VII: THE RUSTLERS ARE ADOPTED
"Well, I reckon this about lets us out."
The Three sat under the _portales_, heavily smoking. Bull puffedmeditatively at a strong old pipe. Between lungfuls Sliver toyedabsently with a cigarette. The necessities of dealing faro-bank hadtrained Jake in the labial manipulations of his fat native cigar. As allnecessary readjustment could be made with the tongue or lips, his handswere thrust deep in his pockets, a proof of profound mentalconcentration. It was he who had spoken, and the "this" alluded toCarleton'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 betterclass, eleven were wearily waiting on the other side of the border tillstill another revolution should restore their territorial rights. TheIcarzas, Ramon and his father, a bewhiskered _hacendado_, attended, withIsabel, the dusky beauty of the house. The Lovells, a small Americanrancher and his two pretty daughters, represented the hundreds of_gringos_, miners, ranchers, engineers, smelter men, who would have comein 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 littleadobe church in the hills. Their duty in the premises being thusconsummated, the Three had resolved themselves into a committee on waysand means.
"Yes, I s'pose we'll have to move on." If not actually dismal, Sliver'sindorsement both expressed regret and invited contradiction.
Bull did not speak. He was watching Lee and the Lovell girls, who hadjust then stepped out of her room across the _patio_. Phyllis, theyounger, was to stay for a week, while Phoebe, the elder, returned homewith her father, who had just brought the horses to the gateway. As Leewalked with her guests the length of the _patio_ she took with her thesympathetic glances of the Three.
Nature mercifully provides her own anesthesia, stunning the victims ofher catastrophes till the dangerous period of shock be passed. Later,the sight of Carleton's riding-whip, spurs, or gloves, carelessly thrownin a corner, would bring a violent recurrence of grief, set heragonizing once more before the great blank wall of death. But just nowcomplete emotional exhaustion left her quiet and calm. Neither had shemade any attempt to bury her youth under the frowsy trappings of grief.Even the black velvet riband she wore at her throat was purelyaccidental, a natural trimming of her dress.
Indeed, the other girls showed more outward sorrow. Though Americanborn, they were almost Spanish in their coloring, and their dusky eyes,dark hair, rich cream skins provided a vivid foil for Lee's fairness. Iftheir eyes were swollen and nose tips chafed, the fact merelyaccentuated their feminine charm. To the Three, deprived for years ofassociation with any but the lowest Mexican women, they swam insweetness and light. The graceful turn of a rounded neck, lift of asmooth chin, flexure of a lithe waist aroused powerful memories. Like acleansing stream, the sweetness of their first young, cool loves sweptthrough their beings, purging them, for the moment, of shame and drossand passion.
"Adios, you fellows!" Lovell's friendly voice came floating back fromthe gate. "Come and see us at San Miguel."
It was the climax; the climax of a week during which, in place ofsuspicion and distrust bred of the knowledge that every man's hand wasagainst them and theirs against every man, they had met only faith andtrust and friendship. The invitation instigated Sliver's mutteredexclamation: "Lordy! I'd like to! but--"
"--it's no place for us." Bull nodded toward Lee. "It 'u'd be easier ifshe was provided for. Think of her, alone here, an' a new revolutionbreaking every other day!"
"Pretty fierce," Jake coincided. "But if 'twas left to that young Mex atthe funeral yesterday--Ramon 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 Mexthat 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 weleft."
"It wouldn't be unnatural, she being raised here an' not knowing muchelse." Bull's gloom was here pierced by a flash of thought. "I'll betyou 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 himafore we left."
"Tol' her yet?" Sliver asked.
Bull nodded. "Las' night. Said she hadn't given any thought, yet, to thefuture."
The two girls were now coming back from the gate. At first they made togo down the opposite _portales_. Then Lee paused, gently disengaging herarm 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 wellformed, she appeared childlike by comparison with their crude bulk. Theyfelt it, and it drove in more keenly the sense of her loneliness.
"Oh, shore!" with his customary impulsiveness, Sliver cut off herattempts to thank them for their kindness. "We hain't done nothing worthwhile."
"Sliver's right." Jake's bleak eyes had grown almost soft. "You don'towe 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. "Itisn't practicable. Valles would never permit us to drive horses acrossthe border. We have asked him once before. And if he would--" Hersweeping hand took in the sunlit _patio_, the brown _criadas_soft-footing it along the _corredor_; the compound ablaze with barbariccolor; the _peonas_ gossiping in the shade at the well; all of thatmedieval life that wraps Mexico in the sunshine of the past. "And if hewould--I could never be happy in the United States. I was brought up tothis. I'm part of it, and it of me," she concluded, with a firm littlenod. "I shall carry on my father's work."
The Three looked at one another. Bull's troubled look, Jake's dubiousbrows, 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 hereto 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 knowsome one?"
The Three looked at one another again, the same thought in the mind ofeach. Well they knew how close they were to the end of their rope. As ina cinematograph they saw Don Manuel, insolent and threatening; theAmerican border tightly closed; the _fusilado_ against a 'dobe wall thatwould surely end their Mexican operations. Black as a thundercloud thatdark prospect stood out against the sunlit peace of the past week. Yet,to do them justice, the girl's helpless situation affected them most. Ifthey paused, it was with the natural hesitation of men surveying a newpath.
