"You?" In spite of the deadly chill at her heart she managed a little
laugh. "That is impossible."
"Why?"
"Fear one's oldest friend?" Already, with intuitive guile, she was
laying the foundations of her defense. Though he looked at her with
quick suspicion, she returned the innocent eyes nature has given woman
for her chief protection. "For you--a man of whom I have known only
good? But these men fill me with fear."
Suspicion clouded, for a moment, his eyes. Passing, it left his gloom
lighter. Reassurance softened his tone. "Don't be afraid. They will
leave us at San Carlos."
"But, Ramon, it is now noon. If we ride hard we cannot get there before
dark." She shuddered at the thought.
"You would rather we were alone?"
"A thousand times." She returned to his gaze the same innocent eyes--and
once more his gloom lightened a shade.
"They are going to San Carlos anyway, so I can hardly send them away.
But I am armed, and there is no necessity for you to be afraid.
Also--you said that the jefe and priest at San Carlos would refuse to
marry us. If so, these are the men who can help me compel."
"Ramon!" she spoke with dread earnestness, "look quickly behind you!"
He did, and his quick frown told that he was not pleased. Dismounting
under a pretext of cinching up his saddle, he motioned for the two men
behind to pass ahead.
"You saw!" she said, riding on. "You are armed, but they are four to
one; may take you unawares. I ask only one thing. Keep my feet bound,
take any other precaution you choose, but unfasten my hands and--lend me
your knife."
"To use on _me_, if you get the chance?"
"Not on you nor them!" Her steady look carried her meaning.
His glance went forward to the revolutionists, who broke out, just then,
in uproarious laughter.
"If I thought--" His hand went to his gun, then fell again. "No! they
are rough and coarse, but they know well that my father is Valles's
friend; that if they lifted a hand against me he would flay them alive.
Really, there is no danger, yet--if it will make you less fearful. But
you promise--to return it, the knife, at San Carlos?"
"I promise."
"I never knew you to lie, and I--" His face lost a little of its
hardness. "I would prefer to be gentle."
Leaning over, he unbound her arms, then gave her the case-knife that
hung at his hip. "I suppose I'm a fool," he said as she slid it under
her belt inside her shirt.
"Indeed you are not!" she began, in a flush of relief. Then, as a
picture of Gordon lying bound on the trail rose to her mind, she turned
her head in fear that he might read the sudden impulse to slash the lead
rope and go galloping back.
The certain knowledge that she would be overtaken checked the impulse.
Also, with a woman's self-abnegation, she comforted herself with the
thought that every mile she traveled lessened his hazard. She rode on
till certain whisperings between the revolutionists ahead brought her
again under fear that grew and reached its climax when, later in the
afternoon, they swung at right angles on to the San Carlos trail and
rode, now along the flank of a mountain, again through a wooded valley,
thence up and over a great hill, while the sun slid down behind them.
While they traveled dusk quenched the flaming peaks. The long shadows
drew together, enwrapping hill and valley in a thick veil through which
men and horses loomed as dark, sinister shapes. When they stopped,
suddenly, where a stream emerged from a wood, she shook with
apprehension.
"The beasts are tired, señor, and this is a good place to camp," a voice
came back.
"Oh, don't! Let us keep on!" she pleaded.
"The animals are tired and must be fed," Ramon answered. "After they are
rested we will go on."
As, dismounting, he began to untie her feet, she was seized again with a
wild impulse to turn and dash away in the dark. But even had it been
possible, just then a heap of dried grass and leaves flared up from a
match illuminating the woods and stream. Reaching up, Ramon lifted her
down and seated her close to the fire.
Sitting there, she watched him unsaddle and hobble their beasts. Her
swift, uneasy glances showed the revolutionists doing the same. Yet--all
the fears of that long afternoon now concentrated in a cold horror.
Intuitively, she knew. When, his hands full of food he had unpacked from
his saddle-bags, Ramon came walking past the revolutionists toward her,
she broke out with a sudden scream:
"Take care!"
Too late! A pair of sinewy arms locked like brown snakes around him,
pinioning his arms to his body. As he went down, fighting madly, Lee
leaped up and ran. But already Ilarian and another man had started
toward her. Running her swiftest, straining madly with the beat of his
pursuing feet, like a drum in her ears, she had gained the edge of the
wood, was almost within its safe blackness, when she was seized and
pulled back with a wrench that tore the shirt away from one white
shoulder and threw her to the ground.
She rose instantly on one knee, then paused at the sight of the brutish
face above. One hand clutching the torn shirt at her neck, eyes dark
lamps in a face of white horror, she crouched like an animal at bay
till, with a sudden snatch, he stooped and lifted her bodily.
"No, no!" The snatch of the second man loosened the other's grip so that
she fell between them to the ground. "No, hombre, fair play between
compañeros. We shall gamble for her. The winner, if he choose, can then
sell his chance."
The fighting, writhing mass at the other side of the fire now
straightened out, and as they rose, leaving Ramon securely bound on the
ground, the other two added their protests. "Si, hombre, we will not
stand for that. She goes first to the winner, according to our custom.
