← catalogue

Over the Border: A Novel

by unknown · English · Gutenberg #40600 · 673,368 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Over the Border: A Novel
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: Over the Border: A Novel

Creator: Herman Whitaker


        
Release date: August 27, 2012 [eBook #40600]
                Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/40600

Credits: Roger Frank and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net.


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OVER THE BORDER: A NOVEL ***




                            OVER THE BORDER


                                A NOVEL

                                   BY


                            HERMAN WHITAKER


    AUTHOR OF "THE SETTLER," "THE PLANTER," "THE PROBATIONER," Etc.


                                NEW YORK
                            GROSSET & DUNLAP
                               PUBLISHERS

            Published by Arrangement with Harper & Brothers




                        Books by HERMAN WHITAKER


                            OVER THE BORDER
                            THE PROBATIONER
                              THE SETTLER
                              THE PLANTER
                      THE MYSTERY OF THE BARRANCA
                              CROSS TRAILS


                       HARPER & BROTHERS NEW YORK
                            Established 1817


                            Over The Border
                 Copyright, 1917, by Harper & Brothers


                Printed in the United States of America
                          Published May, 1917




                                   TO
                              Jack London
                      IN MEMORY OF OLD FRIENDSHIP




[Illustration: GORDON SEIZED ILARIAN WITH HIS NAKED HANDS]




Contents


    I: THE THREE BAD MEN OF LAS BOCAS
    II: OVER THE BORDER
    III: EVEN A RUSTLER HAS HIS TROUBLES
    IV: THE TRAIL OF THE COLORADOS
    V: THE "HACIENDA OF THE TREES"
    VI: BULL TURNS NURSE
    VII: THE RUSTLERS ARE ADOPTED
    VIII: "THE LEOPARD'S SPOTS"
    IX: A PARTY AND ITS CONSEQUENCES
    X: WANTED--A HUSBAND
    XI: GORDON'S DÉBUT
    XII: THE RECRUIT IS TRIED OUT--IN SEVERAL WAYS
    XIII: AMERICAN RUSTLERS _VS._ MEXICAN RAIDERS
    XIV: NEMESIS DOGS THE THREE--AND IS "DOGGED," IN TURN, BY LEE
    XV: BULL AND THE WIDOW CONSPIRE
    XVI: ONE MAN CAN TAKE A HORSE TO WATER, BUT--
    XVII: --BUT TWENTY CANNOT MAKE HIM DRINK
    XVIII: THE "WIND" BLOWS CONTRARY
    XIX: A KISS--ITS CONSEQUENCES
    XX: SLIVER IS DULY CHASTENED
    XXI: THE WIDOW TO THE RESCUE
    XXII: LEE, TOO, IS CONFESSED
    XXIII: IN WHICH THE WIDOW GOES AND SLIVER COMES
    XXIV: UNDERSTANDING
    XXV: LOVE AND BUSINESS
    XXVI: A SETTLEMENT
    XXVII: AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE
    XXVIII: A "REQUISITION"
    XXIX: TEMPTATION
    XXX: THE OTHER HALF OF THE TRUTH
    XXXI: "BRAINS WIN"
    XXXII: TRAVAIL
    XXXIII: THE DEATH IN THE NIGHT
    XXXIV: ---------------------?
    XXXV: WHY?
    XXXVI: "IN THE MIDST OF LIFE--"
    XXXVII: THE THREE--AGAIN
    XXXVIII: FIRE
    XXXIX: "VENGEANCE IS MINE"
    XL: SLIVER "MAKES GOOD"
    XLI: JAKE BETTERS THE "EXCHANGE"
    XLII: BULL DREAMS A DREAM!
    XLIII: THE LAST OF THE THREE BAD MEN




I: THE THREE BAD MEN OF LAS BOCAS


The Three had chosen their lair wisely.

In the picturesque Spanish phrase, it "situated itself" midway of the
desert, the great Mexican desert that is more varied in its heated
monotony than a land of woods and fields and streams. Here it runs to
sparse grass land under upland _piñon_; there spreads over wide, clean
sands that reflect like burnished brass the intolerable glare of the
sun. Now it marches for leagues with the yuccas that fling crazed arms
and shrunken limbs like posturing dwarfs; again it is dotted with lonely
_mesas_, monolithic masses that raise orange and vermilion facades out
of a violet mirage. A magic land it is, made out of shattered rainbows,
girded with crimson-and-gold mountains that wear around their high
foreheads cooling bandages of snow; a land of deathless calms, cyclonic
storms, torrential rains, peopled only by the vultures that wheel
against the sky and the little golden dust-whorls which dance together
over its heated face. A country where dwells the very spirit of romance;
of which anything might be predicted and come to pass; therefore, as
before said, the very place for a lair.

Secondly, the Three had shown a nice discrimination in the selection of
a site. Its capacities in the way of offense and defense would have
earned the instant commendation of a medieval baron, Mexican bandit,
revolutionist, or "movie" director in search of an ideal robber's roost.
Years ago a Yankee "prospector" with more faith than sense and money
enough to have left prospecting severely alone, had kept a raft of
_peones_ busy for the better part of two years ripping the heart out of
a mountain-top in a feverish search for fabulous gold. Rumors that still
linger in Sonora _jacales_ tell that the _gringo_ worked under the
direction of the spirits--or a spiritualist, which may or may not be
quite the same. The results--to wit, a huge gap in the mountain and an
abandoned adobe powder house, now serving as a residence for the Three
Bad Men--seem to favor the rumor. Spirits were never good miners. But
that is neither here nor there, the Three concerning themselves only
with the natural fortifications they thus inherited.

The adobe stood well back in a semicircular gap, protected on three
sides by the curving walls of the excavation. Behind them, the mountain
dropped almost a thousand feet sheer, and the level bench in front of
the house could only be gained by a narrow path that fell like a yellow
snake down the steep slopes into thick chaparral. From its edge one
overlooked the vast reaches of the central Sonora desert, an ashen sea
of sage and mimosa shored in by far mountains that loomed dusky purple
or stood out stark yellow as they happened to lie to the sun. Since the
Yankee went back on his "controls," or they on him, a _sahuaro_ cactus
had raised its fluted barrel within the excavation, captaining a squad
of dwarf yuccas that poked grotesque arms in pathetic entreaty out of
the rubble. To these natural improvements the Three had added a
_ramada_, broad porch of poles and cornstalks, in the shade of which
they took their ease one hot nooning, two playing _pedro_ at a rough
wooden table while the third dozed and nodded with stool tilted back
against the adobe wall.

It did not require more than a cursory glance to know the Three for
members of that sad colony which is doomed by its past to remain on the
wrong side of the Mexican border. Beginning with Sliver Smith, the
sleeper; his drowsy lids hid blue eyes that were hard as chips of agate
and exactly fitted his reckless face. Just now sleep had softened its
lines and brought a certain underlying good-nature. But for the mouth
and deep creases down each side of the nose, which bespoke passions
violent and unrestrained, one would have put him down now for that which
he had been--a cowman from the New Mexican ranges.

The other two, however, really looked the "bad man." "Bull" Perrin, the
biggest and eldest, might have been especially cast by nature for the
part. Big, burly, black-visaged, and heavy-jowled, excessive drinking
had dyed his face out of all relation to the creamy skin the gods had
given him. The hot brown eyes under straight bushy brows bespoke a
cyclonic temper. But though Bull conveyed the impression of an "ugly
customer" at first sight, a physiognomist would have picked Jake Evers,
his partner, as a far more dangerous man. The cold, bleak sparks of eyes
in his lean, lantern-jawed face scintillated with cunning. But for a
certain humor that lurked about the corners of his mouth, his face would
have been utterly repulsive.

Yet after granting their "badness," there was about them no taint of the
mean, rat-like wickedness of the city criminal. Their composite was of
strong impulses, misdirected forces gone to waste, of men cast by birth
in a wrong age. In the councils of a nation in the olden time, their
strength, ferocity, would have gained them power and place; here, out in
the desert, they exactly fitted their environment. As much as the horned
toad in the sand at Bull's feet, as much as the lizard that coursed
swiftly along the adobe wall above the sleeper's head; as much as the
_sahuaro_ and the tormented yucca, they belonged to the land. Its gold
glowed in their bronze. It were a safe bet that--horses and cattle not
being in question--they would, at a given emergency, live in the letter
of its best traditions.

Looking at Bull and Jake as they sat at play, the former might be
likened to a grizzly; the latter to a tiger, alert, stealthy, cunning,
ferocious; qualities which sprang into evidence with startling
suddenness when a shrill burst of woman's scolding presently disrupted
the heated silence.

Apparently the noise issued from a white cloud that hid the doorway; but
as this settled and cleared away, a buxom slattern of a Mexican girl
stood revealed. While flicking out the last dust of flour from an empty
sack she bitterly reviled the Three. Though delivered in Spanish, the
substance of her complaint was international and goes easily into
English.

"Flojos! Lazy ones! how shall one cook without flour? The coffee, too,
is gone--and the sugar. Of lard or grease there is not a smear for the
pan. You must go forth, to-day."

This was merely the text. While she enlarged thereon with copious
illustrations to prove their worthlessness as providers, the two men at
the table proceeded quietly with their play. It was the third that
finally interrupted the harangue with the irascibility of one aroused
from pleasant sleep.

"Shut up, Dove!"

In its literal sense the word stands for the most innocent of birds. But
she chose to take the opposite meaning of the sarcastic Spanish.

"Si, señor! I am that or I should not be here now, cooking for three
beasts." After a comparison between them and the lower animals that
greatly favored the latter, she ran on with increasing heat:

"'Dove,' indeed? Then where is my price? Where are they, the fine
clothes, the silks and satins and linen, the jewelry and laces you were
to gain for me? Was it by this I was bought?" She held out her dirty
black skirt. "I, that might be now sitting in the cantina of Ignacio
Flores at Las Bocas, selling aguardiente and anisette to his custom? Si,
señores, _where are they_, the velvets, ribands, and neck chains? I--"

It was at this point that Jake displayed his quality. Swinging swiftly
around, he threw his knife, so hard and quickly that it stuck quivering
in the door lintel close to the girl's throat before she had time to
close her mouth.

"Here! don't be so careless." Bull's bushy brows drew down over his
burning eyes in quick reproof. But his next remark proved that the
interference was not based on altruism. "If you croak her, who's to do
the cooking? Any corn left, Rosa?"

Whereas Sliver's rude interruption had merely stimulated her tongue;
whereas, also, she had stuck out that member at Jake the instant she
made sure the knife had missed, she now caught her breath with a little,
frightened gulp. "Si, señor."

"Then make some tortillas and serve them along with the jerky," he
called after her. "And bring us out a drink."

At this Sliver, who had resumed his doze, sat up again. His lugubrious
exclamation, "Oh, _hell_!" caused the others to look up a moment later.
With an empty demijohn held upside down Rosa stood in the doorway. She
did not speak. But her tragic pose, vindictive nod, said quite plainly,
"Now will you go?"

Neither did they speak. The situation was beyond revilings. Slowly Jake
picked up and pocketed the cards. Sliver rose to his feet. In single
file they marched down the path to find their horses. Indeed, they had
caught the animals, saddled up at the stable on the flat below and were
riding away through the chaparral before they recovered sufficiently to
attempt to fix the blame for the shortage.

Sliver--who, by the way, had gained his nickname under the law of
opposites because he was short and stout--remembered that he had warned
them several times "notter hit it so hard." But his testimony lost force
by reason of certain "lone drinks" in the absorption of which he had, by
the others, been caught. Jake, on the other hand, had pleaded for more
liquor and less flour the last time they stocked up at Las Bocas. By
frank confession, moreover, he reduced the force of Sliver's charge that
he would never be satisfied with less liquor than "he ked swim in."

"That's right. I never really seen at one time more whisky than I felt I
c'd drink."

From this he went on with invectives against the wave of reform which,
by its sudden flooding of the "Territ'ries"--as he still called the
States of Arizona and New Mexico--might be held indirectly responsible
for his present thirst. "For a cowman, like Sliver here, it don't matter
so much, him being used to dry spells out on the range. But for a man
that's dealt faro in a s'loon for a spell of years with two fingers of
bourbon allus under his nose, it comes some bitter. Them was the golden
days. What a man made in beef cattle or gold was his'n to plank down on
a bar or place on a card. Till them pinch-faces from the Middle West
descended like locusts upon the lan', drought was unknown save by a few
fool prospectors that got themselves lost in the desert. Locusts? I
wrong 'em! A locust does live up to its natural instincts. Locusts is a
blessing compared to pinch-faces. Why--" But certain lengthy reflections
that established the place of the "Middle-Wester" beneath even the lowly
bedbug in the scale of creation, must give place to his conclusion. "Si,
señores! 'twas them druv' me to rustling. But for them I'd still be
living honest, dealing straight faro to all comers with on'y an
occasional turn from the bottom of the box for the good of the house."

"Pity for you!"

Bull's pithy comment was enlarged upon by Sliver.

"An' you-all needn't to be howling so loud, either, about them dry
spells on the ranges. We allus had it in the bunk-houses an' 'twas a
poor cook that couldn't hide a keg in the chuck-wagon. As for your
faro--'twas to play the odd card you wolves dealt from the bottom that I
med my first rustle. But for you I'd be taking my copa right now out of
the cook's keg instead of dying of thirst in this lousy desert."

There was real heat in the accusation, but the ex-gambler's lean,
leathery face merely split in a dry grin.

"If your mother bred you a fool, don't blame me. The flea bit the dog,
the dog bit me; I kicked the dog an' killed the flea. Take a drink of
water, Sliver; it all works out in the end. You next, Bull. Which was
it--water, wine, or weemen?"

"None of 'em." The big rustler shook his head. "Early piety did for me.
Prayers morning, noon, an' night; grace before meals; two long sermons
on Sundays, an' two hours, Sabbath-school, and what would you expect? I
was so well brought up I jest had to go wrong. But if we don't jog along
we won't make Las Bocas to-night."

As Bull spurred on ahead, Sliver looked at Jake. "Say, he ain't exactly
what you-all 'd call frank in his conversings. If there's a thing he
don't know about us--well, 'tain't our fault. But him? When you come to
think of it did you ever hear him say how he kem to take up rustling?"

The gambler shook his head. "In a gen'ral way--so gen'ral that I
couldn't tell jest how I got it--I've sorter gathered that he once
croaked a man. But whether 'twas before or after he took up the profesh
I couldn't say. In the natural order of things, a rustler's bound,
sooner or later, to down some prying fool. There's so many that try to
mix in his business. But if it was before, Bull done it--I'll bet you
the gent had it coming."




II: OVER THE BORDER


That night the Three put up at the _cantina_ in the little adobe town of
Las Bocas, where, by reason of occasional largesses to the leader of the
revolutionary faction that happened to be on top, a welcome was always
certain. Just now it was more particularly so because the present
_jefe-politico_, a Carranzista, varied his political activities by
acting as "fence" in the disposal of their plunder.

In accordance with his advice, the following afternoon found them
approaching the American border at a point far west of their usual
sphere of operations. While they journeyed the sun slid down its western
slant till it hung like a smoky lamp in the far dust of the desert.
Behind them the sea of sage still ran off to distant mountains, but the
sunset glow washed its dust away, draping the land in a royal robe.
Ahead the grade was rising imperceptibly but steadily to a sparse grass
country where the sage, _palo verde_, and yucca gave place to huge
_sahuaros_ that strewed the plain with their fluted barrels like the
jade columns of some vast ruin. Among them roamed the flocks and herds
of a pink-walled _hacienda_ that nestled in a grove of lordly
cottonwoods. As they rode past, the Three noted with appraising glances
the sleek hides of a fine bunch of steers.

"Dress a thousand pounds of beef apiece," Jake opined.

"Worth eighty pesos, gold, on the hoof, in El Paso," Sliver yearningly
added.

But their interest went no further--for reasons that appeared when, at
sundown, they rode past the concrete pillar that marked the
international boundary. Rustler that he was, drunkard and gambler,
utterly worthless if the reports current on the New Mexican ranges were
to be believed, Sliver's eye nevertheless lit up at the sight of it; the
glow on his hard face was not all sunset reflection.

"The good old U.S.," he commented. "_Some_ country!"

"He wasn't talking that way las' time we crossed." Jake winked at Bull.

"Guess not. He was cussing Cristobel Columbo for ever having discovered
it."

"That's right," Sliver admitted. "But I was what you-all might call in a
bit of a hurry with a squad of rangers streaking at my heels. Other
things being ekal--"

"Which they ain't," Jake interrupted. "Mexico's good enough for me.
Mexico an' revolution! For I tell you right now that if Porfirio Diaz
was still boss, his rurales would have taken right holt where the
rangers left off. Instead of dangling from a pine on the American side,
we'd hev' finished with a fusillado on this. But with the government
switching every five minutes between Orozco, Villa, Huerta, Carranza,
an' the jefe-politicos an' governors slaughtering each other
between-whiles, it's nobody's business to look after us. We make our
little sneaks across the border an' return in peace an' quiet. So 'Viva
la revolucion!' That reminds me--where're you heading, Bull?"

"Livingstone _rancho_ on the Little Stoney."

"Say, but that's horses! Don't they run 'em into the corrals at night?"

The big rustler nodded. "All the easier to find, an' after you once get
them moving it don't take three days to run 'em over the line. Besides,
Don Manuel tol' me at Las Bocas yesterday that the Carranzistas are
needing heavy horses for their artillery over on the Coast. He'll pay
fifty pesos apiece an' take his chance on a five-thousand-per-cent
profit after the old gentleman grabs the presidential chair." He
emphatically concluded, "_Horses_, you bet!"

"Some risky, cutting 'em out?" Sliver, too, looked dubious.

"Not as much as you think. Did you never have some flea-bitten son of a
gun rub down the bars while you slept plumb up against the corral an'
wake next morning to find nary a head in sight? A horse don't like a
corral any more'n a man loves prison. The bars once down, you kin trust
'em to soft-foot it out to the open. Why"--his grin at the remembrance
set a flash of good-nature in his hard face--"why, I've seen an old nag
look back at a colt that kicked the bars passing out just like he was
saying, 'You damn young fool! now you've upset the soup!' Leave it to
me. I'll work 'em out on foot while you sit tight an' hold my horse.
Moon's going to be jest about right, too. She'll be taking her first
peep about the time we get 'em out in the clear. It'll be a pipe, then,
to saddle up fresh beasts an' shoot 'em over the border."


The _rancho_ for which they were heading lay still two hours away, and
while they rode the _sahuaro_ pillars gave place in turn to _piñon_ and
juniper thinly strewn over rolling grassland. Before night settled down,
the wandering cattle-trails they had followed drew into the twin ruts of
a wagon-road. Their going was timed by the moon. But it stole out from
behind a low hill a trifle ahead of schedule. By its first dim radiance
they made out the dark mass of the _rancho_ buildings, house, corrals,
stables, in a swale between two hills. It was, however, dark enough for
their purpose, and, leaving his horse with the others, Bull went forward
on foot.

It was nervous work, sitting there watching the buildings take form
under the waxing moon. Their strained senses took every sound, smell,
and sight; a dog's bark, click of horns as a steer scratched his
forehead on the top rail of a corral, the impatient pawing of a horse,
the warm cattle odor that floated on the night breeze. Dim, uncertain
shapes seemed to form and fade in the nearer gloom. They were nervous as
cats by the time a gun suddenly flashed under the dark porch of the
house.

The croupy cough of a child plus the nervous fears of its mother did it.
Not that the woman saw Bull when she drew the curtain and peeped out.
But these days, with a new revolution breaking, as Jake put it, "every
five minutes" over the border, the American ranchers along the
international line slept always with an eye open for possible raids. So
far as Bull was concerned, her whisper was just as fatal as though she
had seen him.

"Pa! get up! I'm sure there's some one out there!"

Perhaps the rancher did see. Educated in objects moving through dusk,
his plainsman's eye may have noticed movement. Or perhaps he shot on
chance. In either case he was quickly informed by the roar and clatter
of hoofs that followed, for though Bull did not expect, now, to get away
with a single head, pursuit would be blinded and divided by stampeding
the beasts. Dropping the bars while the gun continued to flash its
staccato warnings, he started the animals out, leaped on the back of
one; as soon as it cleared the huddle, went shooting down the trail,
guiding the animal with the swing of his body.

Unfortunately, the whim that governs a stampede moved the other beasts
to follow. So when the rancher and his men--in shirts and trousers, but
not one without a gun--pulled their mounts out of the stables, their
pursuit was guided by the distant thunder of hoofs. Neither did Bull's
quick change to his own beast divert the stampede. When the Three
galloped on, the scared animals still followed like dogs at their heels.

"First time my prey ever chased me!" Jake laughed harshly, looking back
at the band. "If old man Livingstone don't follow too close we'll get
'em yet!"

Bull shook his head. "Not with the moon sailing up to her full an' the
critters leaving a trail broad as a pike road. Listen to that!"

A sharp report punctuated the thud and clatter of the stampede; the
first shot of a fusillade that grew hotter and hotter as the horses
trailed off right and left, leaving the rustlers more exposed. As yet
they were running in the shadow of a long hill where the light was poor.
But half a mile ahead lay an open plain unbroken by cover.

"They'll shoot the lights outen us there!" Sliver prophesied. "Better
make a stan' while we can."

"They _are_ getting sassy," Jake agreed, as a bullet whizzed under his
chin. "We'll have to teach 'em this ain't no turkey-shoot."

The deciding word came, as usual, from Bull. "They'd surround an' hold
us for the posse. You ride on while I check 'em. If they try to round me
it'll be up to you to take 'em from the rear. Get behind so's they don't
see me turn."

