Over the Border Part 15

"All right, Missy. There's on'y four, so you don't need to be skeered.

You kin go right back home with Gordon an' leave us to take keer of them."

"Indeed I won't!" she exclaimed, hotly. "I'm going, too! I am! I am!"

She cut off his remonstrance. "I am! I am! _I am!_"

It was the first time their wills had clashed. Bull glanced at Jake, who shook his head-not that he required support or intended to waste time in fruitless argument. "You mean that?" His glance, grave with stern disapproval, came back to Lee.

It hurt her. But though her lips quivered, she answered, doggedly: "I do! I _won't_ go back."

"Very well. We've no time to waste. Ride on while I cut this foal loose." But as she obeyed, with one flick of the wrist he roped her above the elbows from behind. Then, in spite of angry protests that ended in tears, he cinched her little feet from stirrup to stirrup.

"Now take her home." Handing the lead rope to Gordon, he leaped into the saddle and galloped after Jake.

Till they disappeared, Lee looked after, wavering between anger and tears. Tears won. Bowing her fair head, she wept unreservedly for fully a minute. Realizing then that she was gaining nothing but swollen eyes and a red nose, she stopped crying and turned to Gordon with a little laugh.

"Isn't this ridiculous? Please untie me."

But now she found herself gazing into the sullen face of a young man who, through her, had been cut out of a real fight. He shook his head.

"You _won't_?"

"No."

"Why?"

"You'd go after them."

They looked at each other. Her eyes were now gleaming brightly above two red spots; but he met their gaze with stubborn obstinacy.

"You mean to say that you are going to take me home tied up like a veal calf?"

He nodded.

Biting her lips, she looked at him again. "Do you realize, sir, that you never set eyes on me till a week ago?"

"Sure!"

"Also that you are my hired man?"

He nodded again.

"Very well, you're fired! Now untie this rope, then get off my land!"

But even this was turned against her. "I don't have to. I'm no longer your servant. I'll get off your land, yes-after I've delivered you at your home."

If looks could kill, to use that hackneyed but still expressive term, he would have died there and then. But they don't, and, masking his own disappointment with a hypocritically cheerful whistle, he turned his beast and rode down the canon, towing her behind.

It was dreadfully humiliating, and, being a girl, she cried some more-this time for sheer anger. But soon her tears dried and she fell into deep musing. Soon a small smile restored its softness to her mouth.

Her voice, seductively pleasant, mingled with the tramp of hoofs. "Won't you _please_ untie me? The rope is hurting my arms."

He stopped, pulled her horse up alongside, and as he began to fumble with the ropes she turned her head so that he could not see her smile.

It was trans.m.u.ted into a flash of fury when, finding the rope a little loose, he drew it tighter.

"I thought you were a gentleman!" she shot it viciously at his back as he rode on. "Gentlemen don't tie up ladies!"

"Ladies don't fire men for obeying orders. You needn't think I'm enjoying this. Just because you shoved in where you were not wanted, I have to go back."

She did not like that, either. What girl would? Once more she bit her lip, yet, for all her anger, a touch of respect mingled with her resentment. Concerned princ.i.p.ally with his own disappointment, he rode on without looking back and so missed the little persistent wriggles by which she gradually freed one hand. Soon she was able, by leaning forward, to reach and draw her saddle _machete_. Indeed, she worked with such caution that he got his first warning when, with one slash, she cut the rope between them. By the time he had swung his beast around she was going like the wind back up the canon.

Her mocking laughter came floating back.

XIII: AMERICAN RUSTLERS _VS._ MEXICAN RAIDERS

Shoving rapidly into the mountains, Sliver ascended with the trail in a couple of hours through upland growth of _pinon_ and juniper to the height of land, a pa.s.s riven by earthquake or subsidence between twin jagged peaks, from where he overlooked the valley pasture.

