By the time Sliver and Jake returned the sun hung like a red-hot ball in
the smoke of the horizon. Even if the horses had not been tired, it was
too late to start that night. Accordingly, after loading the raiders'
provisions, they rode on down into the ravine and used the glowing
embers of the _fonda_ for their camp-fire.
To them, sitting there, by ones and twos and threes the refugees came
straggling in to gather for the night around their own fires. Going from
one to another, Lee and Gordon dealt comfort and advice. They were to
reap the standing corn and sow again for their own use in the secret
places of the mountains. The _hacienda_ cattle they could herd in the
cañons of the lower hills. Thus, with plenty of milk for butter and
cheese, corn, and beans, their own chickens, goats, and pigs, they would
be able to live in rude comfort till the coming of peace permitted Lee's
return.
"The knowledge that they will not suffer makes it easier to bear."
Lee spoke, looking back at the brown faces enlivened by the ruddy glare
of the fires. But when, next morning, they crowded around her, old men,
women, young girls, and little children, mixing prayers, blessings, and
lamentations with their good-bys, she was less philosophical. She was
still weeping when she looked back at those that had followed her as far
as the mouth of the ravine.
"Oh, if our government could only see them! Surely they would help."
Gordon looked for another outburst when, later, they sighted ruined
Arboles from the very spot he and Mary Mills had overlooked it. How well
he remembered it! The walls and courts, _patio_, rainbow adobes, a small
city of gold magnificently blazoned by the red brush of the sinking sun;
the cottonwoods flaming a deep apricot under a sky that spread a canopy
of saffron and cinnabar, purple and umber and gold, down to the far
horizon; the soft smoke pennons trailing violet plumes off and away into
the smoldering dusk of the east; the cooing of woman voices broken by
laughter, low, sweet, infinitely wild. Now, roofless, windowless, its
blackened walls upreared in the midst of a wide, blurred smudge. Yet
though the contrast brought stinging tears to her eyes, Lee took it
calmly.
"What does it matter? It can be rebuilt. But there are other
things"--her voice lowered and trailed away--"that can never be
replaced."
They were both sad and sick at heart. Yet youth may not permanently be
cast down. When, riding on, they left the smoke-blacked ruin behind them
and passed from the dreary waste of burned pasture into golden plains
she began restoration. A native carpenter could replace every loved
beam; rebuild the massive old furniture just as it was. The _peones_
would lime-wash the exterior in its usual rainbow color! Also,
restoration would give opportunity for remodeling and improvement.
As she ran on Gordon sensed another motive; perceived that she was
striving to draw Bull out of his sorrow. Not a plan that did not include
him! A great fireplace, for use during the rains, was to have a
comfortable settle at one side, on which the Three could lounge and
smoke while basking in the blaze. Each was to have his own room. Thus
and so! Nor was her prattle without effect. Always sensitive where she
was concerned, Bull divined her motive, and, albeit with an effort great
as a physical strain, he responded, listened, and nodded acquiescence,
occasionally forced a smile.
Only Sliver was fooled. "Say," he remarked to Jake, who rode with him in
the rear, "did you allow she'd have taken it so light?"
But Jake, the keen, discerning critic, quickly opened his eyes. "Take it
light, you ----! ----! ----! ----!" The epithets, if printed, would
scorch a hole in the page. "Kain't you see she's grieving her little
heart out? She's doing it all for Bull."
At any other time one of those epithets would probably have produced a
retort that would have tumbled Jake out of his saddle. But,
conscience-stricken, Sliver accepted all. With humility that was almost
pathetic, he actually put into words feeling that was, for him, quite
subtle. "'Tain't that I'd set in jedgment on Lady-girl, on'y--I reckon
it's so with all of us--I jes' kain't bear to see her say or do anything
that don't jes' fit."
After a pause he went on: "About these plans o' her'n? If there warn't
no revolution, an' we ked stay along here without a break, an' they'd
destroy all the licker in the world an' forgit the art of making it, I
don't know but that we might live up to 'em. But I'm telling you,
hombre, it's been awful wearing an' I jes' know what a spell in El Paso
'ull do for me--I'll be that swinish I'll never dare to come near her
ag'in."