In the faint light his sudden whirl behind a bush went unnoticed. He had
already unshipped his rifle from the saddle slings, and through the
upper branches he took careful aim. A hundred yards away Livingstone was
coming at full gallop, about the same distance ahead of his men. Bull
waited till he could see the old fellow's hair, silver in the moonlight,
framing his angry red face. Once the sights lined up level between the
eyes. But muttering, "I ked sure spoil your beauty, but--I won't," Bull
lowered them to the horse's chest and fired.

With the report the beast plunged forward, head and neck doubled under,
throwing his rider out in the clear. Though badly shaken, the old man
was up the next instant, and as he ran for cover his sudden change of
expression from anger to flustered surprise drew from Bull a grin.

"Teach you not to get so fresh."

At the crack of the rifle the others had also darted for cover, and as
their guns began to spit and flash from the chaparral along the
hillside, Bull laughed outright. "Not a rifle among 'em. Easy going!
Hasta luego, señores! Some other time!"

One or two bolder spirits emerged from the chaparral as Bull rode out in
the open. But they scuttled back like rabbits as he swung in the saddle
with leveled rifle. Though they followed till the boundary pillar stood
out, two hours later, a shining silver shaft under the brilliant moon,
they preserved always a safe distance, and Bull denied Sliver's
suggestion to "chuck a volley" into the dim mass.

"Kain't you leave your Uncle Samuel sleep? He ain't a-going to be moved
off his 'watchful waiting' by the loss of no horse, but if we go to
killing folks, he's sure going to take time to catch our goat b'twixt
revolutions."

"To-morrow morning," Jake commented, grinning, "the morning papers will
be running scareheads an inch high about the 'Latest Border Outrage!'
Meanwhile we'll be jogging home--"

"--without the horses," Bull dryly finished.

"An' Rosa, back at the roost," Sliver added, "howling for coffee an'
flour an' grease."

Which reminded Jake of their former argument: "I told you we orter ha'
bought more whisky. Nothing left but to ride back to Las Bocas an' hit
Don Miguel for credit."




III: EVEN A RUSTLER HAS HIS TROUBLES


Las Bocas was slowly stewing in its native filth when the Three sighted
it again at noon next day.

In all the world nothing reflects its environment more faithfully than a
Mexican town. Southward, the great cities of Mexico and Guadalajara
testify with their stately cathedrals, ornate public buildings,
theaters, parks, and plazas, the flowering _patios_ of lovely and
luxurious homes, first to the richness of the central Mexican plateau,
secondly to the fact that in normal times all the wealth of the republic
drains to them. Oppositely, the northern towns with their squalid adobe
streets, overrun with a plague of dirty children, dogs, vultures, pigs;
desiccated by fierce heat, drowned by torrential rains; these in their
place and turn are eminently characteristic of the arid desert. Save
that it was a little smaller, a little dirtier, perhaps a little richer
in the variety of its stenches, Las Bocas might serve as the type of all
Mexican frontier towns.

As the wind blew their way, the Three smelled it from afar. But usage
breeds indifference even to evil odors. If not actually homesome, the
fetor bespoke a possible drink.

A quarter mile before entering the town they crossed the _arroyo_ that
gave it drink. Its waters also furnished an open-air laundry for two
brown girls who knelt by its edge, pounding their soiled linen on flat
boulders. These days of rampant revolution, a good girl had needs be
careful, and at sight of the Three, dusty, unkempt, bearded, and gaunt
from tire and travel, _gringos_ at that, the two leaped up and fled
toward the town.

Grinning at their fright, Bull and Sliver would have ridden on, but
Jake, who never missed a trick, reined in his beast and began to examine
the laundry with the eye of a connoisseur. Though the remainder of her
be clad in rags, the humblest _peona_ will have her lace petticoat, and
the dozen or so pieces that were already spread out to dry on the
neighboring bushes were really very fine.

"D'you allow to turn lady's maid?" Sliver spoke, as Jake bent to stuff
the lingerie into his saddle-bags.

"Not till Rosa's had the refusal of it. This orter keep her satisfied
for at least a month."

Grinning, the pair of rascals spurred their jaded beasts and overtook
Bull as he entered a narrow gut of a street that followed the
meanderings of the original cow-path to the _jefe's_ house, a plastered
adobe, limewashed in purple and gold, that faced the inevitable military
barracks across a sorry attempt at a plaza.

If the small traders and artisans who constituted the bulk of the
population had been addicted to such flights of imagination, they might
have pictured the _jefatura's_ yawning gates as a huge gullet through
which, in normal times, their substance drained in taxes, fines, and
imposts to Mexico City, the nation's stomach, there to be consumed by a
hungry tribe of official hookworms. Now, of course, it was being
deflected into the private pocket of the dominant revolutionary chief.
Lacking the imagination, they cursed beneath their breath and waited
patiently till the next revolution should bring a new tyrant to avenge
them on the present oppressor.

The latest incumbent was at lunch under the peppertree in the _patio_
when the Three dismounted at the gates. Fat and sleek and brown, his
generally gross appearance was accentuated by pouched beady eyes, waxed
mustache, unhealthy, erupted skin. As he sat there, shoveling in
_frijoles_ and _chile_, even a _peon's_ slack imaginings could have
easily established a resemblance--if not between him and a hookworm, at
least, to some greedy parasite. The irritability, blind individualism,
offensive conceit, treachery, too common to Mexicans, lay hidden under
the usual veneer of Spanish courtesy. The embraces, backpattings,
effusive greetings with which he welcomed the Three would have graced
the reception of a favorite son.

"Enter, amigos!" His welcome buzzed through the _patio_. "Sit down and
eat. Afterward we shall look over the horses. You have bestowed
them--where?"

But when he learned of their failure, the scorpion showed through the
glaze of courtesy like a fly in amber. "_Carambar-r-r-aa_, señores!" His
read wagged in a nasty way. "I had counted on the horses--to save your
alive. On my desk lies a requisition from your gringo border police,
demanding your bodies. Que desgracia!" The spite that scintillated in
his beads of eyes gave his words sinister significance. "One would
dislike to do it, if 'twere only through hate of your Government. But
one has to account to his chiefs. Already they have inquired for you,
and always I made answer, 'These are good hombres, useful to our cause.'
But deeds count more than words. Horses for their artilleria would have
proved your worth. But now--" a second nasty wag told that their failure
left them as other _gringos_, to be despised, hated, persecuted. Having
given the impression time to sink in, he suggested, "But there must be
others? You will try again?"

"No use." Bull's gloom emphasized the denial. "This is the second time
in a month that we've been chased across the border. They're looking for
us all along the line."

"Si? Then must you go elsewhere. What of"--pausing, he looked cautiously
around--"what of this side? In central Chihuahua there are many
horse-ranchos, gringo ranches with fine blooded stock."

"But--"

The _jefe's_ shrug anticipated the objection. "Si, si! 'tis Mexico. That
is what I have always told my chief--'these hombres bother only the
gringo pigs.'" With a covert grin at the safe insult, he continued, "But
a gringo is a gringo, whether here or in your United States. If they be
despoiled, we shall not shed many tears. There will be a complaint, of
course, to and from your Government, and much writing between
departments. In the mean time we have the horses. So--"

"But that's Valles's country, isn't it?" Jake put in. "He's a bad hombre
to fool with!"

The _jefe_ turned on him his evil grin. "What if the gringo ranchers had
caught you last night? Hanging, amigo, is a dog's death. I would prefer
the fusilado of Valles's men."

"What if he kicks to your people? Puts in a claim for our heads? You're
working together, ain't you?"

Once again the _jefe_ looked around. "Listen, amigos! Between friends
one may show the truth. Already there is a cloud, a little cloud, no
bigger than a child's hand arisen between us and Valles. If the horses
are taken from a gringo _rancho_ in Valles's country, my chiefs will be
the better pleased. What they have Valles cannot get in the days when
the cloud grows big and black and bursts."

Sliver, who understood more Spanish than he could speak, here nudged
Bull. "Ask him if he'll grub-stake the deal."

"Ask nothing!" Bull's hot eyes shot brown fire. "You heard him rubbing
it into us, didn't you? If it wasn't that we need him I'd wring the
little brown adder's neck." He went on, suavely, in Spanish, "My amigo
questions me of the price. It will be the same--fifty pesos apiece,
señor?"

Nodding, the _jefe_ glanced impatiently back at his lunch. He appeared
to have forgotten his invitation. Pleading an engagement, he bowed them
out through the gates, then returned to his gorging while, hungrier, and
even still thirstier, the Three rode down the street.

Usually they were not averse to an exchange of glances, or a
flirtation--if the _hombre_ was not in sight--with the brown girls who
watched them from their doorways. But now their glances sought only the
_cantinas_, whose open bars displayed a tempting array of bottles. While
they looked their progress grew constantly slower, finally stopped in
front of one whose owner was taking his _siesta_ stretched out on the
bar.

Jake looked from the sleeper to his companions, then at the bottles of
anisette and _tequila_ on the rough wooden shelves. "If he was drunk it
'u'd be easy--" As the Mexican disposed of the doubt, just then, by
opening one excessively sober eye, Jake desperately concluded, "Say,
kain't we raise the price among us?"

Bull tapped his empty pockets.

Sliver mourned, "All I've got is a Confederate five some one slipped me
during my last toot in El Paso. I've carried it sence for a lucky
piece."

"An' lucky it is!" Jake extended an eager hand. "After this
revolutionary currency that's run off by the million on a newspaper
press, these greasers are crazy for gringo bills. What if it has got
Jeff Davis's picter on it? This fellow don't know him from Abe Lincoln.
All gringo bills look alike to him. He'll never know the diff."

Neither did he. The note, when thrown with elaborate carelessness on the
bar, brought in exchange at current ratios thirty-two _pesos_ and some
_centavos_, along with three stiff _copas_. Deceived by the size of the
roll, the Three now proceeded to order from the _tienda_ behind the bar
coffee, sugar, maize, the grease of Rosa's desire, and other
necessaries. With half a dozen bottles of _tequila_, it made a goodly
pile on the counter, but the offer of the roll brought a second lesson
in finance--to wit, that cheap money buys few goods. After segregating
the _tequila_ from the groceries, the merchant explained with a bow and
shrug that the thirty-two dollars and some _centavos_ aforesaid
represented the value of either.

From the groceries, the glances of the Three passed to the _tequila_;
then, with one accord, their hands went out and each closed on the neck
of a bottle. They were already outside when, looking back, Sliver
happened to catch the merchant's eye.

He grinned, answering Sliver's wink. "Si, señores, this time you shall
drink with me."

That which followed was quite accidental. While the Mexican was setting
out three glasses, Jake drew a pack of cards from his pocket and began
to throw two kings and an ace in the "three-card trick." So deftly he
did it that Sliver, who was really trying to pick the ace, failed half a
dozen times in succession. Their backs being turned, only Bull noticed
the Mexican's interest in the performance. Fascinated, he watched the
flying cards.

"Looks easy, don't it?" Bull suggested. "Here, Sliver, give this hombre
a chance."

Of course he succeeded, and, being Mexican, his conceit prodded him on
to try again. He could do it! He'd bet his _sombrero_, his horse, his
store, that he could do it every time! The Three being possessed of no
other stake, he finally wagered the pile of goods, which still stood on
the counter, against their bottles of _tequila_--and lost! In the course
of the next half-hour, being judiciously led on by occasional winnings,
there were added to the groceries six other bottles, the original
thirty-two _pesos_ and some _centavos_, a bolt of lace and linen for
Rosa; but for a large, greasy, and infuriated brown woman who charged
them suddenly from the rear of the store he would undoubtedly have lost
his all. Further acquisitions being balked by her unreasonable
interference with the course of nature as applied to fools, the Three
packed their winnings in the saddle-bags and rode on their way.

As a rule a certain fairness is inherent in the externally masculine.
Even a Mexican expects to pay his losings, and, of his own impulse, the
_comerciante_ would probably have let things go with a shrug. But not so
his woman! The eternally feminine is ever a poor loser--perhaps because
she has usually no hand in the game--and as the Three rode off she let
loose an outcry that brought a gendarme running from around the corner.

"It is that honest Mexicans are robbed by gringo thieves while thou art
lost in a siesta!" she assailed him. "After them, lazy one, and recover
our goods!"

By her violence she might have lost her case. With an answer that was
quite ungentlemanly the gendarme had already turned to go, when the two
girls whom Jake had robbed of their lingerie came tearing up the street
and added their outcries to the woman's clamor. And now the Three were
surely out of luck. It chanced that for a week past this very gendarme
had been making sheep's eyes at the larger of the two girls, and now the
saints had sent this chance for him to gain her favor.

"They stole thy--" Delicacy gave him pause; then, his natural
indignation increased by the nature of the robbery, he hot-footed it up
the street and overtook the Three.

Ordinarily the arrest would have been accomplished with lofty Spanish
punctilio, but in his heat the gendarme allowed his zeal to exceed his
discretion, and thereby invited disaster. For as he seized Bull's
bridle, the rustler reached over, spread his huge hand flat over the
man's angry face, and sent him toppling backward into the kennel. He was
up, the next second, long gun in hand. But in that second Jake's bleak
eyes squinted along his gun, Sliver had him covered, Bull's rifle was
aimed from the hip.

To give the Mexican policeman his due, he does not easily give up. If
one man cannot bring in a prisoner, ten may. If they fail, perhaps a
company can--or a regiment. The man's shrill whistle was really far more
dangerous than his absurd long gun. Instantly it was taken up on the
next street and the next; went echoing through the town till it finally
brought from the _carcel_ a squad on the run.

By that time the Three had backed up against a wall and stood with
rifles leveled across the backs of their beasts. Every particle of human
kindness, humor, that had showed in their dealings with one another was
gone. Jake's long teeth were bared in a wolf grin. Sliver's reckless
face had frozen in stone. Bull's head and huge shoulders rose above his
breast, his face dark, imperturbable, fierce. Grim, silent, ferocious as
trapped wolves, they faced the squad which took cover while messengers
brought an officer and company from the barracks.

Now it was really dangerous. The tragedy that lurks behind all Mexican
comedy might break at any moment. In its uniform, that ragged soldiery
set forth the history of three revolutions. The silver and gray of
Porfirio Diaz's famed _rurales_, the blue and red stripes or fatigue
linen of the Federal Army, even the _charro_ suits of Orozco's
Colorados, were all represented. But in spite of their motley the men
were all fighters, tried by years of guerrilla warfare. Their dark brown
faces showed only eager savagery. If it had depended on them, tragedy
would have burst forth there and then. But the word had to come from the
officer, who found himself looking down the barrels of three leveled
rifles. It took him just five seconds to make up his mind on this
fundamental truth--whoever else survived, he would die. The game was not
worth the candle! Very politely he addressed Bull.

"Did I not see you, señor, at the jefatura just now?"

With Bull's nod tragedy resolved into comedy. Swinging round on the
_comerciante_ and his woman, the officer pronounced on their complaint.
"They that gamble must expect to lose. Off, fool! before I throw thee in
carcel."

Having driven in the moral with the flat of his saber across the
merchant's back, he next took up the complaint of the girls. "How know
ye that these be they that stole your garments? Only that they passed
while you were at the wash? Then back, doves, to your cotes! These be
friends of the jefe and no stealers of women's fripperies."

Stiffly saluting the Three, he marched his ragged soldiery away.

Five seconds thereafter the Three were again on their way--to the
_cantina_ where they usually put up.

"All we've gotter do now," Sliver chuckled as they rode on down the
street, "is to rope a stray calf or a pig on the way home, an' Rosa'll
be fixed for a month."

But, alas for Rosa! After they had stabled their horses and eaten,
followed one of those debauches that occur when men with natural
"thirsts" turn loose after a period of deprivation. During its course
they spent first the thirty-two _pesos_ and some _centavos_, drank up
their own _tequila_, finally bartered the groceries to buy still more
liquor for the rabble of _peones_ and brown girls that flocked to the
_cantina_ like buzzards to carrion.

The "drunk" went through the customary stages from boisterous
conviviality, singing, loud boasting, quarreling, fighting. Three times
Sliver and Jake locked and rolled on the floor, tearing like tigers at
each other's throats, nor let go till pried apart by Bull. Worse,
because really terrible, was it to see the giant rustler, after the
other two had lapsed into sottish sleep, sitting with his broad
shoulders against the adobe wall, huge hands squeezing an imaginary
throat, while his drink-crazed brain rehearsed the details of some past
tragedy. Shortly thereafter he also rolled over in drunken sleep.

As they lay there, crumpled, limp, breathing stertorously, there was
nothing edifying in the spectacle. It would be unfair to hint at a
likeness between them and the swine that snored in the kennel outside;
unfair to the swine, which never descend through drink from their
natural estate. Drunkards and outlaws, they were probably as low, at
that moment, as human beings ever go. Yet when they awoke, _sans_
groceries, _sans tequila_, _sans_ money, but plus three splitting
headaches, they faced the situation with saving humor.

"Tough on Rosa," Jake said, with a rueful grin.

"If she's still there," Sliver doubted. "An' I'll bet a peppercorn to a
toothpick she ain't."

"Chihuahua, now, or starve," Bull succinctly summed the situation. He
added, grinning, "Anyway, we'll travel light."




IV: THE TRAIL OF THE COLORADOS


Five days later the Three looked down from a mountain shoulder upon the
first and greatest of the Chihuahua _haciendas_.

Far beyond the limit of sight its level ranges ran. From the crest of
the blue range in the distance, their glances would still have traveled
on less than half-way to the eastern limit. The Mexican Central train,
then running southward in the trough between two ranges thirty miles
away, had been speeding all day across lands whose ownership was vested
in one man. The half-score of towns, hundred villages, in its environs
were there only by his consent. Until the bursting of the first
revolution had sent him flying into El Paso with other northern
overlords, their thousands of inhabitants, shopkeepers, muleteers,
artisans, _peones_, drew by his grace the very breath of life.

"Seems foolish even to think that one could own all that."

Jake's glance wandered over the desert that laid off its shining
distances to the horizon. Here and there flat-topped _mesas_ uplifted
their chrome and vermilion façades from the dead flat. Very far away,
one huge fellow raised phantom battlements from the ghostly waters of a
mirage. It was altogether unlike their own Sonora desert. In place of
the familiar seas of sage, cactus and spiky yucca were thinly strewn
over a land whose unmitigated drought was accentuated by the parched
windings of waterless streams. Gold! gold! its shimmer was everywhere;
burned in the sand; in the dust whorls that danced with the little
winds; in the air that flowed like wine around the royal purple of
distant ranges. Lifeless, without sign of human tenancy, its solitary
reaches were infinite as the ocean. Yet man and his works were not so
very far away. Certain black specks that hovered or wheeled against the
blue of the sky a mile away served as a sign-post.

"Vultures," Sliver pointed. "Must be something dead over there."

"Or dying?" Bull questioned. "Otherwise the birds 'u'd settle. These
days it's as likely to be human as horse. We might ride down that way."

And human it proved to be when, half an hour later, they rode out of
encircling cactus into an open space around a giant _sahuaro_. Head
fallen back so that his face was turned up to the torrid sun; relaxed,
limp as a rag, a man hung by his wrists that had been tied at the full
stretch of his arms around the _sahuaro's_ barrel. During the sixty
hours he had hung there without food or water the skin had shrunk till
it lay like scorched parchment on the bones of his face. In addition to
the vultures that hovered above, others hopped or fluttered over the hot
sands, or perched, patient as death itself, on the surrounding cactus.
Now and then a bolder scavenger hopped upon his shoulder. But a slow
roll of the head, sudden hiss of dry breath, would drive it away. At the
approach of the Three the evil creatures rose in a black cloud, filling
the air with the beat and swish of coffin wings.

"He's white! a gringo!" Bull cried it while he hacked at the cords.

"The poor devil!" Sliver spoke softly as he lifted and laid the poor,
limp body on his outspread coat.

While he laved the shrunken face and Bull poured water, drop by drop, on
the man's swollen tongue, Jake carefully parted the swollen flesh of the
wrists and cut away the cords.

If old man Livingstone, or other of the border ranchers who had suffered
through their raids, could have seen them at their merciful work, have
noted their gentleness, heard their sympathetic comment, they would
probably have refused the evidence of their own eyes. Though still too
weak to even raise his head, they brought the man in an hour to the
point where he was able, in whispers, to give an account of himself.

He was a miner and his claim lay on a natural bench that jutted out from
the sheer wall of a great gulch in the mountains about a mile away. His
house, a hut of corrugated iron, stood with a few rough work buildings
up there. If he could only get to it, he'd be all right.

And he soon did. Lifted by the others to the saddle in front of Bull and
cradled like a child in the rustler's great arms, he scarcely felt the
journey. Viewed as he hung on the _sahuaro_, dirty, bruised, shrunken by
fever and thirst, he might have been any age. But when laid on his bed,
washed, fed with a quick soup compounded by Sliver out of pounded jerky
and some pea meal he found on a shelf, he proved to be a typical
American miner of middle age--short gray beard, hawk profile, high
cheek-bones, eyes blue and hard as agate. By the time they had cooked
for themselves--for even if his condition had permitted, it was now too
late to go on--he had recovered his voice and told them all.

"It was the 'Colorados' that tied me up. I knew them by the 'red hearts'
on the breasts of their charro jackets."

Even up into their far corner of Sonora had penetrated something of the
terror associated with the name. Originally the "Colorados" had been
Orozco's soldiers. But when dispersed by the collapse of his revolution
against Madero they had split up into bands and overrun the northern
Mexican states. Because of their frightful cruelties they were shot by
the Carranzistas whenever caught. But though the spread of the latter
power was driving them farther south, they still made occasional raids.

"But I was lucky to get off with that," he said, after describing the
beating that had preceded the tying-up. "They cut the soles off the feet
of two of my _peones_, then drove them, stark-naked, through spiky
chollas. When the poor devils fell, exhausted, they beat them to death
where they lay on the ground. Surely I was lucky, for if it hadn't been
that they thought I had money, and tied me up to make me confess, I'd
have got the same. They left me to raid some _rancho_, but swore they'd
come back."

