Over the Border: A Novel

Shortly thereafter the two entered the British consulate. With the quiet of despair he listened while the consul talked.

“I did my best to prevent Mr. Benson from going back, and thought I’d succeeded. If it hadn’t been that he was seen going in, he would simply have disappeared. As it is, the cuartel general has given out several stories. First, that he tried to shoot Valles; which is absurd, for he carried no gun. Then that he was shot while trying to escape after being placed under arrest. Lastly – to satisfy me and give his murder the semblance of a military execution – that he was tried by drumhead court-martial and fusiladoed for his attempt on the life of the general. But of one thing I can assure you, Mr. Perrin” – he went on from a heavy pause – “this does not end it. Already the particulars are entered upon my records, and the British government never forgets. It may be one year – it may be ten. But when peace is restored this business will come up again. No matter how high the murderer may have risen, how low he may have fallen, the case will never be dropped till there appears opposite the name of William Benson in our archives, ‘The murderer was brought to justice.’”

The quiet surety of his speech, based on a record of centuries among wild peoples, made it impressive. Outside, the correspondent commented thereon in his breezy fashion.

“That’s Johnny Bull for you, dignified, slow in speech, but surer than hell! One of his subjects is killed in a far corner of Afghanistan. Up goes a regiment and decimates the tribe – or a brigade, or an army, if necessary; in which case, to offset the expense, the country becomes a British province. Hombre! how long do you suppose it would take that fat old fellow to settle this Mexican affray? Humph! He’d make shorter work of these mushroom generals and sawdust presidents than he did of the Hindu rajahs.”

In another way the scene at the American consulate was equally impressive. When they entered the single little stuffy room, twelve feet square and entered from an alley, that conserved the dignity of the United States the consul looked up, then handed the correspondent a letter.

“Hum! Last call for Americans to get out of Mexico!” He coughed ironically. “Know ye, all gringos, by these presents: Owing to the fact that four hundred of you have been murdered, ravished, or tortured, and in order to remove further temptation from the path of the gentle Mexican, you are hereby ordered, without regard to your financial ability, consideration for the lives you endanger in transit, or property left behind, to return to your own country and thereby save this department from further annoyance by your kicks and complaints! Oyez! Oyez! Frankly,” he turned to the consul, “what do you think of it?”

The consul shrugged his shoulders. “You wish to register?”

His pen scratched in the silence for a while, setting down the correspondent’s name and commission. “Anybody else you wish to notify?”

The pen scratched on in silence the name of the San Francisco girl. Then he reached for the letter the correspondent handed.

“To be sent, in case of your death. Now, Mr. Perrin?”

The pen scratched Lee’s name and address.

“Anything to send?”

“Nothing!”

“Very well, gentlemen!” His superficial cheerfulness was denied by his handshake – the sympathetic pressure of comrades under stress. “I shall observe your wishes – if possible. Well – ” His shoulders rose again. “Hasta luego! Till we meet again.”

“A brave man in a weak place!” The correspondent rightfully placed him, outside. “Now, Diogenes, for the front.”

An hour later, after a heart-bursting run on foot for the last quarter-mile through small fountains of dust raised by shrapnel and rifle-bullets, the pair gained the uttermost outpost, a low wall of stones on the crest of a small hill that lay like a halved orange on the flat of the desert. A mile eastward, from the crest of the other half, a battery of French “threes” was spitting shrapnel with the feverish energy of an angry cat.

Between the hills ran a trench lined with thousands of revolutionists, whose incessant fire shrouded the front in bluish haze that was shot through and through with darting puffs. To the west and a quarter-mile in the rear, a second battery occupied a smaller elevation, protecting that flank.

Of the enemy, thirty thousand Carranzistas, out there on the plain were to be seen only lines of smoke that hung low over sand and chaparral in a great half-moon, the tips of which extended beyond the Vallista positions. But they could hear, too plainly, the twit! twit! of the ceaseless leaden rain passing overhead. Now and then a bullet would strike the wall with the sharp ring of a hammer on stone. Slipping through an embrasure, one pierced the brain of a revolutionist.

Seizing the dead man’s rifle, Bull stepped into his place.

It was not that he particularly desired to kill Carranzistas. He would have shot Vallistas with equal will. But besides wringing a moment’s surcease from his black despair, the instant his eye fell to the sights and he felt the familiar pressure of the butt, the old daredevil rustler spirit revived. As on the night he fought off Livingstone and hisvaqueros on the Little Stony, as on a hundred other occasions, every other feeling was drowned in a heady lust for fight. Just as carefully as though his life depended on it, he drew his beads on the lighter puffs that peppered the distant smoke. Watching him load and fire, grimly earnest, the sweat trickling in pale runlets down through the dust on his face, the correspondent nodded his satisfaction.

“Poor old Diogenes! But if he keeps busy he’ll soon get over it.”

Drawing his own weapons, a pencil and pad, he sat down on a boulder and began to take notes. And surely there was no lack of material. The spitting guns, trenches crammed with brown, ant-like men, the crackling rifle-fire, the desert shining like brass under the intolerable glare of the sun beyond the smoke haze, formed the background for a queer mixture of dirty comedy and squalid tragedy.

