Over the Border: A Novel

by Herman Whitaker

  XX: SLIVER IS DULY CHASTENED

  Had Lee been really trying to break her neck, she could not have riddenmore recklessly.

  Where the mule path crossed and recrossed the stream, she took it insuccessive leaps. Once from the crest of an abrupt declivity her beastlaunched out like a flying bird, yet picked up its stride and flew onfull forty-five feet beyond. Unconsciously, she bent to avoid the oaksthat reached down gnarled hands to snatch her from the saddle. Possessedby but one impulse, to escape, she raced down the canon and out upon theplain.

  Had she given full rein to her feeling she would have galloped on and onand on over the receding horizon into a strange world that knew naughtof her affairs. But as the violence of the exercise drew the blood fromher brain, responsibility resumed its sway. Of her own accord sheslackened speed and allowed Ramon, whose fast beast had outrun Gordon's,to catch up.

  Taught, by long experience, to expect from her always the unexpected, hehad set the wild flight down as one of her customary pranks. "LittleWicked One!" he called, coming up. "Have a care for my happiness if notfor your neck!" But when, in place of the shy confusion of a newlyengaged girl, she turned on him a face of cold distress, the glow fadedfrom his own. "Why, queridita? What--"

  "I want you to leave me now." She cut him abruptly off.

  His big eyes widened. "After raising me to heaven would you plunge mein--"

  "Ah no, no!" She impulsively thrust out her hand. "You have earned farmore happiness than I shall ever be able to give. But--"

  "Si? But--"

  She gave him a little wan smile. "When you come to understand girlsbetter, you will never demand a reason. Men always know why they do athing, but girls act from feeling; most of the time without knowing thecause."

  "But--"

  "Ramon," she looked at him with sweet severity, "if I had told you ontop of the mountain what I said back there--wouldn't you have beencontent?"

  "Assuredly! It was only--"

  "Yes, yes! Now listen. I want you to go, now--and stay till I eithersend or come. It won't be long--I promise."

  "Bueno," he shrugged. "Though minutes will be ages!"

  Her hand was still in his. After raising it to his lips, he swung hisbeast, with a wave of the hand at Gordon in the distance, galloped offto the north.

  His departure left her free to review the situation--with littlesatisfaction. From every angle one fact stood out--in a moment of piqueshe had engaged herself to a man who, no matter what might have been,she now knew she could never love. Of course it was possible to breakit. But even in her desperation she never thought of that.

  "You flirted with him," she berated herself. "Led him on to an avowal;accepted him out of spite. You are a mean, despicable, miserable_thing_, and now you'll go through with it."

  It never occurred to her that, being so "mean and despicable" it mightbe against Ramon's interest to inflict herself upon him. Having, withher girl's illogic, made up her mind, she felt that peculiar sense ofcomfort which men obtain from duty done and women from self-sacrifice.She turned and looked back to see how that other criminal--the chief, ifunconscious, cause of it all--was getting along; and though he was toofar away for her to read his face, his bent head revealed a comfortingdejection.

  As a matter of fact, he was just as miserable as--as she could havewished him to be. At first his thoughts and feelings had run in apersonal groove. At one fell swoop certain excursions into Java forestsand to the Chinese Wall, not to mention other desirable and lovelyplaces, had been swept into the discard of broken dreams. Never wouldtropical sunbeams break down through giant fronds to twine that goldenaureole about a certain head! In consideration of his recent awakeningto her values as a traveling companion, he was just as sore and sillyand jealous as any young man could possibly be. And just as herreflections had, in womanly fashion, turned to self-sacrifice, so hisrose, in masculine style, to high, moral grounds.

  "It's a damn shame!" he told himself. "Ramon seems a good sort, but--nogreaser is good enough for her!" While the bright, hard specks floatedup in his eye, he added, "And it isn't going to be."

  For a while he entertained a notion to catch up and cleanse himself byopen confession. But realizing that two glasses of anisette plus avagrant inclination--even if the latter were based on a sense ofinjury--might not appeal to her woman's logic, he kept his distance.Metaphorically, a quarter-mile of misery stretched between them, acrosswhich the dejected droop of her shoulders, his hanging head, wirelessedtheir hopelessness.

  "Poor girl!" he pitied her.

  "He's feeling terribly," she told herself, with mournful satisfaction.

  Nevertheless, when he came up after she drew rein a half-mile outside ofLos Arboles, her face was composed in the sweet gravity becoming to herheroic mood. "Our friends"--she nodded toward the distantbuildings--"are quite prejudiced. For the present, I wish you would keepit to yourself."

  He bowed with equal gravity, and they rode on in silence.

  At the sight of Bull, waiting for them at the _patio_ gate, Lee didcheer up a little--partly because of a natural instinct to hide herhurt, more largely from the sense of protection his presence alwaysgave. Sensitive in all that concerned her, however, he had caught boththe droop of her shoulders and Gordon's air of gloom.

  He was not to be deceived. "Been fighting. Wonder what it's all about."

  He learned, partially, when Gordon handed him the widow's recipe for"liniment," after Lee had gone in and they were unsaddling at thestable. It ran:

  "Dear Friend,--Sliver took Mr. Nevil to see Felicia at the _fonda_ the other day, and Lee caught her wearing his watch-fob. It made her so mad she flirted her head off with Ramon." In her ignorance of later developments, she had concluded: "But there is no harm done. She likes Mr. Nevil, and if you can just keep him away from the _fonda_, I am sure things will turn out all right."

  Bull read and reread the epistle a second and third time for his ownpleasure, regardless of its sense. In its reverent tenderness there wassomething pathetic in the way he touched with his big forefingers thesignature "Your friend, Mary Mills." Gordon had almost finished caringfor the horses before Bull placed the note in his shirt pocket aftercarefully wrapping it in a piece of newspaper. The ceremony completed,he fished for further information.

  "Any one else there?" he inquired, nonchalantly.

  "Young Mexican," Gordon replied, with what, for him, was excessivecurtness.

  "Ramon Icarza, I reckon." Bull went innocently on: "He an' Miss Lee werealmost what you could call raised together. She thinks a good deal ofhim--"

  "No reason why she shouldn't."

  Nevertheless, the tone caused Bull to duck behind Lee's horse to hide achuckle. "Jealous! green-cheese jealous. Mary--" he paused, reddening,for never before in his thought had he used her given name. He repeatedit with lingering delight. "Mary--was right. We've sure stirred 'em up.On'y we'll have to 'tend to Felicia at once."

  His mind thus made up, he proceeded to Felicia's solution with thecharacteristic directness he gave to any problem. When, after supperthat evening, Gordon went straight to the bunk-house, Bull herded Jakeand Sliver into the stable to deliberate by lantern-light.

  "You-all never orter ha' taken him there," he charged Sliver. "Here wego an' import this young fellow at no end of trouble an' expense, thenyou herd him right into the arms of another girl."

  "Aw! she don't count." Sliver excused himself. "She's Mex an' wildgirl." He sagely added: "You see, I was that anxious to make sure hedidn't drink. We kain't have no young soaks 'round Lady-girl."

  His solicitude drew Jake's satirical grin. "You wasn't looking for adrink yourself, heigh? As for her being Mex an' wild--you damn fool,don't you know that at his age wild girls draws like wild honey. He'sbe'n there once an' he'll go again."

  "If he ain't stopped," Bull qualified.

  "If he ain't stopped," Jake nodded. "An' it's up to you to do it."

  "But how?" Sliver's broad, round face struggled like a ful
l moon inclouds of helplessness. "How in the 'tarnal kin _I_ stop him?"

  "By 'quiring vested rights in the premises," Jake nodded sagely. "If youmarry her he kain't come 'round."

  "_Marry_ her? _Me?_ Marry a _Mex_?" Sliver almost yelled it.

  "That's what." While his thin lips parted in his characteristic wolfgrin, Jake went on: "Anyhow, what's your idee in shying an' rearingthis-a-way at domestic happiness wuss 'n a colt at flying paper? Why,other men rush for it like 'twas--"

  "Sticky fly-paper," Sliver ungallantly supplied. "An' once they'rein--_good night_!"

  But Jake ignored the interruption. "You-all orter take shame toyourself. Marriage is nature's most holy an' necessary ordinance. Don'tall the preachers tell it? An' what would become of the census withoutit? But here, instead of accepting your lot with thankfulness an'thanking your stars that a girl can be found that's damn fool enough totake you, you-all go a-holding up your head an' howling like a hungrycoyote."

  While Jake thus orated, Sliver's expression of obstinacy was leavened byfleeting hope. "If you b'lieve all that--what's the matter with youmarrying her yourself?"

  Jake's thin lips parted again in his sarcastic grin. "I've no callingfor it. You see I'm that soft by nat'er any woman could crush my tenderfeelings. But one glance at your brutal count'nance would tell even ablind man that your wife would be kep' in her place. Besides--was it methat took Gordon up there?"

