Starting "be guess an' be God," the train left Juarez at five the next
morning. To avoid, as before, the jam in the one passenger-coach, Bull
had climbed with his recruit on top of a box-car. Thus, when awakened by
the jerk and rattle as the train plunged down and out of the first
"shoo-fly" around a burned bridge; Gordon saw his first dawn break over
the desert with a clear, fresh vision, intimacy of detail that could
never be obtained through a Pullman window.
It was altogether different from the slow sunrises of his Eastern
experience. A puff of hot, dry wind shook the velvet curtains of night,
tossed and split them into shreds of black and crimson, suddenly
revealing a wall of burnished brass behind. As yet the desert slept in
purple shadow. But this paled to faint violet, then gray. As the sun
rolled up out of crimson mists, the land appeared in all of its
nakedness of hummocky sand a-bristle with cactus beard. There was also
revealed the first of the burned trains and twisted rails which, with
grave crosses and dead horses, were to run all day with the train,
startling evidence of the cyclonic passion that had devastated the land.
"Destruction's the one kind of work a Mexican really enjoys," Bull
answered Gordon's question. "You orter see them at it. They run the loop
of a big steel chain under the rails, hitch it to a hundred-ton engine,
then go shooting down the track, ripping it up at twenty miles an hour,
spikes flying like sparks from a blacksmith's hammer. After cutting down
the telegraph-poles, they hitch to the wires an' yank a mile of it away
at a time. As wreckers, they can't be beat, for in four years they've
completely destroyed mills, factories, smelters, railroads, property
that took Porfirio Diaz and a thousand millions of foreign capital forty
years to build."
"Are they still at it?"
The sudden illumination of the young man's face so palpably expressed
hope that Bull had to grin. "Yes, farther south, where Valles is
fighting the Federals. But this is his base line and he looks after it
pretty close. Still"--his nod went beyond the distant mountains--"it's
pretty much all bandit out there. Now an' then they attack the trains.
There's allus a fifty-fifty chance for a scrap."
"That isn't so bad."
Bull grinned again as the young fellow turned with renewed interest to
the scenery.
In comparison with the eons of time which have elapsed since man first
took to walking uprightly, his written history is as a lightning flash
in the night; civilization itself but a film over passions and instincts
violent and deep. Now that every bunch of cactus offered a possible
ambush, Gordon experienced a new sensation. Over the desert, vague as
its shimmering heat, invisible but real, settled that atmosphere of fear
in which primitive man, in common with all animals, lived and moved and
had his being.
The wrecks occurred almost invariably near cuttings through shallow
sand-hills. From the cactus chaparral that clothed their tops, the
revolutionary lightnings had struck sometimes twice or thrice; and when
the train ran into one, Gordon would feel a prickling at the roots of
his hair.
It was not fear. Some centuries ago his hair would have bristled like
the ruff of an angry dog. Through disuse it had lost the knack. But the
feeling was the same, the expectancy, repressed excitement of an animal
expecting attack. The veneer of home and college influences had peeled
away, leaving him the young male of the tribe, eager to prove himself by
deeds; the commonplace exit of the train on the other side left him
always slightly disappointed. Not till it finally ran out of the
hummocky sand into the far-reaching levels of the great Mexican
_haciendas_ did he lose hope and return to the contemplation of the
scenery as such.
"I'm glad we're up here." From the engine, puffing away at the head of a
dozen intervening coal-cars, he looked back at the passenger-coach far
to their rear. "I wouldn't exchange this for a Pullman."
"Well, don't imagine that you're traveling second-class," Bull grinned.
"I had to slip the conductor five pesos extra. But it's worth it. You'd
suffocate down in that car; not to mention the chance of some _peon_
spitting in your face. By the way, if that ever happens to you, take it
an' grin. Sure!" He answered the young fellow's look of disgust. "That
is, unless you want to feel a knife in your belly. If you're German or
English, or b'long to any other nationality that looks after its people,
you might resent it an' get away. But, thanks to our Government's
policy, it's open season for Americans all the year round. They bag a
few, too, every so long."
"Would _you_ stand for that?"
Bull shrugged. "Kain't say, till I've been tried. But it's good advice,
nevertheless. Seeing, though, that you don't like it, you'd better be
toting a gun. Take one of mine till we get home.
"Here, here!" he hastily struck down the barrel as Gordon drew a bead on
a telegraph-pole. "Valles shot eight of his own soldiers jest t'other
day for plugging insulators. Besides, it's waste. Every bullet is worth
a life--mebbe your own."
"Maybe his own!" Again Gordon felt the prickling hair--in fact, as they
rattled and jerked along there was scarcely a mile of the road that
failed to produce it. Here it was a station, sacked, and burned, with a
few miserable _peonas_, ragged and half-starved, begging for _centavos_.
There a huddle of bones, residue of a hanged wire-thief, at the foot of
a telegraph-pole. A broken rifle-butt, rusted cartridge-clip, empty
brass shell, told with eloquent tongues stories of which Bull supplied
the details.
Somewhere between these two stations a Mexican general, a prisoner of
war, had been thrust down between two cars and ground under the wheels!
That great adobe house with black windows staring like empty eye sockets
from the fire-scarred walls had been the home of a Spanish _hacendado_
whose three lovely daughters had been carried off by raiders. Death and
torture, ravishments, farms laid waste, lives maimed and ruined, the
full tale of fire and sword belonged in the landscape.
Yet to youth, egotistic masculine youth, even horrors may be romantic.
Awed pleasure inhered in the thought that he, so lately from Princeton,
the spoiled son of a wealthy father, was a possible subject for bandit
tortures!
