Over the Border: A Novel

by Herman Whitaker

  XVII: --BUT TWENTY CANNOT MAKE HIM DRINK

  When they rode in to the _rancho_ that afternoon, the "wind"--that is,Ramon--had not yet "blown in"; so there were no complications tointerfere with the widow's first attempts at diagnosis of the "case."She noticed at once that, instead of springing down and taking her andBetty in one hug according to her fashion, Lee swung one leg over thepommel, then sat, quietly waiting, till Gordon reached up and lifted heracross to the veranda.

  "Promising," she inwardly commented.

  A cold shower, that followed greetings and introductions, interferedtemporarily with the diagnosis, but after Lee had emerged, all pink andwhite and cool, and had sat down to make her toilet in the widow'sbedroom, that lady pursued her investigations with the abrupt remark:

  "Ramon is coming."

  "Yes? Isabel too?"

  An imperceptible nod marked Mrs. Mills's belief that the indifferencewas not assumed. She went on to mask her plot. "No, it was quiteaccidental. I wrote some time ago to ask just where my line ran alongtheir eastern boundary, and Ramon replied that he would come over andshow me to-day."

  "Oh, I hope he does. Ramon is such a nice boy."

  She was now powdering her nose. The widow made mental comment. "Nevermissed a dab. William Benson's a fool--though, of course, she may havechanged her mind." This she proceeded to find out. "Your new man seemsnice?"

  "He is." Followed a long description of Gordon's night vigil with thechild. She concluded with a characteristic reservation, "But--"

  "But what?"

  "He's been going to see Felicia at the _fonda_. Sliver took him there,one day, and he says that he has never been again. But--she's wearinghis watch-fob in her bosom-- Yes, yes! I know! A _peona_ will beg theshoes off any man's feet. She might easily have got it at one sitting.But--"

  Her nod conveyed her feeling that, allowances having been generouslymade, young men whose watch-fobs are found in _peonas_' bosoms, willbear watching. "Of course that is nothing to me, and, as you say, he isvery nice. I like Bull better than any of them. Dear me! why isn't hetwenty years younger? Then I could marry him. Oh--"

  She paused, gazing at the widow, for, though the latter was exceedinglysubtle, the subtlety of one woman is plain print for another. A littlesmile, sudden lighting of the eye! The widow stood betrayed.

  Lee jumped an enormous distance to her conclusion. "Oh, wouldn't that bejust too lovely! Is it--settled?"

  The widow, of course, shook her head.

  "But it will be."

  "How do you know?" She was quite willing to be convinced.

  "How do I know?" The words issued, delicately scented, from dabs ofpowder. "Just as if it depended on _him_. Just as if any woman--whohasn't a harelip--can't marry any man she wants."

  Thus turned, in a twinkling, from a diagnostician into a "case," Mrs.Mills tried to cover her confusion with a little laugh. But it was soself-conscious she might as well have made oral confession. Being anhonest person, she owned up with a hug.

  Meanwhile, having been captured by Betty as he emerged from his bedroomdressed and refreshed by a cooling shower, Gordon was being subjected toan equally keen if less discreet examination.

  Betty's major premise agreed marvelously with Lee's and was stated withthe startling directness of childhood after a prolonged survey of thesubject from different distances and points of view. "I like you--onlynot so well as Bull. You're nicer-looking, but--" A long pauseemphasized more powerfully than words how woefully he fell short inother ways. "I'm going to marry him when I grow up--that is, if motherdoesn't beat me to it!"

  "Any danger of that?" Gordon laughed.

  "You bet there is. Bull's dead in love with her, and she--of course, shedoesn't admit it, but _I know_."

  "Well, well, isn't that fine!" Gordon really meant it. "Congratulations,I suppose, are not yet in order."

  "I should say _not_!" Betty's blue eyes widened with horror. "Don't you_dare_! I'm not too big, yet, to be spanked"--she wriggled,reminiscently--"and when mother's real mad she goes the limit.Nevertheless, it's true." After a second calculating survey, sheconcluded, "But if she grabs Bull, I _might_ marry you."

  "If you only will," he pleaded, "I'll be _so-o_ good! Can't we considerourselves engaged?"

  After a moment's thought she doubtfully shook her blond head. "No, I'mafraid not."

  "Why?"

  "Because."

  "Because doesn't answer anything. If you reject me, I must know why."

