Over the Border: A Novel

by Herman Whitaker

  XXXV: WHY?

  While Bull stood on gaze at the distant mountains he shook with thechill of a great fear. His question issued in a whisper so low and huskythat the agent took the meaning from his gesture toward the hills.

  "The bandits moved toward the senor Lovell's." He answered. "Praise thesaints! the senoritas are both in El Paso."

  "Then they'll go straight on to Mary's!" The last vestige of colordrained from Bull's face.

  Leaping the intervening mountains, imagination showed him that trickleof foul humanity dribbling down upon the _rancho_. He saw Mary Mills onthe veranda, Betty pressed to her side. But in place of the hope andtrust of his previous visions pale horror sat on her face. Obliteratingthe sweet wholesomeness that surrounded her like an aura, the dirtydribble swept around her and the child.

  He turned to the agent. "My horse? Did they get him?"

  "No, senor, I had my mozo drive all the beasts into the chaparral." Hepointed eastward. "Come!"

  Half an hour later the _mozo_ shoved a shock head out of the chaparralin answer to the agent's whistle, and five minutes thereafter Bull wason trail, riding hard through a dread nightmare, insensible to the glareof the sun, suffocating heat, conscious only of the terrors that coursedthrough his mind.

  In these dread visions Lee had no part. She had Gordon and Sliver andJake! His fear centered on Mary Mills and her child. Often, in suddenagony, he would dig in the spurs and rowel his beast into a mad gallop.But always his better judgment checked the mad impulse. Reining in, hewould proceed at a gait that would keep the animal running to the end.At least, he so rode until, passing into the grass country thatafternoon, he saw a tall smoke column rising on the shoulder of amountain ahead.

  He recognized it at once for one of the smoke signals arranged by Bensonto spread the news of a raid, and as he saw that it rose in direct linewith the widow's _rancho_ his fears crystallized around its slendercolumn. Beyond peradventure, the place had been attacked. Jaws clenchedtill the bones stood out white through the flesh, black brows bent inbitter desperation, he urged on his frothing beast.

  Whether he came in from Los Arboles or the railroad, distance alwaystimed Bull's arrival at the _rancho_ with the lowering of the sun. As heurged his jaded beast at a shambling trot over the last rise his shadowlay long and black on the rich apricot glow of the slope. Long ago theominous cloud had died on the mountain's high shoulder; but, moreominous still, a lighter column had risen in the foreground. Thoughprepared, a hoarse sob unlocked his set jaws as he came in sight of theplace.

  The externals were the same--crimson and gold mountains encircling tawnypastures. At this hour the widow's cattle were usually to be seenforging slowly homeward across the sun-fired slopes. But now--in all thewide prospect occurred no sign of man or beast. Swept of all life,lonely and desolate, it ran off and away to the hills.

  The house? Instinctively Bull swept his hand across his eyes. But theevil vision remained. In place of the bougainvillea draping all withpurple clusters, a shriveled black lace hung around the windows thatstared with fiery eyes from blackened walls. In agony of spirit thatshook him with tremblings more severe than those on the tired horse,Bull rode on down the slope. Approaching, he caught first the crackleand murmur of the flames that still leaped within the seared walls, thena low wailing mixed with a feverish mutter of prayer.

  A wild rush of hope swept his being--to die the next moment when,rounding the corner, he saw Terrubio's woman. On her knees, hands raisedin supplication, she was so absorbed in her prayers that she did not seeor heed him till he laid his hand on her shoulder.

  She did not start. Slowly, with the deliberation of a being shockedbeyond emotion, she turned her head and looked up in Bull's face. Thoughshe was still under thirty, hers had been the quick withering thatfollows the early ripening of tropical countries. There was left onlythe lingering beauty of great Spanish eyes; and in their depths, halfvacant, half wild, Bull saw, as in some brown pool, flitting reflectionsof the horrors in his own mind. Lips moving without sound, she stared athim for some seconds, then, suddenly clasping his knees, burst into apassion of tears.

