Over the Border Part 51

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 pa.s.sage 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, trans.m.u.ting 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.

XLI: JAKE BETTERS THE "EXCHANGE"

By the time Jake caught up with the others that inner humane being, whose occasional appearances caused him so much disconcertion, had withdrawn within his usual cynical sh.e.l.l. His face, when Lee inquired for Sliver, expressed surprise that she should have thought it worth while to inquire.

"_Him?_ Oh, he's back there a-holding 'em off while we gain a spell."

Though delivered with masterly unconcern, his explanation did not altogether relieve her anxiety. "But-how will he find us again?"

Jake's shrug was fine in its indifference. "He'll play a lone han', Missy; plug straight for the border. Being alone that-a-way, he'll likely beat us to it."

"You really think so?"

"He'll be there to meet us."

Jake's tone carried conviction even to Gordon. Only Bull was not deceived. After the other two had ridden on he looked at Jake. A lift of the eyebrow, slight shake of the head, touch of the forefinger to the knee-he knew all. Thereafter each burst of rifle-fire, long pause, explained itself. He saw Sliver waiting till the _revueltosos_ came out in the open. The slow rhythm of later shots showed him firing along the ridge. A sudden burst of sharpshooting at sundown, following silence, explained themselves. His glance at Jake, the latter's slow shake of the head, signaled then that all was over.

While they were traveling down the long slope toward the railroad the sun had lowered till they could see the telegraph-poles running, a sharp black fence, across the smoldering sky. Southward a toy station rose from the dead-flat plain under a velvet plume of smoke. Bull had laid his course to cross the tracks miles ahead of it. By traveling all night, they could then gain the mountains that bared iron teeth along the western sky-line; but they would be no nearer the border than when they began the fight that morning.

The thought was strong in their minds when Jake leveled his range gla.s.ses at the dark smoke plume. "Enjine an' five cars."

He handed the gla.s.ses to Bull, and before the latter's keen sight the lenses laid the familiar outlines, of a revolutionary train, a-bristle on top with humanity. Even at the distance, the flash and flare of gay _rebozos_ told they were mostly women, and that told all. "n.o.body there but women and wounded. Belongs to the gang that's chasing us."

"A hundred miles to El Paso," Jake spoke. "Three days' horseback? Three hours with that old mogul?"

"Golly!" The idea fastened on Gordon. "Couldn't we?" In place of their present plodding he saw the telegraph-poles, rocks, hills, flying past as they sped northward in the engine.

"On'y women and wounded?" Jake repeated it, musingly.

"Dark in half an hour?" Bull added: "They kedn't tell us from their own.

'Course we should lose the horses." With his accustomed caution he read the reverse of the s.h.i.+eld. "If anything went wrong-we'd be left afoot on the desert."

"No worse than we are," Jake argued. "These beasts have been running sence daylight; are clean plugged out. Even if they carry us across to the mountains we're not sure of feed nor water-an' still a hundred miles from the border."

"But Sliver?" Lee protested. "We can't leave him."

She was looking at Bull. He looked at Jake, who looked away, in his mind a picture of Sliver dead among the rocks. Then with that readiness and steadiness that had always filled poor Sliver with envy he lied to a good end. "The last thing he tol' me, Missy, was not to wait. ''Twould hinder me an' hinder you-all. I'll make my run alone.'"

"Very well." Her sigh would have fitted an anxious mother who felt that her boy would be safer under her own eye. "Very well, but I _do_ wish he were here."

Again Bull glanced at Jake, who once more looked away; but neither spoke.

While riding slowly forward Bull laid out their plan. "It 'ull be up to you an' Missy," he told Gordon, "to take care of the engineer while Jake an' me stan' off the crowd. She kin hold a gun to his head while you pitch the stuff aboard."