Riding in, they had passed the dead _peones_, and, bad man that he was,
Jake shuddered at the memory. "But why do you stay here, with that kind
of people running loose?"

"Why do I stay?" The miner repeated the question, with heat. "The
American consul in Chihuahua is always asking that. Why does any man
stay anywhere? Because his living is there. We came here under treaties
that guaranteed our rights in the time of Diaz when this country had
been at peace for thirty years. Every cent I had was put into this mine,
and I'd worked it along to the point where it would pay big capital to
come in when that fanatic, Madero, turned hell loose.

"At first we naturally expected that Uncle Sam would look after our
rights. But did he? Yes, by ordering us to get out--we that had invested
a thousand million dollars in opening up markets for a hundred million
dollars' worth a year of his manufactured products. Get out and have it
all go up in smoke the minute our backs were turned!

"Luckily for me, I had no women folk to complicate the situation. But
most of the others had. We'd thought, of course, that the mistreatment
of one American woman would bring intervention, and so did the Mexicans
till the thing had been done again and again. Since then--know what that
Colorado leader replied when I threatened him with the vengeance of our
Government?"

"'Your Government!' he sneered. 'We have killed your men, we have
ravished your women, we have exterminated your brats; will you tell me
what else we can do to make your Government fight?'"

He concluded, with bitter sadness, "I was brought up to love and revere
the flag; to believe that an American citizen was safe wherever it
floated. But, men! I've seen it trampled in the mire, spat upon, defiled
by filthy _peones_, then spread in mockery over the dead bodies of
Americans who believed in its power to save."

In Sonora and on the west coast, so far, foreigners had suffered
principally in their goods. But rumors and reports of excesses in the
central states had found their way westward; enough of them for the
Three to find all the miner had said quite easy of belief.

"It sure puts Uncle Sam in rather a poor light," Jake agreed. "He don't
seem a bit like the old fellow that sent General Scott right through to
Mexico City."

Bull's big head moved in an emphatic nod through a thick cloud of
tobacco smoke. "Looks like the old gent had lost his pep sence he put
the Apaches outer the scalping business an' got through spanking Johnny
Reb."

Only Sliver, the optimist, stood by the accused. "Jest wait! D'you-all
know what's going to happen one o' these days? That same Uncle Sam, he's
mighty patient an' he's been handed a heap o' bad counsel; but one of
these days he's a-going to get mad. When he does--listen! he's a-going
to walk down to the Mexican line an' take a look at it with his nose all
crinkled up like he smelled something bad. 'Things ain't quite right
here!' he'll say, ca'm an' deliberate, that-a-way. Then he'll stoop an'
pick up that line, an' when he sots it down again--it 'ull be south of
Panama. Jest you-all wait an' see!"

"'Wait? Wait?'" the miner sarcastically repeated. "Seems as though I'd
heard that before. Wait all you want. As for me--one thing I know.
Unless your Uncle Samuel crinkles his nose pretty soon, there'll be
darned few of us gringos left to see."

"Why not watch from the other side?"

"Watch hell!" The sudden firing of the hard agate eyes showed that,
despite his wounds and torture, his just grievance, sorrow, and
indignation over his fellows' wrongs, that despite all the indomitable
American spirit, the spirit that dared Indian massacres in the conquest
of the plains, the spirit of the Alamo which added Texas and California
to the Union, the spirit that preserved the Union itself from
disintegration, the fine old spirit of '76, still burned under all.
"Watch hell! As I told you, we came here under treaties that guaranteed
protection. We have a right to stay, and by God! we're going to stay!
To-morrow I'll get together my _peones_ and go right to it again;
only"--he observed a significant pause--"the next time the Colorados
come there'll be a machine-gun trained on 'em from up here on the bench.
All I ask is that the Lord sends me the same bunch again."

In this stout frame of mind and recovered sufficiently to move about,
the Three left him next morning. Looking back from the mouth of the
gorge, they got a last glimpse of him between the towering walls, a
solitary figure on the edge of the bench. A wave of the hand and he
passed out of their lives--in person, but not in other ways. His was one
of the stray figures that stroll casually across the course of a life
and, in passing, deflect its course into alien channels. Not for nothing
had he suffered torture. That and his talk last night had sown in Bull,
at least, a certain leaven; the first fruits whereof showed in the
sudden, vicious thump with which he brought his big fist down on the
pommel as they rode along.

"I was thinking of what that fellow said las' night," he replied to
Jake's questioning look. "To think, after that, we're out to rob our own
countrymen for the benefit of a rotten little greaser."

"That's so." Sliver accepted the new point of view with his accustomed
alacrity. "Damned if I seen it that way afore."

But Jake, always practical, sterilized this absurd sentimentality with a
sudden injection of rustler's sense. "Aw, come off! You fellows may be
out for Mexicans, but I'm for myself. We robbed our countrymen on the
other side of the line, an' what's wrong with robbing them on this? I
kain't see the diff. Business is business; we've gotter eat."

"That's right, too." Sliver caught the sense of it. "We've sure gotter
eat."

But Bull's face grew blacker. The Colorado's boast, "We've raped your
women, exterminated your brats," had aroused in him instincts older than
the race; the instinct that set the gorilla-like caveman with bristling
hair, grinning teeth, in the mouth of his cave; that sent the Saxon hind
at the throat of the Norse rover; the instinct that has animated the
entire line of men through eons of time to rise in defense of the tribal
women.

He felt their soul agony, these tribeswomen of his, condemned to become
a prey of _peon_ bandits; and while the feeling swelled within him, his
black brow drew down over narrowed hot eyes. His huge frame quivered
with indignation as righteous as ever animated the best of the race in
the defense of a common cause. And yet--

Business was business, they had to eat! The feeling left untouched their
evil habit of life; compelled no immediate change of plan.


About midway of the afternoon the Three sighted the poles of the Mexican
Central Railway, a gray line of sticks running off in the distance. As
they drew nearer, a certain dark blur on the embankment resolved into
the rusted ironwork of a burned train. The line here ran almost due east
to round a mountain spur, and as they followed along it the rack and
ruin of three revolutions passed under their eyes.

Linking burned trains, that occurred every few miles, long lines of
twisted rails writhed and squirmed in the ditch. The desiccated
carcasses of dead horses, small twig crosses that marked the graves of
their wild riders, ran continuously with the telegraph poles. Far beyond
their view they ran, those twisted rails, wrecks, carcasses, and
crosses, for ten thousand miles throughout the ramifications of the
_Nacional_ railroads, to the uttermost corners of Mexico; and typical of
the vast destruction was the burned station they came on at sundown.
Topping a black hill that rose abruptly from the plain behind it, a huge
wooden cross stood blackly out against the smoldering reds of the
evening sky, futile emblem of the simple faith that had relied upon it
to save the station.

While the Three sat their horses and gazed at the ruin, a whistle
sounded, and out from the north steamed a troop-train, first of a dozen,
whose glaring headlights spaced off the dusk which was now falling like
a dusty brown blanket over the desert.

As the first rolled past Jake swore softly and Sliver exclaimed in
surprise, for never before was seen such a sight. On it were packed some
thousand _peon_ soldiers, part of Valles's army on its way south to
pursue the merry trade that had wrought the prevailing destruction.
Unlike any other army, its guns, horses, munitions, and supplies were
loaded inside, while the soldiers rode with their women on top of
box-cars.

In their motley uniforms, regulation khaki or linen alternating with
tight _charro_ suits and _peon_ cottons, they were exceedingly
picturesque, and not a man of them but was belted or bandoliered with at
least fifteen pounds of shining brass cartridges.

Under shelters of cottonwood boughs or serapes stretched on poles, their
brown women crouched by clay cooking-pots, set over fires built on
earthen hearths within a ring of stones; so while the _frijoles_ and
_chile_ simmered and sent forth grateful odors, their lords gambled,
smoked, or slept.

Nor did they lack music. On every car careless fellows sat with legs
dangling precariously over the edge, while they chanted in a high nasal
drone to the tinkling of a guitar. Ablaze with vivid color, scarlets,
violets, blues, yellows of the women's dresses and serapes, wreathed in
the faint blue smoke of cooking-fires, the trains flashed out of and
passed on into the brown dusk, while the guitar tinkled a subdued minor
to their roar and rattle.

As the last rolled by a tall Texan rose alongside a machine-gun that was
set up on the car roof and yelled to the Three: "Come on, fellows! We're
going to belt hell out of the Federals at Torreon!"

It was the trumpet call of adventure; Adventure, the mistress of men,
she who was largely responsible for their "rustlings," investing it, as
she did, with the fireglows of romance. Subtract the long rides through
hot dusks, sudden swoop on drowsy herds, the thunder of the stampede,
the fight, pursuit, take away all this and reduce the business to its
essence, plain thievery, and not one of the Three but would have turned
from it in disgust.

If the train had stopped--perhaps their lives would have been deflected
into those roaring, revolutionary channels that led on to death in the
trenches outside Torreon. But it rolled on into the dusk, and as it
vanished their eyes went to a light that burst like a golden flower in
the window of a hut built of railroad ties. Five minutes thereafter they
were in full enjoyment of that hospitality which, such as it is, may be
had all over Mexico for "a cigarette and a smile."

While eating they extracted from their host, a simple _peon_, all the
information necessary for the horse raid. To avoid "requisitions"
payable in revolutionary currency wet from the nearest newspaper press,
the _gringos hacendados_ had driven their animals into the mountain
pastures three-quarters of a day's ride east of the tracks. But omitting
the details of the long ride next day over plains where the scant grass
ran in sunlit waves ahead of the wind to the horizon, the history of the
raid may proceed from the moment the Three sighted the first horses in
the hollow of a shallow valley late the following afternoon.

Even at the distance, almost a quarter-mile, they could see the
difference in size and condition between them and the common Mexican
scrubs. After long study through powerful binoculars that played about
the same part in their operations as a "jimmy" in those of a burglar,
Bull exclaimed his admiration, "_Some horses!_"

"But--" Jake indicated five Mexicans who were herding the animals at a
fast trot down the valley, "we're out of luck."

"Oh, I don't know." Bull handed him the glasses. "See what you make of
'em."

"_Colorados!_" Jake spied at once the dreaded ensign, the red heart on
the blue _charro_ jacket. "It's the same outfit that tied up the miner,
too. Remember how he described the leader? 'About twice as tall as a
common Mexican'? That fellow's six-foot-two if he's an inch."

"The gall of him," Sliver snorted. "What do you think o' that? After
_our_ horses! Well, they 'ain't got 'em yet. We'll jest ride along
behind the hill here an'--"

But Jake, who was still gazing through the glasses, dryly interrupted.
"No, you bet he hain't. I've a hunch that the gent coming over the hill,
there, is the man that owns 'em."

As yet the new-comer was unseen by the Colorados, and as, without pause,
he raced after them down the slope, Bull growled his admiration. "He's
sure got his nerve."

"Mebbe he don't know they're Colorados."

Perhaps Sliver was right. As the raiders' backs were turned, the daring
rider could not see the dreaded ensign. Or he may have thought that the
marauders would fly at the sight of him; intended to afford them
opportunity when he pulled his gun and fired.

"Here comes his army!" Jake croaked.

"Only a lad."

Bull, who now held the glasses, made out both the youthful face, white
with anxiety, and the lithe swing of the young body in rhythm with the
galloping horse. The anxiety was justified, for as he also raced on down
the slope the Colorados swung in their saddles, let go a volley from
their short carbines, and dropped the first rider and horse in his
tracks. At the same moment the lad's hat, a soft slouch, blew off,
loosing a cloud of fair hair on the breeze. If it had not, a shrill
scream would still have proclaimed the rider's sex.

"Hell!" Bull's astonishment vented itself in a sudden oath. "It's a
woman! a white girl--dressed in man's riding-togs!"




V: THE "HACIENDA OF THE TREES"


Strange is fate! From two points, perhaps the width of the world apart,
two lives begin their flow, and though their mutual currents be
deflected hither and thither by the winds of fortune, tides of chance,
yet will they eventually meet, coalesce, and roll on together like two
drops that join running in down a window-pane.

Now between John Carleton, owner of some hundred thousand broad acres,
and the three rapscallions of Las Bocas the only possible relation would
appear to be that which could be established by a well-oiled gun.
Between them and Lee Carleton, his pretty daughter, any relation
whatever would appear still more foreign. Yet--but let it suffice, for
the present, that just about the time the Three had gained almost to the
_hacienda_ Carleton and his daughter had reined in their horses on the
crest of a grassy knoll that overlooked the buildings.

A long pause, during which neither spoke, gives time for her portrait.
Rather tall for a girl and slender without thinness, her fine, erect
shoulders and the lines of her lithe body lost nothing by her costume;
riding-breeches of military cord, yellow knee-boots, man's cambric shirt
with a negligée collar turned down at the neck. Her features were small
and delicately cut; the nose piquant, slightly _retroussé_. Her eyes,
large and brown and widely placed under a low broad brow, vividly
contrasted with her fair skin and tawny hair. The face, as a whole, was
wonderfully mobile and expressive, almost molten in its swift response
to lively emotion. Just now, while she sat on gaze, it expressed that
curious yearning, half pathetic, that is born of deep feeling.

"Oh, dad, isn't it beautiful!"

The sweep of her small hand took in the range rolling in long sunlit
billows; but her eyes were on the _hacienda_--_Hacienda de los Arboles_,
named in the sonorous Spanish after the huge cottonwoods that lent it
pleasant shade.

Built in a great square, its massive walls, a yard thick and twice the
height of a man, formed the back wall of the stables, adobe cottages,
storehouses, and granaries on the inner side. It also lent one corner to
the house which rose above it to a second story. Pierced for musketry,
with a watch-tower rising above its iron-studded gates, it was, in the
old days, a real fort. Besides the long row that followed the
meanderings of a dry water-course across the landscape, a cluster of
giant cottonwoods raised their glossy heads within the compound, shading
with checkered leafage the watering wells and house. Set amidst growing
fields of corn and wheat at the foot of a range that loomed in violet,
crimson, or gold, according to the hour, it was as pleasant a place as
ever a man looked upon and called his home.

Carleton smiled as she added, "I'd hate to have been brought up in El
Paso or any other prosy American city."

He might have replied that there were American cities she might find
less prosy than El Paso. But he was well content to have her think as
she did.

His own gaze, overlooking the prospect, expressed the pride of
accomplishment with which men survey their completed work; nor was his
satisfaction less because the buildings themselves were not of his
creation. Coming here, sixteen years ago, with a nest-egg of two or
three thousand dollars, he had leased and let, bought and sold with
Yankee shrewdness; added acre to acre, flock to flock, until, at last,
he was in position to buy Los Arboles from a "land-poor" Spanish owner.

To a man without imagination the fact that its foundations had been laid
almost four centuries ago by one of Cortés's _conquistadores_ might have
meant little. With Carleton it counted more than its broad acreage. From
a trove of old papers left by the former owner he had gathered many a
story of siege and battle, scandal and intrigue, consummated within its
massive walls. Instead of fairy-tales, he had told these to Lee during
her childhood, so that medieval atmosphere had penetrated her very
being.

They seldom overlooked the _hacienda_, as now, without making some
observations anent its past. As in some vivid pageant, they saw the old
Dons, their _señoras_, _señoritas_, savage brown retainers, in the midst
of their fighting, working, loving, praying. By self-adoption, as it
were, Carleton, at least, had allied himself with them, had come to
think of himself as belonging to the family.

"Great old fellows they were!" Though he spoke musingly, now, without
connection, she instantly caught his meaning, knew he was harking back.
"Great old chaps! I was looking into one of our land titles the other
day, and the records read in princely fashion. 'Between the rivers such
and such, of a width that a man may ride in one day,' that was a
favorite method of establishing boundaries. No paring of land like
cheese rinds; everything done by wholesale; no haggling over a few
square leagues."

"And here comes one of them." Lee pointed her quirt at a horseman who
had just topped the opposite rise. "Doesn't he look it?"

Surely he did. The _charro_ suit of soft tanned deerskin with its
_bolero_ jacket and tight pantaloons braided or laced with silver; the
lithe figure under the suit; dark, handsome face, great Spanish eyes
that burned in the dusk of a gold-laced _sombrero_; the fine horse and
Mexican saddle heavily chased in solid silver; the gold-hilted _machete_
in its saddle sheath under the rider's leg, even the rope _riata_ coiled
around the solid silver pommel, horse, rider, and trappings belonged in
that pageant of the past.

"It is Ramon Icarza," Carleton nodded. "He hasn't been here for a long
time." This he repeated in Spanish when the young man rode up.

"Attending to the herds and the horses, señor. As with you, the most of
our _peones_ have run away to the wars. We have left only a few
_ancianos_ too feeble and stiff to be of much service. Still, with the
aid of the women we manage. That last requisition for the"--his shrug
was eloquent in its disdain--"_cause_. You paid it?"

"Had to--or be confiscated." With a grin comical in its mixture of
amusement and anger, Carleton went on, "I raked up five thousand pesos
of Valles's money and took it to him myself. And what do you think he
said? 'I don't want that stuff. I can print off a million in a minute.
You must pay me in gold.'"

Perhaps because humor has no place in the primitive psychology of his
race, Ramon received the news with a black frown. "The devil take him!
Yet you Americans are better treated than we, his countrymen. With us,
he takes all. Those poor Chihuahua comerciantes!" His hands and eyebrows
testified to Valles's scandalous treatment of the merchants. "First he
demands a contribution to the _cause_. Those who refuse are foolish, for
first he shoots them as traitors, then confiscates their goods. But the
poor devils who contribute, see you, fare little better; for with the
money he runs off a newspaper press he buys up the goods they have left.
In the old days we used to curse the locusts, señor; but they, at least,
left us our beasts and lands. Who would have thought, four years ago,
that you and the señorita here and my venerable father would be reduced
to become herders of cattle?"

"Oh, but it's lots of fun!" Lee's happy laugh bespoke sincerity. "I love
it out here. They will never be able to get me back in the house. And
that reminds me that we're almost due there for lunch."

"You'll stay, of course, Ramon?" Pointing to a couple of mares with
foals they had brought in from a distant part of the range, Carleton
added, "There's still another over in the next valley. If you will take
these along, I'll get her."

Left to themselves, the young man and girl headed the mares toward the
_hacienda_, riding sufficiently in rear to check the sudden, aimless
boltings of the foals. The helplessness of the little creatures touched
the girl's maternal instinct, and though their stilts of legs, wabbly
knees, long necks, and big heads were badly out of drawing, she
exclaimed like a true mother over their beauty.

"Oh, aren't they pretty!"

Ramon agreed--as he would had she called upon him to admire a Gila
monster. Not that he had always followed her lead. Close neighbors--that
is, as neighboring goes in range countries where distance is reckoned by
the hundred miles--their childhood had compassed more than the usual
number of squabbles. Until the dawn of masculine instinct had bound him
slave to her budding beauty, they had upset the peace and dignity of
many a ceremonial visit by fighting like cat and dog. Lee knew, of
course, his mother and sister, and not until she had extracted the last
iota of family gossip did she bestow a sisterly inspection on himself
and clothes. Having passed favorably on the material, fit, and
trimmings, she reached for his _sombrero_.

"You are quite the hacendado, now, Ramon, in that magnificent hat. Let
me look at it. What a beauty!"

While she turned and twisted it, fingered the rich gold braid, examined
it with head slightly askew like a pretty bird, the natural glow
intensified in Ramon's big dark eyes; a wave of color flowed through the
gold of his skin. His mouth--too red and womanish for Anglo-Saxon
standards--drew into a tender smile.

According to the cañons of fiction, this was wrong. A man with a black
or brown skin must reserve his admiration for women of his race. Yet,
with singular disregard, for writer's law, Nature continued to weave for
Ramon her potent spells. The sunshine snared in Lee's hair, rose blush
of her skin, her womanly contours, the fine molding of her limbs, the
sweetness of youth, all the witcheries of form and color with which
Nature lures her creatures to their matings, affected the lad just as
powerfully as if he had been born north of the Rio Grande.

On her part Lee ought to have resented his admiration. But here, again,
Nature utterly ignored "best seller" conventions. Brought up among
Mexicans, counting Ramon's sister her best friend, Lee felt no racial
prejudice. Wherefore, like any other young girl possessed of normal
health and spirits, she made the most of the situation. After
sufficiently admiring the hat, she tried it on.

"How does it look?"

As she faced him, saucily smiling from under the enormous brim, there
was no mistaking the "dare." Whether or no the custom obtains in Mexico,
Ramon caught the implication.

"Pretty enough to--kiss!"

With the word he reached swiftly for her neck, but caught only empty
air. Ducking with a touch of the spur, she shot from under his hand.

The next second he was after her. Along the shallow valley for a
half-mile she led, then, whirling just as he rode alongside, she shot
back along the ridge. At the end he overtook her, and, anticipating her
whirl, caught her bridle rein. Leaning back, however, flat on her
beast's back, laughing and panting, she was still out of his reach; and
when he began to travel, hand over hand, along the bridle, she leaped
down on the opposite side and dodged behind a lone _sahuaro_.

Sure of her now, he followed. But, dodging like a hare around the
_sahuaro_, she came racing back for the horses; might possibly have
gained them and made good her escape, if, glancing back over her
shoulder, she had not seen Ramon stumble, stop, then clasp his right
ankle.

"Oh, is it sprained?" she cried, running back. Then, as, reaching
suddenly, he caught her, she burst out, "Cheat! oh, you miserable
cheat!"

