"Yes, but she's our boss an'--well, they love each other a whole lot."
"So that's what's biting you?" In one sentence Jake countered heavily on
the common view of things. "She kin ride with tough guys like you an' me
an' it's all right; but she mustn't go out with the man that loves her
more 'n anything on earth. Where's your sense?"
Sliver feebly scratched his head in a vain effort to find it. Failing,
he made weak answer, "I was jest sorter thinking they orter, have a
chapperonny." Vanquished by Jake's disgusted snort, he withdrew and went
down to close the gates.
Meanwhile Lee and Gordon held on their way. At the crest of the rise,
from where she and her father had overlooked the _hacienda_ on that last
fatal day, they reined in and looked back upon it lying like a huge
painted cup in the great gold saucer of the sun-scorched plains. As
then, the sweep of her hand took in the house, adobes, compound, giant
cottonwoods sweeping with the dry arroyo across the view, the range
rolling in bright billows to the far hills.
Her cry was the same: "Oh, isn't it beautiful? Soon the rains will come
and turn everything green, but I like it best this way. Greens are to be
had anywhere, but these golds--that is Mexico."
Stimulated by his responsive smile, just as she used to do with her
father, she began to dive into the past, relate the battles and sieges,
scandal and intrigue, recreate the vivid pageants of the old dons and
their savage brown retainers. If she had chosen the differential
calculus for her subject, he would have listened with pleasure to the
soft, eager voice. The lithe, graceful figure that gained so in ease and
grace of its flexures from her man's riding-clothes, the mobile face,
molten under the touch of emotion, would have illumined the heaviest
subject. But he was equally interested, plied her with questions when
she showed signs of stopping.
"Oh, I'm so glad that you love it!" she sighed, happily. "It would have
been such a disappointment if you-- But that is so silly, because it
wouldn't have been you. Soon the rains will come, and in the long, dark
evenings after"--she went on with a little flourish--"I shall read you
stacks and stacks of the old letters and documents we found in an old
leather trunk. It will be lots of fun."
Naturally they dipped into the future, building their own castles. Where
she left off, he began. "Wait till we get my old dad down here! A big
streak of romance crosscuts his business sense, and when he sees
this--well, he promised me a hundred thousand when I finally settled
down. After Uncle Sam steps in and puts an end to all this revolutionary
nonsense, we'll--"
The reconstructed and beautiful Los Arboles that emerged from his
imaginings was inhabited by a contented peasantry, better paid,
healthier, and happier than the country had ever seen. What he forgot
she filled in till, from sheer lack of material, they came to a happy
pause.
Business concluded and the Mexican millennium achieved, they turned to
their own pleasure. A certain Java forest was, of course, again lugged
in by the ears. She, however, did not appear to notice it was getting a
trifle shopworn, but enthused as brightly as though it were new goods
freshly displayed. And while they ran on, rebuilding their earthly
scheme of things according to their hearts' desire, the gods in
resentment of their presumption were forging the thunderbolts that were
to shatter it to bits. Unconscious of sharp eyes that were watching from
the heart of the chaparral thicket half a mile away, they presently
joined hands and rode on.
At first the direction seemed to suit the watcher's purpose. After they
passed, he rode his horse out in the open and followed, keeping always
out of their sight. Even when, an hour later, Gordon circled toward the
mountains on his regular beat, the watcher followed. But when their
course began to bend to the south he laid on quirt and spurs and went
after them at a gallop.
Turning at a call, Lee and Gordon saw him coming down a long slope, and,
as he drew nearer, she recognized the _mozo_ who had brought Ramon's
message from El Sol.
"Que? Filomena?"
As he answered, in rapid Spanish, sudden distress wiped out her
happiness. "Oh, Betty is ill!" she translated for Gordon. "Mary Mills
sent word to El Sol and asked them to send for me. Filomena can act as
my escort, so it won't be necessary for you--" She paused, anticipating
rebellion.
It came. "Bull told me that you were not to ride alone. I wouldn't let
you, anyway."
If she made a little face, she was still secretly pleased. "That's what
one gets for being a girl, but I suppose I'll have to put up with it."
Turning to the _mozo_, she gave him his orders in Spanish: "The señor
will go with me. You may ride on to Los Arboles and tell Don Sliver, the
gringo señor, where we have gone."
Disconcertion showed through the man's _peon_ immobility. But with an
obsequious "Si, señorita!" he rode on, but stopped over the next rise,
dismounted, and crawled back to the crest on his belly.
Lying there, he watched them riding in a direction that showed them to
be taking the short cut through the hills. Till they passed out of sight
he lay quietly. Then, after carefully clearing a patch of ground, he
built a small fire of the dry grass and twigs and covered it with the
succulent green leaves of a Spanish bayonet.
