prairie lay smooth he kept his course straight as an arrow's toward
the east. Deflected by hill or arroyo or impracticable spinous
brakes he quickly flowed again into the current, charted by his
unerring instinct. At last, upon the side of a gentle rise, he
suddenly subsided to a complacent walk. A stone's cast away stood a
little mott of coma trees; beneath it a jacal such as the Mexicans
erect--a one-room house of upright poles daubed with clay and roofed
with grass or tule reeds. An experienced eye would have estimated
the spot as the headquarters of a small sheep ranch. In the
moonlight the ground in the nearby corral showed pulverized to a
level smoothness by the hoofs of the sheep. Everywhere was
carelessly distributed the paraphernalia of the place--ropes,
bridles, saddles, sheep pelts, wool sacks, feed troughs and camp
litter. The barrel of drinking water stood in the end of the
two-horse wagon near the door. The harness was piled, promiscuous,
upon the wagon tongue, soaking up the dew.
Chicken slipped to earth, and tied the horse to a tree. He halloed
again and again, but the house remained quiet. The door stood open,
and he entered cautiously. The light was sufficient for him to see
that no one was at home. He struck a match and lighted a lamp that
stood on a table. The room was that of a bachelor ranchman who was
content with the necessaries of life. Chicken rummaged intelligently
until he found what he had hardly dared hope for--a small, brown jug
that still contained something near a quart of his desire.
Half an hour later, Chicken--now a gamecock of hostile
aspect--emerged from the house with unsteady steps. He had drawn
upon the absent ranchman's equipment to replace his own ragged
attire. He wore a suit of coarse brown ducking, the coat being a
sort of rakish bolero, jaunty to a degree. Boots he had donned, and
spurs that whirred with every lurching step. Buckled around him was
a belt full of cartridges with a big six-shooter in each of its two
holsters.
Prowling about, he found blankets, a saddle and bridle with which he
caparisoned his steed. Again mounting, he rode swiftly away, singing
a loud and tuneless song.
Bud King's band of desperadoes, outlaws and horse and cattle thieves
were in camp at a secluded spot on the bank of the Frio. Their
depredations in the Rio Grande country, while no bolder than usual,
had been advertised more extensively, and Captain Kinney's company of
rangers had been ordered down to look after them. Consequently, Bud
King, who was a wise general, instead of cutting out a hot trail for
the upholders of the law, as his men wished to do, retired for the
time to the prickly fastnesses of the Frio valley.
Though the move was a prudent one, and not incompatible with Bud's
well-known courage, it raised dissension among the members of the
band. In fact, while they thus lay ingloriously _perdu_ in the
brush, the question of Bud King's fitness for the leadership was
argued, with closed doors, as it were, by his followers. Never
before had Bud's skill or efficiency been brought to criticism; but
his glory was waning (and such is glory's fate) in the light of a
newer star. The sentiment of the band was crystallising into the
opinion that Black Eagle could lead them with more lustre, profit,
and distinction.
This Black Eagle--sub-titled the "Terror of the Border"--had been a
member of the gang about three months.
One night while they were in camp on the San Miguel water-hole a
solitary horseman on the regulation fiery steed dashed in among them.
The new-comer was of a portentous and devastating aspect. A
beak-like nose with a predatory curve projected above a mass of
bristling, blue-black whiskers. His eye was cavernous and fierce.
He was spurred, sombreroed, booted, garnished with revolvers,
abundantly drunk, and very much unafraid. Few people in the country
drained by the Rio Bravo would have cared thus to invade alone the
camp of Bud King. But this fell bird swooped fearlessly upon them
and demanded to be fed.
Hospitality in the prairie country is not limited. Even if your
enemy pass your way you must feed him before you shoot him. You must
empty your larder into him before you empty your lead. So the
stranger of undeclared intentions was set down to a mighty feast.
A talkative bird he was, full of most marvellous loud tales and
exploits, and speaking a language at times obscure but never
colourless. He was a new sensation to Bud King's men, who rarely
encountered new types. They hung, delighted, upon his vainglorious
boasting, the spicy strangeness of his lingo, his contemptuous
familiarity with life, the world, and remote places, and the
extravagant frankness with which he conveyed his sentiments.
