XXVIII: A "REQUISITION"
Slipping in over the patio wall, a golden sunbeam struck behind whereGordon sat writing and flooded the _portales_ with topaz lights. Fromthe kitchen came the soft spat, spat of _tortillas_ in the course ofshapement between Teresa's palms, competing splash and flop of Maria'scloth as she washed off the brown-tiled floor. No other sound disturbedthe morning freshness, for Gordon had risen early to get off a letterwith Lovell, who had dropped in last night on his way to El Paso toattend Phoebe's wedding.
So engrossed was he that a gentle agitation of the sheet which hungacross Lee's bedroom doorway on the gallery above passed unnoticed. Therail hid from his view the small, bare feet, but he missed a glimpse ofwhite shoulder, flash of brown eyes under her hair's bright tousle,round, red mouth opened in a yawn before, seeing him, she hastilydropped the sheet. He did not see her even when she came out in kimonoand slippers and soft-footed it down the stone stairs at his back.Though, sitting up on her heels, Maria looked on smiling, Gordon's firstnotice came from the soft palms that slipped over his eyes.
With loose treachery the kimono sleeves had slipped back and he couldfeel the soft coolness of her forearms on his neck and cheeks; whereforeit is not to be wondered at that he found difficulty in guessing whomshe might be. Jake, Sliver, Maria, Teresa, Lovell, the _ancianos_, hewas enumerating by name all the women, children, cats, and dogs of the_hacienda_ when she cut him off.
"Your stupidity is suspicious, sir. But it punishes itself. If you hadguessed right I might have given you a--"
He took it--in triplicate, then pulled her down on his knee. "To myfather and mother," he replied to her question. "I thought it was abouttime I dropped them a line--haven't written home since I came down."
"What?" She uttered a small shocked scream. "You've let them suffer allthis time in suspense and alarm?"
He looked up in innocent surprise. "Why should _they_ suffer? I didn't."
_He hadn't?_ Her hands went up, appealing to the wide heavens againstsuch utter lack of imagination--but dropped again quickly, owing to asecond base treachery on the part of the sleeves.
"Oh, you men! What fools women are ever to bother about you. _You_didn't suffer? _Oooooh!_" She pulled his ear till he yelled. "If youever dare to treat me like that!"
"That would be impossible, for you see we shall always be together."
After he had placed the customary seals on this affidavit of intent, sheasked: "But why this sudden plunge into correspondence--after such longabstinence?"
"To inform them," he replied, with great dignity, "of a certainmomentous change impending in my condition."
"Oh, you are telling them about--_me_? May I see what you have written?"
She could! And did! With one arm around his neck, heads so close thathis face was hidden in an aura of flying hair, she began. As her eyespassed along the lines, her smooth cheek came harder and harder againsthis. Her clasp on his neck tightened until, just before she sat up, ithad evolved into a bear hug.
"Oh, what a liar they will think you!"
"To guard against that, I want you to let me have the photo in thesilver frame on your writing-table. Seeing's believing."
Of course she declared it "wasn't a bit like her" and the rest of it.Nevertheless, she brought it and, having resumed her perch on his knee,picked out the bad points and dwelt thereon while her eyes appealed forthe contradiction which he voluminously furnished. While he severallyand _in toto_ denied her scathing indictments and substituted thereforpanegyrics, she glowed radiantly and finally gave consent.
"Only you are so blind. They'll hate me when they see it."
"Trust dad for that!" he laughed. "He still has a soft spot for a prettydamsel. When he sees this--well, he'll go straight out and buy a fattedcalf."
"But your mother and sister? They'll never forgive me for taking youfrom that other girl."
"Wrong again! They weren't a bit anxious about it. It was all myfather--with his nonsense about rounding out fortunes. They'll love youas much as I--no, that's impossible! But they'll love you, all right."
A little thoughtful gleam now explained itself. "That other girl? Younever told me about her. Did you ever--kiss her?"
"Lots of times." Laughing, he held her as she tried to break away. "Atparties, when I was a kid--and when we played 'post-office' and sich."
"Never since you grew up?"
"Never."
"Oh, well," she sighed, "I suppose I'll have to forgive you since youwere so very small, and it's such a long time ago I'll really haveto--make up."
Some of the arrears were paid right then. In fact, it was not until shehad demurred at paying all that he tapped the letter. "And now--whatabout the date? Shall I tell that we will be married by the time theyreceive it?"