That all is fair in love and war, however, goes in all languages, and
while she punctuated the struggle with customary objections whereby
young maids enhance the value of a kiss, there was no anger in her
protests. Wrestling her back and down, he got, at last, the laughing
face upturned in the hollow of his arm; had almost reached her lips,
when, with force that sent Lee to the ground, he was seized and thrown
violently against the horse.

In the excitement of the chase they had completely forgotten Carleton,
who had viewed its beginnings from the opposite ridge. By self-adoption
he had almost, as before said, identified himself with the Spanish
strain that had flowed for centuries through the _patios_ and compound
of Los Arboles. He had even come to think in Spanish; in custom and
manner was almost Mexican. But in moments of anger habit gives place to
instinct. The instinct that first formed and later preserved the tribe,
pride of race, overpowered friendship. In one second the young Mexican,
whom he had regarded for years almost as a son, was transmuted into the
despised "greaser" of the border.

"You--you--" Choking with anger, eyes bits of blue flame, he strode at
Ramon, fist bunched to strike.

But the blow did not fall, for, scrambling up again, Lee seized his arm
from behind. "Oh, dad! dad!" Despite his struggles, she clung like a
cat, defeating his efforts to shake her off. "Oh, dad! It was only a bit
of fun! all my fault! I put on his hat! Please don't!"

If the young fellow had flinched, perhaps Carleton would have struck.
But, head erect, he quietly waited, and presently Carleton ceased
struggling.

"All right! I'll let him go--this time. But, remember"--bringing his
clenched fist in a heat of passion into the palm of the other hand, he
glared at the young man--"remember! when this girl is kissed--it will be
by a man of her own breed. Get off my land!" After helping Lee to mount,
he vaulted into his own saddle and rode away, driving the mares and
foals before them.

In accordance with before-mentioned precedents, Ramon ought to have
folded his arms and hissed a threat through gritted teeth. Instead, he
stood very quietly, his face less angry than sad, watching them go. His
little nod, in its firmness, would have become any young American; went
very well with his thought.

"We shall see."

Mounting, he rode away to the northward, and not till he had covered
many miles did he rein in his beast, so suddenly that it fell back on
its haunches. His dark face expressed vexation mixed with alarm.
"Maldito! I forgot to warn them that Colorados had been seen east of the
railroad. I must go back."

On their part, Lee and her father rode on toward the _hacienda_. Though
he glanced at her from time to time, it was always furtively, for with a
man's dislike of scenes he made no reference to that which had just
passed. Nevertheless, it filled his mind. Man-like, he had watched her
develop into womanhood with scarcely a thought for her future. If he had
given the subject any consideration he would probably have concluded
that, sooner or later, she would choose a suitable mate from the
hundreds of American miners, railroad men, ranchers, and engineers that
had swarmed in the state of Chihuahua before the revolution.

But with the clear vision of after sight he now saw that he had
unconsciously depended on the race pride which had just manifested
itself in himself to prevent her from contracting a mésalliance. Now,
with consternation, he faced the truth that racial pride is masculine;
contrary to both the feminine instinct and nature's scheme of things.

"I was a fool!" he berated himself. "A damned fool! She will have to go
north--live in the States for a while."

These and similar thoughts were whirling through his mind when they came
on a band of his horses at pasture under charge of an _anciano_, a
withered old _peon_, whose age and infirmities had estopped him from
joining the exodus to the wars. After cautioning the old fellow not to
allow the animals to stray too far, Carleton plunged again into deep
meditation.

Had he not been thus preoccupied he would probably have long ago
discovered the five horsemen who were following at a distance, using the
natural cover afforded by the rolling land; for he always rode with a
powerful binocular in his holster, and often swept with it the prospect.
Several times the glass would have shown him a row of heads behind the
next ridge in rear. As it was, he had ridden to the crest of the rise
from which they had looked down on the _hacienda_ before habit asserted
itself. He had no sooner leveled the glasses than an exclamation burst
from his lips. "My God!"

"What is it, dad?" Lee swung in her saddle, looking back at him.

"Raiders! They are attacking Francisco! He has nothing but his staff!
He's fighting them like an old lion! My God, they're chopping him with
their machetes." It came out of him in staccato phrases. "Race in and
send out Juan, Lerdo, and Prudencia with rifles! Stay there! Don't dare
to follow!"

Digging in his spurs, he galloped away. For a moment the girl hesitated.
Her eyes went to the _hacienda_, still half a mile away, then back to
her father racing madly down the slope. There was no time to go for
help! Loosening the pistol in her holster, she drove in her spurs and
galloped after.

From Carleton's first appearance till the girl screamed all had passed
so quickly that the Three could only sit and gape. From their original
intent to rob Carleton it was a far cry to the reconstructed impulse to
succor and save him, and it speaks well for them that they accomplished
the revolution as soon as they did.

The scream had not passed unnoticed by the Colorados. The leader, who
had turned to ride on, swung his beast, looked, then, as the girl
dropped from the saddle to her knees beside the wounded man, drove in
his spurs and galloped toward her. Heedless of her own danger, Lee was
trying to stanch with her handkerchief the bloodflow from Carleton's
chest, so lost in her agonized grief that she did not look up till the
Colorado leaped down and seized her.

In this world there are savages who would have respected, for the time
at least, her white grief. But this was the man who had tortured the
miner and his _peones_; driven the latter naked through spiky cactus
after he had cut the soles off their feet. She sprang up when he seized
her, and as she fought bitterly, beating away his black, evil face with
her little fists, his strident laughter mingled with her wild sobbing
and carried to Bull behind the ridge.

For three days this man's boast had rung in his brain: "We've killed
your men, outraged your women!" But though anger blazed within him, his
tone was icy cold. "Look after the others. I'll 'tend to him!"

He had already pulled his rifle from the sling under his leg. Raising it
now, he lined the sights, the same sights that had directed a ball
through the brain of Livingstone's horse. While Lee writhed and twisted
in the Colorado's arms, he dared not shoot. He waited until, at the
double crack of his companions' rifles, two of the other Colorados
pitched headlong from their saddles. Then, as their leader paused to
look and, with a swift wrench, Lee tore loose and let daylight between
them, the rifle spoke, sent its bullet whistling through his brain.

"Keep after them!" Bull called back as he rode on over the ridge.

But already Jake and Sliver's rifles were barking like hungry dogs.
Trained to a hair in guerrilla warfare, the remaining Colorados had
spurred their beasts behind the horse herd. At the first shot the band
had stampeded, and now, urged on by the yells of the fugitives, who rode
crouched on their horses' necks, the scared animals coursed swiftly down
the valley.

"The gall of them! _Our_ horses!" Repeating his former observation,
Sliver would have ridden after.

But Jake caught his bridle. His bleak eyes were scintillating like
sunlit icicles. His lean, avid face quivered with subdued ferocity.
"Don't be a damn fool! They're only using 'em for cover! We'll shoot
along this side of the ridge an' catch 'em at the end of the valley!"

Meanwhile Bull rode on down the slope. After a surprised stare that
showed her rescuers to be Americans, Lee had knelt again beside her
father. As before said, Bull was no beauty. His black beard, bushy
brows, hot red eyes, drink-blotched face, were of themselves sufficient
to frighten a woman. Yet when she looked up sympathy illumined his
countenance till it shone in her distressed sight as a clear lamp
radiating human feeling. Without fear or doubt she turned to him for
help.

"It's my father! I'm afraid--Can't you do something?"

So far Carleton had lain with his eyes closed. Now he opened them and
spoke in detached whispers as Bull knelt by his side. "You're--American.
I told her not to follow. Don't bother--with me. I'm shot--through lungs
and stomach--bleeding inside. Get Lee--back to the house."

"Plenty of time," Bull soothed him. As a crackle of rifle-fire turned
loose in the distance, followed by sudden silence, he added, "That 'ull
be the last o' the Colorados. I'll fix you a bit, an' when my fellows
come back we'll jest pack you home."

With a plainsman's skill in crude surgery, he tore up Carleton's shirt
to make a pad and bandage which he twisted with a stick till the
blood-flow stopped. This was no more accomplished before Jake and Sliver
rode up, driving the horses ahead.

"They won't cut no more soles offen people's feet," Jake answered Bull's
questioning look.

"Fine and dandy." Bull nodded. "You, Jake, rope a fresh horse outer the
band an' ride like hell to the railroad an' wire El Paso for a doctor."

"No!" Lee eagerly suggested. "Wire the American Club at Chihuahua. These
dreadful days all gringos help one another."

Freshly horsed, five minutes thereafter, Jake galloped away--but not
before, cold, crafty, laconic, dissolute gambler as he was, he had left
a comforting word in the girl's ear. "Don't you be skeered, Miss. I'll
bring out a doctor, if I have to ride inter El Paso an' raid a
hospital."

As he went out of sight over the next roll Sliver, with the girl's aid,
lifted the wounded man up to Bull in the saddle. So for the second time
within three days did the giant rustler bear like a child in his arms a
_gringo_ victim of the Mexican revolution. To the leaven that had been
working within him was now added the most powerful influence that can be
brought to bear on a man--a woman's heartbroken sobbing.




VI: BULL TURNS NURSE


Passing over into the next valley, they came on the body of old
Francisco, hacked almost to bits. So far Lee had kept a strong grip on
herself. But now she burst out crying.

"The poor fellow! He was faithful as a dog. We saw them cut him down,
and that caused dad to lose his head. Otherwise he would never have
tried to pursue them alone."

"He was old--an' died a man's death," Bull offered her rough comfort.
"You couldn't wish him a better ending."

It was man's reasoning, therefore contrary to her woman's feelings, yet
it helped to control her grief. She acquiesced at once when Bull
suggested that she ride ahead and prepare a room.

By her departure Sliver was afforded an opportunity to get something off
his mind. After a glance at Carleton, who had relapsed again into
unconsciousness, he nodded at the horses. "Don't you allow I'd better
leave 'em here? After we get through with him we kin come back an'--" He
stopped, shuffled uneasily, under Bull's stare.

"You're dead right! Don't trouble to say it. I'd steal the horses offen
a hearse."

Bull's glance dropped again to the unconscious man. Then, very slowly,
he voiced his opinion, formed on frontier code: "Wait till he's well
enough to fight for his own. Till then--we leave him alone."

Stepping at a lively gait, they passed in half an hour under the _patio_
gateway. Within, arched _portales_ ran around three sides, supporting
the gallery of an upper story. From the red-tiled roof above a wonderful
creeper poured a cataract of green lace, so dense, prolific, that only
vigorous pruning kept it from burying the _portales_ beneath. In the
center rose a great _arbol de fuego_, "tree of fire," contrasting its
flaming blossoms with the rich greens of palms and bananas.

They were met at the entrance by a flock of frightened brown women,
house servants, and _peonas_; for of the scores of men who had worked
for Carleton before the wars there were left only three withered
_ancianos_ to bear his body up the wide stone stairway to a room that
caught the fresh breeze from the mountains.

Here Bull redressed the wounds. His skill, however, was only of the
surface. As it would require at least four days to bring a doctor even
from Chihuahua, he felt that unless Jake materialized one out of the dry
desert air Carleton would surely die. Nevertheless, he stoutly denied
the possibility to Lee during the two days that he shared her watch.

Sliver, on his part, also did his best to cheer and comfort, relating
marvelous tales of accidents and illnesses that, by contrast, made
shooting through the lungs and stomach look smaller than a toothache.

"You she'd have seen Rusty Mikel, Miss, the time his Bill-hoss turned a
flip-flop onto him. Druv' the pommel clean through his chest, it did.
Yet he was up an' around, lively as a bedbug by candle-light, in less 'n
five weeks."

Surely without them the girl would not only have broken down, but her
father could never have survived to see the doctor, whose arrival was
announced by a rapid beat of hoofs the following evening. For Jake had
achieved the impossible, grabbed him, if not from midair, at least from
a revolutionary-hospital train that had stopped at the burned station to
bury its dead.

The doctor was American. But even as he dismounted at the gate Bull
picked him for a "colonist." Just how, he himself could not have said.
His premature grizzle, unhealthy pallor, might have been due to
overwork. But a certain brooding quiet, seen only in those who have been
cut off for long periods from communication with their fellows,
impressed even Sliver. He remarked on it while they sat with Jake under
the _portales_ while he ate.

"Say! but he's whitish. Looks like he'd done time."

"He has," Jake nodded. "I had it from a Yankee machine-gunner in
Valles's army that had got himself shot through both arms an' was being
taken back to the base hospital with about a hun'red others. When I
landed at the burned station he was a-setting with his legs dangling out
of a box-car door, watching 'em bury his _compañeros_ that had died on
the way.

"'Gotter do it quick,' he says. 'They don't keep worth a darn in this
clime.'

"He'd met Carleton once in Chihuahua, an' 'twas him that sent the doctor
an' tol' me about him while he was packing his grip. Seems that he'd
belonged to a gang that worked insurance frauds on American companies.
They'd insure some _peon_ that was about ready to croak, paying the
premiums themselves an' c'llecting the insurance after he cashed in. If
he lingered 'twas said that they hurried him. That was never quite
proved, most of 'em being too far gone to testify when they was
resurrected. But the doc had furnished the death certificate, an' as the
Mexicans ain't so particular about technicalities as our courts, he was
sentenced to be shot along with his pals. If he'd been Mexican they'd
have done it, too. But Diaz, who liked a bad gringo better than a good
greaser, commuted the sentence to life imprisonment. He'd actually
served twelve years--think of it, hombres! twelve years in a Mexican
jail before the revolutionists let him out to serve on their
hospital-trains."

"Twelve years!" Sliver echoed it. "An' just for croaking a few Mex? He
orter ha' practised in New Mexico. They'd have give him a medal up
there."

After Jake had eaten, the Three sat and smoked till the doctor came
down. While eating he made his report. "If I could do any good I'd stay.
But he will surely die to-night. It's going to be mighty hard on that
poor girl. Like most of us"--his glance took in all Three--"Carleton
didn't come down here for his health. It's bad form in Mexico to inquire
about a man's past. Nevertheless, it's pretty well known that he killed
the seducer of his wife and came here with the child when she was four
years old. She's never been away since, and has no kin that she knows
of. To run a hacienda, these days, is too big a job for a girl."

His deep concern showed an underlying goodness. Genuine sadness weighted
his words when he gave his last orders from the saddle. "I've left an
opiate in case he suffers. He may regain consciousness, but don't be
deceived. It will be the last flare before the dark."


It happened at midnight. An hour before, Bull had put Lee out of the
room with gentle force to take needed rest. He had then moved his chair
to the door, which opened out on the _corredor_, to secure the free air
his rustler's lungs demanded. Across the compound he could see the
moon's pale lantern hanging in the branches of a yucca that upraised its
maimed and twisted shape on a distant knoll. Northward the mountains
loomed, dim and mysterious, in tender light that reduced the vivid
chromes and blues of lime-washed adobes in the compound to pale violet
and clear gold.

_Gringo_ as he was, his people had lived under Carleton's hand fuller,
freer lives than their forebears had ever known under the Mexican
overlords, and, day or night, the _patio_ had never lacked a dozen brown
_peonas_ on their knees at their prayers to the saints. Under the _arbol
de fuego_ in the center of the _patio_ below three old crones had
erected a small altar, and its guttering candles now threw splashes of
gold up through the crimson dusk of the tree. Adding the human note
which, by contrast, accentuated the infinite mystery of that still
night, their mutterings rose up to Bull; bits of gossip sandwiched
between prayers.

"Three crows perched here at sundown, Luisa. Thou knowest what that
means?"

"Si; they were devils come for a soul."

"'Tis a pity that all gringos are doomed to the flame. The señor was a
good master to us that had felt the iron fist of the Spaniard."

"The señorita? She that is so sweet and good. Thinkest thou, Luisa, that
she also will be cast into hell?"

"Not if my prayers can save, Pancha. Three great candles, at twenty
centavos the candle, have I burned on the altar of Guadalupe for her
soul's sake. There is yet time for her. But the poor señor--" her pause
doomed him. Nevertheless, with greater vigor they returned to their
prayers for his saving.

The dim beauty of the night with its spread of moonlit plain, loom of
distant mountains, querulous supplication rising under cold stars,
combined to produce that awful sense of infinity that shrouds the riddle
of life. If Bull was incapable of philosophizing upon it, to translate
the feeling in thought, he still came under its sway. While it weighed
heavily upon him, there came a gasp and feverish mutter from the bed.

In a second he was there. As he removed the shade from the candle he saw
Carleton's face lit by the last flare. Recognition and intelligence both
were there.

"Where is--Lee? Sleeping? Don't wake her. Listen! She--must not--stay
here. Tell William Benson--he's rough and a bully--but honest and good.
Tell him to get a permit--from the revolutionists--to drive my cattle
and horses--across to the States. They will bring enough--to keep Lee
for many--a year. Be sure--"

The halting voice suddenly failed. Even while Bull was reaching for a
stimulant the soul of the man passed out into the mystery beyond the
moonlit plains.

For a while Bull stood looking down upon him. Then, very slowly, he made
toward the door that led to the girl's room. But as her tired face rose
before him he stopped and shook his head. "Let her finish her sleep."
Tiptoeing, instead, out to the gallery rail, he leaned down and softly
called the old women.




VII: THE RUSTLERS ARE ADOPTED


"Well, I reckon this about lets us out."

The Three sat under the _portales_, heavily smoking. Bull puffed
meditatively at a strong old pipe. Between lungfuls Sliver toyed
absently with a cigarette. The necessities of dealing faro-bank had
trained Jake in the labial manipulations of his fat native cigar. As all
necessary readjustment could be made with the tongue or lips, his hands
were thrust deep in his pockets, a proof of profound mental
concentration. It was he who had spoken, and the "this" alluded to
Carleton's funeral, which had taken place the preceding day.

It had been a quiet affair. William Benson, the nearest white neighbor,
happened to be in El Paso. Of a round dozen Mexicans of the better
class, eleven were wearily waiting on the other side of the border till
still another revolution should restore their territorial rights. The
Icarzas, Ramon and his father, a bewhiskered _hacendado_, attended, with
Isabel, the dusky beauty of the house. The Lovells, a small American
rancher and his two pretty daughters, represented the hundreds of
_gringos_, miners, ranchers, engineers, smelter men, who would have come
in normal times. So these, with Lee, Carleton's _peones_, and the Three,
had followed the rude ox-cart that bore him to the graveyard of a little
adobe church in the hills. Their duty in the premises being thus
consummated, the Three had resolved themselves into a committee on ways
and means.

"Yes, I s'pose we'll have to move on." If not actually dismal, Sliver's
indorsement both expressed regret and invited contradiction.

Bull did not speak. He was watching Lee and the Lovell girls, who had
just then stepped out of her room across the _patio_. Phyllis, the
younger, was to stay for a week, while Phoebe, the elder, returned home
with her father, who had just brought the horses to the gateway. As Lee
walked with her guests the length of the _patio_ she took with her the
sympathetic glances of the Three.

Nature mercifully provides her own anesthesia, stunning the victims of
her catastrophes till the dangerous period of shock be passed. Later,
the sight of Carleton's riding-whip, spurs, or gloves, carelessly thrown
in a corner, would bring a violent recurrence of grief, set her
agonizing once more before the great blank wall of death. But just now
complete emotional exhaustion left her quiet and calm. Neither had she
made any attempt to bury her youth under the frowsy trappings of grief.
Even the black velvet riband she wore at her throat was purely
accidental, a natural trimming of her dress.

Indeed, the other girls showed more outward sorrow. Though American
born, they were almost Spanish in their coloring, and their dusky eyes,
dark hair, rich cream skins provided a vivid foil for Lee's fairness. If
their eyes were swollen and nose tips chafed, the fact merely
accentuated their feminine charm. To the Three, deprived for years of
association with any but the lowest Mexican women, they swam in
sweetness and light. The graceful turn of a rounded neck, lift of a
smooth chin, flexure of a lithe waist aroused powerful memories. Like a
cleansing stream, the sweetness of their first young, cool loves swept
through their beings, purging them, for the moment, of shame and dross
and passion.

"Adios, you fellows!" Lovell's friendly voice came floating back from
the gate. "Come and see us at San Miguel."

It was the climax; the climax of a week during which, in place of
suspicion and distrust bred of the knowledge that every man's hand was
against them and theirs against every man, they had met only faith and
trust and friendship. The invitation instigated Sliver's muttered
exclamation: "Lordy! I'd like to! but--"

"--it's no place for us." Bull nodded toward Lee. "It 'u'd be easier if
she was provided for. Think of her, alone here, an' a new revolution
breaking every other day!"

"Pretty fierce," Jake coincided. "But if 'twas left to that young Mex at
the funeral yesterday--Ramòn Icarza, wasn't that what they called him?
If 'twas left to him she'd soon be--"

"--damned an' done for!" Sliver exploded. Hard eyes flashing, he added:
"Come to think of it, the son of a gun did behave sorter soft. No Mex
that was ever pupped is fit to even herd sheep for the little lady-girl.
Hell! if I thought she'd look twice his way, I'd croak him afore we
left."

"It wouldn't be unnatural, she being raised here an' not knowing much
else." Bull's gloom was here pierced by a flash of thought. "I'll bet
you that's what her father dreaded when he said for Benson to try an'
get her up to the States. I wish the man was here so's I could tell him
afore we left."

"Tol' her yet?" Sliver asked.

Bull nodded. "Las' night. Said she hadn't given any thought, yet, to the
future."

The two girls were now coming back from the gate. At first they made to
go down the opposite _portales_. Then Lee paused, gently disengaging her
arm from the other girl's waist, and came walking on alone.

They rose and though she was, as before said, tall for a girl and well
formed, she appeared childlike by comparison with their crude bulk. They
felt it, and it drove in more keenly the sense of her loneliness.

"Oh, shore!" with his customary impulsiveness, Sliver cut off her
attempts to thank them for their kindness. "We hain't done nothing worth
while."