To their guest the band of outlaws seemed to be nothing more than a
congregation of country bumpkins whom he was "stringing for grub"
just as he would have told his stories at the back door of a
farmhouse to wheedle a meal. And, indeed, his ignorance was not
without excuse, for the "bad man" of the Southwest does not run to
extremes. Those brigands might justly have been taken for a little
party of peaceable rustics assembled for a fish-fry or pecan
gathering. Gentle of manner, slouching of gait, soft-voiced,
unpicturesquely clothed; not one of them presented to the eye any
witness of the desperate records they had earned.
For two days the glittering stranger within the camp was feasted.
Then, by common consent, he was invited to become a member of the
band. He consented, presenting for enrollment the prodigious name of
"Captain Montressor." This name was immediately overruled by the
band, and "Piggy" substituted as a compliment to the awful and
insatiate appetite of its owner.
Thus did the Texas border receive the most spectacular brigand that
ever rode its chaparral.
For the next three months Bud King conducted business as usual,
escaping encounters with law officers and being content with
reasonable profits. The band ran off some very good companies of
horses from the ranges, and a few bunches of fine cattle which they
got safely across the Rio Grande and disposed of to fair advantage.
Often the band would ride into the little villages and Mexican
settlements, terrorising the inhabitants and plundering for the
provisions and ammunition they needed. It was during these bloodless
raids that Piggy's ferocious aspect and frightful voice gained him a
renown more widespread and glorious than those other gentle-voiced
and sad-faced desperadoes could have acquired in a lifetime.
The Mexicans, most apt in nomenclature, first called him The Black
Eagle, and used to frighten the babes by threatening them with tales
of the dreadful robber who carried off little children in his great
beak. Soon the name extended, and Black Eagle, the Terror of the
Border, became a recognized factor in exaggerated newspaper reports
and ranch gossip.
The country from the Nueces to the Rio Grande was a wild but fertile
stretch, given over to the sheep and cattle ranches. Range was free;
the inhabitants were few; the law was mainly a letter and the pirates
met with little opposition until the flaunting and garish Piggy gave
the band undue advertisement. Then McKinney's ranger company headed
for those precincts, and Bud King knew that it meant grim and sudden
war or else temporary retirement. Regarding the risk to be
unnecessary, he drew off his band to an almost inaccessible spot on
the bank of the Frio. Wherefore, as has been said, dissatisfaction
arose among the members, and impeachment proceedings against Bud were
premeditated, with Black Eagle in high favour for the succession.
Bud King was not unaware of the sentiment, and he called aside Cactus
Taylor, his trusted lieutenant, to discuss it.
"If the boys," said Bud, "ain't satisfied with me, I'm willin' to
step out. They're buckin' against my way of handlin' 'em. And
'specially because I concludes to hit the brush while Sam Kinney is
ridin' the line. I saves 'em from bein' shot or sent up on a state
contract, and they up and says I'm no good."
"It ain't so much that," explained Cactus, "as it is they're plum
locoed about Piggy. They want them whiskers and that nose of his to
split the wind at the head of the column."
"There's somethin' mighty seldom about Piggy," declared Bud,
musingly. "I never yet see anything on the hoof that he exactly
grades up with. He can shore holler a plenty, and he straddles a
hoss from where you laid the chunk. But he ain't never been smoked
yet. You know, Cactus, we ain't had a row since he's been with us.
Piggy's all right for skearin' the greaser kids and layin' waste a
crossroads store. I reckon he's the finest canned oyster buccaneer
and cheese pirate that ever was, but how's his appetite for fightin'?
I've knowed some citizens you'd think was starvin' for trouble get a
bad case of dyspepsy the first dose of lead they had to take."
"He talks all spraddled out," said Cactus, "'bout the rookuses he's
been in. He claims to have saw the elephant and hearn the owl."
"I know," replied Bud, using the cowpuncher's expressive phrase of
skepticism, "but it sounds to me!"
This conversation was held one night in camp while the other members
of the band--eight in number--were sprawling around the fire,
lingering over their supper. When Bud and Cactus ceased talking they
heard Piggy's formidable voice holding forth to the others as usual
while he was engaged in checking, though never satisfying, his
ravening appetite.
"Wat's de use," he was saying, "of chasin' little red cowses and
hosses 'round for t'ousands of miles? Dere ain't nuttin' in it.
Gallopin' t'rough dese bushes and briers, and gettin' a t'irst dat a
brewery couldn't put out, and missin' meals! Say! You know what I'd
do if I was main finger of dis bunch? I'd stick up a train. I'd
blow de express car and make hard dollars where you guys gets wind.
