Over the Border Part 49

XL: SLIVER "MAKES GOOD"

By the time Sliver and Jake returned the sun hung like a red-hot ball in the smoke of the horizon. Even if the horses had not been tired, it was too late to start that night. Accordingly, after loading the raiders'

provisions, they rode on down into the ravine and used the glowing embers of the _fonda_ for their camp-fire.

To them, sitting there, by ones and twos and threes the refugees came straggling in to gather for the night around their own fires. Going from one to another, Lee and Gordon dealt comfort and advice. They were to reap the standing corn and sow again for their own use in the secret places of the mountains. The _hacienda_ cattle they could herd in the canons of the lower hills. Thus, with plenty of milk for b.u.t.ter and cheese, corn, and beans, their own chickens, goats, and pigs, they would be able to live in rude comfort till the coming of peace permitted Lee's return.

"The knowledge that they will not suffer makes it easier to bear."

Lee spoke, looking back at the brown faces enlivened by the ruddy glare of the fires. But when, next morning, they crowded around her, old men, women, young girls, and little children, mixing prayers, blessings, and lamentations with their good-bys, she was less philosophical. She was still weeping when she looked back at those that had followed her as far as the mouth of the ravine.

"Oh, if our government could only see them! Surely they would help."

Gordon looked for another outburst when, later, they sighted ruined Arboles from the very spot he and Mary Mills had overlooked it. How well he remembered it! The walls and courts, _patio_, rainbow adobes, a small city of gold magnificently blazoned by the red brush of the sinking sun; the cottonwoods flaming a deep apricot under a sky that spread a canopy of saffron and cinnabar, purple and umber and gold, down to the far horizon; the soft smoke pennons trailing violet plumes off and away into the smoldering dusk of the east; the cooing of woman voices broken by laughter, low, sweet, infinitely wild. Now, roofless, windowless, its blackened walls upreared in the midst of a wide, blurred smudge. Yet though the contrast brought stinging tears to her eyes, Lee took it calmly.

"What does it matter? It can be rebuilt. But there are other things"-her voice lowered and trailed away-"that can never be replaced."

They were both sad and sick at heart. Yet youth may not permanently be cast down. When, riding on, they left the smoke-blacked ruin behind them and pa.s.sed from the dreary waste of burned pasture into golden plains she began restoration. A native carpenter could replace every loved beam; rebuild the ma.s.sive old furniture just as it was. The _peones_ would lime-wash the exterior in its usual rainbow color! Also, restoration would give opportunity for remodeling and improvement.

As she ran on Gordon sensed another motive; perceived that she was striving to draw Bull out of his sorrow. Not a plan that did not include him! A great fireplace, for use during the rains, was to have a comfortable settle at one side, on which the Three could lounge and smoke while basking in the blaze. Each was to have his own room. Thus and so! Nor was her prattle without effect. Always sensitive where she was concerned, Bull divined her motive, and, albeit with an effort great as a physical strain, he responded, listened, and nodded acquiescence, occasionally forced a smile.

Only Sliver was fooled. "Say," he remarked to Jake, who rode with him in the rear, "did you allow she'd have taken it so light?"

But Jake, the keen, discerning critic, quickly opened his eyes. "Take it light, you --! --! --! --!" The epithets, if printed, would scorch a hole in the page. "Kain't you see she's grieving her little heart out?

She's doing it all for Bull."

At any other time one of those epithets would probably have produced a retort that would have tumbled Jake out of his saddle. But, conscience-stricken, Sliver accepted all. With humility that was almost pathetic, he actually put into words feeling that was, for him, quite subtle. "'Tain't that I'd set in jedgment on Lady-girl, on'y-I reckon it's so with all of us-I jes' kain't bear to see her say or do anything that don't jes' fit."

After a pause he went on: "About these plans o' her'n? If there warn't no revolution, an' we ked stay along here without a break, an' they'd destroy all the licker in the world an' forgit the art of making it, I don't know but that we might live up to 'em. But I'm telling you, hombre, it's been awful wearing an' I jes' know what a spell in El Paso 'ull do for me-I'll be that swinish I'll never dare to come near her ag'in."

When Jake had admitted like feelings Sliver continued: "Sure, under them conditions, licker an' its makers being, so to say, put on the hog-train an' run off the aidge of the earth, I'd hev' one chanst to make good.

But as 'tis, an' seeing that she's now settled with a fine young husband an' kin get along very nicely, I'm sorter allowing that El Paso 'ull let me out." While his eyes blinked guiltily and his lips quivered with antic.i.p.atory thirst, he concluded, "Sure I'm that dry 'twon't take much temptation for me to tell my troubles to a barkeep an' have him drown 'em in drink."

"Nor me," Jake seconded. "Besides, my fingers is jes' itching to get into a game."

"Drink, cards, flat broke-back to rustling." Sliver laid down the law of their being. "With me it runs like, the A-B-C."

"I drink, you drink, he drinks, we drink," Jake chanted it _sotto voce_.

"If folks wasn't so onreasonable a feller might make an honest living.

But the best tinhorn that ever turned a card from the bottom is bound to make a slip, an' when he does-whoosh! if he's lucky enough to make his getaway, rustling's all that's left."

"Bull?" Sliver nodded at the broad back ahead. "D'you allow he's a-going to stay put?"

Jake's shake of the head mixed doubt with concern. "If we meet up with any Mex-we'll never get him away. He'll run amuck among 'em."

