Over the Border: A Novel

by Herman Whitaker

  XLII: BULL DREAMS A DREAM!

  After the mogul glided away, Bull, Lee, and Gordon crouched in thesage-brush while the _revueltoso_ engine approached. With a roar it cameat them out of the night, its beam light shooting an angry glance ahead.For a moment they saw it on the high railroad bank in black silhouetteagainst the moonlit sky; an engine and two box-cars that swung andswayed under a heavy top load of soldiers beneath a luminous trail ofsmoke. On the first car a machine-gun showed in skeleton outline onspider legs. For a second the train loomed in their sight, then roaredpast, leaving the moon staring down at them through a yellow cloud ofdust.

  Rising, Bull held a brief council. The eastern hills had swung in whilethey traveled northward, now lay only a few miles away.

  "We'll gain into them a piece, then rest up for a couple of hours," hesaid. "We kain't afford more. On foot, this-a-way, we'll have to travelat night an' hide up during the day--unless we chance on a _rancho_where we kin steal horses! Of course, it's terrible on you, Missy. Butif you kin stan' it for a little longer--" He stopped as Lee shook, ashe thought, with a sob.

  It was, however, merely a little laugh strangled at birth by tire andtrouble. "It seemed so funny that I, with hundreds of horses of my own,should have to turn rustler." With a little mothering pat that somehowreversed their positions and brought him, the big, dark giant, under herfostering care, she added: "Don't worry about me. If I could only makeyou some coffee! Do something to justify my existence! Here, give me arifle. I can at least carry something."

  But Gordon took it from her. Bull shouldered the cartridges andprovisions. Then, like dim ghosts, they moved over the desert, windingthrough sage, _palo verde_, stinkbrush, on their way to the obscurehills. Though Lee pleaded, time and again, to carry something, theyobstinately refused--and it was well that they did. When Bull called ahalt, at last, on the crest of the first hill she stood weaving andswaying until Gordon seated her on a flat rock.

  "Don't dare to move," he ordered, "till I get you something to eat."

  They had left of their own provisions only coffee, crackers, and saltmeat. But after "Alberto" cut off the engine Gordon had "requisitioned"his _tortillas_ and chile stew--plenty for three. Once again Lee wishedshe could make them coffee. Fire being impossible, her dominant instinctstill found a vent. While Gordon sat munching leathery _tortillas_ hishead was suddenly seized; with her wet handkerchief she washed theengine soot off his face.

  Neither did Bull escape. "There!" Bestowing a little, loving box onGordon's ear, she turned on Bull. The cool, damp, soft hands seized andwashed and wiped his black visage just as though he had been a child.Whereafter she gave a little sigh of satisfaction.

  "Well, you're _half_-clean, anyway."

  Like two boys they looked up at her through the dusk. Gordon had takenhis punishment with a grin. Now he paid for it with a kiss that drewfrom Bull a grave smile. "Sleep, now, you kids," he admonished them."Two hours an' we'll have to be moving again."

  "You, too!" Lee insisted.

  Exhausted by days of riding and fighting, she and Gordon slid almost atonce into the deep, dreamless slumber of tired youth. Till the slowerrhythm of their breathing informed him of the fact, Bull lay quiet.Then, rising stealthily, he stood over them, a dim giant figure guardingtheir sleep while the moon sailed down to the mountains. Fifteen milesto the southward Jake was playing his last lone "hand." He was in Bull'smind when a distant rumble followed a flash that lit the night sky withcalcium red.

  "Something doing there." Though he could have no accurate knowledge,Bull nevertheless put his intuition into words. "Bet you Jake had afinger in it."

  Stooping, he awoke the sleepers, then shouldering the rifles andprovisions, led off in the gloom, leaving Gordon to help Lee. And sheneeded it. The nap had left her sleepier than ever. Like a child arousedin the night, she yawned, stretched; still her eyes would not open.

  Yet she made light of it. "My feet seem to belong to some one else. Allthe time they are trying to go off by themselves. Outch!"

  It was the barbed thorn of a _nopal_, which hurt worse coming out thanit did going in; the first of a series. Indeed, "cat's claws" and"crucifixion thorns" lay everywhere in prickly ambush. "Spanish bayonet"scratched their shoes, scored their leather puttees. Now the sage wouldrise high above their heads, then leave them to scramble in the openamong limestone boulders. Stripped to its bones by torrential rains ofthe last season, the ground heaved and tossed in pits and hummocks. Indaylight it would have been heavy going. By night it was heart-breaking.When, after an hour of it, Bull called a halt the two laid down at once;in five seconds were fast asleep.

  This time he allowed only twenty minutes, then got them up and pressedon again. So, alternately walking and sleeping, they gained ten miles tothe north and east before dawn burst, a red explosion, through the firstpale lights.

  Its weird illumination revealed the same dreary expanse of limestone andscrub desert they had fought over the preceding day. It also showed Lee,pale, tired, limping, but cheerful.

  She nodded when Bull proposed that they should keep on till sunrise. "Tobe sure! We'll have all day to rest."

  "I didn't mean, though, for you to walk no more." Stooping suddenly, herose with her sitting on his shoulder.

  "Your weight ain't no more to me than a fly," he replied to her protest;and while the weird red lights faded to amber washes and thesebrightened into a fierce sunblaze, he carried her on to a _mesa_ thatraised its limestone face like the walls of an old castle from theboulders and sage.

  "'Tain't safe to go on," he said, setting her down. "You'd think, tolook around, there wasn't a living thing within a hundred thousandmiles. But you never kin tell. The desert has eyes that see withoutbeing seen; voices that tell of a stranger without being heard.Sometimes it is a herder in search of strays; sometimes a rustler hidingfrom the _rurales_; but there's always some one. We'll stop while it'ssafe."

  He was right. Already they had been seen--by a _peon_ who had beendriven by the good looks of his woman to seek a harborage by a secretspring from _revueltoso_ lovers. But the tale of their passing did notgo forth by him. Already he and his woman were trudging at the heels oftheir burro deeper into the desert. But only twelve miles away"Alberto," the engineer, was pointing out their footprints to the troopof _revueltosos_ he had guided up the line.

  "Here it was they got off, el capitan. See the marks of their feet?These little ones no larger than a child's are those of the woman."

  "A white girl, thou sayest?" the leader asked.

  "Si, senor, an Americana white as milk. Dressed she was in man'sriding-clothes that showed her very shapely. She will make the fine matefor thee."

  "There should be _some_ pay." The _capitan_ went on, with a vile oath."Twenty of us, see you, mashed by the engine the gringo loosed upon us;si, mashed to a pulp. As many more cleaned of hair and hide like pigscome out of a scald. Slow roasting would have been the least I had dealtthat gringo. But he goes out like"--he blew out the match with which hewas lighting his cigarette--"this! and takes a hundred more of us withhim. Bueno!" His shrug accepted that which could not be undone. "Theyare gone, our companeros, but we shall meet again--in hell. But theseothers, the girl and her men, shall pay."

  At his order, his men, about a dozen, strung out on a line the units ofwhich rode a quarter-mile apart. Riding slowly, beating the country tothe north and east as they went, they approached Bull's limestone castlejust as the shortening shadows proclaimed high noon.

  After Lee and Gordon had eaten and lain down, Bull had built over them arough _ramada_ of sage-brush to protect them from the sun. Then, sittingin the shadow, he had held his tireless watch. While the _revueltoso_line was still miles away his keen eyes picked up the individual dustclouds that marked its units serpentining across the sage. He knew, yetlet them approach almost within rifle-shot before he woke up Gordon, socarefully that Lee slept on.

  "There ain't many of 'em," he whispered. "We must make 'em sick at thefirst shooting. I'm going to sli
p along the ridge to get that secondman. Let yourn come right to the foot of the bluff. Wait till you kinsee his eyes; then bust him where he's biggest."

  Yesterday's fighting had absorbed most of Gordon's thrills. But now, ashe lay looking down at the _revueltoso_ coming on a little, ambling jog,he sustained a queer revulsion. Yesterday he had lain and loaded andfired as steadily as any of the Three. But, somehow, this seemeddifferent--as different as a duel from a cavalry charge. His Anglo-Saxoninstinct for fair play revolted at this ambushing of a single man. When,pausing at the foot of the bluff, the fellow looked up Gordonexperienced an absurd impulse to rise and shoot from the shoulder afterfair warning.

  But while he hesitated Lee turned in her sleep and sighed. It stiffenedhim, that gentle sigh. A glance along the ridge showed Bull sightingfrom behind a rock. Drawing his own bead, he fired.

  At the crack of the rifle Lee slid from under the _ramada_, startled andwide-eyed, in time to see the man collapse in the saddle, then slideheadlong to the ground. Bull's man was also down, and as the riderlesshorses threw up their heads and galloped away the dust clouds along thesage whirled back and combined half a mile away.

  By that time Bull had returned, and as they moved on back he pointed ata gap in a low range that drew its jagged line across the horizon. "Thatis the Tejon Pass--about ten miles away. The American border is on'ytwelve beyond. Mexicans never fight in the dark. If we kin hold 'em tillthen we'll have all night to climb through the Pass."

  They made a good gain while the _revueltosos_ were recovering from thatfirst sharp lesson. By the time the latter had described a wide circlearound the bluff Bull had taken up a second position on a smallerelevation, and held it while Lee and Gordon retired still further.

  Thus began a repetition of the previous day's fighting--with thisdisadvantage, lacking horses in open country devoid of the limestoneridges that afforded natural barriers, and surrounded most of the timewith tall sagebrush, they had to keep up a constant fire, searching thebrush with their bullets to keep the _revueltosos_ from crawling up onthem. It was hot work, slow work, laborious work, growing all the timemore dangerous, for, following up in a wide circle, the _revueltosos_brought its ends around until, just before sundown, a shot fireddirectly from their rear informed Bull that their investure wascomplete.

  It was not, however, for long. While Gordon threw bullets around thecircle, checking its constriction, Bull crept through the sage till hesighted, at last, a light smoke puff issuing from a bush. He aimed intothe middle of it and, following the crack of his rifle, a man leaped up,then fell forward.

  So began again the retreats which continued while the lowering sun setthe Tejon range on fire above a desert of lavender and purple. At dusk ahuge, flat moon rose and hung like a polished shield on the horizon'sdark wall. Sailing on up, it flooded the desert with quiet radiance,supplying light for their tired feet. As they journeyed the dim mass ofthe range rose higher and higher till it blotted out the stars. Shortlythereafter they entered the Pass.

  From its mouth a mule path wound up between high rocky walls, then fell,hours later, into a narrow valley, where they found a spring and pool,at which they refilled their water-bag. It was hard to leave. But afterthey had drunk and washed the dust from their faces Bull hoisted Lee onhis shoulder again; with tireless strength carried her on up the trailto a plateau almost at the height of land that overlooked the valley. Sotired was she Gordon had to keep her awake while she ate the dole ofcrackers and salt meat, the last of their provisions. Then, gatheringher to him, he fell, with her, into dreamless sleep.

  Again, to please her, Bull had feigned sleep. Again he returned to hisceaseless watch. Not since he left the train five nights ago had heclosed his eyes. Yet his mind functioned as usual. Just as his body wasaccustomed to move, ride, walk under the heat of a desert sky, so histhoughts flashed and faded in the sultry heat of his brain. If anything,it was stimulated. His vision reached farther; he saw with crystalperception, grasped mental conceptions beyond his normal. As he gazeddown on the sleeping pair his mind reached out beyond the danger of thehour.

  Unconscious of his kindly scrutiny, the two slept on, Lee gathered inthe curve of Gordon's arm, fair head pillowed on his breast, both facesturned up in the moonlight. Exhaustion had drained most of the girl'scolor, and, the redder for it, the arched bow of her mouth showed underthe small nose, fine nostrils. The rounded oval of her cheeks, broad,low brow, smooth throat gained delicacy by contrast with the heaviermold of Gordon's features. His level brows, firm mouth, straight nose,forehead broad and high above wide-spaced eyes, the good, square jaw,supplied the masculine equivalent of her fineness. One face, as theother, indicated quality, breeding. The girlish figure, well rounded inspite of its litheness, complemented the rangy body, flat flanks, longlimbs, alongside which it lay so quietly.

  In their wholesome, healthy youth they were perfect as a double flower.The man and the woman! given to him for a helpmeet in the Garden ofEden; a helpmeet in joy and sorrow, love and fighting, in play andearnest throughout the generations! The unconscious tenderness of thatage-long relation was expressed by his guarding arm, her softdependence; something of the feeling, mystery, and beauty of all pastloves enveloped them sleeping there.

  "Jes' naturally made for each other. Not once in a thousand do you getsuch a pair."

  Bull's murmur was founded on truth, for he had seen enough of the worldto know of the misfits and mismatings, of the strong with the weak, ofhealth and disease, ugliness and sweetness; the sales of youth todegenerate age; the chance matings of the slums that bring into theworld a wretched swarm to fill the hospitals and prisons. Once in athousand? Not once in a hundred thousand was Nature's intent socompletely fulfilled.

  To the greatly wise and the greatly simple are vouchsafed visions, andto Bull, looking out over the dim plains, was given a dream. It began atArboles. Just as he had seen Lee sitting under the _portales_ many atime, fair head inclined over a bit of mending for one or other of theThree, he now saw her sewing and making for the small children thattugged at her skirt, tried to climb her knee. Small replicas of herselfand Gordon, with the marvelous celerity of visions, they grew underBull's eyes into strong boys, healthy girls, whose shouts and laughterraised the echoes in the _patio_. Now they were young men and women! Hesaw the lads go forth and return proudly with young wives. He saw fineyoung fellows come in to woo and win Lee's girls.

  With that the vision expanded till it embraced all the land. Underforced peace, he saw the flood of immigration that had been arrested bythe revolutions rise again and pour in wider streams by rail and shipinto Mexico, now, in her turn, the melting-pot of the world. Shipsthronged her ports; over her rich bosom railroads spread their lace ofiron; and here, there, yonder, he saw Lee's children, always strong,always upright, always considerable people among their neighbors. Inlegislature, church, halls of state, they took place--at first a fewwhite faces among the brown; then, as time moved on and the brown racedrowned under the foreign inundation, whites among white, governors,legislators, presidents of the Mexican United States, worthy peer of itsneighbor across the Rio Grande.

  It required hours for his slow visioning to arrive at this statelyconsummation. In course thereof the moon sailed down to its setting inthe north, but while its dew-light still fell on the sleepers Bull'sgaze came back to them.

  Surely they were "fit," the chosen of Nature, ripe fruit of her age-longprocess. Surely they and their children, the big-boned, cool-brainedchildren of the north, would displace the hotheads who now laid wastethe land with their lusts and passions. Not by war would it be broughtabout so much as that commercial conquest which is more lasting andcomplete. "Fit," morally and physically, in the fullest sense of theterm, yet down there in the valley, in the dark Pass beyond, men moreruthless than the tiger, more cruel than the wolf, the "fit" of tenthousand years ago, were waiting for daylight to renew the attempt ontheir lives.

