From the times of David and Jonathan down to the present day the world
has been full of young men sworn to friendship and seeking adventure in
pairs. "Pardners," they call them in the West, and though the word has
not crept into the dictionary yet, it is as different from "partner" as
a friend is from a business associate.
They travel together, these pardners of the West, and whether they be
cowboys or "Cousin Jacks," the boss who fires one of them fires both of
them, and they go share and share in everything.
Bud Hooker and Philip De Lancey had met by chance in El Paso when the
revolution was just beginning to boil and the city was swarming with
adventurers. The agents of the rebels were everywhere, urging Americans
to join their cause. Military preferment, cash payments, and grants of
land were the baits they used, but Hooker stood out from the first and
took De Lancey with him. A Mexican promise did not pass current where
he was born and they went to the mines instead.
Then the war broke out and, while fugitives streamed out of stricken
Chihuahua, they finally struck out against the tide, fighting their way
to a certain mine far back in the Sierra Madres, where they could dig
the gold on shares.
Behind them the battle waged; Casas Grandes was taken and retaken;
Juarez, Agua Negra, and Chihuahua fell; Don Porfirio, the Old Man of
Mexico, went out and Madero took his place; and still they worked for
their stake.
Then new arms and ammunition flowed in from across the border; Orozco
and his rebel chiefs went out, and the breath of war fanned higher
against the hills. At last the first broken band of rebels came
straggling by, and, reading hate and envy in their lawless eyes, the
Americans dug up their gold at sundown and rode all the night for their
lives.
And now, welded together by all that toil and danger, they were
pardners, cherishing no delusions as to each other's strength or
weaknesses, but joined together for better or worse.
It was the last thing that either of them expected, but three days
after they fled out of Mexico, and with all their money unspent, the
hand of fate seized upon them and sent them back on another adventure.
It was early morning again, with crowds along the street, and as they
ambled slowly along toward the line, the men on the corners stared at
them. The bunch of cowboys gazed at Bud, who sported a new pair of
high-heeled boots, and knew him by the way he rode; and the mining men
looked searchingly at De Lancey, as if to guess the secret of his quest.
A squad of mounted troopers, riding out on border patrol, gazed after
them questioningly, but Bud and Phil rode on soberly, leading their
pack, and headed for Agua Negra across the line.
It was a grim place to look at, this border town of Agua Negra, for the
war had swept it twice. A broad waste of level land lay between it and
the prosperous American city, and across this swath, where the Mausers
and machine guns had twice mowed, lay the huddle of low houses which
marked the domain of Mexico.
Fussy little customs officials, lurking like spiders in their cooped-up
guard-houses, rushed out as they crossed the deep trench and demanded
their permit to bear arms. The moment they crossed the line the air
seemed to be pervaded with Latin excitability and Indian jealousy, but
De Lancey replied in florid Spanish, and before his polite assurances
and fulsome compliments it was dissipated in a moment.
"Good! Pass on, _amigos_," cried the beady-eyed little _jefe_, pasting
a label on their pack. "_Adios, señor_," he added, returning Phil's
salute with a military flourish, and with a scornful glance at Bud he
observed that the _gentleman_ was _muy caballero_.
"Huh!" remarked Bud, as they rode on through the town, "we're in Mexico
all right, all right. Talk with both hands and get busy with your
eyebrows--and holy Joe, look at them _pelónes_!"
The _pelónes_ referred to were a squad of Mexican Federal soldiers,
so-called from their heads being shaved, and they were marching
doggedly to and fro through the thorny mesquit-bushes in response to
shouted orders from an officer. Being from Zacatecas, where the breed
is short, they stood about as high as their guns; and their crumpled
linen suits and flapping sandals detracted sadly from the soldierly
effect.
Big and hulking, and swelling with the pride of his kind, Hooker looked
them over slowly, and spoke his hidden thought.
"I wonder," he said, turning to Phil, "how many of them I could lick
with one hand?"
"Well, they're nothing but a lot of petty convicts, anyway," answered
De Lancey, "but here's some boys ahead that I'll bet could hold you,
man for man, husky as you are, old fellow."
They were riding past a store, now serving as an improvised barracks,
and romping about in the street were a pair of tall Yaqui Indians, each
decorated with a cartridge-belt about his hips in token of his military
service. Laughing and grabbing for holds, they frolicked like a couple
of boys until finally they closed in a grapple that revealed a sudden
and pantherlike strength.
