Over the Border Part 43

Appalled, Bull stared at the distant mountains.

x.x.xIV: ---------------------?

Left alone on the trail, Gordon suffered his own agonies-the poignant anguishes of youth unmitigated by the fatalism or philosophy of experience. Time and again his spirit rose in furious rebellion against the frightful injustice of fate. Eyes starting with the strain, sweat pouring from his brow, he rolled in successive paroxysms, vainly striving to burst his bonds-only to subside each time into a coma of utter despair. Then, as the very violence of his exertions cleared the blood from his brain, he did that which an older head would have done at first-lay still and began to think.

How to get loose! There must be some way! He had once seen a prisoner in a "movie" burn off his bonds with a fire of hay started by the coals from his pipe. But if it were possible-outside of a "movie"-where were the hay and pipe? An attempt to cut the _riata_ by abrasion on a stone behind him produced only a sore on his wrists. Yet there must be some way! If he could only loosen them by flexing and reflexing his muscles!

He stopped thinking, at this point, and lay staring downhill.

His struggles had carried him to within a few feet of the dead revolutionist. Before leaving, his followers had looted the body of its guns, bandolier of cartridges, but had left the belt. Under the body Gordon now caught a glimpse of his knife.

To roll downhill was simple. With his b.u.t.ting shoulders, it was no trick to move the body till the knife came up into position where he could draw it with his teeth. But thereafter-a knife in the teeth could not be used to free hands bound behind one's back!

He looked about him. The problem was simple. If the knife could be held firmly so that he could turn and rub the wrist-cords against the edge.

Presently his eye lit on the stump of a _palo verde_ that had been bruised and split off by the slip of some pa.s.sing beast. Working his way over to it, he bent and carefully placed the horn handle in the split, edge up, point resting at an angle of forty-five on the ground. Then, shuffling around, he felt delicately till the razor edge came squarely between his wrists. Very lightly, in mortal dread of a miscarriage, he sawed, sawed, sawed until his hands suddenly split apart. One slash at his ankles and he was upon his feet.

His first thought was to run, wildly, madly, after Lee. Then his usual good judgment resumed command. The revolutionists were mounted and had an hour's start! He must have a horse! And with the thought there rose a mental picture of the _arriero_ they had seen at the _fonda_.

A general freighter, the fellow often brought cordwood and charcoal from the mountains into Los Arboles, and in seasons of sickness and want Lee had helped him and his family out. Undoubtedly he would be willing to help.

He started running up the steep and backward along the trail, and now the fates relented and threw a piece of big luck in his way. For as he came swinging along the flank of the mountain, a tinkle of bells rose out of the canon; a black head shoved up from below; urged on by the _arriero's_ sharp hisses and driving curses, three mules came scrambling up out on the level.

The sight of a man, breathless, dusty, and disheveled, running at top speed with a naked knife in his hand, meant to the _arriero_ only one thing. The celerity with which, slipping from the saddle, he trained his rifle across the animal's back showed how he came to be still riding the trails when mule-trains had been swept away by raids and "requisitions."

As he had seen Lee pa.s.s the _fonda_ with Gordon, one word, "revolutionists," fully explained the situation, and though Gordon got only about a third of his voluble Spanish, it was easy to understand his clucks of commiseration.

"Carried off! Tut! tut! tut! She that was so kind to the poor! supplied remedies to my own ninas when they fell ill of a fever! Josefina will cry her eyes out over this!"

Neither did he stop with idle sympathy. While talking he pulled the hitches and with one shove sent a cargo of pottery on his likeliest mule crashing to the ground. Then, while hastily rigging a saddle out of serapes and cord, he filled the air with crackling Spanish, larding his questions with frightful oaths.

"How many were they, senor? Six? And you shot one. Bueno! bueno! That leaves us but two and a half apiece. Would that I might gut them all with one flick of my knife! Take thou this."

It was an old Colt with a barrel a foot long. Motioning to his own riding-mule, he ran on:

"You shall ride her, senor, for she is easier in her gait than the boats of the sea. Some there are that will tip the nose at a mule for riding.

But in the mountains they will travel three miles to a horse's two. An hour's start have they? Then by shoving hard we should come on them in five, or less if they camp at dark."

He had now finished his saddling. A stream of hisses plus a few pistol cracks of his long mule-whip sent the remaining animals scampering back down the ravine to the lush gra.s.s by the _fonda_, where old Antonio would care for them. Then, springing up on the mule, he sat, rifle across his arm, saddle _machete_ and knife close to his hand, black eyes glittering under his _sombrero_, a wild, dangerous, bandit figure, ready for the start.

Thus, mounted on a mule instead of the gallant steed of fiction, did Gordon go in pursuit. But that which the animal lacked in looks it made up in utility. Justifying its owner's boast, it navigated steeps, slid down into canons sure-footed as a goat, crawled like a fly up the opposite walls, moved forward on the levels at a swift, easy, rocking pace. To the eye of the great, scarlet-crested vulture, sailing on free wing half a mile above, pursued and pursuers appeared as dust clouds, now rising from the deep trough between two great earth waves, again hovering like smoke on the crest of a hill. But by the bird it would easily have been seen that as the hours slid by the second gained steadily upon the first.