Her hair flew in a bright cloud under her vigorous shake. "Suchimpatience! Aren't you happy?"
"Happy?" His voice rang with sincerity. "Happier than I ever thoughtpossible, but--"
"But--?"
"I want to be happier still."
He meant and thought it. But she with her woman's intuition knew this,their love time, for what it was--the flowerage of their lives. Laterwould come the ripe fruit--content mixed with the joys and sorrows thatform the substance of life; but then this hour would have passedforever. Like all women, with whom love is always the great end, shewould have drained its last sweet essence. But like all women, she wasnot at all displeased by his impatience. Presently she yielded to it.
"After--after Bull comes home."
In the course of the argument she had coiled up on his knees, and theshy consent issued from the ambush of hair that hid her profile. Wrappedin his arms, soft and warm, she lay in blissful content for some timebefore he spoke.
"If Bull were here now, we could have gone up with Lovell and have madeit a double marriage. Why, what's the matter?"
She had sat up with a little shiver. "Oh no! I could never be happy inone of those great hotels, huge human warrens!" Coiling up again, sheallowed him a peep into her girlish dreamings. "I never saw him, he whowas to be my all. His face was always dim, indefinite, as a bright moonbehind a cloud, but he felt--like you. In my visions he always took meinto the wilds--the hills, woods, canons, and it is there we must go.
"It would be lovely if we could have taken horses and a pack-mule andgone down the length of the Sierra Madres--at first alone, latertraveling with the arrieros up the mule trails to the snow-line, thendown on the other side through giant canons. We should have seen onlythe simple folk of the country. But the revolution has made thatimpossible. But this we can do--go to the priest and jefe of San Carlos,who are both old friends of my father's, to be married, then ridestraight out to the mountain pasture and keep house there all byourselves till--till we feel like coming home. I will cook while youlook after the horses, and we can play that we are simple _peones_ andbe--oh, _so_ happy!"
Nothing could have appealed to him more strongly. It was almost as goodas a Java forest! He wondered at himself. "How perfectly lovely! Whydidn't I think of that myself?"
"You would have, in time. Oh!" She sprang from his knee at a stir andtinkle of water. "Mr. Lovell is up. I must shoot up-stairs and dress."
"You'll go out with me to-day?" he called after her.
"No." She bent down over the rail to answer. "I promised Jake to go withhim to Canon del Norte to look at the colts."
"Twice with him, twice with Sliver, and only once with me?" heprotested. "'Tisn't fair."
But all that he gained was a little soft laugh that came floating outfrom behind the sheet.
From his third of the wide circle which he, Jake, and Sliver nowdescribed about the _hacienda_, Gordon came in at sundown to the risefrom which he and the widow had looked down on Los Arboles. It hadbecome his daily habit to pause there and look for Lee returning withSliver or Jake--and to-night he saw all three, small dots on the crestsof great earth waves--then to sit and muse while the declining sunwashed the wide world with its resplendence.
As on that other evening, the hacienda lay with its walls, paintedadobes, _patio_, and compound aglow and plumed with soft smoke. As then,the plains lay, an undulating carpet of crimson and violet away to theburning hills. But--in place of soft woman voices, laughter low andwild--there came floating up to him a frightened murmur broken by a cry.
"Beast! she is but a child!"
Startled, he looked more closely and now saw, first; half a dozen horsesstanding with trailing bridles in the center of the compound; then as aflash of brass caught the sunlight, their riders straggling among theadobes.
"Raiders!" he thought, then noting their khaki, he changed it to,"_Revueltosos!_"
A glance north and south would have shown him the others coming in at afast lope. But at the cry, thrilling in its human anguish, wild in itspanic, he was seized with excitement blind and savage as the blood fearwhich turns a band of peaceful cattle into a snorting, bellowing herd.Digging in his spurs, he shot down the slope, in through the backcompound gate just as a woman came staggering back through the doorwayof the nearest adobe, felled by a blow on the mouth.
From within issued a wild, hysterical sobbing. At first Gordon's sight,blinded by the bright sun, showed him only a convulsive movement in thehalf-gloom, but as they swung back into the light of the doorway he sawa slim brown girl struggling in the arms of a _revueltoso_. The eldersister of his little playmate, she herself was but a child, but thishelped her no more than her heartbroken sobbing.