And a group of others, sunning themselves against the wall, looked up
at the Americans with eyes as fearless as mountain eagles.
"Yes, that's right," admitted Bud, returning their friendly greeting,
"but we'll never have no trouble with them."
"Well, these _Nacionales_ are not so bad," defended Phil, as they
passed the State soldiers of Sonora on the street, "but they're just as
friendly as the Yaquis."
"Sure," jeered Bud, "when they're sober! But you get a bunch of 'em
drunk and ask 'em what they think of the Gringos! No, you got to show
me--I've seen too much of 'em."
"You haven't seen as much of 'em as _I_ have, yet," retorted De Lancey,
quickly. "I've been all over the republic, except right here in Sonora,
and I swear these Sonorans here look good to me. There's no use holding
a grouch against them, Bud--they haven't done us any dirt."
"No, they never had no chance," grumbled Bud, gazing grimly to the
south. "But wait till the hot weather comes and the _revoltosos_ come
out of their holes; wait till them Chihuahua greasers thaw out up in
the Sierras and come down to get some fresh mounts. Well, I'll tell 'em
one thing," he ended, reaching down to pat his horse, "they'll never
get old Copper Bottom here--not unless they steal him at night. It's
all right to be cheerful about this, Phil, and you keep right on being
glad, but I got a low-down hunch that we're going to get in bad."
"Well, I've got just as good a hunch," came back De Lancey, "that we're
going to make a killing."
"Yes, and speaking of killings," said Bud, "you don't want to overlook
_that_."
He pointed at a group of dismantled adobe buildings standing out on
the edge of the town and flanked by a segment of whitewashed wall all
spattered and breached with bullet-holes.
"There's where these prize Mexicans of yourn pulled off the biggest
killing in Sonora. I was over here yesterday with that old prospector
and he told me that that wall is the bull-ring. After the first big
fight they gathered up three hundred and fifty men, more or less, and
throwed 'em in a trench along by the wall--then they blowed it over
on 'em with a few sticks of dynamite and let 'em pass for buried. No
crosses or nothing. Excuse _me_, if they ever break loose like that--we
might get planted with the rest!"
"By Jove, old top!" exclaimed De Lancey, laughing teasingly, "you've
certainly got the blues to-day. Here, take something out of this bottle
and see if it won't help."
He brought out a quart bottle from his saddle-bags and Bud drank, and
shuddered at the bite of it.
"All right," he said, as he passed it back, "and while we're talking,
what's the matter with cutting it out on booze for this trip?"
"What are we going to drink, then?" cried De Lancey in feigned alarm.
"Water?"
"Well, something like that," admitted Bud. "Come on--what do you say?
We might get lit up and tell something."
"Now lookee here, Bud," clamored Phil, who had had a few drinks
already, "you don't mean to insinuate, do you? Next thing I know you'll
be asking me to cut it out on the hay--might talk in my sleep, you
know, and give the whole snap away!"
"No, you're a good boy when you're asleep, Phil," responded Bud, "but
when you get about half shot it's different. Come on, now--I'll quit if
you will. That's fair, ain't it?"
"What? No little toots around town? No serenading the _señoritas_ and
giving the _rurales_ the hotfoot? Well, what's the use of living, Bud,
if you can't have a little fun? Drinking don't make any difference, as
long as we stick together. What's the use of swearing off--going on
record in advance? We may find some fellow that we can't work any other
way--we may have to go on a drunk with him in order to get his goat.
But will you stick? That's the point!"
Bud glanced at him and grunted, and for a long time he rode on in
silence. Before them lay a rolling plain, dipping by broad gulches
and dwindling ridges to the lower levels of Old Mexico, and on the
sky-line, thin and blue, stood the knifelike edges of the Fortunas
miles away.
With desert-trained eyes he noted the landmarks, San Juan mountain
to the right, Old Niggerhead to the left, and the feather-edge of
mountains far below; and as he looked he stored it away in his mind in
case he should come back on the run some night.
It was not a foreboding, but the training of his kind, to note the lay
of the ground, and he planned just where he would ride to keep under
cover if he ever made a dash for the line. But all the time his pardner
was talking of friendship and of the necessity of their sticking
together.