Youse makes me tired. Dis sook-cow kind of cheap sport gives me a
pain."
Later on, a deputation waited on Bud. They stood on one leg, chewed
mesquit twigs and circumlocuted, for they hated to hurt his feelings.
Bud foresaw their business, and made it easy for them. Bigger risks
and larger profits was what they wanted.
The suggestion of Piggy's about holding up a train had fired their
imagination and increased their admiration for the dash and boldness
of the instigator. They were such simple, artless, and custom-bound
bush-rangers that they had never before thought of extending their
habits beyond the running off of live-stock and the shooting of such
of their acquaintances as ventured to interfere.
Bud acted "on the level," agreeing to take a subordinate place in the
gang until Black Eagle should have been given a trial as leader.
After a great deal of consultation, studying of time-tables, and
discussion of the country's topography, the time and place for
carrying out their new enterprise was decided upon. At that time
there was a feedstuff famine in Mexico and a cattle famine in certain
parts of the United States, and there was a brisk international
trade. Much money was being shipped along the railroads that
connected the two republics. It was agreed that the most promising
place for the contemplated robbery was at Espina, a little station on
the I. and G. N., about forty miles north of Laredo. The train
stopped there one minute; the country around was wild and unsettled;
the station consisted of but one house in which the agent lived.
Black Eagle's band set out, riding by night. Arriving in the
vicinity of Espina they rested their horses all day in a thicket a
few miles distant.
The train was due at Espina at 10.30 P.M. They could rob the train
and be well over the Mexican border with their booty by daylight the
next morning.
To do Black Eagle justice, he exhibited no signs of flinching from
the responsible honours that had been conferred upon him.
He assigned his men to their respective posts with discretion, and
coached them carefully as to their duties. On each side of the track
four of the band were to lie concealed in the chaparral. Gotch-Ear
Rodgers was to stick up the station agent. Bronco Charlie was to
remain with the horses, holding them in readiness. At a spot where
it was calculated the engine would be when the train stopped, Bud
King was to lie hidden on one side, and Black Eagle himself on the
other. The two would get the drop on the engineer and fireman, force
them to descend and proceed to the rear. Then the express car would
be looted, and the escape made. No one was to move until Black Eagle
gave the signal by firing his revolver. The plan was perfect.
At ten minutes to train time every man was at his post, effectually
concealed by the thick chaparral that grew almost to the rails. The
night was dark and lowering, with a fine drizzle falling from the
flying gulf clouds. Black Eagle crouched behind a bush within five
yards of the track. Two six-shooters were belted around him.
Occasionally he drew a large black bottle from his pocket and raised
it to his mouth.
A star appeared far down the track which soon waxed into the
headlight of the approaching train. It came on with an increasing
roar; the engine bore down upon the ambushing desperadoes with a
glare and a shriek like some avenging monster come to deliver them to
justice. Black Eagle flattened himself upon the ground. The engine,
contrary to their calculations, instead of stopping between him and
Bud King's place of concealment, passed fully forty yards farther
before it came to a stand.
The bandit leader rose to his feet and peered around the bush. His
men all lay quiet, awaiting the signal. Immediately opposite Black
Eagle was a thing that drew his attention. Instead of being a
regular passenger train it was a mixed one. Before him stood a box
car, the door of which, by some means, had been left slightly open.
Black Eagle went up to it and pushed the door farther open. An odour
came forth--a damp, rancid, familiar, musty, intoxicating, beloved
odour stirring strongly at old memories of happy days and travels.
Black Eagle sniffed at the witching smell as the returned wanderer
smells of the rose that twines his boyhood's cottage home. Nostalgia
seized him. He put his hand inside. Excelsior--dry, springy, curly,
soft, enticing, covered the floor. Outside the drizzle had turned to
a chilling rain.
The train bell clanged. The bandit chief unbuckled his belt and cast
it, with its revolvers, upon the ground. His spurs followed quickly,
and his broad sombrero. Black Eagle was moulting. The train started
with a rattling jerk. The ex-Terror of the Border scrambled into the
box car and closed the door. Stretched luxuriously upon the
excelsior, with the black bottle clasped closely to his breast, his
eyes closed, and a foolish, happy smile upon his terrible features
Chicken Ruggles started upon his return trip.
Undisturbed, with the band of desperate bandits lying motionless,
awaiting the signal to attack, the train pulled out from Espina. As
its speed increased, and the black masses of chaparral went whizzing
past on either side, the express messenger, lighting his pipe, looked
through his window and remarked, feelingly:
"What a jim-dandy place for a hold-up!"