"Senor! Senor! Pity of Mary!"
At sight of the girl a cold shiver went down Gordon's spine. Blind,breathless, choking, conscious only of a savage impulse to rend andtear, he rushed in, tore the girl out of the man's arms, and threw himviolently against the wall.
So savage was the impulse he had never thought to use a weapon till thefellow reached for his long gun. Then, suddenly aware of death loomingimminent there in the half-gloom, he grabbed his automatic and fired,aiming with the natural intuitive precision with which one points afinger. He felt the rush of a body past him through the smoke. Then,stepping to the door, he saw the man run a few steps, fall, and rollover.
Suddenly aware that he, Gordon Nevil, had killed a man, intenselysurprised at his lack of emotion, commonplace acceptance of the fact, hestood with the smoking pistol in hand until, with a sudden rush, themother pushed him back in, then slammed and barred the door behind them.
The next moment came a scurry of feet, and the door quivered under aheavy shove. But it was not the varnished leaf of civilization, designedto keep out conversation. Barred top and bottom and three inches thick,it withstood a violent hammering.
The instant she was released the girl had dived like a scared rabbitunder the canvas cot in the far corner and lay there, still as a mouse.But, picking up the knife which the dead man had wrenched from her hand,the dark mother ranged herself alongside Gordon. Though he understoodvery little of her whispered Spanish, the gleaming intelligence of theburning eyes, eloquent gestures, carried her meaning.
"They say to bring fire and burn down the door." Her quick motionsimulated the lighting of a match, followed by the upleap of flame.Whispering: "Tira! senor, tira! Shoot! Shoot!" she pointed at thewindow.
It was merely a square hole, flush with the thick wall on the outside,and barred with heavy oaken staves, and the _revueltosos_ were huggingthe wall. Nevertheless, with a quick thrust of his weapon between thebars Gordon fired two shots along the wall. Though the bullets flew atrandom, there followed a quick scurry of feet.
Watching from one side of the window, Gordon now saw the men working, inswift rushes, around the corrals to the stables, from behind which theycould command his window. Indeed, he had no more than moved backbefore--zip, plug! zip, plug! zip, plug! the bullets began to stream inthrough the window and plump in the back wall.
Presently, with a sharp, splitting ping! one pierced the door just abovethe woman's shoulder. Reaching hastily, Gordon pulled her close againsthim; then, standing against the thick wall between the door and window,they waited--in deadly silence, for the fire had suddenly stopped. Sostill it was, he could distinctly hear the woman's excited breathing andan occasional sob under the bed.
"Tempting me to look out," he read the silence.
But he was wrong. A minute thereafter came a soft patter of nude feetand the voice of Maria, the little _criada_, called through the bars:
"It ess good now, senor, for you to come. Don Jake say for you help withthose evil ones."
The instant he stepped outside the situation explained itself. Warned,first by the firing, then by women who came running out to meet them,"Don" Jake and Sliver had quietly made their dispositions. At the backgate Sliver and two _ancianos_ now stood with leveled rifles. Two morepoked deadly snouts over the low _patio_ wall, Lee and Jake behind them.And now they had leadership the women were swarming like brown hornetsout of the adobes, brandishing knives, cleavers, _machetes_, ahysterical, dangerous mob.
In accordance with their outlaw tactics, Jake and Sliver had both aimedat the leader, and, cut off from escape, with still another enemy behindhim, he had taken the hint. Arms reversed, rifle muzzle resting on theground, he stood with his four companions. To give them their due, theyshowed no fear. Half or whole bandit, ugly, black-browed, one of themvillainously pock-marked, the others with unhealthy erupted skins, theyrolled cigarettes while urging the excited women to greater frenzy withevil jokes.
"Drive back those women!" Jake called the moment Gordon appeared. "Thenbring the captain, or colonel, or general, whichever is what, overhere."
Nodding in reply to Gordon's gesture, the leader followed him across thecompound. Of medium height, well formed, features aquiline and cleanlycut, he was a perfect specimen of that tailor-made, detestably handsomeMexican middle-class type. Conceit, insufferable vanity, bristled at theends of his curved mustache. How it could be associated with suchreckless hardihood as he now displayed must remain one of Nature'smysteries, for, entering the patio, he took a seat under the portalesand addressed Jake with an authoritative air:
"Now, senor, will you please explain why you have attacked a command ofGeneral Valles?"
