Over the Border: A Novel

by Herman Whitaker

  XLIII: THE LAST OF THE THREE BAD MEN

  As before said, it was not the accidental juncture of distance andfatigue that had caused Bull to stop for the last rest on the plateau.From its edge the trail fell steeply down a watercourse between highwalls of shale into a rocky pocket, then climbed the opposite bank to alesser eminence. Huge boulders occurred all over the level. Launcheddown the watercourse as through the bore of a giant stone cannon, theycould be depended upon to do terrible execution upon a file of mountingmen.

  After Lee and Gordon disappeared, using his rifle barrel for a lever,Bull pried loose and rolled to the plateau edge over a dozen of thelargest. Before them he built an ambush of sage that would look, frombelow, like ordinary chaparral. Whereafter, he sat down on a boulder andlooked out over the Pass, the rugged outlines of which were beginning toform in the pale dawn.

  Than this hour, when day stirs in the womb of night, there is none sofraught with a sense of imminence; presage of things to come, calamityor joy, accomplishments and failure, disaster, triumph, defeat. For whoshall say what the day may bring forth? In far-off times the firstpallid lights had often revealed these very mountains shaken upon theirgreat bases; valleys suddenly buried under the green inundations ofrushing seas; cyclonic disturbances that have registered so strongly inthe racial consciousness of man that he may never watch without awe theemergence of the new day from the baptism of dawn. As Bull sat, like aman of the stone age in wait for a great cave bear, the feeling wasstrong upon him.

  In such moments a man's whole life is apt to be thrown, like a cinemadrama, on the curtains of his mind. But Bull's reflections began withhis new birth at Los Arboles. Vividly there rose before him the goldenpastures rolling off and away to the mountains; in the foreground,coming at full gallop down the opposite slope, fair hair floating on thewind, he saw Lee following her father in chase of the Colorados.

  Next flashed up the sick-room, where she sat for long hours in mutewhite fear on the opposite side of Carleton's death-bed. He saw her,after the funeral, coming toward him through the _patio_ gateway,swaying like a lily in a breeze, the whiter by contrast with PhyllisLovell's rich, dark beauty.

  Followed happier pictures. A slight smile marked a memory of herdiligence in his own reconstruction; her delight when her pains yieldedsome small return in the way of an amended fault, correction remembered.All of it, from the coming of Gordon, the pains and perplexities ofmatch-making, to the triumphal conclusion, moved slowly through histhought; then, from the end, his mind returned and lingered with onescene.

  Once again she was giving him her usual critical survey the morning hestarted for Torreon. While he stood smiling with embarrassed pleasureher eyes rose from the tie she was straightening to his. As she readtheir sympathy and intelligence, the hands flew up around his neck, herface buried itself in his breast.

  Now he was looking down on Arboles from the ridge, her last words stillin his ears, the thrill of her soft, cool arms still at his neck. Then,as he turned and rode northward toward the Mills _rancho_, memory leapedthe gap in time and distance--he was sitting in the widow's kitchen,Betty curled up on his knee, watching the compounding of Lee's birthdaycake.

  From that through the stages of their acquaintance down to the lasttender scene the night before he left for Torreon, Memory spread herpictures. Again he was looking down on the house, almost hidden in thebougainvillea whose crimson blossoms splashed the golden walls. Now hewas inside, living again that one perfect evening, Betty snuggled warmin his arms, her mother sewing while the flooding sunset faded intodusk. She was speaking, holding out hope for his regeneration. As alwaysin that vision, her hand came fluttering like a small white bird throughthe dusk. Dark flashed into day. He was listening to the last words thathis ears would ever take from her lips; the words that confirmed herownership.

  "I shall expect you soon?"

  He heard, too, his own answer, "Sure, ma'am, I'll come straight to you."

  Again he was looking back at her, smiling over Betty's shoulder,and--the bougainvillea shriveled into a lace of black around emptywindows that stared with fiery eyes from seared walls.

  In the intensity of his visioning the horrible denouement came almostwith the original shock. He sprang up with a groan of agony.