VII
NIÑO DIABLO*
W. H. HUDSON
*Reprinted from the volume, Tales of the Pampas, by permission of
Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
The wide pampas rough with long grass; a vast level disc now growing
dark, the horizon encircling it with a ring as faultless as that made
by a pebble dropped into smooth water; above it the clear sky of
June, wintry and pale, still showing in the west the saffron hues of
the afterglow tinged with vapoury violet and grey. In the centre of
the disc a large low rancho thatched with yellow rushes, a few
stunted trees and cattle enclosures grouped about it; and dimly seen
in the shadows, cattle and sheep reposing. At the gate stands
Gregory Gorostiaga, lord of house, lands and ruminating herds,
leisurely unsaddling his horse; for whatsoever Gregory does is done
leisurely. Although no person is within earshot he talks much over
his task, now rebuking his restive animal, and now cursing his
benumbed fingers and the hard knots in his gear. A curse falls
readily and not without a certain natural grace from Gregory's lips;
it is the oiled feather with which he touches every difficult knot
encountered in life. From time to time he glances toward the open
kitchen door, from which issue the far-flaring light of the fire and
familiar voices, with savoury smells of cookery that come to his
nostrils like pleasant messengers.
The unsaddling over at last the freed horse gallops away, neighing
joyfully, to seek his fellows; but Gregory is not a four-footed thing
to hurry himself; and so, stepping slowly and pausing frequently to
look about him as if reluctant to quit the cold night air, he turns
toward the house.
The spacious kitchen was lighted by two or three wicks in cups of
melted fat, and by a great fire in the middle of the clay floor that
cast crowds of dancing shadows on the walls and filled the whole room
with grateful warmth. On the walls were fastened many deers' heads,
and on their convenient prongs were hung bridles and lassos, ropes of
onions and garlic, bunches of dried herbs, and various other objects.
At the fire a piece of beef was roasting on a spit; and in a large
pot suspended by hook and chain from the smoke-blackened central
beam, boiled and bubbled an ocean of mutton broth, puffing out white
clouds of steam redolent of herbs and cummin-seed. Close to the
fire, skimmer in hand, sat Magdalen, Gregory's fat and florid wife,
engaged in frying pies in a second smaller pot. There also, on a
high, straight-backed chair, sat Ascension, her sister-in-law, a
wrinkled spinster; also, in a low rush-bottomed seat, her
mother-in-law, an ancient white-headed dame, staring vacantly into
the flames. On the other side of the fire were Gregory's two eldest
daughters, occupied just now in serving _maté_ to their elders--that
harmless bitter decoction the sipping of which fills up all vacant
moments from dawn to bed-time--pretty dove-eyed girls of sixteen,
both also named Magdalen, but not after their mother nor because
confusion was loved by the family for its own sake; they were twins,
and born on the day sacred to Santa Magdalena. Slumbering dogs and
cats were disposed about the floor, also four children. The eldest,
a boy, sitting with legs outstretched before him, was cutting threads
from a slip of colt's hide looped over his great toe. The two next,
boy and girl, were playing a simple game called nines, once known to
English children as nine men's morrice; the lines were rudely
scratched on the clay floor, and the men they played with were bits
of hardened clay, nine red and as many white. The youngest, a girl
of five, sat on the floor nursing a kitten that purred contentedly on
her lap and drowsily winked its blue eyes at the fire; and as she
swayed herself from side to side she lisped out the old lullaby in
her baby voice:
A-ro-ró mi niño
A-ro-ró mi sol,
A-ro-ró pedazos
De mi corazon.
Gregory stood on the threshold surveying this domestic scene with
manifest pleasure.
"Papa mine, what have you brought me?" cried the child with the
kitten.
"Brought you, interested? Stiff whiskers and cold hands to pinch
your dirty little cheeks. How is your cold to-night, mother?"
"Yes, son, it is very cold to-night; we knew that before you came
in," replied the old dame testily as she drew her chair a little
closer to the fire.
"It is useless speaking to her," remarked Ascension. "With her to be
out of temper is to be deaf."
"What has happened to put her out?" he asked.
"I can tell you, papa," cried one of the twins. "She wouldn't let me
make your cigars to-day, and sat down out-of-doors to make them
herself. It was after breakfast when the sun was warm."
"And of course she fell asleep," chimed in Ascension.