  At any other time Bull's dominant racial contempt would have caused himto spurn her. Stooping now, he gently patted her head. Wise in hissorrow, he waited for the passing of the first convulsion.

  "Aie!... Aie!" Soon she began to speak. "Aie! the poor senora ... andthe nina ... where were they? The mercy of God? Pity of the Virgin? Aie!Aie! where were they?"

  A second convulsion choked her utterance, and once again Bull waitedwith the patience of absolute despair; left her, as he had left the manon the train, to tell the tale in her own way.

  "They came in from all sides, senor." Her hands swept the round of thehills. "Only the old man, my father, that was out with the herds,escaped. He it was who sent up the smoke from the mountains. The senorawas at breakfast with the nina in the patio when Terrubio, my man, camerunning from the stables with the brown wolves hard on his heels. Whiteas the petals of the flower at her throat she was with her great fear.But she shook it off, senor, went forward to meet them with smiles andgreetings. They must be hungry and tired! If they would rest for a whileshe would serve them with her own hands! And she had the child speak tothem, trusting that her white youth might move in them some stir ofpity. Aie! Pity! The pity of the tiger for the lamb it holds between itspaws! Si, a white ewe in the midst of a ravening pack, she stood beatingthem off with her smiles.

  "'Enter, senores, and be seated. Food shall be brought you at once.'Thus she spoke them.

  "Because it served their wickedness, they swarmed in, that scum ofbeasts, into the sala, the kitchen, swarmed through the house, till itreeked with their evil presence.

  "At first they held some order. Not at once, even by their kind, are thesanctities to be destroyed. In the days that Don Porfirio held them inplace a white woman was as high above them as the angels of light, sotheir tradition held them for a little while. Their first awe, however,soon became as a whet to their evil appetites. From rough jokes, badtalk, they proceeded to worse--entered her bedroom and the child's,broke open the locked drawers, looted and handled their clothing.

  "For that she did not care--not for anything, could she but keep thechild from their hands. To have her out of their sight, she left herwith me in my kitchen when she herself carried the food and waited uponthem.

  "'Get Betty away!' she had whispered to me. But the bandits had seen tothat. Two of them sat at my kitchen door eating while they kept guard.

  "Still she had hope--that, being fed and flattered and pleased withtheir plunder, they would ride on their way. Even when, as she came andwent among them, they began to pluck at her with little pats andpinches, she still clung to the hope; held them off as she could withsmiling reproof. But, beasts as they were, they took their bread fromher hand, and then--and then--how shall one tell it?

  "They demanded that the senorita Betty be brought in to wait on them. Atfirst they took the food she brought, patted her on the back, called her'Linda' and other pet names. But soon they began to torment her also. Atlast one beast pulled her on to his knee.

  "To me, in the kitchen, came the child's scream and the senora's bittercry. 'For the sake of your mothers, senores!' followed by the crash offurniture, smash of crockery swept to the floor.

  "At the cry I ran to the doorway and saw Terrubio, my man, rush in atthe opposite door. The face of him was torn with the fury of hell! One!Two! Three! He split their hearts with his knife, before he also wentdown under a saber stroke and was hacked to bits as he lay on theground. From the meat-block I had snatched my fleshing knife. But as Igained the doorway the guards took me from behind and threw me backwardupon the floor. As I lay there, fighting with both of them, the screamsof the child, desperate moaning of the mother, rang in my ears! Mercy ofGod! Pity of the Virgin! Where were they? Where were they?"

  Covering her ears, as though to shut out the dreadful echoes, shecowered at Bull's feet while shudder after shudder shook her fram
e.

  "Go on!" He stooped and shook her violently. "Go on!"

  She looked up, the tears streaming from her eyes. "I was wrong, senor.One mercy was granted--death! They murdered them ... murdered them!Angered by the death of their own men, they murdered them--the innocentwoman, sweet child!"