  "Because I'd only be disappointed again." She added, with a little sigh:"All the nice men are sure to be married before I grow up. You'll fallin love with Lee."

  "_I?_ With _Lee_?" His real surprise showed how little that contingencyhad occurred in his thought. Curiosity mingled with a touch ofapprehension colored his accent. "Now how do you figure that?"

  "Because you'd be a fool if you didn't."

  The answer, in its dread plainness, caused him to stare. "But--but, youknow, I am only her hired man?"

  "That wouldn't count--if she liked you." After another examination: "Andshe might do worse. _Gee!_ if I were only a man!"

  "Yes?" he prompted. "If you were a man?"

  "I'd love her so hard she'd just have to give in. I'd--"

  But further revelations were just then cut off. Back in the bedroom hermother had remembered the possibilities of that small, frank tongue.Answering her call, Betty ran off, leaving Gordon, however, withplentiful food for thought.

  During the last two months he had seen Lee--riding the range, a prettylad; presiding at meals, a still prettier girl, excessively feminine inher care for himself and the Three; mothering her brown retainers; agirl clean of mind, clear-eyed, wholesome as a breath of wind off thesage. Yet, somehow, she had not stirred his pulses. He acknowledged itwith a touch of shame. What the deuce could be the matter? Was theresomething wrong with his head?

  Presently he gained an inkling--he had been wearing another's colors!She whom adventure claims has eyes for none else. The color and romanceof this land had fired his imagination, opened a whole world to hisview. Coral isles of the Pacific, palm-fringed and begirt withthundering surf; copra and pearls, magic words; the head-hunters of theSolomons; deep forests, quaint grass villages of Java and Borneo; theinland rivers of China; Siberian steppes; rock temples of Tibet--theseand a thousand other names and places had juggled their terms in hisbrain. Some day he would see them all, following adventure's trail!

  He had calculated to go it alone, but now began to wonder if that werereally necessary. A sympathetic companion doubles one's joy in beautifulthings! Come to think of it--Lee would fit very nicely in a Java forest!He saw her fair hair, a golden aureole, shining in the dusk under gianttropical fronds. She looked well, too, at the tiller of thegasolene-launch in which he was wont to explore, in imagination, theupper waters of the Hoang-ho! Now she was clasping her hands and holdingher breath in pleasure and awe at first sight of the Chinese Walldragging its massive stone coils over mountain and plain. Indeed, in thecourse of the next half-hour they two explored the major part of theearth's fair surface, and not a place in it all where Lee did notbelong.

  Subconsciously, propinquity and isolation had worked their customaryeffects. If not actually in love, the young man was in a highlydangerous, not to say inflammable, state of mind when, in the midst ofhis dreamings, the weathered-oak door at the end of the _corredor_ swungin and there, framed in its golden arch, bathed and powdered and fresh,stood that flower of the ages, a modern girl!

  It cannot be denied that, given a decent superstructure, it's thefeathers that make the bird. Lines that not only stood the test of, butactually triumphed over, Lee's severe man's riding-clothes, took abillowy softness from a pretty voile gown. The silk orange stockingsunder the ruffle harmonized with a narrow orange and black stripe in thedress. The riband that bound her yellow curls in a girlish coiffurerhymed again with a silk sweater of peacock-blue. A pair of white pumps,that ran like frightened mice under the skirt completed a costume which,without
understanding, Gordon knew to be in excellent taste.

  "Why, Sister!" he returned her greeting of the morning. "What killingclothes!"

  "Right, Brother!" she answered, in kind. "That's what they're for."

  Of course he threw up his hands. And of course she laughed. And ofcourse there was more of the perfectly foolish, but perfectly necessary,badinage with which callow youth imitates its elders' wit. But underall, behind his glow of admiration, Lee sensed new feeling. And shereacted to it--though not altogether in a way that suited the widow, whohad followed her out. For if her color heightened, the dangerous gleamstill sparkled in her eye.

  "I wonder what she's up to?" The thought formed in Mrs. Mills's mind.

  She soon found out, for just then the "wind," alias Ramon, "blew in."

  "Oh! I'm _so_ glad to see you!"

