same source, Elbert’s second experience under rifle fire that
night--venomous roaring of slugs in the air. He never could have
dreamed how utterly malignant the sounds. That instant at his right
hand (Bart was still at his left) it was as if the picture unfolded for
his eyes alone--an upturned face, then a crumpled, falling body, horse
leaping aside--empty saddle--one of the four released from the prison
at Arecibo. In the midst of the shots, a yell from Bart:
‘We split right here, men!’
Elbert heard certain names shouted--those who were to turn back, those
to ride north. Then Bart’s face jerked around to him. ‘This way for us,
Mister, we ride together.’
Their horses were at full run, along the river-bed, where the clear
sand showed at the edge of the stream--shots still peppering after.
‘Your mare!’ Bart laughed. ‘Why, they’d have gotten all of us, if she
hadn’t given warning! We’d have gone right into their gun-barrels under
the bridge!’
‘She’s one more listening mare,’ Elbert called back.
XXII
FRAMED IN A DOBE GATEWAY
NORTH, they were riding straight north, though the going for a way was
a bit heavy through the sand and stones.
‘Not so fast quite!’ Bart warned. ‘The other three can’t keep up--’
Elbert was bending forward because the rurales were following, their
shots still in the air. His heart was filled with elation that Mamie
had given the warning, and that their course had turned north. He had
forgotten the three of Bart’s men still riding with them. More shots
from behind, a queer gulping cough from Bart.
‘Are you hurt?’ Elbert called.
‘Yes, one of ’em got me. I’ve--been--hit--before--but not so close in--’
Elbert’s hand tightened; his eyes still held to the north star. ‘Can
you ride a ways?’
‘Sure. Long as you do--’
‘Don’t forget to give me a warning, if you’re going to--’
‘I’m not going to fall, amigo mio! They’ll never get us now, but our
three behind--we’re ridin’ too fast for their ponies!’
Elbert did not look back; nor did he check Mamie’s speed. This was the
instant he realized he was in command of affairs, if anybody was. His
momentary concern wasn’t with the three bandits, whipping their ponies
to hold the pace, but with the one who called him “amigo mio” and bent
forward now as if pushing the saddle from him.
The sorrel galloped at Mamie’s side with great easy leaps. To keep
going with Bart was Elbert’s game, not with this remnant of Vallejo’s
band; to keep going north with Bart at any price; to turn loose the
horses faster and faster, their heads to the north--if only Bart
could stay in his seat! The river road running north assumed clearer
outline--wheel-tracks, a hardening pebbled way. Again from his
companion:
‘We’re ridin’ too fast for the others, Mister--’
‘I think we’d better not wait for anybody now, Bart. This is a
running match right now, while you’re in the saddle. Who’s got the
stuff--that’s what we’re going to find out--Mamie here or your
Mallet-head!’
A chuckle in answer. ‘You’re the doctor!’
Elbert bent forward. ‘I say, Mamie, we’re off!’ She knew that tone--a
wide-open throttle, it meant, and the big sorrel settled lower at the
left, his fish eye fixed on her nose.
Now part of Elbert’s private reaction to the headlong pace was the
sense that he had been fixing for this race all his life--a sort of
climax of all days, and his eyes glanced often up to old Polaris, as
if the north star were a silver cup for the winner. A distance-course,
seconds pounding on into minutes, the minutes into tens, dusk of
earliest morning blent with the low moon’s rays; only two horses in the
finish, silence as deep from behind now as from the desolate foothills
ahead--a friend to stick by at his left--white smile, two slits of
black for eyes, body hanging forward.
Every little while: ‘Don’t fall, Bart! Give me a word if you’re
slipping!’
‘I’m not going to fall, Mister--’
The river had narrowed to a creek; the road to a path; the blowing
horses pelted forward on rising ground--
Then it was all as queer as a dream. Breaking day, a face framed in a
dobe gateway, a face by the side of the road. Just a glimpse--girl or
child or woman, he did not know--but a face in the ashen light--oval
beauty in the gateway of a dobe wall! Elbert’s head flung back as they
passed, but the face was gone. That instant thickly from Bart:
‘Pull up, pardner!’
Elbert’s hand went out to the left, as he drew Mamie sharply in with
the other. The look of death was on Bart’s face; his lips moved.
‘Big town ahead--Fonseca--three miles or so. Rurales--they’ll be
waitin’ for us there--’ The gamy head rocked back, the spine drooping
sideways.
