Over the Border: A Novel

XXV: LOVE AND BUSINESS

In those days of raids and “requisitions,” the customary oversight of the herds on the Chihuahua haciendas had grown of necessity into a system of patrols. At Los Arboles not a day passed without Gordon and the Three describing a circle around the hacienda.

Riding south after the others left, Bull had covered only a few miles before he spied a lone horseman topping a distant ridge. As the rider drew near the first indefinite outlines resolved into the square, hard figure of William Benson. Scarcely a week had passed without a visit from the Englishman. From the first he had accorded Bull the respect due to his quiet strength. Later, this had developed into a real liking which showed in the smile that wiped out, for the moment, his native harshness.

“Heard the news? The Carranzistas have given Valles a lovely trimming. He didn’t stop running till he reached El Oro.”

Bull’s black brows rose. “We’d allus allowed Valles could whip twice his weight in Carranzistas. So long as they keep on killing one another off, we sh’d worry.”

Nodding, Benson went on. “Valles lost heavily in horses, and is looking for fresh mounts. One of his colonels came to my place yesterday and offered me a thousand pesos apiece for all I have.”

“Gold?”

Benson’s big mouth split in a sardonic grin. “Valles money, amigo, beautifully printed on butcher paper. He must have used up all the newspaper stocks in northern Mexico.”

“And you sold?”

“I’d cut their throats first. It may come to that, but just now I see a way – if not to pull even, at least to avoid complete loss. Between us we can pretty nearly equip Valles with fresh mounts. The beggar has gold – hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, in the El Paso banks, and my idea is for us, you representing Lee, to go down to El Oro and offer him all that we have for a low price in gold on condition that he permit us to drive our other stock across the line. If he accepts, we then go out of business till order is restored.”

“Fine idea!” Bull added. “Could you let Mrs. Mills in on it? She was telling last night she didn’t know where to turn for living expenses.”

Benson heartily agreed. “Only too glad!”

“And when do you start?”

“To-morrow night. There’s a freight going down.”

“All right. Pity you hadn’t come earlier. Mrs. Mills left only a couple of hours ago. But I’ll ride over this afternoon, get her written authority, then meet you at the railroad.”

Riding back to Los Arboles, they perfected their plans. They were, indeed, in sight of the buildings before Benson switched the conversation to Lee. Her oldest and stanchest friend, it was his right to know, and Bull told all, from his plotting with the widow down to the disastrous ending in the sudden engagement.

“The little spitfire!” Benson grinned. “Hello! What’s that?”

It was Lee’s horse galloping down a distant slope toward the hacienda. In that wild country a riderless beast generally bespoke tragedy. Without a word they galloped off in the direction from which the beast had come; rode at top speed until Benson, who had gained a lead, suddenly reined in.

A bunch of chaparral intervened, at first, between Bull and the object at which the other was pointing. Then, rising in his stirrups, he saw Lee and Gordon on the one horse; at least in Bull’s sight it was a horse. In that of the lovers, horses, plains, haciendas, and other commonplaces of ordinary existence had vanished, leaving them unconscious of time and space, proceeding magically through the aforesaid illumined dream.

Perhaps some touch of their feeling wirelessed across the intervening space, for Benson’s harshness melted, delight burst like sunlight through Bull’s truculence.

“That’s too good to spoil,” Benson whispered. “Let them go by.”

They had passed over the next ridge before Bull spoke. “I tol’ you Mrs. Mills could do it. She’s a right smart woman.”

“A fine woman!” Benson echoed. “I don’t know what you are thinking about. Now if I were single – ” He burst out laughing at Bull’s blush. Instantly it was drowned in brighter scarlet. But this faded as Bull noted the kindly twinkle in the other’s eye. He shook his head in deprecation.

“What c’d a nice woman do with a bear like me?”

“That’s her business. I’m not denying that it would some job.” Benson critically surveyed Bull’s great bulk. “But if there’s anything in the world a woman loves it is making a man over, like an old dress. After she finishes, she generally realizes that she’s spoiled the material and wishes him back as he was. But in the mean time she has had her fun. I’ll bet Mary Mills is just itching to try her hand on you.”