A few yards away, behind a second short wall, a brown girl sat on her heels patting out tortillas while she gossiped with another girl, in complete indifference to the bullets flying overhead. At least she was indifferent until, glancing from the top stones, one upset her coffee-pot and quenched her little cooking-fire. Then, pretty face convulsed with rage, she shook her fist at the distant smoke-line while screaming frightful curses.

“Damned dogs of Carranzistas!” she finished with her last, spent breath. “Wait! Wait for the Valles riders! Then there will be a scampering with tails between the legs!”

Her mishap had drawn a roar of laughter from the revolutionists. The fellow that stood next to Bull now turned his grinning, sweaty face. “Ole, Amalia! Bring me a drink and thou shalt have the knifing of my first prisoner.”

Her coarse answer drew a second roaring laugh. Nevertheless, while making it, she picked up her water-bottle. Less than a score of yards separated the two walls, yet it afforded stage room for the tragedy that burst in the middle of the comedy. For as she ran with a swift, shuffling step across it, the bullet of an invisible enemy found its mark; she collapsed in a heap.

Bull, also, had looked around. Now, heedless of the correspondent’s yell: “Come back, you fool! She’s dead! shot through the head!” he ran out, picked up the poor creature and brought her behind the wall.

As he laid her down the other girl came running across the bullet-swept space and threw herself on the body with cries and lamentations. She was not dead! She could not be dead, Amalia! the friend of her soul! For a while she ran on in a passion of grief. Then, springing up, eyes flashing white in her furious, distorted face, she flung her frantic curses at the distant line.

“Kill them, the damned Carranzistas! He who kills the most this day shall be my lover!”

“And here comes he that will do it!” The man on Bull’s left touched his shoulder.

Up the hill behind them a battery was coming, stretched on a scrambling gallop. Alongside the guns, urging the drivers on, a man rode a great black stallion at the head of a cavalry detachment. Even at a distance the harsh, monotonous voice rose above the rattle of the limbers, rifle-fire, booming guns.

“It’s Valles!”

As the correspondent pointed, looking back at Bull, the great black horse launched out and shot up the hill.

“Make way, hombres, for the guns!”

Amber eyes aflame, brute mouth working, face quivering like shaken vitriol, he was herding the men aside when his glance fell on the correspondent. Then, though his face drew into a grin, comprehension flashed in his hot eyes.

“Ole, compañero!” His wave of the hand took in all. “Hot work! but nothing to that which is to come. Mira!”

Following his pointing finger, they saw to the westward a great cloud of dust, long, thick, and low, rolling in upon their right flank. “Carranzista cavalry! But – look again!”

Looking always to their front, they had seen nothing of the cavalry, brigade after brigade, which was forming under cover of the hill to the west and behind them. Ten thousand wild horsemen were in the mass. Thousands of others were streaming out of the town. Big hands clutching as though he had them already in his grasp, eyes again aflame, Valles shook his fist at the distant dust.

“Wait, my dear amigos los Carranzistas! Wait!”

The guns just then topped the hill, and, sitting the great black horse with reckless hardihood out in the open, indifferent to the whistling bullets, he directed their emplacement. “To the left, hombres! a little more! To the right! easy! not quite so much!” The last one set, he rasped out a last command: “Bueno! Now shoot into the dust!” Then followed by his staff he went galloping down the hill.

“He bears a charmed life!” The man next Bull spoke again. “Out of a hundred battles he has come with never a hurt.” He added, with a wink, “An’ it was not always from his front the bullets came.”

Bull had looked on, brows bent in a heavy glower. Now the coal eyes lit with a sudden inspiration. The man had turned again to his shooting. The artillerymen were laying their guns. They fired just as Bull threw up his rifle and drew a bead on the black horse and rider. Sweeping back, the smoke blotted all out. As it cleared, and his eye dropped again to the sights, the correspondent struck up the muzzle.

“What are you trying to do?”

“Justice on that grinning devil.”

“Good job no one saw you.” A quick glance around showed the artillerymen and revolutionists absorbed in their own work “Do you know what they would have done to both of us – skinned us alive, boiled us in oil, or something equally nice. Have a heart! If you don’t care yourself, just think what nice reading it would make for my San Francisco girl, ‘Having toasted him on one side, they then proceeded to fry the other.’”

“I hadn’t thought of that. But if I’d been alone – ”

He sent a black flash after the receding figure, then turned again to his loophole.

On his part the correspondent watched till Valles disappeared in the massed cavalry below. Shortly thereafter it began to move, a huge, brown blanket embroidered with the flashing gold and silver of guns and sabers, machetes, accoutrements. For a while it was in full view. Then the impalpable desert dust enveloped it in rolling clouds from which, like the roar of distant surf, issued the thunder of pounding hoofs. Like the rolling, twisting funnel of a cyclone, it swept toward that other distant cloud, and when they met and merged the greater cloud rolled backward, slowly at first, then with increasing speed.