"I'll tell you, Bud," he said at last, his voice trembling with
sentiment, "whether we win or lose, I won't have a single regret as
long as I know we've been true to one another. You may know Texas and
Arizona, Bud, but I know Old Mexico, the land of _mañana_ and broken
promises. I know the country, Bud--and the climate--and the women!
"They play the devil with the best of us, Bud, these dark-eyed
_señoritas_! That's what makes all the trouble down here between man
and man, it's these women and their ways. They're not satisfied to win
a man's heart--they want him to kill somebody to show that he really
loves them. By Jove! they're a fickle lot, and nothing pleases 'em more
than setting man against man, one pardner against another."
"We never had no trouble yet," observed Bud sententiously.
"No, but we're likely to," protested De Lancey. "Those Indian women up
in the Sierras wouldn't turn anybody's head, but we're going down into
the hot country now, where the girls are pretty, ta-ra, ta-ra, and we
talk through the windows at midnight."
"Well, if you'll cut out the booze," said Hooker shortly, "you can have
'em all, for all of me."
"Sure, that's what you say, but wait till you see them! Oh, la, la,
la!"--he kissed his fingers ecstatically--"I'll be glad to see 'em
myself! But listen, Bud, here's the proposition: Let's take an oath
right now, while we're starting out, that whatever comes up we'll
always be true to each other. If one of us is wounded, the other stays
with him; if he's in prison, he gets him out; if he's killed, he
avenges his--"
"Say," broke in Bud, jostling him rudely as he reached into the
saddle-bags, "let me carry that bottle for a while."
He took a big drink out of it to prevent De Lancey from getting it all
and shoved it inside his overalls.
"All right, pardner," he continued, with a mocking smile, "anything
you say. I never use oaths myself much, but anything to oblige."
"No, but I mean it, Bud!" cried De Lancey. "Here's the proposition now:
Whatever happens, we stay with each other till this deal is finished;
on all scratch cases we match money to see who's it; and if we tangle
over some girl the best man wins and the other one stays away. We leave
it to the girl which one wins. Will you shake hands on that?"
"Don't need to," responded Bud; "I'll do it anyway."
"Well, shake on it, then!" insisted De Lancey, holding out his hand.
"Oh, Sally!" burst out Bud, hanging his head in embarrassment, "what's
the use of getting mushy?"
But a moment later he leaned over in his saddle and locked hands with a
viselike grip.
"My old man told me not to make no such promises," he muttered, "but
I'll do it, being's it's you."
V
The journey to Fortuna is a scant fifty miles by measure, but within
those eighty kilometers there is a lapse of centuries in standards.
As Bud and De Lancey rode out of battle-scarred Agua Negra they
traveled a good road, well worn by the Mexican wood-wagons that hauled
in mesquit from the hills. Then, as they left the town and the wood
roads scattered, the highway changed by degrees to a broad trail, dug
deep by the feet of pack-animals and marked but lightly with wheels.
It followed along the railroad, cutting over hills and down through
gulches, and by evening they were in the heart of Old Mexico.
Here were men in sandals and women barefooted; chickens tied up by the
legs outside of brush _jacales_; long-nosed hogs, grunting fiercely
as they skirmished for food; and half-naked children, staring like
startled rabbits at the strangers.
The smell of garlic and fresh-roasting coffee was in the air as they
drew into town for the night, and their room was an adobe chamber with
tile floor and iron bars across the windows. Riding south the next
day they met _vaqueros_, mounted on wiry mustangs, who saluted them
gravely, taking no shame for their primitive wooden saddle-trees and
pommels as broad as soup-plates.
As they left the broad plain and clambered up over the back of a
mountain they passed Indian houses, brush-built and thatched with
long, coarse grasses, and by the fires the women ground corn on stone
_metates_ as their ancestors had done before the fall. For in Mexico
there are two peoples, the Spaniards and the natives, and the Indians
still remember the days when they were free.
It was through such a land that Phil and Hooker rode on their gallant
ponies, leading a pack-animal well loaded with supplies from the north,
and as the people gazed from their miserable hovels and saw their
outfit they wondered at their wealth.
But if they were moved to envy, the bulk of a heavy pistol, showing
through the swell of each coat, discouraged them from going further;
and the cold, searching look of the tall cowboy as he ambled past
stayed in their memory long after the pleasant "_Adios!_" of De Lancey
had been forgotten.