  It should not succeed! As Sliver had sworn to it--and died; as Jake hadsworn to it--and
died; so Bull took oath. Also, with slow deliberation,heavy practicability, he began his dispositions. First, he examined thecartridge-belts, and his face darkened as he noted that two days ofheavy firing had almost exhausted their ammunition. There was left onlyenough for one rifle; indeed, to fully charge Gordon's, he had to emptyhis own.

  "Won't need it, anyway."

  Muttering it, he sent a satisfied glance around the plateau. All lastevening while they were climbing over the first heights into the valley,then on up here, he had searched for just such a place.

  "No, I won't need it."

  Repeating it, he kneeled beside the sleepers and looked closely intoLee's face, pale from exhaustion, but spirited as ever, and as sweet. Heknew it for the last time--just as Sliver had known it; as Jake. LikeSliver, he would have loved to say farewell. But just as Sliver hadrepressed the desire to save her pain so Bull sealed his self-denialwith a heavy shake of the head.

  "Twould on'y break them up an' do me no good."

  Very gently he woke up Gordon. "Don't wake her till I'm through telling.It will soon be daylight. With it they'll be on top of us again. Theborder's over there--on'y a few miles." With heavy steadiness he went onwith the last fine lie: "I'm keeping the bulk of the ammunition, an'I'll stay here, for a whiles, to hold them off. But don't you wait forme. She's well rested now; so keep going and going till you've crossed."

  Reaching up, Gordon took Bull's hand in a strong grip. "I supposethere's no use asking you to let me stay?"

  "No." Bull shook his head. "An' if I would--she wouldn't! Now wake herup."

  Sleep had revived her wonderfully. She chatted quite cheerfully whilemaking their last small arrangements. All day yesterday Bull had coveredtheir retreats, and there was nothing unusual in his staying behind. Yetwhen, looking back as she and Gordon moved off, she saw Bull standingthere, perhaps with some presentiment she ran hastily back.

  "Oh, won't you come?" she pleaded.

  "Sure, come on!" Gordon seconded her plea. "We can fight and run likeyesterday."

  "Yes, _do_?" Through the dusk her eyes, distended with fear for him,shone big and black in the dim whiteness of her face. In her dreadearnestness she seized his arm; tried to pull him along. "Oh, _won't_you come? I'm _so_ afraid. First it was Sliver, then Jake, now you. I'mdreadfully afraid that something has happened to them--will happen toyou. And if it did--oh, what should I do? What _shall_ I do?"

  Her pallid face, earnest pleading, shook Bull like a leaf. For almost ayear now her slightest wish had been his law. If he had succeeded inholding up his end in Torreon, to use his own phrase, "had walked in an'come out again, sober, like a man," he might have given in; gone on inher service. But, besides the deadly hurt that had slain in him thedesire for life, he knew himself; as Sliver had known himself; as Jake.

  She was crying now, head bowed on his arm, and small wonder. Throughevents that had been enough to shatter nerves of iron she had borneherself like a man. Even now she sobbed quietly, doing her best torestrain her tears. "There! there!" Gathering her to him, Bull pattedher back gently, as though she had been a grieving child. "There! there!In a few hours we'll be over the border, and 'twon't be long afore we'llbe back at Arboles, you an' Gordon an' me an' Sliver an' Jake." He saidmore; drew a picture of them all in the full swing of the old life.Then, with an assumption of cheerfulness that was remarkable because ofthe pain it covered, he concluded: "So don't bother about me. There'sless risk here than in any of the stan's we made in the last three days.I've got 'em all down below me an' there's on'y this trail. If they tryto come on, it 'ull be like shooting turkeys for a raffle. I'll hold 'emjest for a whiles, then ketch up afore you reach the border. So runalong."

  "You're sure?"

  "Sure!" He had to swallow his heart to say it.

  "Remember," she called back, moving away, "I'll be on pins and needlestill you come."

  Strongly, with an accent she was afterward to remember, he made answer."I won't be here long."

  Till their dim figures vanished he watched them go. Then, empty rifle inhand, he turned his face to the foe.