The sun had now set. The dusk thickened as they advanced and through its warm curtain presently broke the distant gleam of cooking-fires. Some were down on the tracks; others on the car-roofs built on rude hearths of earth within stone circles. When Bull called a halt and surveyed the scene through the gla.s.ses it presented the familiar spectacle of a _revueltosos'_ train-camp: women bending over the fires; some on their knees at the _metates_, others stirring their clay cooking-pots, all gossiping at their work. Here and there a man's face showed in the fire glow; but always an arm in a sling, crutch, or bandage explained his presence there. Unsuspecting, believing that in those wide s.p.a.ces the railway presented the one avenue of attack, they kept no watch; were stricken dumb when, half an hour thereafter, a stern command to hold up their hands issued from the darkness beyond the firelight. Only one man raised a gun, and as Bull's rifle spat he threw up his hands and plunged headlong from the top of the car to the ground.

Squatted, at supper, with his women by a fire under the lee of the mogul, the Mexican engineer proved easy game. A poke in the side from Gordon's gun emphasized his command to cut the engine off the train.

Trembling, the fellow obeyed and stood mute, shaking with fear, with Lee's gun pressed into the nape of his neck, while Gordon pitched their stuff into the cab. When, moreover, after firing a few warning shots along the length of the train, Jake and Bull climbed aboard he opened wide the throttle and sent the mogul spinning northward.

The instant they started Gordon grabbed the fireman's shovel. "Here's where I fulfil one of my kid ambitions."

Looking back from the seat where she had climbed beside Bull to watch the tracks ahead, Lee saw his face focused in brilliant red light as he shoveled and raked the clinker off the bars. Jake, with his usual caution, sat with the engineer; from whom he prodded valuable information with the muzzle of his gun.

His strident repet.i.tions thereof carried above the roar and rattle of the speeding engine across the cab. "He says the half of Valles's army is scattered like pin feathers afore a north wind!... With what's left he's making a las' stan' north of Chihuahua!... He still bosses all the country from here to Juarez!... This outfit was out raiding haciendas to supply the new base!" The next item of news he delivered with a cheer.

"Hooray! the line's open clean to the border! He don't know of any trains being run to-night! Thinks we'll have a clear track!"

Just then lights and the ruddy glow of fires flashed out as the engine came spinning out of a cut through low hills. It was merely a section gang, and as they sped past they obtained a glimpse of curious brown faces.

They suggested Bull's question, "Ask him if there's any revueltosos on the way."

"At La Mancha!" Jake yelled back. "About thirty miles this side of the border!... Half of the brigada Gonzales is holding the town for Valles!"

The _brigada_ Gonzales! The command that had furnished the murderers of Mary Mills. A spasm of hate writhed over Bull's dark face. His big hands clenched. He turned and looked out of the cab window till he regained control of his voice.

"Does he allow we kin run through there?"

Jake nodded. "If we douse the headlight and race by afore they have time to block us."

Looking back, just then, at Gordon, now stripped to his unders.h.i.+rt and growing sootier every minute, Lee heard the answer. She did not, however, give it much thought. The hills and rocks that took on queer shapes in the dim light of a rising moon, giant _sahuaros_ that went slipping past like huge ghosts, the occasional fires and lights, glimpses of strange brown faces, the rush and roar of the engine speeding through mysterious night, held her senses. Yet it stuck in her mind, came popping out when, as the engine rounded a sharp curve, the headlight beam struck full on a sheaf of glittering wires.

"Oh!" she called out in sudden alarm. "We ought to have cut the wires!"

It was a vital error. Gordon's whistle expressed their joint dismay; but Jake, with his intense practicability, recovered first. "Well, what's to do-stop an' cut them?"

Bull shook his head. "Too late! We've been running over an hour. Nothing left but to take a chanst."

Jake nodded. But presently he spoke again. "Chanst? If they pull up a rail an' ditch us at La Mancha, I'd hardly call it a chanst with half of the brigada Gonzales shooting us up from all around. We'd be pickled for keeps."

During their "rustler days" it had always been Jake's craft that pulled them out of tight places. Habit held Bull silent till, after he had spoken to the engineer, Jake went on: "He says the track runs two per cent. down into La Mancha. We kin shut off steam an' p.u.s.s.y-foot it the last few miles. So here's the dope. We drop you-all"-his glance took in the others-"a mile this side of the station, give you two hours to go around, then shoot ahead. If we get through, you-all strike a light an'

we'll stop and pick you up. If we don't-we don't. But you'll be less 'n thirty miles from the border an' have all night to make your getaway."

"But-"

Gordon's objection, however, was nipped by Bull. "It goes."