Over the Border: A Novel

“There or thereabouts,” Jake agreed. “But, as you say, Missy being along, it’s up to us to dodge ’em.”

“Five days?” Sliver hopefully repeated. “We’d jes’ as well look out for trouble.”

Not till the morning of the third day did the “trouble” loom up over the horizon.

To avoid raiders along the railroad, Bull laid a course that would strike the American border a hundred miles or so east of El Paso. Confirming his judgment, they had seen during the first two days only a few peon herders, who scampered like rabbits at their approach. But while it made for safety, the course he had laid out also carried them away from water, the first necessity of desert travel.

From the Los Arboles pastures they had passed, first, into a sparse grass country dotted with sahuaros; thereafter into sage desert sprinkled with limestone boulders and bounded by arid hills of the same; a dry, inhospitable land, lifeless, without sign of human habitation, its heated silence unbroken by the cry of animal or bird, tenanted only by the dreary yucca that threw wild arms about like tortured dwarfs. Toward the middle of the second day they had been forced to head almost due west in search of the water that was to be had only near the railroad.

Dusk was falling when they – more correctly, the horses – found a smallarroyo. It was so late, and the animals tired, and in order that they might drink their fill Bull took a chance and camped by the water. They did not light a fire. They ate cold food in darkness. Before dawn, too, they were in the saddle, by sunrise had placed nearly ten miles between them and the water which, just there and then, was another name for danger. As a matter of fact, Bull had not expected to get it without fighting. He had not yet ceased marveling at their luck when the “trouble” showed up in form of a line of sombreros behind the peak of a limestone ridge – unfortunately, to the eastward.

Jake saw them first. At his sharp hiss Bull looked, and, driving the pack-horses ahead, rode headlong for the next ridge. Looking back as they rode, Gordon saw the line of sombreros rise in correspondence as the land fell off. Soon a head showed; then, almost simultaneously, the ridge bristled with mounted men, a hundred at least, in bold relief against the sky-line.

“They’ve seen us!”

As he called it a yell, strident, raucous, pierced the clatter of their galloping hoofs. “Gringos! Mueran los gringos! Kill them!”

A volley followed. But, fired from the saddle in movement, the bullets chipped only a few twigs off the scenery. Scattering shots, too, flew overhead; but, intent on overtaking them, the Mexicans in the main wasted no time in shooting. They were only a couple of hundred yards away when the four men dropped from their horses behind the crest of the ridge.

Differing speed had strung the pursuers out in a scattering column, and Sliver grinned his delight at the arrangement. “Like bowling at the county fair. Miss one, you’ve still a chance at the next behind. Set ’em up again!” he yelled as, following their volley, two men and a horse plunged forward on the ground.

“A bit lower, Son,” Bull quietly admonished Gordon. “Aim at the jine of man an’ horse. That gives you a seven-foot target.”

“One cigar, one baby down!”

Sliver’s second yell marked the fall of two more horses and another man – shot by Bull out of his saddle. Aiming and firing with the deadly accuracy bred by years of just such fighting against more sagacious foes, they dropped the leaders as fast as they came on; in three minutes had drawn a dead-line of men and horses across their front. And that deadly practice told. Brave enough, after their lights, the raiders were not accustomed to such shooting. In the revolutionary wars their own practice, like that of their opponents, was to spring up out of a trench, yell “Viva Mexico!” fire in the enemy’s direction, and drop back again, trusting to the god of war to find a billet for the bullet. Turning, they raced back for the opposite ridge, spurred on by the galling shooting that emptied two more saddles.

Bull’s black glance following them with longing that confirmed Jake’s diagnosis – he would have “run amuck among ’em” if left to himself. The more steadily, perhaps, for his deadly thirst to kill, he had aimed and fired with automatic precision. Withal, he had found time to note Gordon’s steady shooting.

“You done fine, lad,” he commented. “If there was only ourselves, I’d be in favor of carrying it to ’em. But” – his glance went to Lee, who was holding the horses – “we’ll have to fall back. They’ve had their lesson an’ ain’t a-going to try any more fool charges. Now they’ll try an’ flank us. While Sliver an’ Jake hold ’em, we’ll run back to the next ridge.”

But Gordon, flushed with his taste of battle, rebelled. “What’s the matter with me staying? You fellows care for me like three hens scratching for an orphan chicken. I’m tired of this sheltered life.”

“‘Sheltered life’?” Communing with himself, Jake glanced at the grisly dead-line. “‘Sheltered life,’ an’ him with two stretched out down there.”

“Comes o’ being married,” Sliver added. “No married man has a right to run with batchelders.”

“That’s right,” Jake approved. “It’s up to you to look after your wife.”