He found it all so fascinating that the day passed like an hour. Before
he was aware of it the sun's great red orb sank behind a huge black
mountain. The desert faded once more to gray, violet, purple. For a
while the oil smoke from the laboring locomotive laid miles of soft dark
pennon against a crimson sky. Then this also faded and left them
rattling along through heated dusk. Sprawled at length on the
running-board, the young fellow gazed up at the fiery desert stars, in a
luxury of content. He was lost to the world when the train stopped at
the station at midnight.
"We'd better go right on," Bull said. "We'd get no sleep here for the
fleas, an' desert travel is easiest at night. By morning we'll be into
the grass country an' kin take a nap while the animals graze."
With an additional horse hired from the Mexican station agent they moved
off at once and had passed into the range country before day broke over
its long grassy rolls. Breakfast, a nap, then three hours' more travel
brought them to the shallow valley where the Three first saw Lee and
Carleton charging the Colorados. Indeed, Bull was telling of it when,
just as on that other day, she came galloping over the opposite rise in
chase of a runaway mare with a colt at its side. _Riata_ swinging in
rhythm with her beast's stride, she shot down the slope, made her cast,
took a turn around the saddle-horn and brought the captive up skilfully
as any _vaquero_.
"Pretty neat!" Gordon exclaimed. "That boy can ride!"
"You bet you!" Eyes sparkling with pride, Bull slyly added, "Sliver
himself, that was born with a rope in his han', don't throw a better
loop than Miss Lee."
"_What?_" As, sighting them just then, Lee swung her hat, emitting a
clear cowman's yell, her knotted hair fell down on her shoulders, Gordon
exclaimed, "Why, it--it _is_ a girl! In this country do they usually
wear--"
"No more 'n they do in the Eastern States," Bull dryly filled in the
hiatus. "On one thing the Maine Methodist jines hands with the Mexican
Catholic--they both cover their weemen from chin to toe-p'ints. Ever
sence the revolution, Miss Lee's been doing vaquero's work, an' what
kind of a job d'you reckon she'd make of it going 'round in skirts? If
you don't mind, I'll ride on an' help her with that critter."
The light that had flashed over the girl's face at the sight of Bull
spread into an illumination that included white teeth, mouth, and
sparkling eyes when he rode up. She thrust out her hand with an
impulsive feeling.
"Oh, I'm _so_ glad you have come home! I missed you dreadfully."
"_Home!_" And she was happy because he, "Bull" Perrin, the notorious
rustler, had returned _home_! Earth held no terror that could have sent
that tremble through his huge frame. It was with difficulty that he
controlled his voice.
"Anything wrong? Sliver or Jake been misbehaving?"
"Indeed, no!" She laughed, merrily. "They're like two old hens 'tending
an orphan chick. But--well, you know a girl, even as independent as I,
must have some one to lean on, and I was uneasy while you were gone."
A dew of moisture quenched the brown fire in the giant's eyes. His
sudden seriousness issued from a vivid memory of his late debauch.
Whereas for twenty years past they had been matters of course to be
forgotten with the passing of the morning head, he now felt convicted of
sin. The shadow marked a resolution.
He spoke very gently. "I hope that you'll allus feel that way." Then,
with mock sternness that covered deep emotion, he went on: "But what are
you doing out here on your lonely? Some one will get a wigging for
this."
She laughed saucily up in his face. "Then it is due to me. I gave them
the slip. Who is--" She nodded toward Gordon, who had almost caught up.
Bull briefly sketched his history. "Young chap I found dead broke in El
Paso. He's the right sort." Perhaps because he divined the probable
effect on her feminine psychology, he added: "He's from the
East--college man--wealthy family--turned out because he refused to
marry a fortune. I tol' him you'd likely hire him."
"I would in ordinary times." She looked at Gordon, who had now reined
in. "But I cannot pay regular wages just now."
"He's willing to wait, like us," Bull began. "He's--"
"--out for experience," Gordon put in. "To tell the truth, Miss
Carleton, I am absolutely green. I doubt whether you'll find me worth my
board."
He had doffed his hat and the attitude of respect accentuated the quiet
reserve of his tone and manner. After a thoughtful pause, during which
she took him in from top to toe in a quick, feminine survey, she broke
out with a comical little laugh. "If it wasn't so nice, it would be
ridiculous. While the gringos on other haciendas are simply streaking
for the border, you men insist on working here for nothing. Whatever is
the matter with you?"
She may have read the answer in Gordon's eyes and resented the indignity
it offered her independence. Or the feeling underneath her sudden
stiffening may have rooted deeper. Be a young man ever so comely, a girl
ever so pretty, there will flash between them on first meeting the
subtle challenge of sex; instinctive defiance based through love's
history to the far time when every girl ran like a deer from a possible
lover and only gave in after he had proved his manhood by carrying her
off. It passed in a flash, for, noticing her stiffen, Gordon reduced his
gaze to respectful attention.
Subtle as it was, Bull had still noticed the by-play. "Looks like she'd
taken a down on him."
But even as the doubt formed in his mind it was removed by her laughing
comment: "I suppose I'll have to stand for it. But you must be starving.
Let us get on to the house."
As they rode along, moreover, Bull noted certain swift, stealthy glances
with which she took complete census of Gordon's clean profile, strong
jaw, deep chest, flat flanks; signs of a secret and healthy curiosity.
"She's a-setting up an' taking notice." He winked, as it were, at
himself. "I reckon, Bull, you kin leave the rest to natur'."