When Jake had admitted like feelings Sliver continued: "Sure, under them
conditions, licker an' its makers being, so to say, put on the hog-train
an' run off the aidge of the earth, I'd hev' one chanst to make good.
But as 'tis, an' seeing that she's now settled with a fine young husband
an' kin get along very nicely, I'm sorter allowing that El Paso 'ull let
me out." While his eyes blinked guiltily and his lips quivered with
anticipatory thirst, he concluded, "Sure I'm that dry 'twon't take much
temptation for me to tell my troubles to a barkeep an' have him drown
'em in drink."
"Nor me," Jake seconded. "Besides, my fingers is jes' itching to get
into a game."
"Drink, cards, flat broke--back to rustling." Sliver laid down the law
of their being. "With me it runs like, the A-B-C."
"I drink, you drink, he drinks, we drink," Jake chanted it _sotto voce_.
"If folks wasn't so onreasonable a feller might make an honest living.
But the best tinhorn that ever turned a card from the bottom is bound to
make a slip, an' when he does--whoosh! if he's lucky enough to make his
getaway, rustling's all that's left."
"Bull?" Sliver nodded at the broad back ahead. "D'you allow he's a-going
to stay put?"
Jake's shake of the head mixed doubt with concern. "If we meet up with
any Mex--we'll never get him away. He'll run amuck among 'em."
Sliver's reckless eye lit with a fighting gleam. "An' the country's jes'
lousy with _revueltosos_? Hombre, it's a cinch! Not that I'd want it,"
he hypocritically added, "Lady-girl being along. But if we do chance on
a few--hum! what's the exchange, jes' now, in Valles's money? Seven to
one, heigh? Well, we've three rifles apiece, counting the extras on the
pack-horses. One man with three rifles is as good as two men. Twice four
of us makes eight. At current exchange, one gringo for seven Mex, we
orter account for fifty-six."
"There or thereabouts," Jake agreed. "But, as you say, Missy being
along, it's up to us to dodge 'em."
"Five days?" Sliver hopefully repeated. "We'd jes' as well look out for
trouble."
Not till the morning of the third day did the "trouble" loom up over the
horizon.
To avoid raiders along the railroad, Bull laid a course that would
strike the American border a hundred miles or so east of El Paso.
Confirming his judgment, they had seen during the first two days only a
few _peon_ herders, who scampered like rabbits at their approach. But
while it made for safety, the course he had laid out also carried them
away from water, the first necessity of desert travel.
From the Los Arboles pastures they had passed, first, into a sparse
grass country dotted with _sahuaros_; thereafter into sage desert
sprinkled with limestone boulders and bounded by arid hills of the same;
a dry, inhospitable land, lifeless, without sign of human habitation,
its heated silence unbroken by the cry of animal or bird, tenanted only
by the dreary yucca that threw wild arms about like tortured dwarfs.
Toward the middle of the second day they had been forced to head almost
due west in search of the water that was to be had only near the
railroad.
Dusk was falling when they--more correctly, the horses--found a small
_arroyo_. It was so late, and the animals tired, and in order that they
might drink their fill Bull took a chance and camped by the water. They
did not light a fire. They ate cold food in darkness. Before dawn, too,
they were in the saddle, by sunrise had placed nearly ten miles between
them and the water which, just there and then, was another name for
danger. As a matter of fact, Bull had not expected to get it without
fighting. He had not yet ceased marveling at their luck when the
"trouble" showed up in form of a line of _sombreros_ behind the peak of
a limestone ridge--unfortunately, to the eastward.
Jake saw them first. At his sharp hiss Bull looked, and, driving the
pack-horses ahead, rode headlong for the next ridge. Looking back as
they rode, Gordon saw the line of _sombreros_ rise in correspondence as
the land fell off. Soon a head showed; then, almost simultaneously, the
ridge bristled with mounted men, a hundred at least, in bold relief
against the sky-line.
"They've seen us!"
As he called it a yell, strident, raucous, pierced the clatter of their
galloping hoofs. "Gringos! Mueran los gringos! Kill them!"