“Do you really mean that?” Bull looked up with sudden hope – that quickly died. He shook his big head. “She deserves something better. I’d only spoil her life.”

Nevertheless, he relapsed into deep thought, returning only monosyllables to Benson’s talk. The little seed thus planted rooted deep in his silence.

Strange is first love with its intense desire for purity! Cleanliness is next to Godliness, and Godliness is Love. Thus Cleanliness must be next of kin to Love.

If this be doubted, observe a ten-year-old boy, self-convicted of water-marks on his neck and soil in his ears enough to grow potatoes. See him scrub himself with profuse use of soap till his countenance shines so that it might serve as a mirror for the small charmer who has ensnared his budding affections with her bright curls. Watch him, later, a man grown, solicitous about his daily tub, careful of his raiment, choice in cravats! Later his wife shall drive him with revilings to his bath! Coming to cases, observe Gordon in the bunk-house after a cooling shower, carefully arranging his tie on the bosom of a brand-new shirt.

Now observe a girl, a vestal in purity, delicately perfumed, flowering in her ribands and laces like a pretty bud. At some time all of them earnestly desire that they had been born men. Yet one moment there is when they are unfeignedly glad to be women. So Lee, who was perhaps even a bit more boyish than the average, came to lunch in a soft white dress with a flower at her throat, powdered and delicately perfumed, bright hair framing happy eyes, every soft line and fold proclaiming her womanhood. Like an emanation, soft and effulgent as moonlit mist, the fullness of her content proceeded from her, wrapped her in a bright atmosphere in the midst of which she softly brooded. Not that she was silent. She laughed and talked; seriously discussed Benson’s schemes. But that was all of the surface. Behind the chatter she lived in the enchantment of her dream.

It was too marked to pass unnoticed. But if Bull and Benson saw the clinging of glances, sensed the pulsing feeling, they observed with the friendly indulgence of experience the young man’s honest devotion, the girl’s shy happiness. During the long hour they sat talking after lunch, no silly jest marred its beauty. Except for a greater kindliness of manner, with delicacy quite foreign to his harsh exterior, Benson gave no hint of his understanding up to the moment he rode away.

Then for a brief moment Bull was taken into the dream. While Gordon went for his horse, Lee packed his saddlebags with clean things for the journey, and was giving him the usual last critical inspection. As he stood smiling down on her, hugely pleased, her eyes rose from the tie she was arranging to his; and as she read their sympathy and intelligence, she clasped his neck and hid her face against his broad breast.

Until the beat of hoofs at the patio gate announced Gordon’s return, he held her to him with one arm while the other hand gently patted her shoulder. Neither spoke. Words would have told less. When she withdrew and walked with him to the gate, she was soothed and comforted as any girl that ever made a confidante of her mother.

When she ran back after the quirt he had purposely left on the table, he had time to pass a word to Gordon. “Remember, she don’t leave this house to go anywhere alone!”

Gordon nodded, and, satisfied, he rode away with Lee’s last charge floating after him, “Come home soon!”

The words were still ringing in his ears, he still felt the firm, cool clasp on his neck, when he drew rein at the first rise and looked back at the hacienda. From one corner, where an anciano had burned some rubbish, rose a lazy pennon of smoke, but the brown girls, women, and children who usually filled the compound with restless life were in full enjoyment of the noon siesta. Within its bright walls, the place dozed in the pleasant shade of its towering cottonwoods.

Somehow the stillness recalled to Bull’s mind the Spaniard’s house he had shown Gordon from the railroad – sacked, burned, its vacant windows staring like empty eyes over the desert. His face clouded. He moved uneasily in his saddle, but presently the golden peace that incited the memory worked its own remedy. Jake and Sliver and Gordon were there, and the place was still far beyond the surge and swirl of the revolution.

“And I’ll be home again in less than a week,” he encouraged himself.