  With a swish of skirts that spread a delicate odor of violet along the_corredor_, Lee ran to meet him as he leaped from his horse. Then,giving him both hands, she inquired after his father, mother, Isabel,aunts, cousins--goodness knows! the category might have embraced everyone of his _peones_ if she had not been warned by the deepening of theyoung fellow's rich color that it was about time to let go.

  "Just a bit too effusive," the widow made note. Aloud she broke in, "Youare forgetting Mr. Nevil, dear."

  "Oh, I beg your pardon!" But the glint in her eye took it back and shemanaged the introductions with malicious skill. "Ramon, this is Mr.Nevil, our latest acquisition."

  "Just as if he'd been a horse," the widow inwardly commented. To preventfurther mischief, she took Lee in to help her set the table.

  On first meeting, two women look in each other for possible enemies; twomen for possible friends. Ramon, with his gentle, deprecatory manner,was so different from the Mexican of American fiction, skulking everwith a knife behind a bush, that he came to Gordon as a revelation. Hisgreat Spanish eyes glowing softly in the dusk under his huge gold-laced_sombrero_; the _charro_ suit of soft leather that so finely displayedhis lithe build; his fine horse and silver-crusted saddle--made such afigure as, in the prosaic East, is to be seen only on the stage.

  Gordon, on the other hand, with his frank, breezy manner, appealed justas strongly to Ramon. After the exchange of cigarettes and a light theysettled down to a friendly chat. Naturally the conversation ran fromGordon's impressions of the country to a review of its troubles, and incourse thereof he obtained an astonishing glimpse into the Mexican pointof view.

  "I do not know of myself," Ramon replied to his question concerning theoutcome, "but one could not listen to my father, who is old and wise,without forming some opinions. No, senor, we shall never settle ourtroubles ourselves--because, first, it isn't in us; second, we do nottry. Any settlement will have to come from the outside--but that weshould fight. You would have every Mexican in the country at yourthroats. Even we, the Icarzas, and dozens of others who are now livingon your side of the border, all of us who would have so much to gain andnothing to lose by a gringo occupation, would turn against you. Likecareless wives we should resent the intrusion of a neighbor to set inorder the house we are too lazy to clean ourselves. To tell the truth,senor"--he concluded his frank opinion with a gentle shrug--"we shouldfight any attempt on your part to limit our 'God-given right'--as yourpolitical speakers would say--to cut one another's throats and run offwith one another's women as we have been doing for thousands of years.We hated Diaz because he kept us from it. Since his overthrow we havedone our best to make up the arrears."

  So quietly was the analysis made, Gordon could not but laugh. "I thinkyour father must be a bit of a cynic."

  "No, senor." Ramon repeated the gentle shrug. "He merely knows us. Inyour schools--I know this, for I spent a couple of years in one of yourbig military academies--you teach that every American boy has a chanceto be President. This, of course, is foolish. In the average life ofyour one hundred of millions, there can only be ten Presidents, soforty-nine million, nine hundred and ninety thousand others of your menhave no chance at all. Now we do not teach that. We are simply born withthe belief that each one of us is going to be president, if he has tokill all the others. Moreover, in actual practice, we cut withoutscruple the throats of those who come between us and again what yourpolitical speakers would call 'our God-appointed place.' As there aremany millions of us ingrained with this belief, some bloodshed is boundto result.

  "Also my father knows you Yankees. You desire peace, not because it isright, but in order that you may pursue your commercial wars. Betweenour wars we are good friends, visit and love one another till the timecomes for another killing. But you pursue your commerce with absoluteruth. Nothing, to you, the ruin of a competitor; nothing the crushing ofchildren's and women's lives in your sweat-shops and factories; noprinciple of morality or humanity can stem the tide of your greed. Yourwarfare is far more inhuman than ours; slays its tens of thousands toour thousands; starves your children, debauches your women in a way thatis unknown with us. For when they are not hacking one another to piecesour _peones_ live in rude comfort on the haciendas with enough to eatand drink, no more work than they feel like doing, merriment enough intheir bailes and fiestas. No, we prefer our own wars; do not in theleast desire the slums, sweat-shops, rapacity, and greed that go withyour system."

  "In other words," Gordon suggested, "'you prefer the frying-pan to thefire'?"

  For a moment Ramon looked mystified. Then, as he grasped the applicationof the strange proverb, he laughed. "Exactly, senor. Why trade devils?"