Bring her back to the fire."
To avoid their handling, she rose and walked herself. As she came where
the light fell on Ramon she saw that he had managed to struggle up on
his knees. Now he began to speak, pleading, arguing, threatening his
captors with the displeasure of their general.
But he drew only jokes and laughter. "Valles?" Ilarian answered him. "He
was defeated by the Carranzistas, and has trouble enough to care for
himself. The requisition el capitan showed was made out months before
the battle. Had the señor, your father, been fool enough to fill it, we
should have taken the horses for ourselves." With a shove that sent
Ramon flat on his back, he added: "Lie down, hombre! For these many
years thou and thy fathers laid the whip on our backs. While we starved
they fed fat and made free with our women. Now it is for thee to watch
us at the eating and loving."
Laughing, he caught Lee again with a sudden snatch, was forcing her head
back, when Rafael again interfered. "Hands off, hombre, till the cards
say she is thine!"
"Si, muddle not the waters for our drinking," the others added. "Let us
eat, then get to the cards."
"The bride? She must not go hungry at the wedding feast." The fourth man
offered her food. "Here, little one."
Weak and faint, she was backing away, but stopped with a sudden
inspiration. "If I may share it with him?"
"Seguro." Rising, the man dragged Ramon a few feet away and set him up,
back propped against a tree. "Only take care he bite not thy pretty
fingers."
Laughing, he went back to the fire, leaving her to sit and watch their
feeding of meat and _tortillas_, with gulps of liquor from clay bottles.
Between her and them yawned a gap in time wider than the centuries that
intervened between herself and her wode-stained ancestors running wild
in the woods of Britain. Their low, sloping foreheads, unbalanced heads
with all the weight below; their loose mouths, brute jaws, dark skin,
nature's infallible stigma of inferiority, pronounced them half a
million years behind her, the last-bloom of a higher race.
In her a solitary youth had intensified the delicate fancies,
sensitiveness, timorous imaginings, shrinkings, and retreats that mark a
young girl's first reachings toward love. And now--her idealizations
were suddenly confronted with the caveman's brutal practice. Sitting
there, she endured a thousand tortures. Worse than their coarse jests
were their glances. She shrank under them in hot shame; to escape them
took the food they offered, moved over and knelt beside Ramon.
He was sitting, head hanging, but as, now, he looked up the firelight
showed the sweat in beads on his brow. "_You_ bring _me_ food?" His
accent carried more than a thousand self-reproaches.
She did not attempt consolation she did not feel. "Pretend to eat." She
spoke in English. "They are watching, now. But soon they will
gamble"--she shuddered, thinking of the stake--"will see only the cards.
I still have your knife. When the time serves I will cut you loose.
Their rifles are piled behind us with the saddles. They may shoot you
down from the fire. But to reach them is our only chance."
He lowered his head to hide a sudden flash of hope. "I will do anything,
take any chance. Greater punishment no man could suffer than I am
enduring. But it has made me think--realize my blind selfishness. I can
only ask your forgiveness."
"Now, compañeros, the cards! Cut and shuffle for love!" A hoarse voice
came from the fire.
While the first hand of a game she did not understand was being dealt
she watched the flying cards with dread interest; was still watching
when Ramon whispered:
"I know that game. Five minutes will see it finished. By leaning a
little to one side, your body will cover my elbows. One cut will set
them free. I will still sit as I am, and when I whisper slash the riata
at my feet, then run! run into the depths of the woods. From here to San
Carlos is but a couple of leagues. Once there--with the jefe, you will
be safe."
Ilarian's bellowing laugh rang out, just then, marking the close of the
first hand. "One to me, little one! Be not impatient. The luck is with
us. Soon we shall take a little pasear together."
"If he wins again it will be over in a minute," Ramon whispered, while
the cards were fluttering around again. As the men bent over them,
thumbing their hands, he gave the word, "Now!"
With two slashes she did it, one at his arms, the other at his feet. But
swift as was the movement, Rafael caught it in the tail of his eye. When
he turned she had dropped the knife in the grass and, though her heart
stood still, she resumed her pretense of feeding Ramon. As he watched
her the suspicion died out of the man's stare. He was just about to turn
again to the game when, as Ramon leaned forward to take the bite she was
offering, the severed _riata_ fell from his elbows.
Given two men in a sudden juncture, the one with a definite plan wins
the lead. As the man jumped up, pointing, Ramon sprang, reached the
rifles, aimed and shot him down. The others looked up, startled, and as
he aimed again they pulled and fired.
"Run, querida, run!" Ramon had called it, leaping up. As he collapsed on
the heap of saddles it issued again on his last dry whisper, "Run!"
It had all happened while she was scrambling up. Naturally she turned
when Ramon fell and paused, horror-stricken. Not till the others were
almost upon her did she turn and run--too late.
As, heart fluttering like that of a frightened quail, she ran for the
wood Ilarian seized her. Wildly beating the brutal, pock-marked face,
she writhed helplessly in his arms.