Home! It recalled again Lee’s words. He felt her clasp, thrilled at the memory. He, “Bull” Perrin, the rustler! Around his neck that had been in constant hazard of the halter for a dozen years, this fine, clean girl had thrown her arms. His tender musing over the wonder would have excited the scorn of a city man, blasé and stale from the constant presence and attentions of pretty women. But it was sincere. While he rode on over the hills and plains, the thought warmed his heart, quickened the seed planted therein by Benson, freed his soul from the bonds of his great humility.

“Of course it’s damn foolish for you even to think of it,” he chid himself. Nevertheless, he did, slowly, heavily, taking stock with minute exactness of his own demerits. How great they were none knew better. The rustling, of course, he had abandoned along with certain gross habits of life. But the liquor? These periodical debauches? Was he strong enough to conquer them?

“If I c’d only ride into a town an’ either leave it alone or take a man’s fair allowance,” he mused. “But kin I? Mebbe with a fine little woman like that to help me.” But the next instant he shook his head. “An’ have her take the chance? No, no, hombre, you’re crazy. You put all that behind you by your own act years ago.”

Yet this conclusion did not end the argument. When, at sundown, he drew rein at the accustomed spot and looked down on the rancho buildings now dyed a flaming apricot he took his breath deeply. With its bougainvillea draping walls and porches in rich purple clusters, its pretty patio and outside kitchen garden, it was just such a home as would fit the dreams of a common man. Instantly his mind filled in the picture, the man and woman sitting after supper on the veranda, he with his pipe and paper, a child on his knee, she with her sewing. A thousand intimacies were supplied by his lonely, hungry soul, and when the picture stood complete he burst out with a great resolve.

“By God, I’ll do it! You’re a-going to walk like a man into town an’ come out without teching a drop!”

From where he was sitting he usually could see – either Betty at play on the veranda, her mother moving in and out, or Terrubio moving around the stables. To-night silence wrapped the place. From the west, as on the south where he sat, the land fell rapidly toward the rancho, and as he rode forward, puzzled, the silence was explained. Over the western ridge the widow, Terrubio, and Betty came riding, and reached the house just as he rode up.

“Though we brought bad news to his son,” she explained the delay, “the old Icarza would not permit us to leave till we had broken his bread. How did Ramon take it? Just as I said he would – out came the Mex in in all of its nasty selfishness, blind conceit. She was promised to him and he would hold her to it! He’d kill any one who interfered. Goodness! you never saw such fireworks! He showed no trace of the real pride that would have kept one of our boys from showing his hurt; and still less consideration for Lee. It was” – she gave a little sniff of disgust – “just sickening. I was almost sorry she couldn’t have been there, for it would have effectually cured her remorse. But she’ll get it to-morrow, for he’s going over to plead his own cause.”

Unease swept Bull’s dark visage. After a brief statement of his mission he voiced his apprehension. “But if he’s coming to-morrow, I don’t know but I orter go back.”

“Nonsense!” Mrs. Mills pooh-poohed the idea. “It’s all fireworks – and there’s Sliver and Gordon and Jake.”

To which Betty added a direct command. “You are just going to stay here. We haven’t seen you for ever so long, and mama is just dying to tell you her troubles.”

“Tea and trouble,” the widow laughed. “A genuine woman’s party.”

When he lifted and placed her with one swing on the veranda she allowed one hand to remain on his shoulder, and he was not so ignorant of woman nature as not to recognize the liking behind the action. While she bustled around, adding dainties to the meal Terrubio’s woman had ready, he watched her with an expression that she, on her part, could not fail to interpret. And whereas, on previous visits, she had managed all kinds of accidental contacts, watched with mischievous delight for the effect, she was now filled with pleasurable confusion that manifested itself in an almost girlish shyness.

When, afterward, they moved out upon the veranda, Bull’s dream of an hour ago was almost fulfilled. For Betty snuggled as usual in his arms, while the widow busied herself with a bit of sewing – a fine excuse that lent itself to the lowering of eyes, permitted stealthy glances.