  While he had sat there, musing, the pallid first lights had grown andstrengthened, flared up in the crimson fires of sunrise. Beneath, therugged walls of the Pass flamed in apricot lights pitted with purpleshadows. Far down, just where the trail began to climb from a narrowinterior valley, came a silver flash as a scabbard took the first gleamof the sun.

  It announced the _revueltosos_ of the _brigada_ Gonzales! Her murderers!Answering it, the lines of sorrow, deep-plowed through his face, drewinto deeper furrows of hate. His coal-black eyes lit with a maniacglitter. The knuckles of the hand that held his rifle-barrel like aclub, gleamed whitely through the skin. When, crouching suddenly, hepeered downward from behind a boulder at the file of horsemen nowwriggling like a loose-jointed snake along the narrow valley, he wasagain the animal Sliver and Jake had seen looking down on the_revueltosos_ in the _fonda_ canon. Big, black, burly, he looked morelike a bear than a man.

  If he had followed his own desire he would have waited and brought thelong fight to a conclusion there and then. But even the deadly hate thatsent slow shivers coursing through his huge frame was dominated by hiscare for Lee. Time was the first consideration; time for the fugitivesto make good their escape. Though his rifle was empty, he still had hisrevolver, a heavy Colt's .45. Having looked over his boulders and poisedthem in balance with smaller stones, he passed down the water-course andclimbed to the crest of the opposite bank.

  Lying there, he looked down on the _revueltosos_ who had begun to climbup through the chaparral. The mountainside fell off so steeply it wasimpossible for them to deploy in line, and, knowing it, he sighted highand fired.

  The bullet fell short, as he knew it would. But at the crack the_revueltosos_ tumbled out of their saddles; the next second disappearedwith their horses in the sage. To them it was the reopening of the"fight and run" of yesterday's warfare, and, taught by its lessons, theymoved cautiously up through the brush, seeking higher positions fromwhich to return his fire.

  Fully aware of their belief, Bull encouraged it by answering, atintervals, the bullets that began to clip the rocks, plump in the dustabout him. But he husbanded his shots, firing only when, after a longsilence on his part, the foe came creeping on up.

  Six shots, fired quarter of an hour apart. To Bull they were mile-posts,each recording a stage in Lee's advance toward safety. As clearly asthough he had been with them he saw her, tired, limping a little, butmoving steadily on with Gordon's help. And his imaginings ran with thefacts. Just about the time that he fired his last shot and ran back,down into the gully and up the bore of his huge stone cannon to theplateau above, Gordon sighted, far away on a rise, a speck of white thatmarked the international boundary line, and moving dots that presentlygrew into a United States cavalry patrol.

  Suspecting an ambush, the _revueltosos_ came forward slowly. Quarter ofan hour passed, indeed, before the first head poked up from behind theopposite bank. Another quarter slid by; then, emboldened by the longsilence, three appeared in the open.

  "They have gone! Bring up the horses!"

  The leader's call, in Spanish, carried across to Bull. Also, while theywaited, he heard their conversation:

  "If Prudencia had sent in to La Mancha yesterday morning for more men,we had caught them last night."

  "Si," came the answer. "But he wanted the girl for himself."

  "The swine!" The epithet was set in vile oaths. "But he is cured foreverof that complaint. Hombre! but they shoot well, these gringos. Thebullet took him squarely between the eyes."

  There was more of it--their present hope to run the _gringos_ down withhorses after they gained the levels beyond the Pass; the dispositionthey would make of them after capture. Unaware of the glittering blackeyes only a hundred yards away
, they talked on till a scrape of hoofs,hubbub of voices on the other side of the ridge announced the arrival ofthe horses.

  A minute thereafter they came riding in single file, slipping andsliding, most of the time on their beasts' haunches, down into the rockpocket below. At the bottom, the first man looked up a little nervously.Then his voice rose up to Bull, crouching among the sage:

  "They are surely gone. Vamos!"

