XIGAS AND GUNS
Elbertsmelled gas, as he rode behind the sedan. It had always been so; gas belonged to the deep fatigue of his bones. One of the keenest minutes he had ever lived was that in which they had leaned down toward the wide tangle of tracks in front of the fonda marked El Cajon—all able-bodied men gone from Nacimiento, and big doings promised farther on. And then, a matter of mere minutes afterward, his old enemy had come roaring down the dirt road. Girls—everything spoiled—Cal and Slim all changed around.
The sedan was just rolling forward, but it kept the ponies at a lope. It seemed hours; the sliver of a moon had sunk out of the sky. Florabel’s resonant voice reached him from the car. No secret now why ‘Mexicali’ Burton dared to stand off Northern Sonora for his oil wells—the father of this girl would be like that. Cal loomed in the dark, having waited for Mamie to come up.
‘Your lady-friend’s got her mind made up to sit a horse for a ways, Elbert. Slim’s Indian ain’t that kind of a horse, and your Mamie’s a filly yet. I figure she’d better try old Chester, butyou sort of ride close and keep him consoled and her camped in the right place.’
‘How about you, Cal?’
‘Nothin’ else will do, but I’m to test my morals in the little red buggie.’
The transfer was made. Elbert rode on through the thick May dark with Mary Gertling at his left.
‘I’ve been on a horse before,’ she said.
No answer.
‘I’m afraid you think I’m being a trouble.’
Still Elbert’s lips were locked. He couldn’t see her clearly, but her hands certainly were not in sight. Nobody with any sense of a horse would leave her hands in her lap.
‘Oh, I’m afraid you don’t like to have me here!’ reached him in the stillness.
‘Sure. Pick up your reins. We’re falling back—’
‘But he bumps so—’
‘They don’t make horses any smoother than he is. Want to get back in the car?’
‘No-o.’
‘You’re doing all right.’ He had lied in spite of himself, and this didn’t make him feel any better. Old Chester, tired as he was, couldn’t be expected to keep his feet trim, with no hand of authority communicating with the bit. Heat increased under Elbert’s collar. A heave in the road and hisleft hand shot out before he thought. It was clutched. Warm, small, firm. The two horses pulled apart a little, but the hand didn’t let go. He was afraid of yanking her out of the saddle.
‘I’m so sorry to make you cross. I think it was awful for Florabel to think of coming—oh—I’m falling!’
The hand slid out of his. He hurriedly dismounted. Mary was hanging sideways, both hands on the pommel. Elbert knew the abused look of Chester’s head, hanging low in the dark. He pushed her back up in the saddle.
‘Need any help?’ Slim sang back from in front.
‘No!’
‘Why, Elbert, I never heard such tones as them, spoke from you before—’
‘Oh, please don’t be cross!’ in a whisper from his side. ‘I don’t know what I’d ever have done—’
‘Oh, that’s all right.’ The miles were the longest in his experience. During the last twenty minutes the horses had trudged up hill, the motor making noisy business of the grade. Then the ridge and lights below, San Pasquali, doubtless. Elbert fancied he smelled the oil wells. He would never get away from gasoline.
‘Hadn’t you better get into the car?’ he remarked to Mary Gertling.
Cal was back on old Chester. The sedan had just started down-grade, when Elbert saw three red perforations in the dark ahead. The fraction of a second later, three separate concussions shocked his ears—not gas explosions, guns! There was one scream—from the little one—and Cal’s yell directed toward the car, as he spurred forward. ‘Better turn back, Miss—they may have the town surrounded!’
Slim’s Indian and Mamie had settled down after Chester. Shouts of Mexicans sounded beyond the car, just as Elbert’s mare came to abrupt stop. The sedan had halted, too, but the lights still pointed straight ahead. Florabel wasn’t making the turn; she was either shocked helpless, or her engine stalled. In the wide fling of the head-lights, Elbert saw armed Mexicans standing across the road. Then they started this way—six or seven figures running toward them, hands upraised, rifles held aloft For once Cal’s voice lost its drawl.
‘Get in the car, Kid! Let your horse go!’
Elbert’s leg lifted out of the stirrup—one of the hardest things he was ever called to do, but that very second the lights of the sedan went out. There was one clear call from Mary Gertling, deadened by a blasting roar from the sedan’s exhaust at the very knees of his mount. