Again he was looking back at her, smiling over Betty's shoulder,
and--the bougainvillea shriveled into a lace of black around empty
windows that stared with fiery eyes from seared walls.
In the intensity of his visioning the horrible dénouement came almost
with the original shock. He sprang up with a groan of agony.
While he had sat there, musing, the pallid first lights had grown and
strengthened, flared up in the crimson fires of sunrise. Beneath, the
rugged walls of the Pass flamed in apricot lights pitted with purple
shadows. Far down, just where the trail began to climb from a narrow
interior valley, came a silver flash as a scabbard took the first gleam
of the sun.
It announced the _revueltosos_ of the _brigada_ Gonzales! Her murderers!
Answering it, the lines of sorrow, deep-plowed through his face, drew
into deeper furrows of hate. His coal-black eyes lit with a maniac
glitter. The knuckles of the hand that held his rifle-barrel like a
club, gleamed whitely through the skin. When, crouching suddenly, he
peered downward from behind a boulder at the file of horsemen now
wriggling like a loose-jointed snake along the narrow valley, he was
again the animal Sliver and Jake had seen looking down on the
_revueltosos_ in the _fonda_ cañon. Big, black, burly, he looked more
like a bear than a man.
If he had followed his own desire he would have waited and brought the
long fight to a conclusion there and then. But even the deadly hate that
sent slow shivers coursing through his huge frame was dominated by his
care for Lee. Time was the first consideration; time for the fugitives
to make good their escape. Though his rifle was empty, he still had his
revolver, a heavy Colt's .45. Having looked over his boulders and poised
them in balance with smaller stones, he passed down the water-course and
climbed to the crest of the opposite bank.
Lying there, he looked down on the _revueltosos_ who had begun to climb
up through the chaparral. The mountainside fell off so steeply it was
impossible for them to deploy in line, and, knowing it, he sighted high
and fired.
The bullet fell short, as he knew it would. But at the crack the
_revueltosos_ tumbled out of their saddles; the next second disappeared
with 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, they
moved cautiously up through the brush, seeking higher positions from
which to return his fire.
Fully aware of their belief, Bull encouraged it by answering, at
intervals, the bullets that began to clip the rocks, plump in the dust
about him. But he husbanded his shots, firing only when, after a long
silence 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 as
though he had been with them he saw her, tired, limping a little, but
moving steadily on with Gordon's help. And his imaginings ran with the
facts. 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 the
plateau above, Gordon sighted, far away on a rise, a speck of white that
marked the international boundary line, and moving dots that presently
grew into a United States cavalry patrol.
Suspecting an ambush, the _revueltosos_ came forward slowly. Quarter of
an hour passed, indeed, before the first head poked up from behind the
opposite bank. Another quarter slid by; then, emboldened by the long
silence, three appeared in the open.
"They have gone! Bring up the horses!"
The leader's call, in Spanish, carried across to Bull. Also, while they
waited, 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 forever
of that complaint. Hombre! but they shoot well, these gringos. The
bullet took him squarely between the eyes."
There was more of it--their present hope to run the _gringos_ down with
horses after they gained the levels beyond the Pass; the disposition
they would make of them after capture. Unaware of the glittering black
eyes 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 of
the horses.
A minute thereafter they came riding in single file, slipping and
sliding, most of the time on their beasts' haunches, down into the rock
pocket 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 room
for all in the "bore." He waited. Till he caught the labored breathing
of the first beast he waited, then--with a sudden pry of the
rifle-barrel he launched the first boulder. One after the other, as fast
as he could pry them, he sent the others thundering after. Then, clubbed
rifle waving like a windblown reed above his head, eyes ablaze, teeth
bared, leaping and bounding like some mad gorilla, he shot into the
midst of the crushed, struggling mass of horses and men. He was in among
them almost before the last boulder struck down a horse in its rebound
from the opposite hill.
For a few seconds all was hidden in a cloud of dust, from the bowels of
which rose the snorts of wounded horses, groans and yells. Then, as the
dust settled, Bull loomed up. Berserk as any Norseman that ever beat
time for his death chant with swinging sword, obedient only to the
primal instinct to kill, he swung his clubbed rifle, flailing out that
evil 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 his
fellow. They could only hack and stab with knives and _machetes_. Till
only two were left they fought him, and when they gave and ran back up
the hill Bull made no effort to follow.
Running blood from a dozen wounds, he stood swaying drunkenly among the
dying and the dead, the ferocious, primal passion gone, evaporated with
the crimson mists that had veiled his sight. His hot brain had cooled
and cleared. He saw with wonderful clarity the golden sheen of the sand
and stones; subdued glow of the rock walls; the two _revueltosos_
staring at him from the hillside above. One of them was raising his
rifle, but Bull took no heed. His eyes were lifted to a drift of white
cloud overhead.
With such intensity did he stare, the second _revueltoso_ also looked
up, then crossed himself. Did he also see in the diaphanous vapors the
faint 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 his
answer rang out, "Sure, ma'am, I'll come straight to you."
The rifle cracked and "Bull" Perrin, the last of the "Three Bad Men of
Las Bocas," collapsed in a heap.