A volley followed. But, fired from the saddle in movement, the bullets
chipped only a few twigs off the scenery. Scattering shots, too, flew
overhead; but, intent on overtaking them, the Mexicans in the main
wasted no time in shooting. They were only a couple of hundred yards
away when the four men dropped from their horses behind the crest of the
ridge.
Differing speed had strung the pursuers out in a scattering column, and
Sliver grinned his delight at the arrangement. "Like bowling at the
county fair. Miss one, you've still a chance at the next behind. Set 'em
up again!" he yelled as, following their volley, two men and a horse
plunged forward on the ground.
"A bit lower, Son," Bull quietly admonished Gordon. "Aim at the jine of
man an' horse. That gives you a seven-foot target."
"One cigar, one baby down!"
Sliver's second yell marked the fall of two more horses and another
man--shot by Bull out of his saddle. Aiming and firing with the deadly
accuracy bred by years of just such fighting against more sagacious
foes, they dropped the leaders as fast as they came on; in three minutes
had drawn a dead-line of men and horses across their front. And that
deadly practice told. Brave enough, after their lights, the raiders were
not accustomed to such shooting. In the revolutionary wars their own
practice, like that of their opponents, was to spring up out of a
trench, yell "_Viva Mexico!_" fire in the enemy's direction, and drop
back again, trusting to the god of war to find a billet for the bullet.
Turning, they raced back for the opposite ridge, spurred on by the
galling shooting that emptied two more saddles.
Bull's black glance following them with longing that confirmed Jake's
diagnosis--he would have "run amuck among 'em" if left to himself. The
more steadily, perhaps, for his deadly thirst to kill, he had aimed and
fired with automatic precision. Withal, he had found time to note
Gordon's steady shooting.
"You done fine, lad," he commented. "If there was only ourselves, I'd be
in favor of carrying it to 'em. But"--his glance went to Lee, who was
holding the horses--"we'll have to fall back. They've had their lesson
an' ain't a-going to try any more fool charges. Now they'll try an'
flank us. While Sliver an' Jake hold 'em, we'll run back to the next
ridge."
But Gordon, flushed with his taste of battle, rebelled. "What's the
matter with me staying? You fellows care for me like three hens
scratching for an orphan chicken. I'm tired of this sheltered life."
"'Sheltered life'?" Communing with himself, Jake glanced at the grisly
dead-line. "'Sheltered life,' an' him with two stretched out down
there."
"Comes o' being married," Sliver added. "No married man has a right to
run with batchelders."
"That's right," Jake approved. "It's up to you to look after your wife."
"Well?" Gordon protested. "How can I do it better than by staying here?"
"What?" Sliver looked scandalized. "Us take a chanst of her being
widowed after all the trouble we had getting her married? No, sir-ree!
Git out."
"Come on, Son, you're delaying the game." Bull had already joined Lee.
His heavy command came floating up from below. Albeit with a shrug,
Gordon obeyed.
The next commanding ridge lay nearly a mile away, and after the others
had started back toward it Jake nodded toward the enemy. "Bet you
they've split already an' are moving around us. Now if we do the same,
keeping well out of sight, we'll mebbe get another crack at 'em."
And so it was. When, after a half-mile détour through limestone and sage
chaparral, the halves of the raiders' party showed in the open two
rifles opened in concert at points a mile apart; two more riderless
horses went scampering away before the others gained back to cover. From
the wide base of their triangle Jake and Sliver then came galloping back
and joined Bull at its apex; and thus they moved back and back, as the
nature of the country permitted, with no more danger than that of an
occasional bullet, fired at long range, singing overhead.
While they retreated the sun blazed up in the east, rolled on around its
southerly course, superheating the dreary prospect till it glowed like
an oven. All that time Bull was looking anxiously for a cross-ridge
behind which they might swing their course to the north and east. But
with the regularity of the waves of the sea the ridges rolled on back in
unbroken succession toward the railroad. With the enemy spread widely
upon their flanks a turning movement was impossible. They could only
roll back with the limestone waves, trusting that the railroad would
bring forth no new enemy.