“Well?” Gordon protested. “How can I do it better than by staying here?”

“What?” Sliver looked scandalized. “Us take a chanst of her being widowed after all the trouble we had getting her married? No, sir-ree! Git out.”

“Come on, Son, you’re delaying the game.” Bull had already joined Lee. His heavy command came floating up from below. Albeit with a shrug, Gordon obeyed.

The next commanding ridge lay nearly a mile away, and after the others had started back toward it Jake nodded toward the enemy. “Bet you they’ve split already an’ are moving around us. Now if we do the same, keeping well out of sight, we’ll mebbe get another crack at ’em.”

And so it was. When, after a half-mile détour through limestone and sage chaparral, the halves of the raiders’ party showed in the open two rifles opened in concert at points a mile apart; two more riderless horses went scampering away before the others gained back to cover. From the wide base of their triangle Jake and Sliver then came galloping back and joined Bull at its apex; and thus they moved back and back, as the nature of the country permitted, with no more danger than that of an occasional bullet, fired at long range, singing overhead.

While they retreated the sun blazed up in the east, rolled on around its southerly course, superheating the dreary prospect till it glowed like an oven. All that time Bull was looking anxiously for a cross-ridge behind which they might swing their course to the north and east. But with the regularity of the waves of the sea the ridges rolled on back in unbroken succession toward the railroad. With the enemy spread widely upon their flanks a turning movement was impossible. They could only roll back with the limestone waves, trusting that the railroad would bring forth no new enemy.

Unfortunately the desert was growing rougher. Dry watercourses crosscut the sage that now rose tall as a mounted man. The going was rendered more difficult by outcroppings of limestone that sometimes raised an impassable barrier, forcing a détour. Worst of all, the denser growths permitted closer pursuit. At the last stand made by Jake and Sliver, midway of the afternoon, bullets came spitting out of the sage less than two hundred yards away.

“If ’twas on’y black powder they was using,” Sliver bitterly complained, “we’d stan’ some chance. A feller could bust into the middle of their smoke.”

“You’re onreasonable,” Jake answered. He went on, sarcastically, quoting from an editorial in the last American paper that had come to Los Arboles: “In order that these here bandits kin exercise the ‘sacred right of revolution to reg’late their own internal affairs’ your Uncle Samuel has kindly supplied ’em with the latest smokeless cartridge. Thanks to his benevolence, some one’s going to get hurt pretty soon.”

He was right. A scattering volley, fired from that very ridge after they evacuated it, overtook them in the hollow below and brought down Sliver’s horse. Hanging on to Jake’s stirrup leather, he made the next ridge, but one of the pack-animals had to be given to him and its load abandoned.

“An’ this is on’y the beginning.” Jake continued his remarks from the next ridge. “The railroad’s not far away, an’ as I remember the country hereabouts, she runs right out in the open, with nary a snitch of cover for over twenty miles. There’ll be nothing to stop ’em from shooting us down by volleys at long range. So it all boils down to this – some one’s got to hold ’em at the next good stand while the others make their getaway.”

They had been carrying two rifles apiece. Now Sliver quietly appropriated Jake’s extra weapon. “With three rifles I orter be good for two hours.”

“When I said ‘some one’” – Jake quietly repossessed himself of the weapon – “I naterally allowed his name was Jake Evers. Git! before I bust you over the head.”

“If ’twasn’t for them” – Sliver’s hard glance went out to the chaparral – “there’s nothing I’d like better ’n to take time to rub your long hoss face in the dust.”

The threat, however, produced from Jake only his wolf grin. “You damned fool! D’you know what’s going to happen to the man that stays behind? He’s a-going to be what the society columns call ‘the piece de resistence’ at a Mexican barbecure. There ain’t a thing in the line of torture that them bandits won’t do to you.”

“You ked never stan’ it.” Sliver displayed great solicitude. “You’re getting along, Jake, an’ your nerve ain’t what it used to be.”

“You’ve said it.” Jake’s cold eye warmed. He placed a friendly hand on Sliver’s shoulder. “You’re dead right, Son. I’m getting on. What’s more, I’m that dyed-in-the-wool with deviltry ’twon’t hurt anybody when I pinch out. But you’re young yet. You’ll – ”

“ – hit El Paso an’ go straight to the devil. You know it darned well. We’ll gamble for it.” He spat on a pebble and threw it up. “Wet or dry, which? Wet! I win!”

“Jest my luck!” Jake’s complaint was sincere as though, instead of death or torture, life and fortune had been the hazard. “I don’t have no chance at all except with cards. What did I wanter go an’ do that for, anyway, an’ me with a deck right here in my pocket?”