Instantly there rose on the still air a dense smoke column. Till it
soared to its full height he waited. Then, alternately covering and
lifting his scrape from the fire, he sent a succession of great smoke
puffs rolling on high. Whereafter he stamped out the fire and, grinning,
mounted and rode away.
About that time Lee and Gordon were entering the ravine. A slight
embarrassment rose between them as they drew near the _fonda_. But in
place of Felicia's smooth, dark face the wrinkled, purblind visage of
old Antonio appeared at the bar window, where he was serving an
_arriero_ whose loaded mules cropped the lush grass along the stream.
As they passed Lee looked quickly at Gordon. But meeting and reading her
glance, he laughed and raised his right hand in attestation. Disarmed,
she shook her finger, and the next minute their horses had scrambled
around the bend, past the spot whence she had looked down and seen the
kiss, into neutral territory.
Half an hour put them at the head of the staircase from where, as on the
night they had brought home the raiders, they looked over spur and ridge
to the distant plains. Then it had all been washed in the crimson and
violet and gold of sunset. Now, beyond the black chaparral, that
undulated like a woman's mantle over the shoulders and breasts of the
hills, the plains lay to the eye, a sea of undulating gold flecked with
green isles, trees, and far fields of growing corn. Mountains and
plains, cañon and ravine, it was just as wild, infinitely beautiful in
one mood as the other.
"A wonderful land!" Gordon breathed it.
Could his eyes have gone with the curving meridians over its length and
its breadth, have followed the dim, blue ranges in their course across
brazen deserts, to the deep forests, eternal snows of the Sierra Madres;
then ranged south across the great central plateau rich in cotton, corn,
and cane; have slid with lacy streams down the cañons, streets of the
mountains that led into the tangled jungles where coffee and cocoa,
rubber and tobacco, palms and bananas, sage, rice, spices, flourish in
the languid tropics; could he have taken the land in its entirety,
richer in its beauty, variety of crops, fruits, plants, than the fabled
Garden of Eden--could he have done all this, even then imagination would
have fallen far below the reality. Yet he saw enough to stimulate him to
prophecy.
"Some day, when all this petty revolutionary business is squelched, this
is going to be part of the greatest nation on earth."
That set them planning again, and while they talked the largest army yet
brought forth by successive revolutions was in process of disintegration
but an eagle's flight away. Following battle and retreat across
sun-struck desert where thirst slew more than lead or steel, it was
scattering fiery chaff blown by cannon's blast over the face of the land
to set it aflame with minor disorders. Beyond the farthest blue range
columns of smoke marked the sites of a hundred burning _haciendas_. With
them, under the pitiless sky, rose the groans and cries of the wounded
and tortured, wailing of ravished women.
In present ignorance of this, unconscious, again, of the keen eyes that
had spied the _mozo's_ signal and were now watching them from the
chaparral half a mile ahead, they rode on.
"Why waste good rope? One shoots him out of the saddle with ease."
If the voices had not been pitched low, Lee and Gordon, now only a few
hundred yards away, might have heard the argument.
She would easily have recognized Ramon's voice. "True, amigo, and I love
him less than thou; would kill him the quicker but for my promise to his
compañero. While he held me under his rifle, I gave it--to make no
attempt on their lives."
"A promise?" A low, hard laugh issued from the covert. "What is it but a
deadfall for one's enemy? If all those I have broken, to men killed,
women deceived, rise against me on the last day, Satan will be put to it
to find a hot enough corner in hell. But _I_ gave no promise--and he
killed Tomas, my man. If your stomach turns at the job, leave him to
me."
"No, no!" Ramon's voice rose in quick protest. "His killing would still
be at my hands. Also"--the addition came in lower tones--"I would rather
he lived--to suffer the furies I have suffered when he thinks of her in
my arms. No, señor, we will rope him from behind."
"Bueno! Have it thy--" A sharp hiss cut them off.
Very cunningly they had taken up their positions at the head and foot of
a slippery steep where loose rubble bank and a narrow passage through
thick chaparral would allow only one horse to go down at a time. Ramon,
with two of the revolutionists, crouched above, while the leader, with
the others, hid at the foot. He had no more than gained back to his men
before Lee and Gordon appeared silhouetted against the sky above.
She was in the lead, so close that Ramon could almost have touched her
stirrup as she looked back at Gordon. "I'll go down first. If I break my
neck you can pick up the remains."
Really anxious, he watched her go slipping and sliding, most of the way
on her beast's haunches, but at every stumble she picked it up with
skilful use of the bridle.
"Come on!" she called back, laughing.
But before he could move, before she could even turn to look back, the
noose of a _riata_ writhed like a smoke ring out over the chaparral and
was drawn with a swift, hard pull around her arms. At the same moment a
man leaped and seized her bridle while the leader cinched her feet under
her horse's belly.