Unfortunately the desert was growing rougher. Dry watercourses crosscut
the sage that now rose tall as a mounted man. The going was rendered
more difficult by outcroppings of limestone that sometimes raised an
impassable barrier, forcing a détour. Worst of all, the denser growths
permitted closer pursuit. At the last stand made by Jake and Sliver,
midway of the afternoon, bullets came spitting out of the sage less than
two hundred yards away.
"If 'twas on'y black powder they was using," Sliver bitterly complained,
"we'd stan' some chance. A feller could bust into the middle of their
smoke."
"You're onreasonable," Jake answered. He went on, sarcastically, quoting
from an editorial in the last American paper that had come to Los
Arboles: "In order that these here bandits kin exercise the 'sacred
right of revolution to reg'late their own internal affairs' your Uncle
Samuel has kindly supplied 'em with the latest smokeless cartridge.
Thanks to his benevolence, some one's going to get hurt pretty soon."
He was right. A scattering volley, fired from that very ridge after they
evacuated it, overtook them in the hollow below and brought down
Sliver's horse. Hanging on to Jake's stirrup leather, he made the next
ridge, but one of the pack-animals had to be given to him and its load
abandoned.
"An' this is on'y the beginning." Jake continued his remarks from the
next ridge. "The railroad's not far away, an' as I remember the country
hereabouts, she runs right out in the open, with nary a snitch of cover
for over twenty miles. There'll be nothing to stop 'em from shooting us
down by volleys at long range. So it all boils down to this--some one's
got to hold 'em at the next good stand while the others make their
getaway."
They had been carrying two rifles apiece. Now Sliver quietly
appropriated Jake's extra weapon. "With three rifles I orter be good for
two hours."
"When I said 'some one'"--Jake quietly repossessed himself of the
weapon--"I naterally allowed his name was Jake Evers. Git! before I bust
you over the head."
"If 'twasn't for them"--Sliver's hard glance went out to the
chaparral--"there's nothing I'd like better 'n to take time to rub your
long hoss face in the dust."
The threat, however, produced from Jake only his wolf grin. "You damned
fool! D'you know what's going to happen to the man that stays behind?
He's a-going to be what the society columns call 'the piece de
resistence' at a Mexican barbecure. There ain't a thing in the line of
torture that them bandits won't do to you."
"You ked never stan' it." Sliver displayed great solicitude. "You're
getting along, Jake, an' your nerve ain't what it used to be."
"You've said it." Jake's cold eye warmed. He placed a friendly hand on
Sliver's shoulder. "You're dead right, Son. I'm getting on. What's more,
I'm that dyed-in-the-wool with deviltry 'twon't hurt anybody when I
pinch out. But you're young yet. You'll--"
"--hit El Paso an' go straight to the devil. You know it darned well.
We'll gamble for it." He spat on a pebble and threw it up. "Wet or dry,
which? Wet! I win!"
"Jest my luck!" Jake's complaint was sincere as though, instead of death
or torture, life and fortune had been the hazard. "I don't have no
chance at all except with cards. What did I wanter go an' do that for,
anyway, an' me with a deck right here in my pocket?"
"Too late!" Sliver pressed his triumph. "Now git!"
But with his usual sagacity Jake had already picked the spot for the
stand. The next ridge rose so precipitously that Bull, Lee, and Gordon
were having difficulty in getting up its face. North and south, too, it
loomed even more inaccessible.
"'Twill take them hours to go around it with you planted square in the
middle."
Sliver's glance had gone to Lee, scrambling up the steep face of the
ridge, leading her horse. His hard face softened. "Don't tell
Lady-girl--that is, not jes' now. Let her think I'll make my getaway to
the northward. But some day, after she's safe in El Paso, you kin tell
her--that Sliver was on'y too damn glad to give his life for her'n." He
went on, dreamily: "'Course I knew it 'u'd be all off after I'd hit the
city. But I'd sorter thought, now an' then, that if the rangers didn't
get me too quick, some day I'd come back to Arboles, when her kids was
about hip-high, an' teach 'em to ride an' shoot. But that was jes' a
dream."
Jake's glance had gone back to the cover that sheltered the
_revueltosos_, and, judged by the casuality of his nod, Sliver's request
might have concerned the purchase of a silk handkerchief or other
trifle. But he swallowed hard, spat viciously several times before he
could command speech; blushed, even then, at the softness of his tone.