Like a great jade bowl, bisected by the silver line of a stream, its wide green circle, miles in diameter, lay within a broad ring of purple chaparral. Over its surface black dots were scurrying toward the corrals at the northern end, and under Sliver's gla.s.s these resolved into horses that were being rounded up by four Mexicans; for he could see their peaked _sombreros_, tight _charro_ suits, even at that distance. Turning the gla.s.s on the _jacal_, a rude hut of poles and gra.s.s thatch near the corrals, he looked for Pedro, the _anciano_.

"Poor old chap! they've sure got his goat." While clucking his commiseration, however, he s.h.i.+fted the gla.s.s to a patch of white on a near-by tree, and it immediately resolved into the old fellow's blouse and _calzones_. "No, they've just tied him up. Then these ain't no Colorados. It's Felicia's gang, all right, all right." He added, chuckling, "Four nice little raiders in a pretty trap, along comes Jake and Bull, then there was none."

And trapped they were. Except where the stream slipped out over a precipice between two narrow walls, the mountains rose sheer around the Bowl, unscalable save where the trail rose by precarious zigzags to where Sliver held the pa.s.s a thousand feet above. At few places was it possible for two hors.e.m.e.n to ride abreast. At that point there was barely room for one; if necessary, he could have held it, alone, against a score. But it was not. Watching closely, he saw the raiders first drive the horses into the corrals, then settle down for a _siesta_ in the shade of the _jacal_.

"Going to bring 'em up at sundown," he muttered, "in time to make the first run by night."

So certain he was of it that he did not scruple to take a sleep himself; cat-napped, with occasional squints down into the valley up to the moment that he was awakened by the hoof-beats of Jake and Bull's beasts.

The gla.s.s then showed the raiders working the horses out of the corrals.

As the herd thinned out to single file at the trail, one man took the lead; a second and third fell in at even distances; the last brought up the rear.

"They know their business," Bull commented on the manuver. "It's easier to keep 'em moving." He grimly added: "And easier for us. The line will string out for a quarter-mile, so I'll go down that distance an' hide in the chaparral. Let the last man pa.s.s me before you hold up the first.

Then, while one of you keeps him covered, t'other can take away his tools. I'll keep 'em moving on up till you've got the other three."

While Jake took away and tied their horses, Bull gained his position. By that time the leading raider had gained a like distance uphill and, peeping, Bull watched the thin file of animals wriggling like a slow black snake up the yellow trail. So clear was the air he could hear, above the thud and sc.r.a.pe of hoofs, the raiders calling to one another.

Now they were directly beneath him; so close that he could plainly see the leader's face, ugly, pock-marked. As he withdrew into the chaparral Bull carried with him an irritatingly haunting remembrance. Somewhere, though he could not place it, he had seen the man before! He was still puzzling over it when Jake's command rang out in Spanish:

"Hands up!"

The leader looked and complied, persuaded by the black muzzles, wicked eyes, that looked down from the rock above. The second and third men did try to turn, but were blocked by the file of animals. An attempt to pa.s.s would have sent them down, bounding from level to level to the floor of the valley below. The fourth man swung his beast around only to find himself looking into Bull's rifle. So while Jake covered the operation from above and Bull from below, Sliver disarmed and bound the raiders.

After the captives were arranged in line under a _copal_ tree upon a little plateau, where the trail began to fall downhill on the other side, Bull stood frowning down from his height on the man whose face had aroused that haunting memory. "I've a hunch that I've seen this chap afore."

He would have been more certain of it had he noticed the fellow's look of recognition and fear only a moment before. But now his ugly countenance was veiled in that ox-like stolidity which a Mexican _peon_ can so easily a.s.sume. He shook his head in dull negation to all of Bull's questions. He did not come from any of the neighboring _haciendas_! They had never met before! His _pais_ was far-it might have been anywhere in a thousand-mile circle implied by the wave of his hand.

"Yet I could swear to him." Bull looked musingly at Sliver.

"Pock-marked, too. Where have I seen him afore?"

Sliver shook his head. "Can't prove it be me. All _peones_ look like so many peas in a pod; some mebbe a bit uglier than others; an' pock-marks ain't no distinction with two-thirds of 'em pitted like a nutmeg-grater."