"Sliver's right." Jake's bleak eyes had grown almost soft. "You don't
owe us anything. All that's bothering us is--"

"--that we kain't jest see how you're going to manage," Bull finished.
"Your father's idea--" He stopped.

Her smooth white brow had drawn up into a thoughtful little frown. "It
isn't practicable. Valles would never permit us to drive horses across
the border. We have asked him once before. And if he would--" Her
sweeping hand took in the sunlit _patio_, the brown _criadas_
soft-footing it along the _corredor_; the compound ablaze with barbaric
color; the _peonas_ gossiping in the shade at the well; all of that
medieval life that wraps Mexico in the sunshine of the past. "And if he
would--I could never be happy in the United States. I was brought up to
this. I'm part of it, and it of me," she concluded, with a firm little
nod. "I shall carry on my father's work."

The Three looked at one another. Bull's troubled look, Jake's dubious
brows, Sliver's cough, all expressed their common doubt. "Can you do it,
Miss, alone?"

"I sha'n't be altogether alone. Mr. Lovell and Mr. Benson will be here
to advise, and I shall hire an American foreman. If you--" she paused,
looking them over with sudden interest, then shook her head. "Of course,
that's absurd! You have your own business. But perhaps you might know
some one?"

The Three looked at one another again, the same thought in the mind of
each. Well they knew how close they were to the end of their rope. As in
a cinematograph they saw Don Manuel, insolent and threatening; the
American border tightly closed; the _fusilado_ against a 'dobe wall that
would surely end their Mexican operations. Black as a thundercloud that
dark prospect stood out against the sunlit peace of the past week. Yet,
to do them justice, the girl's helpless situation affected them most. If
they paused, it was with the natural hesitation of men surveying a new
path.

Jake spoke first. "To tell the truth, Miss, we ain't exactly what you'd
call rushed with business."

"Like all of us--upset by the revolutions." She jumped to the natural
conclusion, "Were you--mining?"

A picture of the lair on the bench of the abandoned mine flashed before
all Three. Not without truth was Bull's statement, "We ain't worked it
much, of late."

"Peones all gone to the wars, I suppose?"

A sudden memory of Rosa's desertion permitted Sliver to say, "The las'
we had left jest t'other day."

Her pretty face brightened. "Then you mean to say that you are free for
the present?"

That was exactly what they had!

She went on, slowly: "I'll have to be frank. We own about a hundred and
sixty or seventy thousand acres of land. But we haven't been permitted
to sell any stock for two years, so have no ready cash. I don't know,
even, whether I could pay a regular wage. But if you would take what I
can scrape up and wait for the remainder till things quieten--"

"Don't you be bothering about that, Miss," Bull broke in. "We'll stay,
an' when it comes that you don't need us any longer--"

"--we ain't a-going to bust you with no claims for high wages," Sliver
concluded. "To tell you the truth, Miss, I'd be willing to work for my
board jest to feel at loose on a range ag'in."

His enthusiasm brought her smile, and though it was but a wintry effort,
it still added warmth to her words. "Then--now you are _my_ men."

The accent on the "my" unconsciously expressed the deepest lack of her
bereavement, the sudden check to the natural feminine instinct to own
and care for a man. The isolation of herself and her father amid an
alien brown people had undoubtedly tended to develop it in her to the
fullest. Though Carleton had grumbled, man-like, at her pretty tyrannies
in manners and modes, shirts and socks, he had, surreptitiously, hugely
enjoyed it. Now, the stronger for her sorrow, that dominant trait broke
loose on the devoted heads of the Three.

"_My_ men!" It sealed their adoption.

"Phyllis, come here!" She was eying them with that microscopic feminine
scrutiny that detects the minutest personal defect. Her gesture of
despair when the other girl came up was so lovingly insulting it could
not have been outdone by the best of mothers. "They are going to work
for me, so we'll have to care for them. Do you suppose we can _ever_ get
them to rights?"

Phyllis wasn't quite sure, but as her interest while real was more
casual, she held out hope. "They'll look better, dear, after they're
washed and mended."

That was too mild for Lee. Nothing but revolution, drastic and complete,
would satiate that hungry instinct. "No, they'll have to have new
things. The store is run down badly, but it will supply their present
needs."

With something of the air of convicts arraigned before a stern judge the
Three listened to certain other frank comments upon their appearance. As
laid down, their reconstruction included shaves for Sliver and Jake, a
beard-trim for Bull, hair-cuts for all three. To this they meekly
agreed; took their new things with sheepish thanks when they were
brought from the store; endured all with resignation, if not
cheerfulness, up to the moment that she tried to quarter them in the
house. Then the last shreds of masculine independence asserted
themselves. They made a stand.

"If it's all the same, Miss," Jake pleaded, "we'd sooner bunk down in
one of those empty adobes."

Sliver supported the rebellion. "You see, Miss, we're that rough an' not
used to ladies' society--"

"An' we smoke something dreadful," Bull added his bit. "You really
couldn't stan'--"

"Oh, I wouldn't mind it a bit. I love tobacco smoke. It's half of
Mexico."

Deprived of their last weapon, the Three could only stand and fidget
till Phyllis came to the rescue. Her interest, as aforesaid, being
founded merely on the general principles of loyalty to her sex, she
could afford to be generous.

"They'll want to play cards and generally carry on," she whispered. "Men
always do. Let them sleep in the adobe and take their meals with you at
the house."

A compromise thus effected, Lee marched the Three to their new abode.
But this was not the end. Just as they were about to settle therein she
turned loose upon them a veritable hornets' nest of brown _criadas_. All
afternoon they found themselves encircled, as it were, by clouds of
flying skirts, and when the flutter subsided the adobe stood scrubbed
and dusted and furnished with _catres_, bed-clothing, wash-stands,
chairs, and a table for the "cards and general carrying on." When the
invasion, brown and white, finally withdrew, and the suggested changes
in apparel and personal appearance were duly consummated, they were left
gazing with something of awe and a great deal of wonder at their
reconstructed selves.

"You look almost human," Jake gave his opinion of Bull. "A touch with a
powder-puff an' I allow you might mash one o' them criadas."

Catching himself up short, Sliver walked to the door to expectorate.
"It's dreadfully clean in here," he remarked, coming back. "But I reckon
we'll sorter get used to it. Now if we on'y had a bottle o' aguardiente
to hold a bit of a house-warming, it 'u'd--"

Bull looked at him with sudden sternness. "Look here! We've got the care
of a young girl on our han's. There's going to be no boozing--at least
on the premises. When you feel you kain't stan' it any longer, light out
somewheres an' get it over."

"That's right," Jake lent support to the moralities. "Though it sorter
looks to me like she'd adopted us."

As a matter of fact, the girls' talk, walking back to the house, quite
favored the latter theory. While overseeing the housecleaning Lee had
obtained temporary surcease from her grief. She laughed softly at
Phyllis's remark, "Aren't they big and crude and funny?"

"Helpless and clumsy as children. But just wait till I've had them a
month."

"Won't it be a little difficult? They're grown up; can't be treated like
babies."

"Not a bit." Lee laughed softly again. "If one of them misbehaves, I
shall quietly draw the attention of another to it. Mr. Jake will correct
Mr. Bull; and Mr. Sliver, Mr. Jake. If they were girls they'd see
through it at once. Being men, they'll feel quite perked up."

Why they should have thought it so funny is hard to say. Perhaps their
merriment proceeded from that obscure source whence issues the
disappointment of a woman after she has molded masculine clay in her own
likeness, and wishes it back in all of its crudity again. In any case,
as they looked forward to that most delightful of feminine visions, a
crude man-animal, tamed and parlor broke, they laughed again.




VIII: "THE LEOPARD'S SPOTS"


It was not done with malice aforethought, for Sliver had not quite
reached the point where "he couldn't stan' it any longer." It just
happened. Heavy drinkers may be divided into three classes--to wit, the
sporadic, who break out in occasional wild debauches; the "steadies,"
who sop, sop, sop all the time; and a third class which combines the
traits of the other two. Of the Three, Bull represented the first, Jake
the second, Sliver the last and worst.

If Sliver had not ridden his horse along the crest of a certain hog's
back on the chance that the cattle he was hunting might be in the ravine
below, it might never have come to pass. If Napoleon Bonaparte, for
matter of that, hadn't developed indigestion at Waterloo; if Christopher
Columbus had followed the Church instead of the sea; if Julius Cæsar had
been born a girl; if all the cats on all the famous fences of history
had happened to jump the other way--this world would be quite different.
So let it suffice that Sliver rode along the hog's back.

At its end the ridge ran out on a wide bench from which Sliver looked
over the foot-hills, rolling tumultuously under a black blanket of
chaparral out to the tawny valleys of the _hacienda_ pastures. Below, he
could see a path that ran with a silver stream at the bottom of the
ravine. Its deep rut, no wider than the swing of a mule, marked it for
one of those ancient highways whose place had been usurped by the Diaz
railways. In its heyday the cañon had rung with the tinklings of the
mule-trains that transported _aguardiente_, maize, tobacco, serapes, and
cloths between Mexico City and Santa Fé. But of that great traffic there
now remained barely enough to support the little _fonda_ that lay with
its mule _patio_ almost at Sliver's feet.

Though no one was in sight, he set down certain moving black dots as
chickens, goats, or pigs. Thus assured of tenancy, and thinking that he
might pick up some news of his strays, he rode on down a trail that
zigzagged through the chaparral.

Looking down from above, Sliver had noted the resemblance of the place
to the lair back on the miner's bench in Sonora. The _ramada_ of grass
and cornstalks might have been the same. Only that she was younger and
prettier, the Mexican girl who knelt before a _metate_ grinding
_tortilla_ paste could have passed for Rosa herself. Though Mexican
Indian, some vagrant Spanish strain had pushed up her brow, reduced her
cheek-bones, shortened her waist, and lengthened her limbs. Masses of
black hair framed her oval face. Her eyes were velvet pools; the nose
small and well shaped. Her bare arms tapered from fine shoulders to
small wrists, and if she followed Juno rather than Psyche in her
luxurious molding she was pliant as a willow, carried her shapely
poundage with an effect of slimness.

If Sliver noted these desirable personal assets, his interest therein
disappeared after he had spied the sign, "Fonda," over the door. True,
the month which had now elapsed since they entered Lee's service had
not, however, been entirely "dry." At the close of each day's work the
Three took their _copa_ with the _ancianos_ at the _hacienda_ store in
the Mexican fashion. But the application of liquor in such medicinal
doses to a thirst like Sliver's was equivalent to the squirting of
gasolene upon a fire. Now, as he gazed at the sign, spirituous desires
flamed within him. It was with difficulty that his dry lips formed his
question to the girl.

Was there a _copita_ of _aguardiente_ to be had?

Nodding, she rose, and as she let down a small wooden door in the wall
Sliver's glance licked the rows of bottles within.

_Tequila_, anisette, _aguardiente_, _mescal_, every variety of liquid
fire with which the Mexican _peon_ burns out his stomach, stood there in
deadly array. Beginning at one end, Sliver worked his way, during the
next two hours, along the row, and had just started back again when,
with some surprise, he noted a most curious phenomenon--to wit, the gray
hair and deep wrinkles the girl had suddenly acquired. Quite unaware
that she had resigned his thirst to her father, and was even then
vigorously rubbing _tortilla_ paste behind his back, he solemnly studied
this startling metamorphosis. Drunk as he was, his cowman's instinct had
kept him warned of the sun's declension. Sure, now, that he had had
enough, he paid his score, gravely addressing his host, meanwhile,
concerning his changed appearance.

"You she'dn't do it. It's--hard on the nerves. Keep it up an'--you'll
drive your custom away."

Having climbed into the saddle, he remained there because of that
merciful provision of nature by which a man may ride long after he has
lost the power to walk. Realizing his condition, he left the business of
going home to his horse. While it carried him down the cañon and out
across the plains he concentrated his remaining energies on "The
Cowboy's Lament," howling its one hundred and one verses at the top of
his voice, sending warning of his coming a full mile ahead.


In the mean time Bull with Lee, Jake "on his lonely," had pursued the
search for the strays in other directions. It chanced that luck rode
with the former. Returning home at sundown, Jake saw them driving the
cattle along a shallow valley.

During the month which had elapsed since her father's death Lee had
taken the only real panacea for grief--hard work. In addition to the
management of the house _criadas_, she exercised a feudal overlordship
over the _hacienda peones_. Besides hiring and letting, leasing of lands
on charges, she acted as judge in their squabbles, adviser in their
small affairs, comforter in trouble. In addition, her womanhood brought
extra duties. She had to godmother the babes, attend christenings,
doctor the sick, lend her patronage to the _bailes_ and _fiestas_.

Most of these duties she discharged in the mornings. Afternoons she
donned her man's riding-togs and rode out with the Three, rounding up
strays, new-born calves, and foals. At nights her fair head might be
seen under a golden aureole lent by the lamp, while she mended or made
for them and herself. If it lacked the stimulation and color of city
life, it was, at least, a healthy and honest existence. Already it had
restored her shocked nerves, given back her roses. She had never been
prettier than when, reining in, she looked back at Jake as he came up!

"We found them! _we_ found them!" Her pride in the fact provoked Jake's
smile. "They were up in the Cañon del Norte. Whatever in the world is
that?"

It might have been anything from the last puff of a worn-out calliope to
the yelp of a sick coyote, for at its best Sliver's voice rarely came
within a quarter of a mile of a specified tune, and an hour's steady
tearing into "The Cowboy's Lament" had not improved its tone. As the
raucous strains came floating down the wind Lee burst into a bubbling
little laugh.

"Mr. Sliver isn't hardly what you could call a singer. Is he--often
taken like that?"

They could have answered quite easily, Sliver's vocal efforts being ever
timed by his potations. Instead, they looked at each other in blank
disgust. Nor was answer necessary, for just then Lee dug in her spurs
and shot after a wild steer that had taken a sudden notion to go back to
the Cañon del Norte.

"Piously drunk!" Jake swore loudly, as soon as she passed beyond
earshot. "Wonder where he got it!"

"Search me," Bull shrugged. "The question is how to stop him. You know
what to expect if he's loose an' drunk among all them _peonas_. You ride
on an' head him off. Don't stan' any nonsense. Bat him over the can if
nec'ssary."

The admonition was not required, for Jake was always thorough. Neither
was it his habit to waste time on argument or persuasion. Having roped
Sliver, ten minutes thereafter, from behind a convenient bush, he gagged
and cinched him in his saddle, hustled him in by the back gate of the
compound, had him lashed to his _catre_ in their adobe before Lee and
Bull arrived.

So far, all was well. Their real troubles began when at supper Bull
replied to Lee's inquiry concerning Sliver's absence that he "wasn't
feeling well."

She jumped up at once. "Oh, the poor fellow! I must go and see what he
can eat!"

A vivid mental picture of the "poor fellow," gagged and lashed to his
_catre_, filled them with consternation. Bull inwardly cursed himself
for not having reported Sliver absent. But while he floundered, beating
his brains for a second excuse, the crafty Jake supplied it.

"I wouldn't--really, Miss."

She stopped, half-way along the _portales_. He had spoken so earnestly.
"Why not? Is it--catching?"

Bull would have replied in the affirmative, regardless of further
complications. Jake shook his head. "No, it's just chills an' fever, a
sorter constitutional ague he's taken with at this time o' the year.
But--well, Miss, it's this way, Sliver's that bashful, though you
mightn't think it to look at him, he'd die of shame if a young lady was
to see him in his bunk."

She hesitated, then came back. "But--he ought to be looked after."

"He has been." Jake clinched the victory. "A copa's the finest thing in
the world for chills. He's had a couple an' was sleeping like a babe
when we came in."

She gave in with a sigh. "Then we won't wake him. But you must take him
a tray when you go out."

But if her dominant instinct was thus, for the time, frustrated, it
broke out more violently the following morning. When Sliver would fain
have carried his aching head and sick stomach out to some secluded
portion of the range, to be wretched at his ease, Lee "shooed" him like
a sick chicken into a corner of the _patio_, there to be coddled and
doctored with slops and brews compounded by her brown maids, every
mother's daughter of whom had her own infallible "_remedio_." His real
contrition was made none the lighter by the veiled jestings of his
companions at meals.

"Invalid looks a bit better," Jake would opine.

"A week's careful nursing orter bring him around," Bull would add. Then
while prodding him with secret gibes, they ate with a zest that turned
his poor, burned-out stomach.

That night, moreover, he furnished the text for a rude sermon after they
got him alone in the adobe. "I s'pose neither of you saints would ha'
stopped even to smell of it," he sarcastically inquired, after
confessing how and where he obtained the liquor.

"'Tain't that," Bull admonished him. "I'm pretty near due for a bust
myself. But when it hits, you bet I'll go somewheres so's the sight of
my hoggishness ain't a-going to offend our girl. No, 'tain't that you
acquired a bun we're kicking at, but that you toted it back here."

"You bet y'u," Jake added. "Next time you're took that-a-way, have 'em
hide your horse, then lie down with your nose in it an' don't budge till
you're through. Have you done, now, or is there anything out there you
forgot to drink?"

"Through? Oh, Lordy! Lordy!" Sliver groaned. "My liver's burned right
out!"

"Bueno!" Jake nodded his satisfaction. "Then if you've finished I'm free
to begin. My fingers has been itching to get into a game for a week.
That's where you fellows have me at a disadvantage. All you've gotter do
is to find a bottle, but mine's simply gotter have cards in it. I don't
get off short of El Paso. I reckon some of that important mining
business of our'n calls for my presence there day after to-morrow."

"All right, get it over," Bull agreed, after a moment's rumination.
"Tell her at breakfast. She'll fix you up with the fare."

"'Tell her at breakfast'?" Jake looked his scorn. "An' have her running
an' fixing me out with socks an' shirts an' things like I was going off
on honest business. Not on your life! When she looks at me, so amiable
and trustful, like she felt I was straight grain through an' through, I
simply kain't fix up my mouth for a good lie. No, you fellows can jest
give me all you've got. With any kind of luck it'll turn you big
interest. You can tell her that I left in the night so's to catch an
early train."

So real was his feeling, he did rise and leave before daylight. But
thereby his moment of shame was merely postponed.

When Jake arrived in El Paso--But the less said about his sojourn there
the better. His operations, which included the fleecing of some
cattlemen, would not make edifying reading. He may be picked up again at
the moment he was, as aforesaid, overtaken by shame, when Lee spied him,
a week later, coming through the _patio_ gateway.

"Oh, you poor man!" she exclaimed at the sight of his haggard face.
"They must have worked you all night."

"Which they did work me overtime," he confessed to Bull, in the adobe
that evening. "Five days an' most of the nights I sat inter one game.
Look at this!"

The roll he held up contained two thousand and some odd hundreds of
American dollars. "When I seen how the luck was heading my way I pulled
a side partner into the game, for I saw what a chance it was to fatten
Miss Lee's hand. He was a--

"What are you crinkling your nose at?" he hotly demanded of Bull. "This
ain't no tainted money. I took it from some sports that had been buying
horses from Mexican raiders. Mebbe some of 'em came from this very
ranch. Anyway, in default of finding the real owners, who has a better
right to their money than the little girl?"

"'Tain't that." Bull shook his head. "I was on'y thinking that I'd
liefer you tried to give it her than me. She don't look like she'd take
easily to charity."

"_That so?_" Jake regarded him cynically. "Now kain't you jest hear me
a-saying, 'Please, Miss, will you please take this, you need it so bad?'
But is there any reason why she should object to us investing a couple
of thousand in horses?"

"No; but she will."

And Bull was right. When, next morning, Jake, speaking for the Three,
made his proposition, Lee shook her head. "It's only a question of time
before the revolutionists run off all the stock. Then where would be
your two thousand dollars?"

"In the same box with yours--stowed safely away where we can't spend or
lose it, till Uncle Sam makes Mexico pay our claims," Jake argued. "The
risk we're willing to take, because we expect to buy cheap on that
account."

At that she wavered; with a little more pressing, acceded. And thus by
devious ways did the blind god of chance atone for many a former error,
turning evil to good, if only for once.




IX: A PARTY AND ITS CONSEQUENCES


"Lady-girl's a-going to have a birthday."

The remark issued from the blue tobacco reek that filled the bunk-house.
So thick it was the lamp on the table sent forth a feeble golden glimmer
that barely revealed the sketchy outlines of the Three stretched at ease
on their _catres_. But the title "Lady-girl," Sliver's especial name for
Lee, stamped the remark as coming from him.

"That so?" Bull and Jake spoke in chorus. "How'd you know?"

"She asked me to write a piece, t'other day, in her birthday-album, an'
looking through it I kem on her day."

"She asked me, too," Jake admitted. "What did you write?"

"'Roses is red, violets is blue; sugar is sweet, an' so air you.'"

"A real nice piece, too," Jake commented upon this classic. "I like it
better 'n mine." Nevertheless, with the secret pride of your true poet,
he gave his own:

Under pressure, Bull also admitted a descent into poetry. "I ked on'y
think of a verse that a girl once wrote in my sister's album when I was
a kid. 'Tain't near as good as yourn.

    "My pen is dull, my ink is pale;
    My love for you will never fail."

"I think it's pretty fine," the others commended the effort.

After a thoughtful pause, consecrated by heavy smoking, Bull asked, "How
old is she, Sliver?"

"Rising twenty, be the date."

"Seems to me we orter raise a little hell in honor of the 'casion--if
it's on'y to keep her from feeling lonesome."

"Little bit close on the funeral," Jake tentatively suggested. "Jest
about three months, ain't it?"

"Yes, for a regular party. My idea was just to tip off the Lovells an'
have 'em drop in that day."

"We might shoot things up a bit, too," Sliver began, but Jake cut him
off with utter scorn.

"This ain't no cowman's jamboree. Girls don't like any shooting except
what they do with their own pretty mouths. A cake with candles 'u'd be
my idee."