"Funny, ain't it? But that's just what I'd often thought myself. Sure
I'll tell her--if them devils don't down me on the next run. They're
damn close now, and they'll be up here before we're half-way across.
Against that limestone front we'll make some mark, an' with fifty of 'em
cracking at us it 'ull be the luck of hell if they don't down one or
both."
Again he was right. While, ten minutes later, they struggled among the
boulders and brush at the foot of the ridge, the rifles began sputtering
behind them. Right and left, above and below, bullets chipped the rocks
or plumped in the dust; and just as their beasts rushed on a breathless
scramble up the last steep two found their mark--one through Sliver's
knee, the other dropped Jake's horse.
Almost fainting from shock and pain, Sliver still clung to the neck of
his beast while, with Jake hanging on to a stirrup leather, it carried
him to safety. Lee, with the pack-animals, had already moved on, was a
full quarter-mile down the slope that fell easily to the great plain
traversed by the railroad. Miles away they could see--not the tracks; it
was too far away for that--a dark-velvet plume, smoke from an engine.
Bull and Gordon still lay answering the _revueltosos'_ fire. But Sliver
and Jake had ascended up a watercourse a hundred yards to the right, in
which the dead horse lay out of sight.
"Hey!" Sliver hastily stopped Jake from calling Bull. "Let 'em go!
You'll never be able to tear Lady-girl away if she knows I'm hurt. You
kin take my horse; on'y lift me down first an' prop me up among the
rocks where I kin lie comfortable an' pump a gun."
Having complied, Jake stood looking down upon him. For once in his
rough, hard life he was shaken out of his cold, gray self. Sliver, well
and hearty, fighting his lone fight was one thing. To leave him,
painfully wounded, was quite another. The memory of many a wild ride
with the dogs of the law hard on their heels; of desperate stands,
shoulder to shoulder, the rifle of each protecting the other; of daring
raids in the dark; of midnight diversions shared together; ay, even the
memory of many a drunken quarrel in which they had beaten each other
beyond identification and awakened next morning just as good friends;
all that had gone into the making of the rough loyalty which had bound
the "Three Bad Men of Las Bocas" closer than brothers--all this combined
in an emotion that revolted at desertion.
"My _God_, hombre!" he broke out in protest. "I kain't leave you here,
wounded, to fall in the han's of them wolves!"
"You kain't do nothing else!" Hard eyes flashing, Sliver went on:
"Didn't we gamble, jest now, for who was to stay? An' didn't I win? Now
you're trying to renig?" As he noted the sweat standing out on Jake's
brow, he went on more quietly: "Look at it sensible. What ked you-all do
with a wounded man? You'd on'y sign Lady-girl's death warrant. And don't
worry about them wolves. They ain't a-going to light no fires on my
belly nor burn my feet. If I don't get done up in the scrap--the last
bullet will be for myself."
Also he turned an adamant face to a proposal that Jake should stay too.
"No, hombre, it's still over a hundred miles to the border, an' they
need you. There's nothing left for you but to take my horse an' git."
It had all been said and done without strain, effort, or
self-consciousness; was entirely the expression of his hardy, careless
soul that had never known the vice of self-pity. But when Jake still
stood, his long, lean face working lugubriously in his attempts to hide
his grief, Sliver did that which, for him, was a miracle in
divination--entered into and felt the pain of another soul.
"Oh, shore, hombre!" His face lit up with sympathy. "You orter be glad.
Ain't it better to die clean, this-a-way, than to choke slowly at the
end of some ranger's rope? Go on, now, an' catch up to 'em an' keep 'em
moving till night. With the least bit of luck, you'll pull through all
right."
As before said, not one iota of self-pity entered into Sliver's
consciousness. Apart from a heavy fever and dull ache, the broken knee
was behaving itself as well as could be expected and, after Jake's
departure, Sliver settled down to the business in hand; _i.e._, to
inflate to the limit the current exchange of one _gringo_ for seven
_revueltosos_. Reckless, hardened scamp that he was, his remark,
addressed to himself, had no reference to water, a canteen of which Jake
had left at his elbow.
