, just then, marking the close of the first hand. "One to me, little one! Be not impatient. The luck is with us. Soon we shall take a little pasear together."

"If he wins again it will be over in a minute," Ramon whispered, while the cards were fluttering around again. As the men bent over them, thumbing their hands, he gave the word, "Now!"

With two slashes she did it, one at his arms, the other at his feet. But swift as was the movement, Rafael caught it in the tail of his eye. When he turned she had dropped the knife in the gra.s.s and, though her heart stood still, she resumed her pretense of feeding Ramon. As he watched her the suspicion died out of the man's stare. He was just about to turn again to the game when, as Ramon leaned forward to take the bite she was offering, the severed _riata_ fell from his elbows.

Given two men in a sudden juncture, the one with a definite plan wins the lead. As the man jumped up, pointing, Ramon sprang, reached the rifles, aimed and shot him down. The others looked up, startled, and as he aimed again they pulled and fired.

"Run, querida, run!" Ramon had called it, leaping up. As he collapsed on the heap of saddles it issued again on his last dry whisper, "Run!"

It had all happened while she was scrambling up. Naturally she turned when Ramon fell and paused, horror-stricken. Not till the others were almost upon her did she turn and run-too late.

As, heart fluttering like that of a frightened quail, she ran for the wood Ilarian seized her. Wildly beating the brutal, pock-marked face, she writhed helplessly in his arms.

x.x.xIII: THE DEATH IN THE NIGHT

During the rest of the day, while the train rolled and rattled and jolted its slow way over the heated face of the desert, the correspondents stewed with Bull in their own juices in semi-darkness. At intervals there would come a stop. With the mad, blind selfishness of panic the _brigada_ Gonzales had burned the watering-tanks as they pa.s.sed. So those that followed had to draw for the engine with buckets from wells. Also there were occasional rails to be replaced which, with equal selfishness, they tore up again the moment the train pa.s.sed over.

When the sun finally set in a fiery conflagration and dusk brought some cess of the heat the conductor came in with tales of wholesale desertions from the _brigada_ Gonzales, and shortly thereafter began the dispersion of their own men. As they approached familiar country, or tempted by tales of rich loot to be taken from near-by _haciendas_, they began to drop off in fives, fifties, tens. Of those that had kept the corrugated-iron roof beating like a drum with their stampings and shufflings throughout the afternoon, there remained only a single solitary figure when, after dark, Bull climbed up on top to air his choked lungs.