  A scraping of hoofs followed. But Bull was in no hurry. There was roomfor all in the "bore." He waited. Till he caught the labored breathingof the first beast he waited, then--with a sudden pry of therifle-barrel he launched the first boulder. One after the other, as fastas he could pry them, he sent the others thundering after. Then, clubbedrifle waving like a windblown reed above his head, eyes ablaze, teethbared, leaping and bounding like some mad gorilla, he shot into themidst of the crushed, struggling mass of horses and men. He was in amongthem almost before the last boulder struck down a horse in its reboundfrom the opposite hill.

  For a few seconds all was hidden in a cloud of dust, from the bowels ofwhich rose the snorts of wounded horses, groans and yells. Then, as thedust settled, Bull loomed up. Berserk as any Norseman that ever beattime for his death chant with swinging sword, obedient only to theprimal instinct to kill, he swung his clubbed rifle, flailing out thatevil chaff, dropping them as they came on.

  And come they did, those that were able. Accustomed to war and wounds,they ringed him so closely none dare shoot for fear of hitting hisfellow. They could only hack and stab with knives and _machetes_. Tillonly two were left they fought him, and when they gave and ran back upthe hill Bull made no effort to follow.

  Running blood from a dozen wounds, he stood swaying drunkenly among thedying and the dead, the ferocious, primal passion gone, evaporated withthe crimson mists that had veiled his sight. His hot brain had cooledand cleared. He saw with wonderful clarity the golden sheen of the sandand stones; subdued glow of the rock walls; the two _revueltosos_staring at him from the hillside above. One of them was raising hisrifle, but Bull took no heed. His eyes were lifted to a drift of whitecloud overhead.

  With such intensity did he stare, the second _revueltoso_ also lookedup, then crossed himself. Did he also see in the diaphanous vapors thefaint outlines of a woman and child? Clearly as in life Bull saw;clearly as on that last night he heard Mary Mills's voice:

  "I shall expect you soon?"

  The _revueltoso_ was aiming, but Bull did not move. Exultantly hisanswer rang out, "Sure, ma'am, I'll come straight to you."

  The rifle cracked and "Bull" Perrin, the last of the "Three Bad Men ofLas Bocas," collapsed in a heap.

  THE END.

  ZANE GREY'S NOVELS

  May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list.

  THE LIGHT OF WESTERN STARS

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  A picturesque romance of Utah of some forty years ago when Mormon authority ruled. The prosecution of Jane Withersteen is the theme of the story.

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  THE LONE STAR RANGER

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  THE BORDER LEGION

  Joan Randle, in a spirit of anger, sent Jim Cleve out to a lawless Western mining camp, to prove his mettle. Then realizing that she loved him--she followed him out. On her way, she is captured by a bandit band, and trouble begins when she shoots Kells, the leader--and nurses him to health again. Here enters another romance--when Joan, disguised as an outlaw, observes Jim, in the throes of dissipation. A gold strike, a thrilling robbery--gambling and gun play carry you along breathlessly.

  THE LAST OF THE GREAT SCOUTS, By Helen Cody Wetmore and Zane Grey

  The life story of Colonel William F. Cody, "Buffalo Bill," as told by his sister and Zane Grey. It begins with his boyhood in Iowa and his first encounter with an Indian. We see "Bill" as a pony express rider, then near Fort Sumter as Chief of the Scouts, and later engaged in the most dangerous Indian campaigns. There is also a very interesting account of the travels of "The Wild West" Show. No character in public life makes a stronger appeal to the imagination of America than "Buffalo Bill," whose daring and bravery made him famous.

  Grosset & Dunlap, Publishers, New York

  NOVELS OF FRONTIER LIFE BY WILLIAM MacLEOD RAINE

  HANDSOMELY BOUND IN CLOTH. ILLUSTRATED.

  May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset and Dunlap's list.

  MAVERICKS.

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  WYOMING.

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  BRAND BLOTTERS.

  A story of the Cattle Range. This story brings
out the turbid life of the frontier, with all its engaging dash and vigor, with a charming love interest running through its 320 pages.

  Grosset & Dunlap, Publishers, New York