Fast as the little beasts traveled, however, their pace appeared like an insect's crawl when measured by Gordon's fears. Action, at first, brought relief. Later he fell again a prey to anguish. The threat of the revolutionists filled him with horror through which, as in a dreadful nightmare, he saw Lee struggling frantically. Of Ramon he never even thought. It was always the men. Yet he managed to hold himself in hand; refrained from lashing the mule into the furious pace that would, while killing it, have still lagged far behind his fears.

And he had always at his side the _arriero_, with his repeated, "Do not trouble, senor; they will keep traveling till dark!" to cheer him.

The latter's sharp glance it was that picked out the sign where the revolutionists had swung on to the San Carlos trail. His hawk eyes found, just before sundown, dust rising like yellow smoke on the opposite hills. When darkness covered the tossing earth with its solemn veil it was he, again, that saw the first flare when the revolutionists'

fire blossomed like a red rose in the black heart of a valley. Lastly, it was his knowledge of the country that made it possible for them, after tying the mules at a safe distance, to crawl up until, gently shoving the bushes aside, Gordon looked out and saw under the red light of the fire the revolutionists at their gambling and Lee seated beside Ramon.

"One to me, little one," Ilarian's bellow just then rang out. "Be not impatient. Soon we shall take a little pasear together."

At the sight of Ramon, the _arriero's_ brows had gone up under the roots of his hair, for, had he wished it, Gordon's Spanish would not have permitted a full explanation. Now he touched Gordon, pointing. Nodding, he nipped off a few leaves, then leveled the long Colt, aiming at the nearest man. A glance to his right showed him the _arriero_ slowly shoving his rifle-barrel through the leaves. Then, turning again to his aim, he was just in time to see Lee slash Ramon's bonds.

The next instant the latter sprang for the rifles. Lee was up and standing almost in line with the man he had covered. He dared not shoot, and in the next five seconds, before they could readjust themselves to the rapid change, the situation had flashed into its final stage-Ramon had fallen with one revolutionist; the others were rushing at Lee across the firelit s.p.a.ce.

By that time Gordon had risen. As, standing, he fired from the edge of the wood a second man fell forward upon his face. The _arriero's_ rifle cracked sharply, and there remained only Ilarian. Swinging with Lee, still in his arms, he faced Gordon charging across the firelit s.p.a.ce.

Usually Gordon could be depended upon to keep his head. But Lee's bitter cry, the sight of her helplessness, combined with the awful strain of the afternoon, produced in him a berserker rage. Teeth bared in a snarl, his gun completely forgotten, he seized Ilarian with his naked hands just as he dropped Lee; threw him with such violence that his feet rose in the air and he struck shoulders first on the ground. Then, without even a second glance, he lifted and gathered Lee in his arms.

Fortunately, the _arriero_ not only kept his wits, but was working them overtime. As, rolling over, Ilarian pulled and pointed his gun the _arriero's_ second bullet plumped between his shoulders.

It is doubtful whether Gordon heard the shot. His face in Lee's hair, hers hidden in his breast, they remained without looking around even when the _arriero_ spoke.

"Warm work, senor!"

Receiving no answer, he grinned and gently tapped the side of his nose.

"They are all that way-at first," he confided in the stars. "But wait till the priest ties them so that neither can wriggle without the other.

Wait!"

A cough also pa.s.sing unnoticed, he walked over and knelt beside Ramon.

With a heavy shake of the head, he pa.s.sed to the revolutionists. Three were dead, but, though unconscious, Ilarian still breathed stertorously.

"The worse for thee, amigo," the _arriero_ addressed him. "The old senor Icarza will pay well to do thy killing with his own hands. By sunrise, manana, I should have thee to him, and then"-he gave a little sinister nod at the dead-"and then thou wilt be envying these."

A glance at the lovers having shown them to be, to all intents and purposes, still alone under the stars, he went off, shaking his head, to bring up the mules. "Santa Maria Marisima! to think that I, also, was once so foolish!"

On his return he gathered up the arms, belts, knives, bandoliers of cartridges, guns-it has to be written, also stripping the khaki coats and riding-boots from the dead. "They will serve thee no more after the old senor finishes," he addressed the unconscious Ilarian, as he tore off his.

While he was packing his loot in an orderly and methodical manner on the mules a murmur of talk rose behind him. But as it was couched in English he was saved from further reflections.

"Oh-_dear!_" Lee's exclamations, partially smothered in a rough and dirty shirt, still conveyed a curious mixture of confidence and fear, regret, relief, sorrow, and happiness, hope and doubt. "Oh-_dear!_ I used to be so independent and fearless. Now-I feel so weak."

"Time you did." A hug mitigated the severity of the comment. "After this perhaps you will let me do a little of your thinking?"

"For a while." The shirt choked a little, perverse laugh. "Till I get over it."

"Very well, we are going on, right now, to be married in San Carlos."

"Oh, but-"

"No 'buts.' We'll take no more chances."

She hesitated and-gave in. "Oh, isn't it nice to have some one decide for you?"

Had the _arriero_ been consulted he could have told a tale. But Gordon quite believed it. He was raising her face to his when her eyes distended with a sudden sorrow.

"Oh, poor Ramon! Whatever are we thinking of?"