"Gosh, but I'd like a drink!"
His grin and following chuckle were natural and unaffected. "You're
going to be a good boy from now on, Sliver. You've taken your last."
Pulling his Colt's .45 from his belt, he laid it with the water-bottle.
"Handy for the funeral." He uttered a second grim chuckle.
The two extra rifles he placed within easy reach on his left. Then he
lay quiet, hard blue eyes fixed on the opposite ridge--so quiet that a
lone vulture poised above swooped down, alighted, then hopped mournfully
away and stood poised on one leg, hopeful if disappointed. In recent
history so much firing had invariably brought food.
From the first severe lesson when, from points a mile apart, the deadly
rifles picked them off, the _revueltosos_ had learned caution, only
advancing when they were certain the two had retired. Riding away, Jake
had exposed himself along the ridge; but, suspecting a trap, the
_revueltosos_ remained in hiding. Ten minutes elapsed before a couple of
_sombreros_ rose cautiously out of a clump of sage.
"Stuck up on sticks." Sliver criticized their wabbly motion.
After a real head appeared under them he waited. When the ridge suddenly
broke out in a rush of mounted men he waited. While they rode down into
the valley he waited. Not until they were involved in the labyrinth of
sage, watercourses, pit-holes, brush, and boulders beneath him, did he
draw his first bead. Then, so swiftly that it seemed to the
_revueltosos_ that they were facing the fire of several men, he emptied
the three rifles into the kicking, struggling, plunging line of horses
and men. Four saddles he made vacant there and then. He picked off two
more as the _revueltosos_ raced back over the opposite ridge.
"Six added to three I got makes nine!" Sliver grunted. "A few more an' I
kin afford to cash in."
He could see from where he lay for miles along the ridge, and as he
noted its front rising more steeply in both directions he chuckled his
satisfaction.
"You ain't a-going to try an' pass through me ag'in," he addressed the
invisible foe. "An' you ain't going to leave me here. It'll take you an
hour to come around. Be that time Lady-girl will be ten miles away, with
night fast coming on. Jest to encourage you--"
The shot he threw into the brush opposite was the first of a series
designed to keep the _revueltosos'_ attention upon himself, and when,
half an hour later, he glimpsed men without horses scaling the steep
face of the ridge nearly a mile away he knew that he had succeeded.
"They reckon we're all here, trying to stick it out till night," he
correctly interpreted the movement. "It 'ull take 'em another half-hour
to find out."
A glance in the other direction showed a second party emerging from the
brush beyond rifle-shot. While it crossed the valley and scaled the face
of the ridge he watched quietly. A little later he began throwing shots
in both directions along the ridge.
"Not that I'm expecting to bag any of youse," he addressed the unseen
enemy. "But just to slow you up a bit an' let you know I'm here. When
you get there"--his glance took in scrub-clothed elevations that
commanded his post on both sides--"good-by an' _good_ night."
Of all ordeals, there can be none more severe than to be called upon to
wait, wait, wait while an unseen enemy is closing in around. Yet Sliver
stood the test. If he felt the passage of time, it was because he
counted each minute, each second in yards--the hundreds, scores of yards
Lee and his friends were gaining on the pursuit. He had fought all day
in heat and dust and smoke; the grime of battle added to his grimness.
While he waited the sun rolled down the west, transmuting the scorched
slopes into a wonderland of cinnabar, sienna, crimson, ocher; a huge
oven aglow with the hot slag of creation. But its rich lights showed
neither fear nor softening in Sliver's face when, from the spot he had
long noted, a rifle spoke.
It was the signal for a leaden rain that began to spatter the rocks
about him. It was now only a question of time. He knew it. But till that
time came he replied to the fire. He was aiming into the heart of a puff
of smoke when the death he had gambled so recklessly with these many
years claimed the stakes.
He turned slightly sideways as his head collapsed on his outstretched
arm, and through the grime and powder smoke, in the rich evening lights,
his face showed with its hard lines all sponged out.
Sliver, the outlaw, gambler, drunkard, horse-thief, turned up to the low
sun the quiet, peaceful face his mother had looked down upon as a child.