‘We’re not going there,’ said Elbert, leaping down. ‘God, how you’ve
sat it out! You can fall now--I’m underneath!’
‘I’m not goin’ to fall--’ Bart mumbled, but his hand relaxed on the
pommel.
Elbert looked forward and back; not a sign of life either way, but the
face at the dobe gate was strangely before his inner eyes. Something
queerly to do with the song of the corn-dust maiden in that far
doorway, it seemed to have for him. His face lifted to the cold gray of
the dawn-lit sky. Rurales still following possibly ... ‘mere formality’
... blank wall ... oval beauty.
Now he was carrying Bart back, leading both horses.
‘I’m taking a chance to get you a berth,’ he gasped, coming in sight of
the dobe gateway, now empty.
An aperture in a dobe wall for a gate--face gone. Over the gate as he
led the horses into the yard, his eye caught the letters formed of
faded tile, ‘El Relicario.’ He fancied the movement of a dress through
a low arbor ahead. Still with his burden, he moved toward it.
She was there--in the doorway of a broad low dobe ruin. He seemed at
first to see only her wide eyes. And then his Spanish came to him and
words inspired by another’s need--pressure he had never felt back of an
effort before.
‘Look, Señorita--he must have shelter and care--my companion! Will you
not give help to him? I will pay a great price!’
The girl made no sound, her eyes fixed on Bart’s back, where Elbert’s
hands pressed a dark saturation.
‘May I take him into your house for shelter, Señorita?’ he panted.
She led the way indoors, halting in a large, all but empty room.
‘There are those who want his life,’ Elbert said unsteadily under his
burden. ‘May I not take him farther in?’
She turned instantly toward an inner door.
XXIII
FENCELESS FOOTHILLS OF SONORA
THERE was a room in which he saw a full-sized harp in its shroud;
there was a trellised patio, two great ollas standing on the heaved
tiles and jasmine vines very thick and ancient. At the far corner, in
the gray morning light, stood an elderly man with bared head. To him,
the señorita gave the signal of silence with her finger touching her
lips, and also to an old woman in the latticed kitchen.... Ruin of an
old plantation house, very large, some of the windows unglazed; El
Relicario--the name ran through Elbert’s brain which throbbed from the
stress of his burden--all this a matter of seconds only.
Then a corridor and a little room to the left--queer warmth rising in
Elbert’s heart, as he placed Bart upon a cot that had recently been
slept in. The sense came to him that this was a kind of sanctuary--a
cross upon the wall, a white flower beneath, the girl standing against
the wall, her arms slightly lifted, her hands toward the long booted
figure on her own cot. Elbert bent over Bart now--a rush of memories
of the day he had brought his father to the cabin and set him down
like this. The eyes were looking up to him; the lips moved with hardly
audible words.
‘Back at the gate--as we turned in--the tracks of our horses!’
‘Yes, sure, I’ll fix them.’ Then he added: ‘Listen, can you hear me,
Bart?’
‘Yes, sure--’
‘I’m going to ride on and leave you here. I’m taking both horses--so
the rurales won’t stop, but follow me on. I’ll hide in the foothills
to-day, and circle back here to-night or to-morrow night.’
‘I hate to see you go, but you’re--you’re the doctor!’ Bart laughed.
‘About the sorrel--he knows the whip, but goes mad under a spur--just a
pointer in handling him--but you know a horse.’
Elbert’s jaw hardened. ‘Thanks, I’ll remember,’ he said.
The voice went on faintly: ‘I didn’t miss how you handled the mare!’
‘You didn’t miss--anything!’ Elbert replied, fearing the other was
delirious from his wound.
‘Sorry--you go--’
‘It’s the only way. Adios, Bart--and to you, Señorita, this--’
He placed two gold pieces on the table, but saw her hurt and troubled
look, as she came forward from the wall.
‘You see, I’m leading them away from him!’ he said, as if the point
were of great moment to her.
Bart’s hand lifted; but his face was cut off by the girl’s bending
profile. Queer joy lived in him from Bart’s recent words about his
handling of the mare, but a sudden weariness came over him, too, as he
turned away. A nicker outside answered his step as he hastened across
the broken stonework of the patio. Mamie had never before been left
unceremoniously to cool in a yard--in company with a stranger.
He led the horses out to the road; no sight or sound so far at least,
from the direction he had come. Leaving them standing on the highway,
he reëntered the gate and began fanning out the hoof-marks in the yard,
using his broad hat. Out through the gate again, he worked until all
was clear; then mounted and pushed on, leading the sorrel.