Americans were scarce in those days, and what few came by were riding
to the north. How bold, then, must this big man be who rode in
front--and certainly he had some great reward before him to risk such a
horse among the _revoltosos_! So reasoned the simple-minded natives of
the mountains, gazing in admiration at Copper Bottom, and for that look
in their eyes Bud returned his forbidding stare.
There is something about a good horse that fascinates the average
Mexican--perhaps because they breed the finest themselves and are in a
position to judge--but Hooker had developed a romantic attachment for
his trim little chestnut mount and he resented their wide-eyed gapings
as a lover resents glances at his lady. This, and a frontier education,
rendered him short-spoken and gruff with the _paisanos_ and it was left
to the cavalier De Lancey to do the courtesies of the road.
As the second day wore on they dipped down into a rocky cañon, with
huge cliffs of red and yellow sandstone glowing in the slanting
sun, and soon they broke out into a narrow valley, well wooded with
sycamores and mesquits and giant hackberry-trees.
The shrill toots of a dummy engine came suddenly from down below and
a mantle of black smoke rose majestically against the sky--then, at a
turn of the trail, they topped the last hill and Fortuna lay before
them.
In that one moment they were set back again fifty miles--clear back
across the line--for Fortuna was American, from the power-house on the
creek-bank to the mammoth concentrator on the hill.
All the buildings were of stone, square and uniform. First a central
plaza, flanked with offices and warehouses; then behind them barracks
and lodging-houses and trim cottages in orderly rows; and over across
the cañon loomed the huge bulk of the mill and the concentrator with
its aërial tramway and endless row of gliding buckets.
Only on the lower hills, where the rough country rock cropped up and
nature was at its worst, only there did the real Mexico creep in and
assert itself in a crude huddle of half-Indian huts; the dwellings of
the care-free natives.
"Well, by Jove!" exclaimed De Lancey, surveying the scene with an
appraising eye, "this doesn't look very much like Mexico--or a
revolution, either!"
"No, it don't," admitted Bud; "everything running full blast, too. Look
at that ore-train coming around the hill!"
"Gee, what a burg!" raved Phil. "Say, there's some class to this--what?
If I mistake not, we'll be able to find a few congenial spirits here to
help us spend our money. Talk about a company town! I'll bet you their
barroom is full of Americans. There's the corral down below--let's ride
by and leave our horses and see what's the price of drinks. They can't
faze me, whatever it is--we doubled our money at the line."
Financially considered, they had done just that--for, for every
American dollar in their pockets they could get two that were just as
good, except for the picture on the side. This in itself was a great
inducement for a ready spender and, finding good company at the Fortuna
hotel bar, Phil bought five dollars' worth of drinks, threw down a
five-dollar bill, and got back five dollars--Mex.
The proprietor, a large and jovial boniface, pulled off this fiscal
miracle with the greatest good humor and then, having invited them
to partake of a very exquisite mixture of his own invention, propped
himself upon his elbows across the bar and inquired with an ingenuous
smile:
"Well, which away are you boys traveling, if I may ask?"
"Oh, down below a ways," answered De Lancey, who always constituted
himself the board of strategy. "Just rambling around a little--how's
the country around here now?"
"Oh, quiet, quiet!" assured their host. "These Mexicans don't like the
cold weather much--they would freeze, you know, if it was not for that
_zarape_ which they wind about them so!"
He made a motion as of a native wrapping his entire wardrobe about his
neck and smiled, and De Lancey knew that he was no Mexican. And yet
that soft "which away" of his betrayed a Spanish tongue.
"Ah, excuse me," he said, taking quick advantage of his guess, "but
from the way you pronounce that word '_zarape_' I take it that you
speak Spanish."
"No one better," replied the host, smiling pleasurably at being taken
at his true worth, "since I was born in the city of Burgos, where they
speak the true Castilian. It is a different language, believe me,
from this bastard Mexican tongue. And do you speak Spanish also?" he
inquired, falling back into the staccato of Castile.
"No, indeed!" protested De Lancey in a very creditable imitation;
"nothing but a little Mexican, to get along with the natives. My friend
and I are mining men, passing through the country, and we speak the
best we can. How is this district here for work along our line?"