"Yes, if you will explain, on your part, why a command of General Vallesattacked my people!"
It was Lee that answered. She was wearing her man's riding-clothes, andthe man's surprise when she spoke told that he had taken her for a boy.Now, with exaggerated courtesy that was far more offensive than hisfirst hardy insolence, he sprang up and offered her his chair.
"I did not know"--his bold glance wandered over her costume--"you willpardon me, senorita?"
Though she flushed, Lee returned the stare. It was not the first timethat revolutionists had come with "requisitions" to Los Arboles. Sheanswered from experience.
"You have a commission from General Valles?"
He had. It ran in the usual form, setting forth in grandiose languagethat the necessities of the revolution demanded all good citizens tocontribute their uttermost to the cause, authorizing the bearer, _elcapitan_ Santos, to seize and expropriate such goods, cattle, horses, orother chattels according to his judgment, and to settle therefor withhis note of hand, payable after the revolution; signed in Valles's ownilliterate, crabbed hand and attested with a prodigious seal.
Lee handed it back. "This seems to be in legal form. That being thecase"--she returned to the attack with a directness that drew from Jakean appreciative nod "perhaps you will now answer why you attacked mypeople!"
"I know of no attack except"--the straight brows knit over a black flashat Gordon--"when this man killed one of my men."
Already Lee had gained the details from the women. She replied at once:"He shot in self-defense--to save one of my girls."
"Santa Maria!" His mustache drew up in a cynical grin. "Whatfoolishness! As though a good soldier should be shot because he ruffleda dove. You Americanos take these _peonas_ too seriously, fill them withideas above their station. On our haciendas they are proud to gain asoldado for a sweetheart."
Could the thoughts of, say, Gordon, Jake, and Sliver have been examinedjust then they would have shown, respectively, an intense desire onGordon's part to break the officer in two across his knee; a coolcalculation by Jake as to the possibility of "getting away with it"should they find it necessary to kill the entire command. Sliver, stillholding a bead on the file of men, from his gaze, was ardently wonderingif he could send one bullet through all four heads.
If the thoughts of the _peonas_--now gathered in a murmuring,gesticulating mob that showed principally as glistening eyeballs rollinglike foam in a sea of brown faces along the wall--a composite of theirthought would have shown a mad passion to rend and maim, mutilate andtorture, bred of their natural savagery aggravated by centuries ofmistreatment under Spanish-Mexican rule. Out of which chaos of thoughtand passion, vibrant and sweet with the strength and truth of a finenature aroused by base wrong, came Lee's voice:
"_You_ say that? _You_, a follower of a man who was once himself a_peon_, who boasts that his is the _peones'_ cause? _You_, hisrepresentative, sneer because we treat like human beings these poorcreatures? If you _do_ represent him, then God help us, for we havelittle but violence to expect from your cause."
It was a fine chord, strongly struck, should have set in vibration thestrings of sympathy in any normal human being. Though he caught butlittle of the Spanish, Gordon felt and glowed responsively. It arousedeven Jake, the cold and crafty, born hater of the _peon_ in all hisways, to mutter: "You bet! they hain't got nothing coming from him!" Butin the nature of the Mexican, warped and blackened forever both bytraining and by the vicissitudes of bandit war, it aroused onlysurprise. Though his eye lit up, it was only in secret appreciation ofher beauty. It was to ingratiate himself, personally, in her favor that,with a sudden reversal, he ran off with despicable glibness theshibboleths of his "Cause." Surely they were fighting for the _peon_; toobtain his rights and restore the public lands alienated by the_hacendados_.
"If my hombre did as you say," he concluded, "he earned his death. Mygeneral would be the first to applaud it." With a gesture that dismissedthe killing lightly, as if it were that of a fly, he added: "So let ussay no more of that. My wish is to serve _you_!"
Though again he did not understand the words, the grin that accompaniedthem in its offensive mixture of conceit and admiration sent the angryblood flooding Gordon's face. He was standing behind Lee, and, hearinghis quick breath, she put back her hand in a restraining gesture.
"Leave him to me," she whispered. Then, looking the other straight inthe eye, she gave him his answer. "You wish to serve me? Very well,senor, you may do so very easily--by removing yourself and your men offmy place."