Jake spoke first. "To tell the truth, Miss, we ain't exactly what you'dcall rushed with business."
"Like all of us--upset by the revolutions." She jumped to the naturalconclusion, "Were you--mining?"
A picture of the lair on the bench of the abandoned mine flashed beforeall Three. Not without truth was Bull's statement, "We ain't worked itmuch, 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 forthe present?"
That was exactly what they had!
She went on, slowly: "I'll have to be frank. We own about a hundred andsixty or seventy thousand acres of land. But we haven't been permittedto 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 Ican 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," Sliverconcluded. "To tell you the
truth, Miss, I'd be willing to work for myboard 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 herbereavement, the sudden check to the natural feminine instinct to ownand care for a man. The isolation of herself and her father amid analien brown people had undoubtedly tended to develop it in her to thefullest. Though Carleton had grumbled, man-like, at her pretty tyranniesin manners and modes, shirts and socks, he had, surreptitiously, hugelyenjoyed it. Now, the stronger for her sorrow, that dominant trait brokeloose on the devoted heads of the Three.
"_My_ men!" It sealed their adoption.
"Phyllis, come here!" She was eying them with that microscopic femininescrutiny that detects the minutest personal defect. Her gesture ofdespair when the other girl came up was so lovingly insulting it couldnot have been outdone by the best of mothers. "They are going to workfor me, so we'll have to care for them. Do you suppose we can _ever_ getthem to rights?"
Phyllis wasn't quite sure, but as her interest while real was morecasual, she held out hope. "They'll look better, dear, after they'rewashed 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 newthings. The store is run down badly, but it will supply their presentneeds."
With something of the air of convicts arraigned before a stern judge theThree listened to certain other frank comments upon their appearance. Aslaid down, their reconstruction included shaves for Sliver and Jake, abeard-trim for Bull, hair-cuts for all three. To this they meeklyagreed; took their new things with sheepish thanks when they werebrought from the store; endured all with resignation, if notcheerfulness, up to the moment that she tried to quarter them in thehouse. Then the last shreds of masculine independence assertedthemselves. They made a stand.
"If it's all the same, Miss," Jake pleaded, "we'd sooner bunk down inone of those empty adobes."
Sliver supported the rebellion. "You see, Miss, we're that rough an' notused to ladies' society--"
"An' we smoke something dreadful," Bull added his bit. "You reallycouldn't stan'--"
"Oh, I wouldn't mind it a bit. I love tobacco smoke. It's half ofMexico."
Deprived of their last weapon, the Three could only stand and fidgettill Phyllis came to the rescue. Her interest, as aforesaid, beingfounded merely on the general principles of loyalty to her sex, shecould afford to be generous.
"They'll want to play cards and generally carry on," she whispered. "Menalways do. Let them sleep in the adobe and take their meals with you atthe 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 sheturned loose upon them a veritable hornets' nest of brown _criadas_. Allafternoon they found themselves encircled, as it were, by clouds offlying skirts, and when the flutter subsided the adobe stood scrubbedand dusted and furnished with _catres_, bed-clothing, wash-stands,chairs, and a table for the "cards and general carrying on." When theinvasion, brown and white, finally withdrew, and the suggested changesin apparel and personal appearance were duly consummated, they were leftgazing with something of awe and a great deal of wonder at theirreconstructed selves.
"You look almost human," Jake gave his opinion of Bull. "A touch with apowder-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 reckonwe'll sorter get used to it. Now if we on'y had a bottle o' aguardienteto hold a bit of a house-warming, it 'u'd--"
Bull looked at him with sudden sternness. "Look here! We've got the careof a young girl on our han's. There's going to be no boozing--at leaston the premises. When you feel you kain't stan' it any longer, light outsomewheres an' get it over."
"That's right," Jake lent support to the moralities. "Though it sorterlooks to me like she'd adopted us."
As a matter of fact, the girls' talk, walking back to the house, quitefavored the latter theory. While overseeing the housecleaning Lee hadobtained temporary surcease from her grief. She laughed softly atPhyllis's remark, "Aren't they big and crude and funny?"
"Helpless and clumsy as children. But just wait till I've had them amonth."
"Won't it be a little difficult? They're grown up; can't be treated likebabies."
"Not a bit." Lee laughed softly again. "If one of them misbehaves, Ishall quietly draw the attention of another to it. Mr. Jake will correctMr. Bull; and Mr. Sliver, Mr. Jake. If they were girls they'd seethrough it at once. Being men, they'll feel quite perked up."
Why they should have thought it so funny is hard to say. Perhaps theirmerriment proceeded from that obscure source whence issues thedisappointment of a woman after she has molded masculine clay in her ownlikeness, and wishes it back in all of its crudity again. In any case,as they looked forward to that most delightful of feminine visions, acrude man-animal, tamed and parlor broke, they laughed again.
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