“Too late!” Sliver pressed his triumph. “Now git!”

But with his usual sagacity Jake had already picked the spot for the stand. The next ridge rose so precipitously that Bull, Lee, and Gordon were having difficulty in getting up its face. North and south, too, it loomed even more inaccessible.

“’Twill take them hours to go around it with you planted square in the middle.”

Sliver’s glance had gone to Lee, scrambling up the steep face of the ridge, leading her horse. His hard face softened. “Don’t tell Lady-girl – that is, not jes’ now. Let her think I’ll make my getaway to the northward. But some day, after she’s safe in El Paso, you kin tell her – that Sliver was on’y too damn glad to give his life for her’n.” He went on, dreamily: “’Course I knew it ’u’d be all off after I’d hit the city. But I’d sorter thought, now an’ then, that if the rangers didn’t get me too quick, some day I’d come back to Arboles, when her kids was about hip-high, an’ teach ’em to ride an’ shoot. But that was jes’ a dream.”

Jake’s glance had gone back to the cover that sheltered therevueltosos, and, judged by the casuality of his nod, Sliver’s request might have concerned the purchase of a silk handkerchief or other trifle. But he swallowed hard, spat viciously several times before he could command speech; blushed, even then, at the softness of his tone.

“Funny, ain’t it? But that’s just what I’d often thought myself. Sure I’ll tell her – if them devils don’t down me on the next run. They’re damn close now, and they’ll be up here before we’re half-way across. Against that limestone front we’ll make some mark, an’ with fifty of ’em cracking at us it ’ull be the luck of hell if they don’t down one or both.”

Again he was right. While, ten minutes later, they struggled among the boulders and brush at the foot of the ridge, the rifles began sputtering behind them. Right and left, above and below, bullets chipped the rocks or plumped in the dust; and just as their beasts rushed on a breathless scramble up the last steep two found their mark – one through Sliver’s knee, the other dropped Jake’s horse.

Almost fainting from shock and pain, Sliver still clung to the neck of his beast while, with Jake hanging on to a stirrup leather, it carried him to safety. Lee, with the pack-animals, had already moved on, was a full quarter-mile down the slope that fell easily to the great plain traversed by the railroad. Miles away they could see – not the tracks; it was too far away for that – a dark-velvet plume, smoke from an engine. Bull and Gordon still lay answering the revueltosos’ fire. But Sliver and Jake had ascended up a watercourse a hundred yards to the right, in which the dead horse lay out of sight.

“Hey!” Sliver hastily stopped Jake from calling Bull. “Let ’em go! You’ll never be able to tear Lady-girl away if she knows I’m hurt. You kin take my horse; on’y lift me down first an’ prop me up among the rocks where I kin lie comfortable an’ pump a gun.”

Having complied, Jake stood looking down upon him. For once in his rough, hard life he was shaken out of his cold, gray self. Sliver, well and hearty, fighting his lone fight was one thing. To leave him, painfully wounded, was quite another. The memory of many a wild ride with the dogs of the law hard on their heels; of desperate stands, shoulder to shoulder, the rifle of each protecting the other; of daring raids in the dark; of midnight diversions shared together; ay, even the memory of many a drunken quarrel in which they had beaten each other beyond identification and awakened next morning just as good friends; all that had gone into the making of the rough loyalty which had bound the “Three Bad Men of Las Bocas” closer than brothers – all this combined in an emotion that revolted at desertion.

“My God, hombre!” he broke out in protest. “I kain’t leave you here, wounded, to fall in the han’s of them wolves!”

“You kain’t do nothing else!” Hard eyes flashing, Sliver went on: “Didn’t we gamble, jest now, for who was to stay? An’ didn’t I win? Now you’re trying to renig?” As he noted the sweat standing out on Jake’s brow, he went on more quietly: “Look at it sensible. What ked you-all do with a wounded man? You’d on’y sign Lady-girl’s death warrant. And don’t worry about them wolves. They ain’t a-going to light no fires on my belly nor burn my feet. If I don’t get done up in the scrap – the last bullet will be for myself.”

Also he turned an adamant face to a proposal that Jake should stay too. “No, hombre, it’s still over a hundred miles to the border, an’ they need you. There’s nothing left for you but to take my horse an’ git.”

It had all been said and done without strain, effort, or self-consciousness; was entirely the expression of his hardy, careless soul that had never known the vice of self-pity. But when Jake still stood, his long, lean face working lugubriously in his attempts to hide his grief, Sliver did that which, for him, was a miracle in divination – entered into and felt the pain of another soul.