Day was brightening among the foothills. The big range he had ridden
toward through the night was now intimately uncovered on his right
hand; Fonseca, three miles straight ahead, Bart had said. Both horses
were pulling toward the creek. They were too hot for a deep drink, but
might have a few draughts without harm. Besides, he must replenish his
pack-canteen.
The sorrel fought to drink his fill. Elbert had to climb into Bart’s
saddle to get the big fellow out of the stream. Back on the road again,
he followed for about a quarter of a mile, toward Fonseca, before
turning eastward to the mountains. He had left a clear trail so far,
and now off the road, he began to weave back and forth along the stony
waste, following a vague idea to confuse and delay pursuit, being well
past the old dobe house. Bart would have done all this better, he
thought, recalling how the other, half dead, had not forgotten to tell
him to wipe out the tracks leading from the road in through the dobe
wall.
Many minutes afterward, he came to a halt upon an eminence and looked
down, at a frail low smoke pattern of the town to the north. Also he
glanced back to familiarize himself with the lay of the land around El
Relicario. The hills shut him off from much of the road; he caught no
glimpse of possible pursuit. Still later in full sunlight he halted in
a rift between the hills and forked out a few mouthfuls of breakfast
from a glass jar of frijoles, packed in his saddle-bags at San Isidro
three days before.
Now in a rush it closed upon him--the heaviness, the coldness, the
blur of fatigue. Languidly, he set to work upon the horses. They
were sweated out, cakes of dust and salt at the cinchlines and
blanket-edges, both restlessly athirst, but apparently not lastingly
hurt by the long gallop of the night. He took off only one saddle at
a time; holding the other ready instantly to mount and be off at the
first sight or sound, working meanwhile with wisps of grass and cloths
from his kit. Strange, it seemed, to play the groom to another than
Mamie; unfamiliar, the bones and textures of this rangy gelding; no
curiosity or particular affection from the sorrel runner such as Elbert
was accustomed to. Running was what this one knew, but Mallet-head was
presently adapting his taste, nevertheless, to the scant sun-dried
grass with better grace than the mare. She couldn’t see why a stop
should be made in this waterless, fenceless wilderness. Standing by,
she nudged the man’s arm repeatedly for light on the subject.
‘Night-running’s all right with her,’ he mused, ‘but she doesn’t get
the inconveniences of being a bandit’s mare.’
His thoughts were running queerly from so many shocks and tensions.
The sun was well above the eastern mountains, but not yet nine
in the morning--just about the time he used to be getting to the
leather-store. Fenceless foothills of Sonora, a wearing grind of
thoughts and questions. Little inner room--cross and white flower and
cot so recently slept in. Did the señorita always get up so early? Were
the old people her parents? How had it all been arranged with so few
words, as if some power intervened to help in a pinch? Was Bart going
to live, or would it be as it was with his father? Had the rurales by
this time stopped at that open dobe gateway? Had it been yellow of him
to run away from the other three bandits?
He began to think he had done rather poorly. If Bart had held the lead,
he wouldn’t have run away from his men. Bart had spoken of the matter
three or four times after his wound, and then given up--‘You’re the
doctor!’ In the thick bruised feeling of his brain, Elbert’s depression
deepened. He recalled his bad judgment in letting Mamie out--so close
to Arecibo, and in telling the rurale that he had come from San Isidro.
The sickish smile came again to his lips. He wasn’t much for this sort
of life; he ought to be driving a car, a truck, possibly. He recalled
his funk in the prison at Arecibo, even before he was locked up, and
afterward in the cell--and how the bandits had given themselves to
death. ‘... peaceful to be with like cattle. I don’t mean they’re
cattle, only that they loll around and ruminate like ’em,’ old Bob
Leadley had said, summing up the whole matter in the remark that he
wished he had treated the Mexicans as well as they treated him.
Moreover, the old man had found out that there were times when a man
couldn’t wash his hands. ‘Wasn’t that just what I did about the other
three?’ Elbert questioned, squinting up at the sky. Now a painful rush
of pictures went through his brain--the wall in the prison patio, the
corner of the wall--only yesterday morning--standing at the bars of the
cell.
He caught himself rubbing his right cheek.
No, there was something in him that didn’t belong to this sort of life.
As for Red Ante, he couldn’t have done the thing Bart did--he couldn’t
have lived through it, as Bart’s father did.