"'Cake'?" Sliver now returned the scorn. "Kain't you see these Mexican
dames baking a real, sure-enough birthday cake made out of raisins an'
curran's an' cit-tron peel, an' with spice fixin's to it? An enchilada
stuffed with store prunes 'u'd be the best they ked do."

"Oh, I don't know." Bull poured the oil of quiet counsel on the troubled
waters. "What about Mrs. Mills?"

He referred to the widow of an American rancher who, with the aid of her
young daughter and a few _peones_, had kept their _rancho_ going since
her husband's death. "If one of us was to ride over to-morrow I'll bet
you she'd fix up a cake, if 'twas only a three-layer chocolate. As for
candles, candles an' beer-factories are the main products of Mexico."

Thus was the ball set rolling, not only for the party, but also toward
consequences unforeseen; and it received a second fillip when Bull
delivered his invitation to the Lovells at San Miguel midway of the
following afternoon. It chanced that Phoebe's _fiancé_, a young mining
engineer, had arrived the preceding evening, bringing with him a friend,
a smelter man from El Paso. With the enthusiasm of youth they proceeded
to enlarge upon the plan after Bull rode on.

"It would be a shame to leave out Isabel Icarza," Phyllis warmly
declared. "She and Lee have always been such good friends."

Accordingly, a _mozo_ delivered an invitation at the _Hacienda del Sol_
about the same time that Bull dismounted at the widow's _rancho_.

The widow, a woman of thirty-five or six, whose comeliness indicated
former real beauty, fell at once for the plan. While Bull was eating
supper she began on the cake. Having met her but once before, he
developed a certain shyness. But if his communications with her bordered
on the formal, he yielded himself captive without reserve to Betty, her
small daughter.

Though nearly thirteen, with the promise of being as pretty in her
flaxen whiteness as Lee herself, isolation had conserved, if anything,
the girl's childishness. Sitting on a chair opposite Bull, she prattled
happily while they both seeded raisins, questioning him with an artless
directness that sometimes proved embarrassing.

Had he a father, mother, sister? Where did they live? What was his
business? Married? Why not? And when he returned the usual answer that
no one would have him she brought him to sudden and utter confusion.

"Oh, I'm so glad! Mother would take you, I'm sure. I'd just love to have
you for my father. Will you please marry her, then she will never be
anxious or fearful again?"

Her mother's merry laugh helped to cool Bull's blushes. "Don't be
specially insulted. She says that to every one." Then, brave little soul
though she was, she lifted a corner of the curtain that veiled an
ever-present fear. "It's true that I get sometimes terribly anxious.
Mexicans are lovely people when they're kept in their place. But since
Diaz was overthrown they're like a school of naughty children, let loose
without morality, discipline, or guidance to protect them from
themselves. Sometimes I think we ought to leave, but if we did the place
would be sacked and burned before we reached the railroad. So I'd rather
take the risk than be a pauper in the United States. But there, I'm
ungrateful talking this way instead of thanking Providence we've got
along so well."

"That's the way to look at it, ma'am," Bull encouraged her. While a
wicked flash shot from under his black brows he added, "If any one
bothers you jest send for us."

"Oo-oh, but you looked fierce then!" the child gave a delighted shudder.
"Do it again." Though a humorous twinkle sterilized the rehearsal, she
consoled herself with the reflection: "'Tisn't the same. But I'll bet
you're muy malo when you fight."

"It's a good thing if he is." From the sink, where she was washing
currants, her mother surveyed with approval Bull's imposing bulk. "It
was a great relief when we heard that you and your friends were staying
with Lee."

Later, when Bull's shyness had somewhat abated, she spoke more
intimately. From Ramon himself she had learned of his expulsion from Los
Arboles. "Ramon is a nice boy, yet no one could blame Mr. Carleton," she
said. "Yet what is Lee to do? Before the revolution she could have taken
her pick from scores of young Americans, but now they're all gone."
Laughing, she finished with a remark which was destined, later, to
produce unexpected results. "I guess we'll have to import her a
husband."

Bull's heavy rumble echoed her laugh. It broke out again when Betty
cried out: "While you're at it get one for me. I simply won't marry a
greaser."

Because of the unusual proceedings she was allowed to sit up. Caught
yawning while the cake was baking, she fled to Bull's knee, from which
strategic position she defeated her mother's best efforts to coax her to
bed. Whereafter she promptly celebrated her victory by falling asleep.
Curled against him in trustful comfort, she slept with her fair head
pillowed on his mighty chest till, the cake finished, he carried her to
bed. A _catre_ had been moved out for him under the _portales_. But
after silence and sleep descended on the house he sat for a long time on
its edge, softly musing, the warmth of the child's body enwrapping his
heart. Even Jake, whose sharp eyes had detected many an alien expression
on that scarred visage of late, would have wondered at its tenderness.

Betty was still asleep when he mounted to leave next morning, but at the
beat of hoofs she came running, bare feet and legs flying under her
nightdress. Stooping, he swung her to the saddle before him. The
pressure of her warm arms around his neck, soft lips on his cheek, put a
thrill of earnestness into his farewell.

"Remember, ma'am, we'll come whenever you call."

A quarter-mile away he drew rein and looked back. Though smaller than
Los Arboles, the _rancho_ buildings grouped picturesquely in a pocket of
the foot-hills. The rich purple and crimson blossoms of a bougainvillea
vine that almost buried the house made a fine splash of color against
the golden adobe walls and tawny pastures. Drenched in sunlight, roofed
in by fleecy clouds sailing across the deep blue vault above, it seemed
the abode of peace. But not so did Bull see it. It loomed through a
dread mirage that squirmed with ugly fighting shapes.

Shaking his big head, he spoke aloud. "'Tain't safe for them here,
'tain't safe!"

So vivid was that dread feeling, presage of evil, the sweat broke on his
brow. Into his mind shot a vivid picture of the miner hanging limply
from the _sahuaro_, face turned up to the torrid sun. Around it, as in a
whirling nightmare, revolved all of the horrors, outrages, and murders
of three awful years. Turning, he shook his big fist at the northern
horizon in fierce rebuke of the political lethargy and executive
indifference on the other side of the border that had not only made the
long list of outrages possible, but almost set the seal of approval upon
it. Anger choked him. With the growl of a furious dog he turned again
and rode on.


It may be laid down as a general principle that a woman never forgets
and a man seldom remembers anniversaries. These tendencies are due to
the fact that a woman lives principally in the past and present, a man
in the future; while she observes past occasions, he creates new ones.
Whether she be looking forward with youthful joy, or looking back with
increasing regret, a woman specializes upon her birthdays. But,
accustomed to her father's bad memory, Lee had not expected any one to
remember; was accordingly astonished and pleased when, coming to
breakfast that morning, she found the table decorated with trailing
vines and a bouquet of wild flowers at her plate that had been picked by
Sliver.

"Why--" she gave a little gasp. Then her shining glance accused the
Three, whose sheepish grins loudly proclaimed their guilt. "How _did_
you know? What's this?"

While she was unwrapping the tissue-paper in which Mrs. Mills had
wrapped the cake the Three looked on with eager expectance, and were
treated to a second bath of sunshine. "A _real_ cake! Where _did_ you
get it?"

In a country where cakes, if not actually hanging on every tree, may be
either home-grown or plucked from the counter of any pastry cook, her
joy might have seemed exaggerated. But in that alien desert, stripped of
its substance to the bare hot bones by repeated revolutions, the
conjunction of a sure-enough cake with a girl's birthday verged on the
miraculous. Nor was Lee's pleasure lessened after she heard at what
pains it had been produced.

It was, of course, merely the first of the day's surprises, some of
which were purely accidental, as when William Benson rode in at noon. As
a matter of fact, his visit pertained to a defensive alliance against
raiders, but, being warned in time, he straightway credited his visit to
the birthday. A bluff Englishman, almost as big as Bull, hot-tempered
and overbearing in manner, he fell with great joviality into the spirit
of the occasion; kissed and congratulated Lee with the license of old
friendship. His big, hearty laugh was resounding in the _patio_ when the
second irruption of the Lovells and their _fiancés_--for Phyllis had
conquered the smelter man in record time--occurred midway of the
afternoon. And they were no more than settled under the _portales_
before, like some rich, dusky bird, Isabel Icarza came floating under
the arched gateway into Lee's arms.

"But you surely did not come alone?" Though that was exactly what she
might have done herself, Lee looked at her in horror.

"Ah no, querida! Ramon escorted me, and will return to-morrow!"

"You don't mean to say that he has--" Lee stopped, for she had caught,
just then, a glimpse of him riding away.

"Your father--you remember--he thought--"

Isabel stopped in her embarrassed explanations for, like a scared white
bird, Lee was flying through the gateway. Grabbing Isabel's horse from
the _anciano_ who was just about to lead it around to the compound, she
leaped into the saddle and went flying down the trail.

Turning at the sound of hoofs, Ramon waited for her. It was the first
time they had met since the funeral, and though embarrassment would have
been quite natural, Lee's frank greeting put him at once at his ease.

"You were going away--on my saint's day?"

"It was out of respect for--"

She cut off his apology. "Yes, yes, but father was angry and unjust that
day. He would have acknowledged it himself, had he lived. You must come
back, at once, with me."

Not knowing the cause of her sudden flight, Bull had followed to the
gateway. As he stood there watching the two returning, Benson's voice
broke at his shoulder.

"That's the hell of raising a girl in this country. I spoke often to
Carleton about it, but he was a lonely man and couldn't bear to have her
away. I suppose that he felt she was perfectly safe with him."

Knowing him for Lee's sincere friend, Bull did not scruple to hand on
the information he had gained from Mrs. Mills. Benson received it with a
low, shocked whistle.

"And the poor man had to meet death with that on his mind? She hasn't
seen Ramon since the funeral, you say? That speaks well for him. He
tried to go, just now, too. He's not half bad. But when it's a question
of marrying Lee, no Mexican need apply. But come on back in. She'll pick
out in a second that we're talking about them."

During the lively chatter that whiled away the afternoon; at supper when
the cake appeared in a glory of radiant candles; while the young folks
laughed and chatted thereafter under the lighted _portales_, the two
stealthily watched Lee and Ramon. Sliver and Jake having retired early,
Bull and Benson engaged in an interminable game of poker which left them
free to discuss the proposed defensive alliance without neglecting their
watch.

Before night fell the girls had distributed candles here and there among
the foliage which now transmuted their waxen gleam into a greenish
incandescence. Behind the creeper that fell in a cascade from the roof,
the lamplit _portales_ gleamed in half-circles of gold. The massed
cluster of a bougainvillea dripped clotted blood down the façade of the
gate arch. As the girls moved under the golden arches opposite, their
white dresses might easily have been the fluttering wings of giant
tropical moths, and, noting it, Benson paused in filling his hand.

"It's like a beautiful stage setting."

Bull's nod took in the bright faces, soft laughter, happy chatter. With
a slow, indulgent smile he musingly watched the secret glances between
the two pairs of lovers; artless subterfuges by which the girls achieved
small personal contacts.

"Don't take much to make 'em happy, does it? A little laughter an' a
little song; plenty of chatter an' some pretty clothes; a baby to love
and a man to boss; 'tain't much, but Lordy, how many of 'em don't get
it. If men 'u'd on'y keep on admiring in their wives the things they
liked in their sweethearts, the divorce courts 'u'd go out of business.
If I had a daughter, I'd marry her to a boot-black that understood the
nature of women ahead of a merchant prince; for a man that says to his
wife at breakfast, 'Why, how pretty you look this morning!' is a-going
to get a reward that can't be bought with a million."

Just then Phoebe Lovell's clear voice floated across the _patio_. "What
a lovely night! Let's go for a walk."

"All right. Wait till I get a shawl."

As the others moved off, Lee ran back into her room. They had passed
through the gateway when she came out again, except Ramon, who took the
shawl and threw it over her shoulders. For a few moments they stood
talking under the lamplit _portal_, and, though the conversation was
quite ordinary, the glow in his big dark eyes was sufficiently
revealing. As Lee's back was turned toward them, her face told nothing.
But just before they moved off she reached up and straightened the lapel
of Ramon's coat.

Bull frowned. "D'you really think she's in love?"

Benson shrugged. "When a girl fusses with a young man's clothes she
doesn't hate him."

Bull broke a second frowning pause. "You've knowed her almost all her
life. Kedn't you put in a word?"

The Englishman made a wry face. "I did, about six months ago, when I
first noticed this thing starting. But never again!" He laughed, a
little self-consciously. "I never had any one sauce me so in all my
life. Told me that it was none of my damn business; to go home and boss
my poor wife. Said that she preferred Mexicans to English, anyway.
Phe-e-ew! I never think of it, even now, without aching to spank her.
No, counsel wouldn't help her."

"But she simply kain't be allowed to go ahead an' marry him." Bull's
coal eyes flashed with the old wicked gleam. "Before that I'd--lay for
him an' shoot him."

Benson regarded him dryly. "Your plan has the advantage of finality,
but--it would lead to reprisals. Old Icarza stands well with Valles. If
anything happened to his beloved son we'd be wiped out so completely
there'd be no one left to mourn us. But why worry? We don't know for
sure whether she even loves him. Give me two cards. I raise you three
blues."

For two hours thereafter the two played and talked, arranging a code of
smoke signals by day, beacons by night, to warn the _haciendas_. But
under it Bull's thought still revolved around Lee and her problem. The
party had returned from the walk, and Lee was shooing all her guests off
to bed before his brow cleared and he uttered a low chuckle.

"What's the matter?" Benson looked up in surprise.

"Oh, jest something I was thinking of. I raise you two reds."

Not until Jake woke up when Bull entered the bunkhouse did his secret
thought find expression. "Sure I noticed it," he answered Jake's remark
concerning Lee's "likin' for that Mexican." "But leave it to me."

"What d'you allow to do?"

This time Bull laughed outright. "Mrs. Mills was saying, t'other day,
that we'd have to import a rival. 'Tain't sech a bad idea."

"What d'you reckon to do--put an ad in the paper 'Wanted, a husband'?"

"Never you mind," Bull quietly replied to the cynical comment. "I'm
going, to-morrow, up to El Paso."




X: WANTED--A HUSBAND


Departures are usually cheerless affairs, but the morning sun loosed a
flood of gold into the _patio_ where the party was in process of
dissolution. William Benson had left with Jake and Sliver, when they
went out on the range, so Bull sat and smoked alone.

It was very pleasant there. His after-breakfast pipe was always the
sweetest of the day, and while puffing contentedly Bull observed with an
indulgent grin two small brown _criadas_, darting with needle and thread
and pins from room to room with first-aid-to-injured habits; the
transparent flirtations, stealthy glances after the girls came out; the
beauty of innocent sex, of youth in love--set his big rough heart aglow.
The girls, with keen instinct for honest feeling, felt it. The young
men, with natural respect for quiet power, admired his kindliness and
strength. Their farewells and invitations were hearty and sincere.

"You've promised and promised and never come yet--that is, for a real
visit," Phoebe and Phyllis rebuked him.

The young men earnestly charged him, "We look to you to take care of our
girls till we're in shape to look after them ourselves."

Not till the Icarzas bid him good-by did that kindly glow fade. Even
when Isabel slid a small soft hand into his huge paw and turned on him
the full power of her big Spanish eyes while uttering lovely felicities,
he remained non-committal. He frowned hearing Lee accept an invitation
for a visit in the near future. But when she came in, after they left,
the hostile look had faded.

"Oh, didn't we have a lovely time?" She patted his arm. "And it was all
due to you."

"And now I'll take my pay. I want to go up to El Paso."

"Oh, I'm so glad!" Darting into her room, she came running back with a
fat roll of bills. "I felt dreadfully, yesterday, because you and Mr.
Sliver and Mr. Jake had to wear your working-clothes. While you are in
El Paso I want you to buy a nice suit apiece."

Now fine raiment, even of the vogue of the Western cow towns, was the
last thing in the world that Bull's heart desired. But she looked so
pretty in her earnestness, he found it hard to refuse. His laugh rumbled
through the _patio_.

"Now that's real nice of you. But back up at the mine we've all got
store clothes to burn. One o' these days, when the work ain't so
pressing, Sliver kin ride over an' get 'em. Fifty'll be all I'll need."

"Oh _dear_!" she gave in, with a little disappointed sigh. "I did want
to do something; you've all been so kind."

But she made up for the disappointment by busy preparations for his
comfort. She packed her own suit-case with socks and clean shirts, then
bossed the job while her _criadas_ brushed and curried and sponged him.
After tying one of her father's cravats around his neck she turned him
round and round like a mother inspecting a school-boy, finally dismissed
him with a gentle pat.

On the Mexican Central, trains were running, as Bull put it, "be how an'
when," but fortune favored him. Catching a mixed freight and passenger
at the burned station that midnight, he camped down on the rear platform
to avoid the fetor of unwashed bodies and tobacco smoke exhaled by the
mixture of _peones_, revolutionary soldiers, and fat Mexican
_comerciantes_ that jammed the only first-class car. When he fell asleep
he could make out the dim outlines of another form that evolved under
the light of the following morning into an American war correspondent.

"'Morning, friend," he greeted Bull, cordially. "My name is Naylor.
Yours? Glad to meet you, Mr. Perrin. Now if you'll tip this water-bottle
for me, I'll do the same by you, and we can take off at least one layer
of dust and cinders."

The operations placed them at once on terms that would have taken years
to establish in civilization's cultured circles. Before it was over,
Bull had learned that his companion was "on a little _pasear_ between
revolutionary battles," and had given, in return, some inkling of his
own affairs. The young fellow's lithe, spare figure, clean face,
fearless gray eyes, impressed him strongly, and while the train ambled
along through the scrubby desert of sand and cactus toward Juarez, he
eyed and estimated and measured him with a care that attracted, at last,
the other's attention.

"Hey!" he demanded. "Is my nose out of plumb, or what?"

Bull warded off offense with the truth. "I happened to be looking for a
man about your size. Any chance of your changing your job?"

"That depends." The correspondent answered, breezily, but with caution.
"Without being what you could call wedded to this sandy, thirsty,
cutthroat business of Mexican revolutions, I like it better than
anything else in sight. But what's your lay? Ranching?" He repeated it
after Bull. "In central Chihuahua? Forget it, friend."

Bull eyed him wistfully. He fitted so closely to specifications.
Finally, in desperation, he opened his simple heart; was explaining his
quest when the young fellow burst out laughing.

"I beg your pardon." He raised a protesting hand against Bull's black
glower, then went on with sympathetic seriousness: "But you'll have to
admit that one doesn't see a man of your build every day in this
matrimonial business. So there's a damsel in distress, hey? That alters
the case. If it wasn't for a little girl up in San Francisco that I
expect to marry some day when I become very rich and famous, I'd try and
help you out, for I know just how you feel. It would be a damned shame
to have her throw herself away on a Mexican. But you've laid yourself
out some job. Not that you won't be able to find men, good-looking chaps
at that. But to get the right one calls for some picking and choosing.
But I tell you what I will do--I shall be up for a week and I'd love to
give you a hand."

"Sure you kedn't tackle it yourself?"

The young fellow denied the wistful appeal. "Hombre! a million wouldn't
release my girl's mortgage."

With a regretful sigh Bull struck hands on the compact. While they were
talking the train had ambled through the brown adobe skirts of Juarez,
the squalid Mexican town across the Rio Grande, whence they were
presently shot by automobile over the international bridge into the
spacious bosom of El Paso's largest hotel. Bull had calculated to go
out, at once, on his search, but while they sat at breakfast there
descended upon them a host of reporters and correspondents, ravenous for
news and aching to dispense hospitality.

"Might as well put it off till to-morrow, Diogenes." His friend had
already named Bull after the person who had such a deuce of a time
hunting an honest man among the grafters and ward heelers of ancient
Greece. "We'll devote to-day to the irrigation of our desiccated
systems, then go to it mañana like hungry dogs. But safety first! Take a
ten out of your wad and give the rest to the clerk."

Instead of one day, however, three passed during which Bull's huge bulk
upreared alongside a hundred bars. In all that time he never went to
bed, for, intensified by long abstinence, the outbreak proved unusually
virulent. Generally the conclusion of his debauches found him broke.
But, thanks to the correspondent's prevision, he awoke on the fourth
morning, in bed at the hotel, with the bulk of his money still in the
office safe. While he was draining the water-jug according to
time-honored precedents, his friend appeared in the doorway of the
adjoining room. His own head was swathed in a wet towel that almost hid
his rueful grin.

"One never knows what one is starting. You certainly went the limit,
Diogenes. Are you quite sure you're through?"

Bull nodded and put down the jug with a satisfied sigh. "It's a bit of a
strain, this fathering an' mothering a lone girl, a feller's gotter keep
so straight." He added, apologetically, "I was jest plumb ripe for a
bust, but I reckon this orter hold me for another three months."

"Very well, then, let's get down to work. At intervals, while I could
still see, I kept one eye open for possibles. But it's like looking for
gold or diamonds; the supply doesn't touch the demand. The few prospects
all proved to have attachments in the shape of sweetheart or wife. Good
ones, I suppose, are so rare that the girls grab them at sight like
marked-down waists on a bargain-counter."

After two days of vain search through the plazas and parks, hotel
lobbies, streets, and bars of El Paso, Bull was almost driven to the
same conclusion. Short men, tall men, thin men, broad men; some that
were ugly, others handsome; well and ill clad from all walks of
life--passed under his observation. The few he trailed were either
engulfed within the sacred precincts of some bank or met at the doors of
suburban bungalows and there warmly kissed by young and pretty wives.
Without fulfilling the specifications called for in the potential
husband, it would have been difficult enough to have enlisted an
ordinary ranch hand for service across the line. At the close of the
second day Bull reported as much to the correspondent when they met in
the hotel lobby.