"Run!" From above Gordon saw her white, desperate face turned over her
shoulder. "Run! Oh, _run_!"
He could not--had he wished it. It happened so quickly that he had
barely time to use the spur, and if Ramon's cast had been made a second
sooner he would have been roped before his beast moved. As it was, the
loop settled diagonally across his left arm and right shoulder. The next
second he went flying backward out of the saddle and landed heavily.
While he was still in the air, however, his hand had gone to his gun.
Now he turned it loose downhill.
That it would shoot nine shots in eight seconds was its maker's boast,
and the weapon proved it. Aware that he might kill Lee, but conscious
through his blind confusion that it might be worse, he emptied the clip,
shooting close to the ground.
His aim, erratic enough, was rendered more so by the desperate tugging
of the revolutionists on the rope. Like spray from a swinging nozzle,
the bullets flew right and left, all but one, which went through the
leader's head. Then, a couple of whips of the rope caught the free arm
in against his body.
At the foot of the hill the men were examining their fallen leader. "He
has killed him, el capitan! Cut his throat, the gringo swine!"
Eyes glittering in his villainous, pock-marked face, one of them
snatched out his knife and came rushing uphill.
Gordon knew it for the end, felt the chill of death. If he could only
have risen and fought them! But to lie there, bound and impotent, while
the knife was drawn across his throat! To pass out into the blackness
and leave Lee to face her fate! He struggled fiercely, striving to break
his bonds. As he relapsed in cold despair, Lee's voice, shrill in its
mortal terror, rang out:
"If he is hurt, Ramon, I shall hate you forever!"
To give him due, Ramon was already stepping forward. A sudden writhing,
like the first quiver of boiling water, passed over his face. He looked,
but without answer raised a warning hand. "The gringo is not to be
harmed, hombre."
"But he has killed el capitan. Also he shot Tomas, our compañero."
"The fortune of war, amigo. I passed my word to one that held my own
life in the hollow of his hand."
Gun in hand, he faced the revolutionist who stood fumbling his knife.
Out of the situation it appeared that only tragedy could issue. But in
all the world there is nothing more mercurial than the moods of a
_peon_. Behind them rose a coarse laugh.
"Santisima Trinidad! why quarrel over a dead man, Ilarian? Hast thou
forgotten the ten strokes with the flat of his saber el capitan gave
thee for wasting rifle cartridges on rabbits before the fight of El Ojo?
As for Tomas--I owed him ten pesos. Also, there are now but four of us
to divide this señor's money."
The argument reached down to their bandit instincts. "Bueno, Rafael,
bueno!" Another called: "Trust thee to see a peso through a dead man's
shirt. Put up thy knife, Ilarian. It was Tomas's throat it flashed at
last when he took Catalina, the pretty mestiza, away from thee."
The fellow still stood, undecided. He had drawn the knife. Dislike to
back down kept him muttering and bristling like an angry dog till Ramon
pulled a roll of notes from his breast.
"Here, hombre."
The man's huge mouth split in a grin. In his eagerness to secure his
share, the fourth man came running uphill, dragging Lee's horse by the
bridle, and while they argued over the division and gambled for the last
odd note, she spoke in English.
"I would never have thought to find you in alliance with bandits against
me. Why did you do it? It can only bring disaster." From which she ran
on, touching with all her strength and skill on the chords of
memory--their childhood, budding youth, incident, fond reminiscence, her
own faith in his goodness, pride in his honor. "And now would you
destroy it all? The respect and affection I have always had for you? And
what have you to gain by it? Surely not my love."
She thought he was shaken. Looking into his face, she had been shocked
and astonished at the change wrought in a few days. Like mountain slopes
stripped of their verdure, burned down to the hard slag by volcanic
fires, so its softness and youth were gone, leaving in bold relief the
hard lines of passion and hate. For one moment a quiver shook its
grimness. But there was no softening of the burning eyes, for it took
out of bitter anger.
"What have I to gain?" He threw up his head in defiance. "You! with love
or without it!"
By its very unnaturalness his quiet was more ominous than his violent
outpourings of the other day. She took her breath in sudden fear.
"Ramon, what are you going to do?"
Danger inhered in a light shrug, with its defiance of consequences.
"Take you to San Angel--to be married, hard and tight, by jefe and
priest."
"Oh, but they will not do it! They were friends of my father; have known
me from childhood--"
"They are Mexican--would love to see you mate with me, a Mexican like
themselves. They will do as I say. If not"--his nod carried a sinister
significance--"so much the worse for you."
Unable to believe, she stared down at him; as she looked into the
brilliant, hard eyes there was borne in upon her understanding of his
insane egotism. The veneer of softness, courtesy, lip service, burned
away; there was left only the animal fighting for the possession of its
mate.