All day the horses kept their heads turned down hill. They snipped
the sparse grass--eyes and ears and muzzles stretched toward distant
hollows--all instincts fixed upon unseen water. Elbert didn’t trust the
sorrel, not even to tether him, but kept a hand on his bridle-rein.
Once he dozed and was awakened from a thirst dream by the sound of
horses sucking in water from a stony stream.
... Mexico with her quaint, gentle ways--a plaintive singing voice
‘carved out of starlight’--but underneath--violence. Men fell to
killing each other. Just so much of all this killing a man could stand,
and no more. How had Bart stood it for so long? Bart wasn’t like that,
himself. He hadn’t even roughed it with the soldier of the keys in the
Arecibo prison--not even in that moment of fierce danger and haste! ...
and that easy flowing voice of coolness and laughter and daring, but
how had Bart dared to put Palto out of his misery?
Elbert pondered a long time, finally remembering how he had felt the
need of carrying Bart deeper and deeper into the house, as if he had
known all the time there was an inner room. When he reached there and
had laid his burden down--a sudden sense of peace had come over him.
What was the meaning of that? With his eyelids closed he saw a light
shining through alabaster. Yes, he had met one who would know the
meaning and could answer this.... But what was the meaning of the power
that had seemed to come to him to make the señorita understand with so
few words?...
Cross and white flower--Spanish-faced girl standing back against the
wall... Elbert dozed again, and the inner room of El Relicario and the
still flowered room of Tucson softly, magically folded into one. It
seemed quite easy and natural.
A grim day, his nerve at lowest ebb, nothing of the lift or glow he had
known in moments of last night’s riding with Bart. Would they ever ride
together again? Was Bart lying dead now in that inner room?
Fenceless foothills of Sonora--ages in a day! He didn’t feel quite
sane, riding down to the creek in the dusk at last. He couldn’t hold
his mind to thought of danger, but to water only. Mamie smelled it and
could scarcely be held in; the sorrel plunged at her side.
XXIV
SHEATH-KNIFE
IN full darkness he left the two horses fastened among the alders of
the stream bed and started for the dobe house. At least, there were
no horses of rurales waiting at the gateway of El Relicario, nor any
lights to be seen in front; but moving around to the side, he fancied
a faint ashen shaft farther on from an unglazed window. He knocked. A
pall seemed to have fallen upon the world--before the step, the moving
candle--and the señorita’s face, finger pressed across her lips as she
pointed to the little room. Then he was following her candle through
the passage.
There was Bart--bloodless, startlingly altered, but asleep, not dead,
as he had thought in the first flash. And presently, Elbert began to
feel himself standing about like a stranger. Either he hadn’t seen
straight at daybreak, or the señorita had become a woman since then;
no face of a peon girl by a lonely roadway, this woman of El Relicario
to whom he had offered coins, but of one risen to emergencies, as only
quality and breeding can arise. She had led him out into a hallway and
was speaking as one who had found her place and work in life.
‘He will be so glad to hear you have come. I have said you would
return, but he could not be sure. There is food for you waiting--please
come.’
He followed her through a firelit room, where the elderly man he
had seen in the patio in the morning, arose and bowed with courtly
grace, and from behind him the faded-faced woman smiled in the manner
of far-off times. A wooden table, a pitcher of milk, corn-bread and
rubbery cheese of goat’s milk--but Elbert hardly tasted what he put in
his mouth.
Horsemen had ridden by in the early morning to Fonseca, the señorita
told him, an unusual thing, but they had not stopped, and others had
passed later, going the opposite way.
She left the room and returned, dragging a small sack of grain for the
horses, which Bart had asked her to procure, and there was a package of
food for Elbert’s need of to-morrow--all this spoken of with frequent
gestures toward the wounded man in the little room; her every thought
and sentence apparently blent with something Bart had said or wished.
Yes, he would live, she repeated, but his recovery would take many
days. Then Elbert heard his own words in careful Spanish of the book:
‘Tell him I shall be waiting--that I will come again to-morrow night
or the next night--that I shall wait for him until he is ready to
travel--’
‘You mean to leave now--at once?’
‘Yes, I see that he is being well taken care of. The horses might call
to any horses traveling by--’
His words were getting slower and quieter, but there was in his body
and brain an intolerable burden having to do with the thought of
to-morrow--not only to-morrow, but ‘many days.’ It had been all he
could do to live through to-day. Now he left her, knowing she would
steal back to the little room at once. He crossed the inner garden, the
room of the harp, nodding to the elders, crossed the yard, passed out
through the dobe gate--in unbroken darkness, moving toward the alders
of the creek-bed.