  "Quit your fooling," Bull interposed. Then, unconscious of the humor ofthe situation, aware in his simplicity only of the danger to hischerished plan, he faced Sliver. "Yes or no--will you do it?"

  "No, I'm da--"

  "You won't?" Bleak eyes pin-points of steel, teeth bared in a snarl,knife flashing blue in the lantern-light, Jake sprang from the pile ofcorn fodder on which he was sitting. "You upset the beans we put tob'ile an' refuse to pick 'em up?"

  Almost as quickly Sliver's knife took the lantern gleam, and as theycircled, looking for an opening, the friendly habit of the last monthsdropped away. They were again the rustlers, wild, fierce, united againstman and his law, but equally ready to fight among themselves. But beforethey could close, Bull's bulk pushed in between. One shove of his greathands sent them staggering back.

  "Cut it out! We can't stand for no blood-letting around Miss Lee."Towering in the lantern-light, he turned to Sliver and laid down thelaw. "You an' us have ridden an' fit together for many a year. So faryou've never failed us an' I don't believe you will. We brought thisyoung fellow in, as you know, to cut that damn Mexican out, an' you'vesp'iled our game by throwing him in Felicia's way. Now it's up to you.If you make good--we go on. If you don't--there's the trail."

  He could not have taken better ground. Where threats would have provokedonly further obstinacy, the appeal won. While putting up his knife,though, Sliver glared at Jake.

  "I'll knock your block off the first time I catch you alone on therange." Addressing Bull, he went on: "Of course if it's to helpLady-girl, you bet I'll go the limit. But what d'you-all expect? ThatI'm a-going to cinch her with a priest an' license?"

  "That'd be more loving-like; she'd appreciate it, too."

  "Shut up, Jake! We don't care so long as you acquire enough title toshoo Gordon off. Here's fifty pesos. For half that, old Antonio 'u'dsell her along with his soul. You kin settle the details with him. Ofcourse you'll have to live out there for a whiles--mebbe till this Ramonbusiness is knocked out of Miss Lee's head."

  "What! An' cut out the range?" Sliver exclaimed in horror. "Me hangaround there a-selling aguardiente to _peones_?"

  "What's left after you get through," Jake began, but was cut off again.

  "No, we can arrange the work so there'll be plenty for you within easyriding."

  "So's you won't be drug too far away during the honeymoon. She wouldn'tstan' for that."

  Though a model in force and brevity, Sliver's answer transcends print.He wound up with the complaint: "All right, I'll go, but I see myfinish. I'll die on Felicia's grub."

  "Couldn't be any worse than Rosa's," Jake comforted. "You managed tolive on that."

  With a certain resignation, but still grumbling, Sliver set out nextmorning. To make sure that he followed program, Jake and Bull packed hiskit and even escorted him a mile or two on his way. Throughout all thesepreliminaries, Sliver's mien was rather that of chief mourner at afuneral than a groom on his way to his bride, and just before they lefthim he even advanced a belated plea.

  "Don't you allow we ked get some one else?"

  "With all the men in the country off at the wars?" Bull shook his head."Besides, no _peon_ could hold her down. She needs a strong hand."

  "It's either you or Gordon," Jake added. "You'll have to sacrifice."

  Not until they turned homeward after his lone figure had faded behindthe next rise did they consider how the affair was to be broken to Lee."'Tain't going to be so dreadful easy," Bull frowned thoughtfully, "shebeing a girl and prejudiced. She'd hardly cotton to sech primitivenupt'als as Sliver is likely to consummate."

  "I she'd think not!" Jake looked his horror and scorn. "You'll make amess of it. Better leave it to me."

  Bull was quite willing, but though he had looked for some embroidery onthe bare facts, the woof of romance Jake wove through the warp of factat lunch that day made him choke on his food and gasp. A tale of secretlove and stealthy visitations, a reluctant lady gradually won,ornamented with priests and licenses and other trimmings necessary forfeminine approval, were woven into a consistent narrative that provedhow much Bacchus gained and the Muses lost when Jake enlisted in theformer's service.

  "No, Missy, you ain't a-going to lose him," Bull answered, on his part,Lee's troubled question. "He'll take care of things over that way."

  "Well--" Lee laughed, a little choked laugh, "I hope he'll be--happy."Then becoming conscious of Gordon's gaze, she dropped her glance to herplate. But not before he had read its meaning.

  "Why hadn't this happened a week ago!"