While they were at supper, the sun had slid down to the western horizon. Pools of deep indigo now filled the hollows. Above them the plains ran, a deep violet sea broken with apricot foam where the crests of the great earth waves rolled high, ran off and away around the bases of gold and crimson mountains.

It was unearthly in its beauty, and while they could not have put their feeling in words, it filled both with that sense of vastness before which man in his littleness quails. Often the widow paused in her sewing, and as Bull saw that infinite loneliness reflected in her face, the big, simple soul of him melted with love and pity. Till the lights faded and she no longer needed its excuse, she alternately sewed and gazed; then when warm gloaming settled over all, wiped out the loneliness with its friendly gloom, she recovered her voice.

“Oh, I had almost forgotten.”

It was that which she had seen in the morning – to wit, Gordon snatching Lee out of her saddle.

“And oh, isn’t it nice to think that she’ll be settled, at last, with that fine boy!”

Happy in the conclusion, she began to sketch a picture of them settled happily at Los Arboles. Her voice, as she ran on, took a little quiver that powerfully expressed her own loneliness, inspired in Bull an intense desire to seize and squeeze it out. Instead his arms tightened around the child.

“Not one marriage in a hundred turns out what it might be. But with the exception, when respect, friendliness, affection, and a sense of duty are reinforced by love – well, it’s the nearest to heaven that poor humans ever gain.” She added, with a sigh: “Excepting that it gave me this child, my own wasn’t all that it might have been. She’s been a joy and comfort, but – in a few years more she’ll be marrying, herself. Then I’ll be again alone.”

“Why did you never marry?” Betty’s small, soft voice stole out on the darkness from the depths of Bull’s embrace.

The stock excuses rose to his lips – but did not pass, for through the friendly gloaming he was aware of a rustle. His face turned toward it.

“I never felt myself fit.”

“Why, that’s just nonsense!” Betty indignantly declared. “Any woman that wasn’t a downright fool would be glad to have you. I know one that would give her best shoes – ”

“Betty!”

But the small rebel ran on, “Well, she would – even if I can’t tell you her name.”

Once more Bull faced a stir in the darkness. “I’ve led a hard, rough, bad life. No decent woman would ever want me.”

Now he saw the dim whiteness of her face turning to him. Her quiet voice took up the argument. “It’s a thin, pinched nature that’s always good. A big, strong one is liable to be led astray by its own force before wisdom comes to teach and chasten. In the long run I don’t know but that it gains by it in charity and loving-kindness. Wickedness of the flesh doesn’t count so much as wickedness of the heart; the inward vileness that rots and corrupts; and I’ve seen as much of that in the churches as among downright sinners.” She concluded with the very words that Gordon had used with Lee. “It isn’t what you were, but what you are that counts.”

From a second warm silence issued Bull’s vibrant rumble. “You think a man that has lived hard has a right to speak, to a good woman – providing he’s put it all behind him?”

Low, but confident and firm, her answer thrilled through the gloaming. “I do, and – she’d love to help him.”

Almost without his volition, Bull’s huge paw stole out. He half hoped she wouldn’t see it. He had begun to withdraw it when, like a dim white dove, her hand came fluttering and nested in his.

Every life has its golden hour. That was Bull’s, and, like a pearl shining in the mire, it stood out from the blackness of his past life. Though neither spoke, the peace and quiet, surety of perfect understanding, settled upon them. When, presently, Betty resumed her chatter, they listened or joined in. After she fell asleep they relapsed again into happy silence; just sat like a shy boy and girl, hand in hand, till she rose and carried the child off to her bed.

To meet her, next morning, was to Bull something of an ordeal, but her quiet smile restored at once the perfect understanding. Her sense of proprietorship showed in the way she fussed over his coffee and eggs, berated him for his lack of appetite. Her final inspection before he left could not have been outdone in severity by Lee herself. But nothing was said. She knew that he would speak in his own good time.