  "So that is how you Mexicans feel?" Gordon commented on these strangeideas after a thoughtful pause. "Then why did you ever let theforeigners in? Now that a hundred thousand of them have investedbillions here under guarantees from Mexico to their respectivecountries, you can never turn them out."

  Ramon's nod conceded the fact. Not now were the hands of time to be setback. The evolutionary process which was sweeping his country from itsancient foundations, laid in a pastoral age, into the vortex of adetested commercialism, was not to be stayed.

  "Why did we do it? _We_ did not. It was the work of Porfirio Diaz. Lerdode Tejada, whom he overthrew, held to the Mexican idea, and would havebuilt a Chinese Wall around the country to keep the foreigners out. Butafter him--Diaz, the Flood!" Flicking the ash carelessly from hiscigarette, he concluded, with a shrug: "No, we cannot throw themout--now. Some day you gringos will swallow us up even as you swallowedTexas, New Mexico, Arizona, Alta California. But in the mean time--weshall fight."

  From these lines the talk turned to more intimate things and, if letalone, they would undoubtedly have become friends. But just then Leereturned and plunged again into family gossip, cutting Gordon out. Infact, she did it so completely that he looked up, surprised, when sheaddressed him half an hour later.

  "We are going for a little walk. You may come--if you choose."

  He didn't _choose_! As the blue sweater and orange stockings moved offalongside the _charro_ suit and jingling silver spurs, however, his facedisplayed that mixture of exasperation and bewilderment that is commonto two creatures under the sun--to wit, a bull being played with the_capa_ by a skilful _matador_ and a man under torture by a woman.

  When they disappeared around the corner, wrath surged within him. Herethe creature whom, less than an hour ago, he had elected to wander withhim through Java forests and on a personally conducted tour of China hadfirst flouted him openly, and was now throwing herself at the head ofa--well, a blanked, blanked Mexican! It was hard to swallow, and yetunder his wrath the "wind" was fanning another flame into quite arespectable blaze.

  If he could have seen the celerity with which Lee replaced theirrelations on the usual basis after she and Ramon passed from sight,Gordon might have felt better. But he did not, and when they returnedalmost an hour later she behaved just as badly, if not worse. Until thegoing down of the sun, in biblical phrase, and then some, she flirtedshamelessly while Gordon exhibited, on his part, the customary phases.In lack of another girl of flirting age, he concent
rated his attentions,at first, on Betty. But growing desperate as the evening wore on, hestarted a flirtation with the widow, whose looks and years brought herwell within the limit. Being neither prim nor prudish, she, on her part,threw herself into the fray with a certain enjoyment and helped him out.But never for a moment was she deceived.

  "Flirting their young heads off against each other," she summed thesituation.

  With secret amusement she observed the dignity of Gordon's good-night atthe close of the evening, and the excessive cordiality of Lee's answer;also the stiffness of the bows between the young men.

  A certain restraint in the girl's good-night to herself caused herinward laughter. Nevertheless, she observed the scriptural injunctionnot to let the sun go down on one's offense. She entered with Lee intoher bedroom, and, judging by the low laughter that escaped under thedoor, she quickly removed it. Nevertheless, she was not prevented,thereby, from a correct judgment of results.

  "On the whole honors were even," she mused while making her toilet. "Iwonder who will score to-morrow?"

  It was Lee.

  "I'm coming home later," she gave Gordon his orders, after breakfast."You can go now. Mr. Icarza will ride with me."

  There was nothing for it, of course, but to obey. Saddling up, he rodeaway, but not before the widow had handed him a hastily scribbled notethat contained--at least so she said--the recipe for a liniment Terrubioused on their horses which he had promised to Bull.

  Going back into the bedroom, she caught Lee watching Gordon behind thecurtains. "That's downright cruelty," she scolded.

  "Well?" Lee shrugged. "Didn't he say, yesterday morning, that he didn'ttake any interest in girls after they grew up?"

  "But he does."

  Very illogically, but quite naturally, Lee answered, with a littlelaugh, "I know it."

  Nevertheless her eyes softened as she watched the lonely figure--thatis, they softened until it turned from the beaten trail and headed onthe path by which they had come in. Then they flashed. "Oh, he's goingback by the _fonda_!"

  "Ah-ha!" the widow mused. "Now we shall see."

  She did, for having given Gordon barely time to pass from sight, Leerouted out Ramon from a comfortable smoke, mounted, and rode after.