  "Yet you--escaped?"

  "Si. The two had left me for dead in the kitchen, and the fire wasalmost upon me when I gained strength to rise and stagger out. Then,they were gone--gone like the wolves that sneak into the forest afterthey have slain the white heifer of the plains."

  Turning, Bull walked blindly to his horse and dropped his face on hisarms, propped upon the saddle. While he stood, trembling in every limb,blind struggle filled his mind.

  The Mercy of God? Pity of the Virgin? Indeed, where were they? Where, ina universe ruled by a just God, could one find justification for thishorror? "The sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the children tothe fourth generation," says the old Law; but where in Mary Mills'sblameless ancestry, where in their long line of honest merchants andfarmers, could one find the fault that demanded this terrible atonement?And she--who had given forth only kindness, charity, mercy, throughouther life? And Betty, spotless in her innocence as her new-born soul?Where could one find the fault which called for their desecration?

  Not in these clear terms did Bull's thought run. Blind anguish kept himstraining as in the throes of a violent nausea. He did not think, hefelt--felt the frightful injustice beyond the explanation of anydoctrine; and, feeling, his whole being rose in revolt against it.

  While he stood, face buried in his arms, there forced upon hisconsciousness a sound that rose above the woman's sobbing--the drymurmur of the flames. Strange to say, it brought him a certain comfort.They were gone, that pleasant, wholesome woman, sweet child, goneforever beyond the blank wall that rises between the quick and the dead!Surely they were gone! Yet--the corruption of the tomb, mold of thegrave, would never touch their flesh. Through the clean, white flamesthey had passed into the original elements; and, wild man of the plainsthat he was, born of free spaces, wide deserts, clean winds, he tookcomfort in the thought.

  Next, intensifying, yet soothing his poignant anguish, there floated inupon him a vision of the soft beauty of that last night. Again he sawthrough the gloaming the infinite loneliness reflected in Mary Mills'sface. Again its dim whiteness turned toward him in the dusk. Like atimid dove he saw her hand come fluttering into his. Then--with deepthankfulness he realized it--now she would never know! never know howfar he had fallen below his resolves.

  Not for her, now, the pain of listening to his confession. His own didenter into his thoughts. All that he had suffered, was now suffering,was as naught. No anguish, physical or mental, could atone in his ownsight for his fall. If he could have restored her and the child as theywere yesterday, to go forward with a worthier man to happier destinies,he would have done it, then turned and gone on his own dark and solitaryway. But that was impossible, and, being impossible, he hugged to hisbreast the thought--now she would never know!

  From this his mind turned again in a dull way to the question, "Why?" Hehad no skill in the philosophy of words. The doctrine that evil ismerely good out of place, that the ferocity which had brought thisterrible thing to pass had origin under the power that set the stars intheir courses, the suns on their ways, would never have appealed to him.His mind turned to a nearer cause, and found it in what clearer mindsthan his denounced as the slack policies of a government that hadutterly failed in its duties to its own--the government that, with thepurblindness of the mole, had intrigued with bandits, played fast andloose with the fates, crowned its follies by permitting a barbaricpeople to attempt the impossible task of guiding its own destinies.

  Raising his head, he turned his face of dark despair to the northward.Then, with the truth of a simple vision that is not to be blinded bydiplomatic sophistries, with power beyond the wildest raving, his sternnod placed the responsibility where he believed it belonged--across theRio Grande.

  "You done it!" His homely phraseology increased rather than lessened theforce of his indictment. "Yes, _you_ done it!"

  The woman had fallen again to her praying. Her mutter drew hisattention. Even in that moment of dire distress racial feeling was stillforceful enough to halt an impulse to kneel at her side. Instead heknelt in mind. Head bowed, he stood beside her, a silent partner tosupplications which his keen sense of unworth prevented him fromsharing.

  When she broke into a second wild frenzy of cursing, arms raised to thesky, he turned and walked away, his face set toward the mountains--andrevenge.