For a moment he looked at her, the offensive grin wiped out by surprise.In turn, surprise gave way to sudden viciousness. "Si, senorita--afteryou have produced two hundred horses, which is your share of the newlevy for equipment and supplies. Also"--another black flash went toGordon--"it will be my duty to take this man to my general."
"Perhaps I had better go," Gordon whispered. "It may save you--"
Lee cut him off without looking around. "And shoot him the moment youget him outside the gates?" She quoted the Mexican law of "The escape.""No, senor, I will be responsible for his safe-keeping and deliver himwith my own hands at your general's call." She added, after asignificant pause, "Along with the evidence of your own neglect inpermitting your men to attack my people."
For a moment he looked nonplussed. Now and then, for the sake ofeffect--especially upon meddlesome consuls--it was the fashion in therevolutionary armies to shoot a few men for just such offenses; and onecould never be certain where the next lightning might strike. Heblinked, tried to pass it with a shrug; but suppressed fury showedthrough his vicious look.
"Very well, senorita, the matter shall be left to my general. But thehorses. These I must have at once."
"Well, think you've got 'em, an' let it go at that!"
While Jake muttered behind her, Lee stood thinking. Then out of hermeditation flashed a sharp question: "Were you at the hacienda of thesenor Benson last week?"
The man's dark brows rose. "No, senorita. If there was a requisitionserved there it must have been by el coronel Lopez."
"When did you leave the cuartel general?"
"Ten days ago. We have been working among the haciendas on the otherside of the railroad. But what difference does it make--"
"A great deal." She gave a little nod. "Since you left headquarters thesenor Benson, with my manager, the senor Perrin, has gone with an offerof all our horses on favorable terms to General Valles. So that mattermay also be left with him."
"Which lets you out!" Jake, who had been fuming all this time in thebackground, now burst out. "Now git! That's what I said--an' take yourdead hombre along."
From his cold, bleak face, so dangerous in its vitriolic quiet, theman's glance passed to Gordon, whose hand was on his gun, then to thepeonas who were now crowding the _patio_ gates. Everywhere his glancefell amid a small sea of hot, brown faces flecked with a scum ofglittering, dangerous eyes. Accustomed to be met always with fawningfear, defiance was a new experience, not easily assimilated. As hisglance returned to Jake and he felt the danger that loomed imminentbehind his cold truculence, the instinct of defiance wilted. With ashrug he passed out into the compound through the lane the _peonas_opened.
While he was assembling his command Jake leaned casually across the_patio_ wall, his rifle in the hollow of his arm, beside him Lee andGordon, the latter now with a rifle. At the back gate Sliver and his_ancianos_ still stood, wary and watchful. Wherefore, in spite of secretmutterings, the intruders made quick business of it.
As, with the dead man tied in his saddle and leading the horse, theypassed out under the _patio_ arch, the leader paused, bowed ironically,then followed his men.
"Saddle a fresh horse an' go after them," Jake ordered, when Sliver cameup. "Don't let 'em see you, but keep them in sight. After this we'llhave to keep one man circling the hills while the _ancianos_ keep watchan' watch at the gates."
With Lee, Gordon had moved out to the stage and stood watching the menride away. "I am sorry to have brought this on you," he said, in lowtones. In his ignorance of Mexican habits and treachery, he added,"Perhaps it would have been better if I had gone with him."
A hasty glance through the arch showed Sliver on his way to the stables.Jake was shooing the _peonas_ back to their quarters with much languageand little ceremony. There was no one to see when, with a quickmovement, she threw one arm around his neck, pulled down his head, andplanted a swift kiss on his cheek.
"I don't want to be widowed--before I'm married."
At midnight Sliver brought in his report. "They've gone on to El Sol.After dark I drew up so close that I almost ran into 'em when theystopped suddenly at the other side of a ridge. Luckily my horse stoodquiet an' the air was so still I heard every word of their wrangling.The captain he was fer coming back, but the others wouldn't hear of it.
"'The damned gringos shoot straight,' I heard one of 'em say. 'Alreadyhave they killed one of us, an' now they be ready. Also the horses aretired an' we hungry. Let us go forward to Hacienda El Sol.' Then, aftersome jawing, they moved on."
"An' they won't come back," Jake commented on the report. "Not so longas they kin find something that looks easier."
Which was only half of the truth!
Over the Border: A Novel Page 28