"Guess I'll have to give it up."

"Now if _that_ was only free." The other bowed, just then, to a young
man who had just walked in from the street. "Look at him! Five-eleven in
his socks, hazel eyes, brown hair, good strong jaw, flat shoulders and
flanks, deep chest; walks the earth like he owned it. Some dresser, too.
That mixed plaid cost a hundred at his New York tailor's."

"Some banker's son, I'll bet you," Bull grumbled.

"That or better. I had a little chat with him this morning. A 'varsity
man by his accent and manner. Seemed to know the Mexican situation down
to the ground from the Wall Street end, so papa's probably a broker.
Holy snakes! Look at that! Neat work! Neat work!"

Walking up to the counter, the young man had held out his
hand--evidently for the key of his room--while his indifferent gaze
traveled around the lobby. The clerk, who departed in no wise from the
casual specifications of his supercilious breed, glanced at the hand
contemptuously. Turning, the young man spoke. Then as, without glancing
up, the clerk answered, he snatched, hauled that superior person across
the counter, and slammed him down hard on the floor. Next, as they came
on, he felled one large door porter and three oversized bell-boys who
had answered the clerk's yell. This done, he waited, expectantly,
quietly surveying the wreck, the hazel eye admired by Naylor transmuted
into hard steel flecked with dots of brown light.

Jaw, eyes, pose, all said, "Next!" But the "wreck" was complete. The
oversized bell-boys ran off to answer imaginary calls. An automobile
party at the door called for the porter's attention. Deserted, the clerk
swiftly retreated behind his counter, behind which, from a safe
distance, he issued defiant mutterings. With a slight nod that expressed
comprehension and satisfaction, Hazel-Eyes sauntered across the lobby
out into the street.

All had passed in the time required for the correspondent to reach the
desk. He was back again in five seconds. "He's broke--owes two weeks'
room rent. Clerk told him to get out; hence the scrap. Diogenes, we're
in luck! Venus and Cupid are in the ascendant. He's our meat."

Grabbing Bull's arm, he hustled him outside, where they spied the quarry
turning up a cross-street that led to the plaza. When he finally settled
down on an empty bench, the correspondent nudged Bull in the ribs.

"Look at them!" He indicated the hundreds of men idling on the benches
or sprawled out on the turf. "Last refuge of the broke, home of the
out-of-works. That settles it. Bet you he hasn't the price of a meal.
But, say! he's plucky. The beggar is actually smiling."

From the way in which the young fellow's glance wandered around the
assembled out-of-works, it was easy to see that he rather enjoyed the
novel situation. When Bull had noted and commented on the fact, the
correspondent went on:

"Now, Diogenes, we must proceed with due regard for the traditions. When
grand dukes, princes, and caliphs in disguise befriend some worthy
person, they invariably begin by testing his honesty--see _Arabian
Nights_ and other authorities. Split a couple of tens off your wad and
drop them as you stroll past him. I'll stay here and watch lest he be
found wanting."

Bull managed it, too, quite cleverly, scraping the bills out of his
pocket along with his tobacco-pouch. Watching closely, the correspondent
saw the young fellow look, pick them up, then run and tap Bull's
shoulder. Leaning back, he shook with silent laughter.

"And they say romance is dead," his thought ran. "_Dead!_ while this
big, black giant stalks around like a knight of old seeking a perfect
husband for a girl he's known only a few weeks. Diogenes, my friend, Don
Quixote had nothing on you. Of all the lovely, fine pieces of idiocy
that ever helped to raise us out of the muck of commercialism, this is
the very finest. And wouldn't it be queer if it worked? It's almost too
good to be true, and yet--a girl that can move a man to do things like
that must be remarkably worth while. Quien sabe? Perhaps it will end
like all true romances, with a happy marriage."

Till the two settled down side by side on a bench, the correspondent
watched. Then with a satisfied nod he rose and walked out of Bull's life
in the same casual way he had entered it; to return once more, however,
at a critical juncture, many months later.

Thus left to his own devices, Bull carried on the campaign with
diplomacy quite foreign to his Goliath makeup. From thanks and casual
observations anent the weather, he led by gradual stages to labor
conditions as exemplified by the surrounding out-of-works. His simulated
astonishment when the young fellow claimed community with them was
remarkably well done.

"_No-o-o!_" he protested.

"Sure!" the other nodded. "I was turned out of my hotel only half an
hour ago."

Quite in the fashion of grand dukes and caliphs, Bull still pretended
doubt. "Broke, mebbe, but you don't belong with these. What was it?
Wine, weemen, or cyards?"

The young fellow grinned a little ruefully. "A woman, yes, but not in
the usual way. What would you think if I told you--But, pshaw! what's
the use? It would sound to you just like any other out-of-work
fairy-tale. Well, it may amuse you. If you really want to know, I'm
here, busted and broke, because I refused a hundred thousand dollars'
worth of gilt-edged securities and real estate."

"A hundred thousand!" Bull's financial acquaintance having rarely risen
above the sixty-a-month class, he could not repress his surprise.

"There, I told you. Nevertheless, it is true. I am here because I
refused a hundred thousand--with a girl attached."

Bull's face fell. "I see. Folks wanted you to marry her an' you refused
beca'se you'd already picked one for yourself."

The young man nodded. "Correct except in one or two particulars. I
disliked the girl so much that her money couldn't tempt me. As for the
one I'll marry, I haven't picked her yet. But I mean to when I'm taken
that way."

Bull's face lit up with hope again as, with naïve frankness, the young
fellow went into details; told how his father had set his heart on a
marriage that would unite the wealth of two families. The girl, an only
daughter, was desirable; pretty, accomplished, played, sang, and all
that! They had been brought up almost like brother and sister, and there
was the hitch!

"For a fellow doesn't want to marry his sister," he explained. "I know
her so well she hasn't a surprise in her hand. When I hook up, it will
be with a girl that can bowl me over at first sight and keep me guessing
forever after. But the Relieving Officer"--he broke off, laughing at
Bull's puzzled look--"that's my name for my father. He was always coming
through when I got in debt at college, hence the title. He's a good old
scout, but obstinate as--as--"

"--yourself?" Bull suggested.

"Right-o! Well, you know what happens when the irresistible force hits
the immovable obstacle--something busts. That was me. Without even the
last check the stern parent presents to the undutiful son in melodrama,
I got. Of course the dear old gentleman wouldn't have me suffer. He
supposed I'd presently come home to partake of the fatted calf; and just
for fear that I might, I took my last money and bought a ticket West. So
here I am, without money and without friends. Add it up and subtract the
result--pick and shovel. I see them looming in the future."

"Oh, shore!" The caliph--that is, Bull--was proceeding very cautiously.
"You'll get a job in some bank."

"Don't believe it. You see, I'd just come home from Princeton and had no
commercial training. Anyway, I'd rather work in the open, ranching, or
something like that. If I had a little capital, I'd buy in. As I
haven't, I'm open for any kind of a job. But there, again, I've got no
experience further than the fact that I can ride a horse. I'm afraid
it's pick and shovel."

The abused and hackneyed psychological moment had arrived! The net was
spread, the twigs limed, the cage door open! With great artfulness Bull
proceeded to shoo the bird inside. He knew of a job--in fact, it was on
the same _hacienda_ where he worked himself! Of course it had the
disadvantage of being located in Mexico, across the line where nothing
was certain but death and "requisitions"! And there was always the
chance of a scrap! He, Bull, wouldn't advise any one to try it that had
too strong a grip on this life, for there was no saying just when one
might be launched into "Kingdom Come." But for a man who liked action
and would take a fighting chance--so forth and so on.

A disinterested listener would have thought these and kindred
inducements were eminently fitted to scare the bird away. If so--Bull
did not want him. But, sizing him for a lad of spirit with the romantic
outlook of his years, he counted on their appeal. Nor was he mistaken.
He had finished telling of Carleton's death at the hands of the
Colorados, and was relating the accidental manner in which he and his
_compañeros_ had assumed the guardianship of Lee, when the young fellow
thrust out his hand.

"Say, that's fine, old man! I'd be proud to have you take me in. My name
is Nevil--Gordon Nevil, at your service. When do we start?"

"Whenever the train goes, an' that's be guess an' be God. It's billed to
pull out from Juarez this evening, but we'll be lucky if it leaves
before morning. But sometimes they do make a mistake an' start almost on
time. So we'll go aboard to-night."

"What about clothes?" The recruit glanced down with distaste and dismay
at his fashionable tweeds. "I can't punch cows in these."

"Hardly," Bull grinned. "You'd come out from your first bunch of pear
chaparral naked as on the day you were born. Come on an' we'll see about
an outfit."

It was found without any trouble in a convenient Jew store, and Gordon
changed into it there and then. In cord riding-breeches, a brown army
shirt, shoes, and leather puttees, topped with a conical cowman's hat,
his length of limb, flat flanks, deep chest, appeared to even better
advantage. Bull's expression, looking him over, would have fitted a
match-making mama surveying a pretty daughter arrayed for her début. His
comment, "You'll do," would have surprised the recipient could he have
divined all of its implications.

Thoroughly satisfied, Bull was producing the money to pay, when Gordon
stopped him. "Here, you can't do that!"

"But you're broke."

"I still have these." He held out the tweeds. "How much boot do I get,
Father Abraham?"

Already the Jew had felt with secret rumblings of the material, but he
stood for his tradition. "Only vot iss on your feet. These ain'd much
good. But you are a nice young veller. I make it an even trade."

"You'll chuck in that pair of chaps?"

With the customary grumblings that he would be ruined by his own
generosity, the Hebrew eventually complied. While his customers were
stowing away the _chaparros_ and a few extras in a slop-bag, he made out
a ticket for the suit, and pausing on their way out, their late owner
read the legend which announced to the world that it was to be had very
cheap for twenty-nine dollars and ninety cents.

Gordon burst into a merry laugh. "Father Abraham isn't on to real
clothes. They stung me a hundred and ten for that in New York."




XI: GORDON'S DÉBUT


Starting "be guess an' be God," the train left Juarez at five the next
morning. To avoid, as before, the jam in the one passenger-coach, Bull
had climbed with his recruit on top of a box-car. Thus, when awakened by
the jerk and rattle as the train plunged down and out of the first
"shoo-fly" around a burned bridge; Gordon saw his first dawn break over
the desert with a clear, fresh vision, intimacy of detail that could
never be obtained through a Pullman window.

It was altogether different from the slow sunrises of his Eastern
experience. A puff of hot, dry wind shook the velvet curtains of night,
tossed and split them into shreds of black and crimson, suddenly
revealing a wall of burnished brass behind. As yet the desert slept in
purple shadow. But this paled to faint violet, then gray. As the sun
rolled up out of crimson mists, the land appeared in all of its
nakedness of hummocky sand a-bristle with cactus beard. There was also
revealed the first of the burned trains and twisted rails which, with
grave crosses and dead horses, were to run all day with the train,
startling evidence of the cyclonic passion that had devastated the land.

"Destruction's the one kind of work a Mexican really enjoys," Bull
answered Gordon's question. "You orter see them at it. They run the loop
of a big steel chain under the rails, hitch it to a hundred-ton engine,
then go shooting down the track, ripping it up at twenty miles an hour,
spikes flying like sparks from a blacksmith's hammer. After cutting down
the telegraph-poles, they hitch to the wires an' yank a mile of it away
at a time. As wreckers, they can't be beat, for in four years they've
completely destroyed mills, factories, smelters, railroads, property
that took Porfirio Diaz and a thousand millions of foreign capital forty
years to build."

"Are they still at it?"

The sudden illumination of the young man's face so palpably expressed
hope that Bull had to grin. "Yes, farther south, where Valles is
fighting the Federals. But this is his base line and he looks after it
pretty close. Still"--his nod went beyond the distant mountains--"it's
pretty much all bandit out there. Now an' then they attack the trains.
There's allus a fifty-fifty chance for a scrap."

"That isn't so bad."

Bull grinned again as the young fellow turned with renewed interest to
the scenery.

In comparison with the eons of time which have elapsed since man first
took to walking uprightly, his written history is as a lightning flash
in the night; civilization itself but a film over passions and instincts
violent and deep. Now that every bunch of cactus offered a possible
ambush, Gordon experienced a new sensation. Over the desert, vague as
its shimmering heat, invisible but real, settled that atmosphere of fear
in which primitive man, in common with all animals, lived and moved and
had his being.

The wrecks occurred almost invariably near cuttings through shallow
sand-hills. From the cactus chaparral that clothed their tops, the
revolutionary lightnings had struck sometimes twice or thrice; and when
the train ran into one, Gordon would feel a prickling at the roots of
his hair.

It was not fear. Some centuries ago his hair would have bristled like
the ruff of an angry dog. Through disuse it had lost the knack. But the
feeling was the same, the expectancy, repressed excitement of an animal
expecting attack. The veneer of home and college influences had peeled
away, leaving him the young male of the tribe, eager to prove himself by
deeds; the commonplace exit of the train on the other side left him
always slightly disappointed. Not till it finally ran out of the
hummocky sand into the far-reaching levels of the great Mexican
_haciendas_ did he lose hope and return to the contemplation of the
scenery as such.

"I'm glad we're up here." From the engine, puffing away at the head of a
dozen intervening coal-cars, he looked back at the passenger-coach far
to their rear. "I wouldn't exchange this for a Pullman."

"Well, don't imagine that you're traveling second-class," Bull grinned.
"I had to slip the conductor five pesos extra. But it's worth it. You'd
suffocate down in that car; not to mention the chance of some _peon_
spitting in your face. By the way, if that ever happens to you, take it
an' grin. Sure!" He answered the young fellow's look of disgust. "That
is, unless you want to feel a knife in your belly. If you're German or
English, or b'long to any other nationality that looks after its people,
you might resent it an' get away. But, thanks to our Government's
policy, it's open season for Americans all the year round. They bag a
few, too, every so long."

"Would _you_ stand for that?"

Bull shrugged. "Kain't say, till I've been tried. But it's good advice,
nevertheless. Seeing, though, that you don't like it, you'd better be
toting a gun. Take one of mine till we get home.

"Here, here!" he hastily struck down the barrel as Gordon drew a bead on
a telegraph-pole. "Valles shot eight of his own soldiers jest t'other
day for plugging insulators. Besides, it's waste. Every bullet is worth
a life--mebbe your own."

"Maybe his own!" Again Gordon felt the prickling hair--in fact, as they
rattled and jerked along there was scarcely a mile of the road that
failed to produce it. Here it was a station, sacked, and burned, with a
few miserable _peonas_, ragged and half-starved, begging for _centavos_.
There a huddle of bones, residue of a hanged wire-thief, at the foot of
a telegraph-pole. A broken rifle-butt, rusted cartridge-clip, empty
brass shell, told with eloquent tongues stories of which Bull supplied
the details.

Somewhere between these two stations a Mexican general, a prisoner of
war, had been thrust down between two cars and ground under the wheels!
That great adobe house with black windows staring like empty eye sockets
from the fire-scarred walls had been the home of a Spanish _hacendado_
whose three lovely daughters had been carried off by raiders. Death and
torture, ravishments, farms laid waste, lives maimed and ruined, the
full tale of fire and sword belonged in the landscape.

Yet to youth, egotistic masculine youth, even horrors may be romantic.
Awed pleasure inhered in the thought that he, so lately from Princeton,
the spoiled son of a wealthy father, was a possible subject for bandit
tortures!

He found it all so fascinating that the day passed like an hour. Before
he was aware of it the sun's great red orb sank behind a huge black
mountain. The desert faded once more to gray, violet, purple. For a
while the oil smoke from the laboring locomotive laid miles of soft dark
pennon against a crimson sky. Then this also faded and left them
rattling along through heated dusk. Sprawled at length on the
running-board, the young fellow gazed up at the fiery desert stars, in a
luxury of content. He was lost to the world when the train stopped at
the station at midnight.

"We'd better go right on," Bull said. "We'd get no sleep here for the
fleas, an' desert travel is easiest at night. By morning we'll be into
the grass country an' kin take a nap while the animals graze."

With an additional horse hired from the Mexican station agent they moved
off at once and had passed into the range country before day broke over
its long grassy rolls. Breakfast, a nap, then three hours' more travel
brought them to the shallow valley where the Three first saw Lee and
Carleton charging the Colorados. Indeed, Bull was telling of it when,
just as on that other day, she came galloping over the opposite rise in
chase of a runaway mare with a colt at its side. _Riata_ swinging in
rhythm with her beast's stride, she shot down the slope, made her cast,
took a turn around the saddle-horn and brought the captive up skilfully
as any _vaquero_.

"Pretty neat!" Gordon exclaimed. "That boy can ride!"

"You bet you!" Eyes sparkling with pride, Bull slyly added, "Sliver
himself, that was born with a rope in his han', don't throw a better
loop than Miss Lee."

"_What?_" As, sighting them just then, Lee swung her hat, emitting a
clear cowman's yell, her knotted hair fell down on her shoulders, Gordon
exclaimed, "Why, it--it _is_ a girl! In this country do they usually
wear--"

"No more 'n they do in the Eastern States," Bull dryly filled in the
hiatus. "On one thing the Maine Methodist jines hands with the Mexican
Catholic--they both cover their weemen from chin to toe-p'ints. Ever
sence the revolution, Miss Lee's been doing vaquero's work, an' what
kind of a job d'you reckon she'd make of it going 'round in skirts? If
you don't mind, I'll ride on an' help her with that critter."

The light that had flashed over the girl's face at the sight of Bull
spread into an illumination that included white teeth, mouth, and
sparkling eyes when he rode up. She thrust out her hand with an
impulsive feeling.

"Oh, I'm _so_ glad you have come home! I missed you dreadfully."

"_Home!_" And she was happy because he, "Bull" Perrin, the notorious
rustler, had returned _home_! Earth held no terror that could have sent
that tremble through his huge frame. It was with difficulty that he
controlled his voice.

"Anything wrong? Sliver or Jake been misbehaving?"

"Indeed, no!" She laughed, merrily. "They're like two old hens 'tending
an orphan chick. But--well, you know a girl, even as independent as I,
must have some one to lean on, and I was uneasy while you were gone."

A dew of moisture quenched the brown fire in the giant's eyes. His
sudden seriousness issued from a vivid memory of his late debauch.
Whereas for twenty years past they had been matters of course to be
forgotten with the passing of the morning head, he now felt convicted of
sin. The shadow marked a resolution.

He spoke very gently. "I hope that you'll allus feel that way." Then,
with mock sternness that covered deep emotion, he went on: "But what are
you doing out here on your lonely? Some one will get a wigging for
this."

She laughed saucily up in his face. "Then it is due to me. I gave them
the slip. Who is--" She nodded toward Gordon, who had almost caught up.

Bull briefly sketched his history. "Young chap I found dead broke in El
Paso. He's the right sort." Perhaps because he divined the probable
effect on her feminine psychology, he added: "He's from the
East--college man--wealthy family--turned out because he refused to
marry a fortune. I tol' him you'd likely hire him."

"I would in ordinary times." She looked at Gordon, who had now reined
in. "But I cannot pay regular wages just now."

"He's willing to wait, like us," Bull began. "He's--"

"--out for experience," Gordon put in. "To tell the truth, Miss
Carleton, I am absolutely green. I doubt whether you'll find me worth my
board."

He had doffed his hat and the attitude of respect accentuated the quiet
reserve of his tone and manner. After a thoughtful pause, during which
she took him in from top to toe in a quick, feminine survey, she broke
out with a comical little laugh. "If it wasn't so nice, it would be
ridiculous. While the gringos on other haciendas are simply streaking
for the border, you men insist on working here for nothing. Whatever is
the matter with you?"

She may have read the answer in Gordon's eyes and resented the indignity
it offered her independence. Or the feeling underneath her sudden
stiffening may have rooted deeper. Be a young man ever so comely, a girl
ever so pretty, there will flash between them on first meeting the
subtle challenge of sex; instinctive defiance based through love's
history to the far time when every girl ran like a deer from a possible
lover and only gave in after he had proved his manhood by carrying her
off. It passed in a flash, for, noticing her stiffen, Gordon reduced his
gaze to respectful attention.

Subtle as it was, Bull had still noticed the by-play. "Looks like she'd
taken a down on him."

But even as the doubt formed in his mind it was removed by her laughing
comment: "I suppose I'll have to stand for it. But you must be starving.
Let us get on to the house."

As they rode along, moreover, Bull noted certain swift, stealthy glances
with which she took complete census of Gordon's clean profile, strong
jaw, deep chest, flat flanks; signs of a secret and healthy curiosity.

"She's a-setting up an' taking notice." He winked, as it were, at
himself. "I reckon, Bull, you kin leave the rest to natur'."




XII: THE RECRUIT IS TRIED OUT--IN SEVERAL WAYS


"Well, what do you-all think of him?"

Bull's question emerged from the thick tobacco reek which invariably
mitigated the severity of their evening deliberations.

It pertained, of course, to the new recruit, concerning whose merits or
demerits Jake and Sliver had reserved judgment during this, his first
week. When they had come from supper straight to the bunk-house, Gordon
had taken his pipe and gone for a stroll around the compound, which was
never more interesting than when clothed in the mystery of a hot brown
dusk. The lights and fires, like golden or scarlet blossoms; the soft
brown faces glimpsed in cavernous interiors by the rich glow of a
_brasero_; the women's subdued chatter; laughter wild and musical as the
cooing of wood-pigeons--all had for him perpetual fascination; and while
he sauntered here and there, looking, listening, the Three held session
on his case.

"What do we think of him?" Jake slowly repeated the question. "It's a
bit soon to jedge, but if he's half as good as he looks, he orter do."

Sliver, however, was more critical. "Too darned nice-looking fer me. I
hain't got much use for these pretty boys."