His feet dragged; the early night, so dark that he had to keep constant
thought to the road, burdened by the sack of grain over his shoulder.
Still distant from the alders, he began to listen for Mamie’s signal,
but the sound of trotting hoofs came instead.
One horse only, coming his way, no accompaniment of wheels. He let down
the grain-bag at the side of the road, instinctively aware that if
either of his horses had pulled loose a hunch like this on his shoulder
would make any effort at capture practically impossible in the dark.
‘Hoo-ooo, baby, easy, little one!’ he softly intoned. He could see no
movement yet; the hoofs were still. Then like an explosion, a snorting
blast of fright from the horse ahead--not Mamie. He well knew her
protest of fear. ‘Come in, kid--easy, old-timer!’ from his lips, as he
moved forward very slowly, his fingers closing at last upon the broken
bridle-rein of the sorrel.
The big runner was standing almost rigidly in the dark, as Elbert made
a quick tie of the two shortened leather ends, his ears still straining
for a sound from the mare. He mounted, but had difficulty in turning
back toward the alders. The gelding fought the bit, tossing his head.
The man’s unspurred heel knocked his ribs, but the runner snorted like
a crazed colt at this, standing straight up, and Bart’s warning about
the spur flashed back. Elbert, getting control again, snatched off a
small branch as he brushed the foliage at the road-side, and the sorrel
started forward at a stiff-legged, unwilling trot, still unruly as he
neared the alders.
The mare was gone. Holding to the shortened bridle-rein, Elbert was
on his knees, lighting matches--an ashen smile on his lips. Yes, he
actually smiled at himself now--so miserably hopeless a few minutes
before, just at the thought of waiting days. Something to be dismal
about now.
Countless horse-tracks among the alders, conveying nothing to his eyes.
Passing rurales had possibly heard the horses, and tried to take them.
Possibly one of the police had mounted the sorrel and attempted to
force him with a spur. That might account for old Mallet-head breaking
loose.
Elbert rode slowly on toward Fonseca, head bowed. Yes, they had given
him something to be dismal about all right. What hope--if they had
taken her into town.
He couldn’t brace into Fonseca and attack the town single-handed.
Still he kept on, until--it was almost a sob that surged up in his
throat--the sound of a nicker--far to the right! His hand darted
forward to the muzzle of the sorrel to shut off possible answer. No
need of that. The big gelding was unconcerned about that far-off sound.
Mamie--letting him know! He could tell that call of hers in the midst
of a herd of horses; and the rurales or whoever had her, were not
pushing on to Fonseca, but eastward toward the mountains. ‘I’m coming!’
he muttered. He flicked his branch on the sorrel’s flanks.
Minutes afterward, the call again; and presently from over the eastern
mountains, appeared the moon, a shaving less full than last night.
Last night--that moon from the cell of Arecibo--far-off as childhood.
Two hours, at least, of fierce strain--following those whom he supposed
were looking for him; finally a faint haze of firelight over the rim
of a hill just ahead--the mysterious party having come to a halt. If
they were rurales, why hadn’t they gone to Fonseca--why this halt in
the open? He was close as he dared to be with the sorrel. Even now, the
big stake-horse might undertake to announce his presence and need of
forage. Elbert turned him back to a live-oak scrub, made him fast, and
retraced his way up the slope again, struggling with weariness and many
fears. The moon was now well clear of the eastern ridges.
On top, he gradually discerned two figures stretched out in the
firelight below--in ordinary Mexican garb, not in uniform of rurales.
Moving nearer, he presently made out Mamie, still saddled, a third
Mexican sitting on the ground at her head. Seconds crawled by, as
he waited breathlessly, with a vague hope that this third one might
doze, but nothing of the kind. Instead, the Mexican now rose, leading
his charge to a low tree clump, where other horses were faintly to be
discerned.
Evidently the Mexican was about to fasten the mare. Once tied, there
was less chance for her to break clear, than from the Mexican’s hand.
Only a second or two to think in; in fact, Elbert didn’t think it out.
His fingers reached for the handle of the sheath-knife, bringing the
whistle to his lips. Its shrill scream cut forth. Mamie’s head lifted
and yanked back, but the Mexican did not lose his grip upon the rein.
Running forward Elbert whistled again; then stretched his lungs in a
yell, as strange and startling to himself as to the sleepy Sonora hills.