“Weekes was wrong!” It came out of the correspondent in an excited yell. “He’s smashed ’em to smithereens! Me for a wire at once!” But as the cloud continued to sweep on he added a qualification, “That is, if Valles stops and comes back.”

When, later, the cloud drew steadily down the horizon the doubt evolved into criticism. “Whatever is he thinking of? There he’s gone with all the cavalry and left his flank exposed!”

At intervals along the far blue haze the flash of cannon now broke with greater frequency. The rifle-fire rivaled the rapid roll of a thousand drums. Answering the “threes,” shrapnel shell came on long, shrieking curves and burst around them. In as many minutes one blew up the next wall, killing half its defenders. A second disabled a gun. The man next to Bull collapsed without a groan.

Turning his glasses eastward, the correspondent saw men piling in heaps where shrapnel was bursting on the edge of the trench. On the far hill came the flash of explosions among the Valles guns.

“Brains win! They were only playing with us, using less than a third of their guns! They’ve drawn Valles off with a false retreat! Now they’ll flank us! My God! there they come!”

From the chaparral, on their right, had burst a new, thick line of smoke. Bullets were slipping like hail along their flank, tumbling men. He leaped and caught Bull’s arm.

“Come on! Let’s get while we can!”

They could already see the Carranzistas, thousands of them, half-wild, maniacal figures, looming through the smoke. Yet Bull shook his head.

“Some chance for shooting now. Light out yourself.”

“Man! Valles is defeated!” The other seized and shook him. “Do you know what that means? This army will be scattered throughout northern Mexico. If you won’t consider yourself, think of your girl! Are you going to leave her to face this bandit rabble, stung by defeat, mad against Americans?”

Bull had turned on him with suppressed fury. But through the din and smoke, into that hell of cries and groans, whistling, crashing shells, there came to him first the old wistful vision of Mary and Betty Mills; then the feel of Lee’s soft, cool arms on his neck. Himself forgotten, the lust of battle suddenly chilled, he shook with fear.

“Come on!”

Turning, he ran down the hill toward the chaparral where they had hidden their horses, half a mile away. Coming in they had faced only the rain of bullets curved over the hill. Now, from the flank, they came fast and low, a heavy cross-fire. Yet while they ran breathlessly through the dust under the merciless blaze of the sun the correspondent cracked his jokes.

“Consolation race! Odds a hundred to one!” he gasped. “Gosh! but that chaparral is going faster the other way!”

A few minutes later he dropped, almost on its edge. Yet even in that dire moment he remained his cheerful self.

“Shot in the leg! I always said that was the only way they’d ever get me. Here’s my notes, Diogenes! Give them to Weekes and tell him to chuck ’em on to the wires. Now, run like hell!”

And Bull did “run like hell” – with the correspondent across his shoulders, into the chaparral where the rain of bullets slacked; faded out by the time he reached the horses. The bullet had gone through the knee. All that he could do was to stop the bleeding with a handkerchief twisted tight above. Then, with the correspondent lying forward in his saddle, arms around his horse’s neck, he headed for the town.

As they rode, in their rear rose a huge, raucous voice, the charging yell of the Carranzistas pouring in a brown flood over the trenches. Followed the terrible roar of a rout – yells, shrieks, curses, victorious shouts, scattering shots, occasional volleys. On the edge of the town it caught and engulfed them, that mad rout. Helpless jetsam, they floated above, a stream of wild, sweating faces, powder-grimed, bloody, flecked with a yeast of glistening, fearful eyes, floated through the painted adobe streets to the railroad yards.

There fugitives were already piling by thousands on top of the trains and increasing the confusion; there came, just then, a flash from the hills they had left. Followed the shriek, rising crescendo of the shell, then – the explosion smoke cleared, showing a splintered mass be-spattered with mangled humanity that had been, a moment before, sentient human beings. The Carranzistas were shelling the station with Valles’s own guns.

“We’re farther up!” the correspondent whispered through white, drawn lips. “We bribed the engineer, last night, to pull us out on the main line to insure our getaway.”

He spoke again, with an effort, when they had ridden another half-mile. “That’s queer. It stood about here, yet I don’t see the placards. Perhaps we have overshot.”

But as Bull made to turn a man slipped from the brake-rods under a car ahead. “Here, señores! This way!”

Just then, too, the door rolled back and the “dean” looked out. “Hurry up! Ten minutes more and you would have been too late. The Gonzales Brigada played discretion for the better part of valor and made a quick sneak. We go next! We tore off the signs for fear they might cut us out. We’re traveling, for the present, incognito. You’re hurt! Here, you fellows, lift him in and shut the door quick!”

After the correspondent had been laid in his bunk the “dean” turned to Bull. “That chap outside has been here ever since yesterday morning, looking for you. He said his business was muy importante, so the Chinaman kept him fed. Perhaps you had better see what he wants.”

But when Bull looked out the man was gone. Also, just then, a welcome accompaniment to the roar of the mad rout outside, came the groan, bang, and rattle of cars starting in succession under the engine’s tug.