"None better!" cried the Spaniard, shaking his finger emphatically. "It
is of the best, and, believe me, my friend, we should be glad to have
you stop with us. The country down below is a little dangerous--not
now, perhaps, but later, when the warm weather comes on.
"But in Fortuna--no! Here we are on the railroad; the camp is
controlled by Americans; and because so many have left the country the
Mexicans will sell their prospects cheap.
"Then again, if you develop a mine near-by, it will be very easy to
sell it--and if you wish to work it, that is easy, too. I am only the
proprietor of the hotel, but if you can use my poor services in any way
I shall be very happy to please you. A room? One of the best! And if
you stay a week or more I will give you the lowest rate."
They passed up the winding stairs and down a long corridor, at the end
of which the proprietor showed them into a room, throwing open the
outer doors and shutters to let them see the view from the window.
"Here is a little balcony," he said, stepping outside, "where you can
sit and look down on the plaza. We have the band and music when the
weather is fine, and you can watch the pretty girls from here. But you
have been in Mexico--you know all that!" And he gave Phil a roguish dig.
"_Bien_ my frien', I am glad to meet you--" He held out his hand in
welcome and De Lancey gave his in return. "My name," he continued, "is
Juan de Dios Brachamonte y Escalon; but with these Americans that does
not go, as you say, so in general they call me Don Juan.
"There is something about that name--I do not know--that makes the
college boys laugh. Perhaps it is that poet, Byron, who wrote so
scandalously about us Spaniards, but certainly he knew nothing of our
language, for he rimes Don Juan with 'new one' and 'true one'! Still,
I read part of that poem and it is, in places, very interesting--yes,
_very_ interesting--but 'Don Joo-an'! Hah!"
He threw up his hand in despair and De Lancey broke into a jollying
laugh.
"Well, Don Juan," he cried, "I'm glad to meet you. My name is Philip De
Lancey, and my pardner here is Mr. Hooker. Shake hands with him, Don
Juan de Dios! But certainly a man so devoutly named could never descend
to reading _much_ of Don Joo-an!"
"Ah, no," protested Don Juan, rolling his dark eyes and smiling
rakishly, "not moch--only the most in-teresting passages!"
He saluted and disappeared in a roar of laughter, and De Lancey turned
triumphantly on his companion, a self-satisfied smile upon his lips.
"Aha!" he said; "you see? That's what five dollars' worth of booze will
do in opening up the way. Here's our old friend Don Juan willing, nay,
anxious, to help us all he can--he sees I'm a live wire and wants to
keep me around. Pretty soon we'll get him feeling good and he'll tell
us all he knows. Don't you never try to make me sign the pledge again,
brother--a few shots just gets my intellect to working right and I'm
crafty as a fox.
"Did you notice that _coup_ I made--asking him if he was a Spaniard?
There's nothing in the world makes a Spaniard so mad as to take him for
a Mexican--on the other hand, nothing makes him your friend for life
like recognizing him for a blue-blooded Castilian. Now maybe our old
friend Don Juan has got a few drops of Moorish blood in his veins--to
put it politely, but--" he raised his tenor voice and improvised--
"Jest because my hair is curly
Dat's no reason to call me 'Shine'!"
"No," agreed Bud, feeling cautiously of the walls, "and jest because
you're happy is no reason for singing so loud, neither. These here
partitions are made of inch boards, covered with paper--do you get
that? Well, then, considering who's probably listening, it strikes me
that Mr. Brachamonte is the real thing in Spanish gentlemen; and I've
heard that all genuwine Spaniards have their hair curly, jest like
a--huh?"
But De Lancey, made suddenly aware of his indiscretion, was making all
kinds of exaggerated signs for silence, and Bud stopped with a slow,
good-natured smile.
"S-s-st!" hissed De Lancey, touching his finger to his lips. "Don't say
it--somebody might hear you!"
"All right," agreed Bud; "and don't you say it, either. I hate to
knock, Phil," he added, "but sometimes I think the old man was right
when he said you talk too much."
"Psst!" chided De Lancey, shaking his finger like a Mexican. Tiptoeing
softly over to Bud, he whispered in his ear: "S-s-st, I can hear the
feller in the next room--shaving himself!"
Laughing heartily at this joke, they went downstairs for supper.