“Oh, shore, hombre!” His face lit up with sympathy. “You orter be glad. Ain’t it better to die clean, this-a-way, than to choke slowly at the end of some ranger’s rope? Go on, now, an’ catch up to ’em an’ keep ’em moving till night. With the least bit of luck, you’ll pull through all right.”

As before said, not one iota of self-pity entered into Sliver’s consciousness. Apart from a heavy fever and dull ache, the broken knee was behaving itself as well as could be expected and, after Jake’s departure, Sliver settled down to the business in hand; i. e., to inflate to the limit the current exchange of one gringo for sevenrevueltosos. Reckless, hardened scamp that he was, his remark, addressed to himself, had no reference to water, a canteen of which Jake had left at his elbow.

“Gosh, but I’d like a drink!”

His grin and following chuckle were natural and unaffected. “You’re going to be a good boy from now on, Sliver. You’ve taken your last.”

Pulling his Colt’s .45 from his belt, he laid it with the water-bottle. “Handy for the funeral.” He uttered a second grim chuckle.

The two extra rifles he placed within easy reach on his left. Then he lay quiet, hard blue eyes fixed on the opposite ridge – so quiet that a lone vulture poised above swooped down, alighted, then hopped mournfully away and stood poised on one leg, hopeful if disappointed. In recent history so much firing had invariably brought food.

From the first severe lesson when, from points a mile apart, the deadly rifles picked them off, the revueltosos had learned caution, only advancing when they were certain the two had retired. Riding away, Jake had exposed himself along the ridge; but, suspecting a trap, therevueltosos remained in hiding. Ten minutes elapsed before a couple ofsombreros rose cautiously out of a clump of sage.

“Stuck up on sticks.” Sliver criticized their wabbly motion.

After a real head appeared under them he waited. When the ridge suddenly broke out in a rush of mounted men he waited. While they rode down into the valley he waited. Not until they were involved in the labyrinth of sage, watercourses, pit-holes, brush, and boulders beneath him, did he draw his first bead. Then, so swiftly that it seemed to therevueltosos that they were facing the fire of several men, he emptied the three rifles into the kicking, struggling, plunging line of horses and men. Four saddles he made vacant there and then. He picked off two more as the revueltosos raced back over the opposite ridge.

“Six added to three I got makes nine!” Sliver grunted. “A few more an’ I kin afford to cash in.”

He could see from where he lay for miles along the ridge, and as he noted its front rising more steeply in both directions he chuckled his satisfaction.

“You ain’t a-going to try an’ pass through me ag’in,” he addressed the invisible foe. “An’ you ain’t going to leave me here. It’ll take you an hour to come around. Be that time Lady-girl will be ten miles away, with night fast coming on. Jest to encourage you – ”

The shot he threw into the brush opposite was the first of a series designed to keep the revueltosos’ attention upon himself, and when, half an hour later, he glimpsed men without horses scaling the steep face of the ridge nearly a mile away he knew that he had succeeded.

“They reckon we’re all here, trying to stick it out till night,” he correctly interpreted the movement. “It ’ull take ’em another half-hour to find out.”

A glance in the other direction showed a second party emerging from the brush beyond rifle-shot. While it crossed the valley and scaled the face of the ridge he watched quietly. A little later he began throwing shots in both directions along the ridge.

“Not that I’m expecting to bag any of youse,” he addressed the unseen enemy. “But just to slow you up a bit an’ let you know I’m here. When you get there” – his glance took in scrub-clothed elevations that commanded his post on both sides – “good-by an’ good night.”

Of all ordeals, there can be none more severe than to be called upon to wait, wait, wait while an unseen enemy is closing in around. Yet Sliver stood the test. If he felt the passage of time, it was because he counted each minute, each second in yards – the hundreds, scores of yards Lee and his friends were gaining on the pursuit. He had fought all day in heat and dust and smoke; the grime of battle added to his grimness. While he waited the sun rolled down the west, transmuting the scorched slopes into a wonderland of cinnabar, sienna, crimson, ocher; a huge oven aglow with the hot slag of creation. But its rich lights showed neither fear nor softening in Sliver’s face when, from the spot he had long noted, a rifle spoke.

It was the signal for a leaden rain that began to spatter the rocks about him. It was now only a question of time. He knew it. But till that time came he replied to the fire. He was aiming into the heart of a puff of smoke when the death he had gambled so recklessly with these many years claimed the stakes.

He turned slightly sideways as his head collapsed on his outstretched arm, and through the grime and powder smoke, in the rich evening lights, his face showed with its hard lines all sponged out.

Sliver, the outlaw, gambler, drunkard, horse-thief, turned up to the low sun the quiet, peaceful face his mother had looked down upon as a child.