Sliver's reckless eye lit with a fighting gleam. "An' the country's jes'

lousy with _revueltosos_? Hombre, it's a cinch! Not that I'd want it,"

he hypocritically added, "Lady-girl being along. But if we do chance on a few-hum! what's the exchange, jes' now, in Valles's money? Seven to one, heigh? Well, we've three rifles apiece, counting the extras on the pack-horses. One man with three rifles is as good as two men. Twice four of us makes eight. At current exchange, one gringo for seven Mex, we orter account for fifty-six."

"There or thereabouts," Jake agreed. "But, as you say, Missy being along, it's up to us to dodge 'em."

"Five days?" Sliver hopefully repeated. "We'd jes' as well look out for trouble."

Not till the morning of the third day did the "trouble" loom up over the horizon.

To avoid raiders along the railroad, Bull laid a course that would strike the American border a hundred miles or so east of El Paso.

Confirming his judgment, they had seen during the first two days only a few _peon_ herders, who scampered like rabbits at their approach. But while it made for safety, the course he had laid out also carried them away from water, the first necessity of desert travel.

From the Los Arboles pastures they had pa.s.sed, first, into a spa.r.s.e gra.s.s country dotted with _sahuaros_; thereafter into sage desert sprinkled with limestone boulders and bounded by arid hills of the same; a dry, inhospitable land, lifeless, without sign of human habitation, its heated silence unbroken by the cry of animal or bird, tenanted only by the dreary yucca that threw wild arms about like tortured dwarfs.

Toward the middle of the second day they had been forced to head almost due west in search of the water that was to be had only near the railroad.

Dusk was falling when they-more correctly, the horses-found a small _arroyo_. It was so late, and the animals tired, and in order that they might drink their fill Bull took a chance and camped by the water. They did not light a fire. They ate cold food in darkness. Before dawn, too, they were in the saddle, by sunrise had placed nearly ten miles between them and the water which, just there and then, was another name for danger. As a matter of fact, Bull had not expected to get it without fighting. He had not yet ceased marveling at their luck when the "trouble" showed up in form of a line of _sombreros_ behind the peak of a limestone ridge-unfortunately, to the eastward.

Jake saw them first. At his sharp hiss Bull looked, and, driving the pack-horses ahead, rode headlong for the next ridge. Looking back as they rode, Gordon saw the line of _sombreros_ rise in correspondence as the land fell off. Soon a head showed; then, almost simultaneously, the ridge bristled with mounted men, a hundred at least, in bold relief against the sky-line.

"They've seen us!"

As he called it a yell, strident, raucous, pierced the clatter of their galloping hoofs. "Gringos! Mueran los gringos! Kill them!"

A volley followed. But, fired from the saddle in movement, the bullets chipped only a few twigs off the scenery. Scattering shots, too, flew overhead; but, intent on overtaking them, the Mexicans in the main wasted no time in shooting. They were only a couple of hundred yards away when the four men dropped from their horses behind the crest of the ridge.

Differing speed had strung the pursuers out in a scattering column, and Sliver grinned his delight at the arrangement. "Like bowling at the county fair. Miss one, you've still a chance at the next behind. Set 'em up again!" he yelled as, following their volley, two men and a horse plunged forward on the ground.

"A bit lower, Son," Bull quietly admonished Gordon. "Aim at the jine of man an' horse. That gives you a seven-foot target."

"One cigar, one baby down!"

Sliver's second yell marked the fall of two more horses and another man-shot by Bull out of his saddle. Aiming and firing with the deadly accuracy bred by years of just such fighting against more sagacious foes, they dropped the leaders as fast as they came on; in three minutes had drawn a dead-line of men and horses across their front. And that deadly practice told. Brave enough, after their lights, the raiders were not accustomed to such shooting. In the revolutionary wars their own practice, like that of their opponents, was to spring up out of a trench, yell "_Viva Mexico!_" fire in the enemy's direction, and drop back again, trusting to the G.o.d of war to find a billet for the bullet.

Turning, they raced back for the opposite ridge, spurred on by the galling shooting that emptied two more saddles.

Bull's black glance following them with longing that confirmed Jake's diagnosis-he would have "run amuck among 'em" if left to himself. The more steadily, perhaps, for his deadly thirst to kill, he had aimed and fired with automatic precision. Withal, he had found time to note Gordon's steady shooting.

"You done fine, lad," he commented. "If there was only ourselves, I'd be in favor of carrying it to 'em. But"-his glance went to Lee, who was holding the horses-"we'll have to fall back. They've had their lesson an' ain't a-going to try any more fool charges. Now they'll try an'

flank us. While Sliver an' Jake hold 'em, we'll run back to the next ridge."

But Gordon, flushed with his taste of battle, rebelled. "What's the matter with me staying? You fellows care for me like three hens scratching for an orphan chicken. I'm tired of this sheltered life."

"'Sheltered life'?" Communing with himself, Jake glanced at the grisly dead-line. "'Sheltered life,' an' him with two stretched out down there."

"Comes o' being married," Sliver added. "No married man has a right to run with batchelders."

"That's right," Jake approved. "It's up to you to look after your wife."

"Well?" Gordon protested. "How can I do it better than by staying here?"

"What?" Sliver looked scandalized. "Us take a chanst of her being widowed after all the trouble we had getting her married? No, sir-ree!

Git out."