"_Pretty_ yourself!" Bull swelled like a huge toad with indignation. "He
ain't no pretty boy! You-all orter ha' seen him clan up that hotel lobby
in El Paso."

"A _ho_-tel clerk, an' some bell-hops!" Sliver sneered. "Why, a good
cowman 'u'd jest about as soon think of hitting a lady. 'Fore I allow
him even a look-in with Lady-girl, he's gotter show me. If you-all ain't
afraid he'll spoil, jest send him an' me out together to-morrow."

"All right, señor, he's your meat." Bull's grin, provoked by a sudden
memory of the thwack with which the hotel clerk had hit the lobby floor,
was veiled by tobacco reek that reigned beyond the lamp's golden
glimmer. "Only, don't chew him. Kain't afford to have his scenery
damaged."

"Nary a chew," Sliver agreed. "Twon't be necessary. I'll take him in two
swallows."

In this wise was Gordon apprenticed to Sliver for the period of one day,
to learn, in course thereof, such lessons in cow and other kinds of
punching as it might bring forth. When they two rode out, armed
cap-a-pie as it were, with rifles, saddle _machetes_, and a brace of
Colt automatics, in addition to the usual cowman's fixings, it is
doubtful whether North America held a happier young man than he. Out of
the thousand and one lovers who had awakened to the knowledge that this
was their wedding-day, some might have been equally happy. But none more
so, for Gordon was also espoused--to Adventure, the sweetest bride of
real men. It may be safely stated that no bride ever surveyed her
trousseau with more satisfaction than Gordon displayed in his "chaps,"
spurs, guns, and _riata_.

This enthusiasm, however, he cloaked with a becoming nonchalance. He
wasn't in any hurry to tell all he knew. His few questions were to the
point, and between them he maintained a decent reserve. Also he adapted
himself quickly to new requirements. Sliver observed with satisfaction
that, after one telling, his pupil abandoned the Eastern, high-trotting,
park fashion in riding and settled down to a cowman's lope. In fact, so
quiet and biddable was he, Sliver began to feel secret qualms at the
course he had marked out for himself; had to steel his resolution with
thoughts of Lee.

"'Twon't do to have no pretty boys pussy-footing around her," he told
himself. "He's gotter show me, an' if he don't--out he goes."

Opportunity soon presented itself in the shape of a momentary relapse,
on Gordon's part, into the old habit of riding. Sliver seized it with
brutal roughness.

"Hey! that milk-shake business may go with missies in pants that ride
the parks back East, but if you-all expect to work this range you'll
have to try an' look like a man."

Gordon stared. It wasn't so much the words as the accent that
established the insult. Just as Bull had seen in El Paso, his hazel eyes
were suddenly transmuted into hard blue steel flecked with hot brown
specks. Sliver felt sure he was going to strike; experienced sudden
disappointment when he rode on.

"_Santa Maria Marrissima Me!_" He swore to himself in sudden alarm. "Is
he a-going to swallow it?" But the next moment brought relief. Gordon
was rising in his stirrups with the regularity of a machine.

With the quick instinct of sturdy manhood, Sliver sensed the motive, the
wise hesitancy of a new-comer in starting trouble. "Calculated it would
get him in wrong with Lady-girl. He's putting it up to me!"

Even more loath, now, to push than he had been to begin the quarrel,
there was nothing left but to go on. So, riding alongside Gordon, he
began to deliver himself of a forcible opinion concerning his mode of
riding. "Why, you blankety, blank, blank of a blank--"

The rest of it was cut off by a crack between the eyes that toppled him
out of the saddle. He was up again, hard eyes flashing, as Gordon leaped
down, and as he rushed, broad round body swaying above his short hairy
chaps, Sliver looked for all the world like a charging bear.

A clever writer once described a terrific combat between two sailors in
two words, "Poor McNab!" Sliver was almost as terse in describing his
defeat to Bull and Jake that evening.

"Gentlemen, hush! He leaned over as I took my holt, grabbed me round the
waist from behind, straightened, an' away I flew over his shoulder an'
kem down spread-eagled all over the grass, plumb knocked out."

Returning to the combat: When Sliver gathered his shocked wits together
and sat up, Gordon stood looking down upon him, hands on his hips,
quiet, determined, yet with an inquisitive twinkle in his eye.

Sliver answered the twinkle. "Say, that was sure a lallapaloo. I've
wrestled with bears an' once choked a cougar till he was gol-darned
anxious to quit. But I draw the line at earthquakes. If you-all 'll
please to tell how you done it, I'll shake han's an' call it squar'."

"Done!" Gordon broke out in a merry laugh. "And I'll promise, on my
part, never to ride like that again."

"For which I'll be greatly obliged; that hippity-haw, side-racking gait
does sure get on my nerves."

Striking hands upon it, they mounted and rode on.

They were heading for a mountain valley, enormous green bowl hemmed in
on all sides, that could only be reached by a single rough trail.
Watered by a running stream and knee-deep in lush grass, the difficulty
of approach and sequestration rendered it almost raider-proof. But as it
afforded pasture for barely a third of Lee's stock, it was their habit
to send the animals out in relays to remain under charge of an _anciano_
for a week at a time.

As they rode along, Sliver's secret satisfaction revealed itself in many
a stealthy glance. At first they expressed that feeling alone, but
presently there entered into them a leaven of doubt. Their way now led
along the foot of the hog's back from the crest of which Sliver had
obtained his first view of the _fonda_ on the other side, the discovery
of which caused his first lapse from grace. The slight doubt was
explained by the thought that accompanied his glance upward at the
ridge.

"He's a fine upstan'ing lad an' kin take his own part. But that ain't
all. Supposing he drinks? We-all jest kedn't stan' for any young soak
around Lady-girl."

In view of his own shortcomings, his grave shake of the head was rather
comical. Nevertheless, it was quite sincere; likewise his emendation:
"'Course we wouldn't have him no canting prig. He orter be able to take
his two fingers like a gentleman, then leave it alone."

Reining in suddenly, he asked, "D'you ever take a drink?"

Gordon looked surprised. "Why, yes, on occasion. But you don't mean to
say--"

"Come on!" Sliver's manner was quite that of the "mysterious stranger"
of melodrama who demands absolute faith in those he is about to
befriend. It is feared, however, that both it and his thought, "It's a
fine chance to try him out," cloaked certain strong spirituous desires.

Quarter of an hour's heavy scrambling up and down rutted cattle tracks
brought them out in the _fonda_ dooryard. From above Gordon had noted
its golden walls nestling beside the stream in a bower of foliage. His
eyes now went, first to the two _ancianos_, a wrinkled old man and
woman, who dozed in the shade of the _ramada_; then to the girl who
knelt by the stream pounding her soiled linen on its smooth boulders.
Though he knew Spain only through pictures, the tinkling bells of a
mule-train going up the cañon added the last touch, vividly raised in
his mind the country inns of the Aragonian mountains. But for her darker
colors the girl with her shapely poundage might easily have been one of
their lusty daughters. She had risen at the sight of Sliver. With
unerring instinct she now walked inside, let down the wooden bar window,
and set out a bottle of _tequila_.

Through all, her big dusky eyes never left Gordon. With what would have
been brazenness in a white girl she studied him. But her gaze was wide
and curious as the stare of a deer, and caused him no offense. When
their eyes met, she smiled, but, unskilled in the ways of her kind, he
missed both its invitation and question till Sliver put it in words.

"She wants to know who you are an' all about you," he translated her
rapid Spanish, in which her small hands, satin arms and shoulders played
as large a part as her tongue. "She says her father an' mother are about
ready to cash in. If you'll stay here an' be her man, you'll stan' right
in line for the _fonda_."

It was sprung so suddenly, Gordon gasped. "Cash in?--the _fonda_? Say!
You're fooling?"

Sliver raised his right hand. "Take my oath!"

"Then _she's_ fooling."

"Nary!" Sliver grinned. "She's serious as a New England housewife in
chase of a bedbug."

Now Gordon's merry laugh rang out. "Is this leap year, or does this sort
of thing go all the time down here? Her proposal calls for a priest, I
suppose, and a marriage license?"

"Nary." Sliver grinned again. "Ladies of her class get along very nicely
without them artificial aids to marriage. All she wants is for you to
settle down here with her to housekeeping."

"Why--but--" He still half believed that Sliver was joking; but, looking
at the girl, he saw for himself the smoldering flame in her dusky eyes.
This time his laugh was a little confused. "Please tell her that I'm
dreadfully sorry, that I appreciate the high compliment, and if it
wasn't for the fact that I don't expect to stay long in this country I
would give her nice offer my most distinguished consideration."

Any further doubts that he might have entertained would have been
effectually dispersed by her dark disappointment when Sliver translated.
A touch of pity mingled with his amusement; moved him to add, "I hope
that you put it nicely."

"Sure," Sliver breezily answered. "I told her that you said for her to
go to hell."

"Oh, well"--Gordon recovered his breath again--"at least that puts the
whole business beyond further doubt."

"Don't you believe it." Sliver gave a third and last grin. "She says
that you-all kin always find her here if you happen to change your
mind."

"Now that's very nice." Really pleased under his amusement, Gordon
brought the little comedy to a graceful end. Unsnapping the leather
watch-fob that bore his initials worked in gold, he laid it in the
girl's hand. "A fellow doesn't get a proposal of marriage every day.
Tell her for a little remembrance."

"And now for another drink."

But as Sliver reached for the bottle Gordon seized his arm, and any
doubts as to his sobriety were removed then and there from the cowman's
mind. "You've had two already, and I'm not going to stand by and see you
burn your stomach out. Come on, gol darn you! or I'll hand you one."

His smiling good humor removed the offense. Nevertheless, the curious
brown specks were floating again in the blue of his eye.

Sliver knew the threat was real. "Just this one?"

"Well, if you'll down it quick and come on."

With feelings that had hovered between gratification at Gordon's
sobriety and regret for his own, Sliver drank, bade the girl "Adios,"
and mounted again. Standing in the doorway, her glance followed them,
enwrapping Gordon's upright figure with its dark caress. Just as they
crossed the stream at the foot of the path, her face lit with sudden
remembrance. Turning at her call they saw her coming at a breathless
run.

"Kain't bear the parting," Sliver interpreted the action.

But his grin faded as he listened to her voluble talk. "She says that
four strange Mexicans stayed here last night. They didn't belong to this
country, an' they questioned her closely about the different haciendas.
They were 'specially curious about our horses. Us being gringos an' her
Mex, they naturally concluded she'd be ag'in us, and they would have
been right but for the fancy she's taken to you. So they opened right
up; asked all about the mountain pastures an' whether we kep' a close
guard. She says they was heading for there. While I go after 'em, you
ride like the mill tails o' hell an' bring out Bull an' Jake."

That crude but strong expression accurately described Gordon's progress
homeward. While his beast scrambled like a cat up one side of the
ravine, slid like a four-footed avalanche down the other, and streaked
like a shooting star up and down the long earth rolls, he learned more
of horsemanship than during all his previous years. Lee, who saw him
coming from the upper gallery above the _patio_, nodded her approval.
Such haste, of course, had but one interpretation--raiders; and by the
time Gordon dashed into the compound she was already mounted and a fresh
beast waiting for him.

"They are up in the Cañon del Norte," she answered his inquiry for Bull
and Jake. "Come on!"

"You are surely not thinking of--"

Before he could finish, however, she shot under the gate arch; was off
at a speed that kept him galloping his hardest to keep her in sight. Not
until she slowed down on the rough trail that led into the cañon, within
sight of Bull and Jake, who had just roped a foal for branding, did he
catch her. But it was just as well, for that which he would have said
came with more authority from the lips of Bull.

"All right, Missy. There's on'y four, so you don't need to be skeered.
You kin go right back home with Gordon an' leave us to take keer of
them."

"Indeed I won't!" she exclaimed, hotly. "I'm going, too! I am! I am!"
She cut off his remonstrance. "I am! I am! _I am!_"

It was the first time their wills had clashed. Bull glanced at Jake, who
shook his head--not that he required support or intended to waste time
in fruitless argument. "You mean that?" His glance, grave with stern
disapproval, came back to Lee.

It hurt her. But though her lips quivered, she answered, doggedly: "I
do! I _won't_ go back."

"Very well. We've no time to waste. Ride on while I cut this foal
loose." But as she obeyed, with one flick of the wrist he roped her
above the elbows from behind. Then, in spite of angry protests that
ended in tears, he cinched her little feet from stirrup to stirrup.

"Now take her home." Handing the lead rope to Gordon, he leaped into the
saddle and galloped after Jake.

Till they disappeared, Lee looked after, wavering between anger and
tears. Tears won. Bowing her fair head, she wept unreservedly for fully
a minute. Realizing then that she was gaining nothing but swollen eyes
and a red nose, she stopped crying and turned to Gordon with a little
laugh.

"Isn't this ridiculous? Please untie me."

But now she found herself gazing into the sullen face of a young man
who, through her, had been cut out of a real fight. He shook his head.

"You _won't_?"

"No."

"Why?"

"You'd go after them."

They looked at each other. Her eyes were now gleaming brightly above two
red spots; but he met their gaze with stubborn obstinacy.

"You mean to say that you are going to take me home tied up like a veal
calf?"

He nodded.

Biting her lips, she looked at him again. "Do you realize, sir, that you
never set eyes on me till a week ago?"

"Sure!"

"Also that you are my hired man?"

He nodded again.

"Very well, you're fired! Now untie this rope, then get off my land!"

But even this was turned against her. "I don't have to. I'm no longer
your servant. I'll get off your land, yes--after I've delivered you at
your home."

If looks could kill, to use that hackneyed but still expressive term, he
would have died there and then. But they don't, and, masking his own
disappointment with a hypocritically cheerful whistle, he turned his
beast and rode down the cañon, towing her behind.

It was dreadfully humiliating, and, being a girl, she cried some
more--this time for sheer anger. But soon her tears dried and she fell
into deep musing. Soon a small smile restored its softness to her mouth.
Her voice, seductively pleasant, mingled with the tramp of hoofs. "Won't
you _please_ untie me? The rope is hurting my arms."

He stopped, pulled her horse up alongside, and as he began to fumble
with the ropes she turned her head so that he could not see her smile.
It was transmuted into a flash of fury when, finding the rope a little
loose, he drew it tighter.

"I thought you were a gentleman!" she shot it viciously at his back as
he rode on. "Gentlemen don't tie up ladies!"

"Ladies don't fire men for obeying orders. You needn't think I'm
enjoying this. Just because you shoved in where you were not wanted, I
have to go back."

She did not like that, either. What girl would? Once more she bit her
lip, yet, for all her anger, a touch of respect mingled with her
resentment. Concerned principally with his own disappointment, he rode
on without looking back and so missed the little persistent wriggles by
which she gradually freed one hand. Soon she was able, by leaning
forward, to reach and draw her saddle _machete_. Indeed, she worked with
such caution that he got his first warning when, with one slash, she cut
the rope between them. By the time he had swung his beast around she was
going like the wind back up the cañon.

Her mocking laughter came floating back.




XIII: AMERICAN RUSTLERS _VS._ MEXICAN RAIDERS


Shoving rapidly into the mountains, Sliver ascended with the trail in a
couple of hours through upland growth of _piñon_ and juniper to the
height of land, a pass riven by earthquake or subsidence between twin
jagged peaks, from where he overlooked the valley pasture.

Like a great jade bowl, bisected by the silver line of a stream, its
wide green circle, miles in diameter, lay within a broad ring of purple
chaparral. Over its surface black dots were scurrying toward the corrals
at the northern end, and under Sliver's glass these resolved into horses
that were being rounded up by four Mexicans; for he could see their
peaked _sombreros_, tight _charro_ suits, even at that distance. Turning
the glass on the _jacal_, a rude hut of poles and grass thatch near the
corrals, he looked for Pedro, the _anciano_.

"Poor old chap! they've sure got his goat." While clucking his
commiseration, however, he shifted the glass to a patch of white on a
near-by tree, and it immediately resolved into the old fellow's blouse
and _calzones_. "No, they've just tied him up. Then these ain't no
Colorados. It's Felicia's gang, all right, all right." He added,
chuckling, "Four nice little raiders in a pretty trap, along comes Jake
and Bull, then there was none."

And trapped they were. Except where the stream slipped out over a
precipice between two narrow walls, the mountains rose sheer around the
Bowl, unscalable save where the trail rose by precarious zigzags to
where Sliver held the pass a thousand feet above. At few places was it
possible for two horsemen to ride abreast. At that point there was
barely room for one; if necessary, he could have held it, alone, against
a score. But it was not. Watching closely, he saw the raiders first
drive the horses into the corrals, then settle down for a _siesta_ in
the shade of the _jacal_.

"Going to bring 'em up at sundown," he muttered, "in time to make the
first run by night."

So certain he was of it that he did not scruple to take a sleep himself;
cat-napped, with occasional squints down into the valley up to the
moment that he was awakened by the hoof-beats of Jake and Bull's beasts.
The glass then showed the raiders working the horses out of the corrals.
As the herd thinned out to single file at the trail, one man took the
lead; a second and third fell in at even distances; the last brought up
the rear.

"They know their business," Bull commented on the manoeuver. "It's
easier to keep 'em moving." He grimly added: "And easier for us. The
line will string out for a quarter-mile, so I'll go down that distance
an' hide in the chaparral. Let the last man pass me before you hold up
the first. Then, while one of you keeps him covered, t'other can take
away his tools. I'll keep 'em moving on up till you've got the other
three."

While Jake took away and tied their horses, Bull gained his position. By
that time the leading raider had gained a like distance uphill and,
peeping, Bull watched the thin file of animals wriggling like a slow
black snake up the yellow trail. So clear was the air he could hear,
above the thud and scrape of hoofs, the raiders calling to one another.
Now they were directly beneath him; so close that he could plainly see
the leader's face, ugly, pock-marked. As he withdrew into the chaparral
Bull carried with him an irritatingly haunting remembrance. Somewhere,
though he could not place it, he had seen the man before! He was still
puzzling over it when Jake's command rang out in Spanish:

"Hands up!"

The leader looked and complied, persuaded by the black muzzles, wicked
eyes, that looked down from the rock above. The second and third men did
try to turn, but were blocked by the file of animals. An attempt to pass
would have sent them down, bounding from level to level to the floor of
the valley below. The fourth man swung his beast around only to find
himself looking into Bull's rifle. So while Jake covered the operation
from above and Bull from below, Sliver disarmed and bound the raiders.

After the captives were arranged in line under a _copal_ tree upon a
little plateau, where the trail began to fall downhill on the other
side, Bull stood frowning down from his height on the man whose face had
aroused that haunting memory. "I've a hunch that I've seen this chap
afore."

He would have been more certain of it had he noticed the fellow's look
of recognition and fear only a moment before. But now his ugly
countenance was veiled in that ox-like stolidity which a Mexican _peon_
can so easily assume. He shook his head in dull negation to all of
Bull's questions. He did not come from any of the neighboring
_haciendas_! They had never met before! His _pais_ was far--it might
have been anywhere in a thousand-mile circle implied by the wave of his
hand.

"Yet I could swear to him." Bull looked musingly at Sliver.
"Pock-marked, too. Where have I seen him afore?"

Sliver shook his head. "Can't prove it be me. All _peones_ look like so
many peas in a pod; some mebbe a bit uglier than others; an' pock-marks
ain't no distinction with two-thirds of 'em pitted like a
nutmeg-grater."

"That ain't the question before the house, neither," Jake put in. "All
I'm bothering about is whether to hang or shoot 'em. Hanging is what I
was brought up to, but shooting's more fashionable down here. I'd allow
they'd likely prefer it."

"Shooting's too good for 'em." In a spasm of virtuous indignation,
Sliver shook his fist at the captives. "Hanging's slower an' hurts a
heap, an' if it gets about that the gent that meddles with our stock is
in for a slow, choking they ain't a-going to be near so careless."

"There's something in that," Jake conceded. "An' this copal's got nice
stout limbs. We kin use their own riatas, an' that'll be what the
Tombstone editor used to call 'poetic justice.' Hanging goes."

Bull was still staring at the raider, but, taking his consent for
granted, they proceeded to fit the _riatas_ around the prisoners' necks.
Jake had, indeed, thrown the slack of the last over a bough when there
came a rattle of stones and scrape of hoofs on the trail below. Grabbing
his rifle, he slid with Bull and Sliver, each behind a tree. One second
thereafter their guns were trained on the spot where the trail debouched
on the plateau.


Meanwhile, with Gordon in pursuit, Lee had led the race into the hills.
Her blood mare was the fleetest animal she owned and, had she chosen,
Gordon would have soon dropped out of sight. But she contented herself
with just holding a lead.

Unaware of this, Gordon made repeated attempts to catch her with sudden
bursts of speed. Perfectly aware of it, on her part, she would wait till
his horse's head almost touched her leg, then shoot ahead with a little
laugh. Her face, looking back at him, was hard as her laugh--eyes bright
and shining, nose contemptuously tilted, mouth one scarlet line.

To be defied, drawn on, mocked, and teased with low, derisive laughter
is not a situation that any man loves. But if thoroughly angry, mad
clear to the bone, Gordon's face revealed only dogged hope. For Chance
was riding with him. If Lee's beast slipped or tired. If she were a
second late with the spur. One of the three was fairly certain, and the
belief set a gleam in his eyes that caused her a quiver of apprehension.

"Oh, he's mad enough to beat me!" she told it to herself. "I wonder if
he would."

Nevertheless, every time she looked back at that dogged face she felt a
sense of security. With raiders at large, it was just as well to have
him around! The thought was in her mind when, with him only a few feet
behind, she shot over the edge of the last steep out upon the plateau.

"Oh, my _goodness_!" It burst from her in sudden fright.

The Three, of course, were out of sight. The natural droop of the
_copal's_ outer branches hid the halters, and she saw only the

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/40600