Except that her hand clung a little in parting, it differed little from their usual. “I shall look for you when you return.” Her call after him reiterated ownership.

His answer confirmed it. “I shall come here, ma’am, straight from the station.”

Indeed, the real parting came when, reining in at fifty yards, he looked back over his shoulder. With both hands on Betty’s shoulders, slightly dejected, yet with her honest, level gaze sending out trust and hope, she stood watching him go, as the race of wives and mothers have stood throughout the generations. And just as, throughout time, the sight of a woman’s trust and child’s faith have urged real men on to big deeds, so the sight of them set the ex-rustler’s heart swelling within him. As, with a last wave of the hand, he turned again and rode on, the spirit within him equaled in love and reverence that of an ancient knight-errant starting out in pursuit of the Holy Grail.

XXVI: A SETTLEMENT

About the time Bull started, Lee and Gordon rose from the breakfast-table under the Los Arboles portales.

Perhaps with sympathetic intuition, for they exchanged an amiable grin, Sliver and Jake had already passed out. It is true that Maria and Teresa, the small brown criadas, were peeping from the crypt-like depths of their kitchen. But even had she been aware of their vast interest, Lee would not have withdrawn the hand which, as they rose, had somehow tangled with Gordon’s. Reflected and thrown up from the yellow wall, the strong morning lights bathed the flesh of her arms, face, and neck with suffused amber, wove a soft glow in the mesh of her hair. So different from her usual boyish activity, her gentle quiet, combined with the warm air, suffused lights, to create a dreamy spell. Goodness knows how long they would have stood if Maria had not come out to clear the table.

Then Lee spoke. “Such sloth! This will never do if I am to go to El Sol and return to-day. While I dress will you please get my horse?”

When Gordon reached the stable Sliver had already gone, but Jake had lingered to say a word. It was very much to the point. “Say! Bull tipped me off as how the young greaser was likely to show up an’ raise some hell to-day. Don’t you allow I’d better hang around?”

He nodded, however, when Gordon explained the situation. “Missy don’t know he’s coming, hey? – thinks she’s going over there. Then they’ll meet on the way. Mebbe I’d better tag along.”

But to this Gordon’s pride would not consent. “Don’t you think I can take care of her?”

“No one better,” Jake hastened to appease. “But, say! If he doesn’t show up, don’t you let her go on over there – not if you have to rope an’ drag her home.”

“Like we did before?” He smiled at the memory. “This time I’ll not leave her the saddle machete.”

“Little bit too smart for you that time,” Jake grinned in sympathy. “Take care she don’t spring a new one. She ain’t so very slow.”

Nevertheless, in the face of his apparent acquiescence, while apparently heading out on his usual beat, he whirled behind the first ridge and, proceeding at a fast lope, had covered five miles of the way to El Sol, the Icarzas’ hacienda, by the time Lee came out. Slowing down, then, he rode more leisurely, had covered another mile when, over the crest of a ridge, he sighted Ramon coming at a gallop down the opposite slope. A clump of mesquite and palo verde afforded convenient cover. Forcing his beast in, Jake stooped low and watched Ramon go by, so close that his stirrup whipped the bushes.

It had never been Jake’s habit to notice Mexicans. But now he noted with surprise the change in the young man’s face. The lines deeply plowed down the nose under the cheeks, the hardening of the red, womanish lips, the vindictive black sparkle that had contracted his great dusky eyes into burning black dots, added ten years to his age.

“The Mex is souring in him,” Jake inwardly commented. “That guinea’s liable to try an’ hurt some one. Glad I came.”

Allowing Ramon to pass on, Jake then rode after, and so, progressing from ridge to ridge, keeping always the height of land between them, was less than fifty yards behind when, peeping over the crest, he saw Lee and Gordon coming up the slope.

Another bunch of chaparral afforded cover, and after tying his horse in it, Jake crawled up to the ridge and looked over.

It was not without argument that Gordon had obtained Lee’s consent to accompany her. When she found him standing with two horses at the gate, her brows rose in a troubled arch.