"Let me tell it, auntie!" exclaimed the other. "And she fell asleep,
and in a moment Rosita's lamb came and ate up the whole of the
tobacco-leaf in her lap."
"It didn't!" cried Rosita, looking up from her game. "I opened its
mouth and looked with all my eyes, and there was no tobacco-leaf in
it."
"That lamb! that lamb!" said Gregory slily. "Is it to be wondered at
that we are turning grey before our time--all except Rosita! Remind
me to-morrow, wife, to take it to the flock: or if it has grown fat
on all the tobacco-leaf, aprons and old shoes it has eaten----"
"Oh no, no, no!" screamed Rosita, starting up and throwing the game
into confusion, just when her little brother had made a row and was
in the act of seizing on one of her pieces in triumph.
"Hush, silly child, he will not harm your lamb," said the mother,
pausing from her task and raising eyes that were tearful with the
smoke of the fire and of the cigarette she held between her
good-humoured lips. "And now, if these children have finished
speaking of their important affairs, tell me, Gregory, what news do
you bring?"
"They say," he returned, sitting down and taking the maté-cup from
his daughter's hand, "that the invading Indians bring seven hundred
lances, and that those that first opposed them were all slain. Some
say they are now retreating with the cattle they have taken; while
others maintain that they are waiting to fight our men."
"Oh, my sons, my sons, what will happen to them!" cried Magdalen,
bursting into tears.
"Why do you cry, wife, before God gives you cause?" returned her
husband. "Are not all men born to fight the infidel? Our boys are
not alone--all their friends and neighbours are with them."
"Say not this to me, Gregory, for I am not a fool nor blind. All
their friends indeed! And this very day I have seen the Niño Diablo;
he galloped past the house, whistling like a partridge that knows no
care. Why must my two sons be called away, while he, a youth without
occupation and with no mother to cry for him, remains behind?"
"You talk folly, Magdalen," replied her lord. "Complain that the
ostrich and puma are more favoured than your sons, since no man calls
on them to serve the state; but mention not the Niño, for he is freer
than the wild things which Heaven has made, and fights not on this
side nor on that."
"Coward! Miserable!" murmured the incensed mother.
Whereupon one of the twins flushed scarlet, and retorted, "He is not
a coward, mother!"
"And if not a coward why does he sit on the hearth among women and
old men in times like these? Grieved am I to hear a daughter of mine
speak in defence of one who is a vagabond and a stealer of other
men's horses!"
The girl's eyes flashed angrily, but she answered not a word.
"Hold your tongue, woman, and accuse no man of crimes," spoke
Gregory. "Let every Christian take proper care of his animals; and
as for the infidel's horses, he is a virtuous man that steals them.
The girl speaks truth; the Niño is no coward, but he fights not with
our weapons. The web of the spider is coarse and ill-made compared
with the snare he spreads to entangle his prey." Thus fixing his
eyes on the face of the girl who had spoken, he added: "therefore be
warned in season, my daughter, and fall not into the snare of the
Niño Diablo."
Again the girl blushed and hung her head.
At this moment a clatter of hoofs, the jangling of a bell, and shouts
of a traveller to the horses driven before him, came in at the open
door. The dogs roused themselves, almost overturning the children in
their hurry to rush out; and up rose Gregory to find out who was
approaching with so much noise.
"I know, _papita_," cried one of the children. "It is Uncle
Polycarp."
"You are right, child," said her father. "Cousin Polycarp always
arrives at night, shouting to his animals like a troop of Indians."
And with that he went out to welcome his boisterous relative.
The traveller soon arrived, spurring his horse, scared at the light
and snorting loudly, to within two yards of the door. In a few
minutes the saddle was thrown off, the fore feet of the bell-mare
fettered, and the horses allowed to wander away in quest of
pasturage; then the two men turned into the kitchen.
A short, burly man aged about fifty, wearing a soft hat thrust far
back on his head, with truculent greenish eyes beneath arched bushy
eyebrows, and a thick shapeless nose surmounting a bristly
moustache--such was Cousin Polycarp. From neck to feet he was
covered with a blue cloth poncho, and on his heels he wore enormous
silver spurs that clanked and jangled over the floor like the fetters
of a convict. After greeting the women and bestowing the avuncular
blessing on the children, who had clamoured for it as for some
inestimable boon--he sat down, and flinging back his poncho displayed
at his waist a huge silver-hilted knife and a heavy brass-barrelled
horse-pistol.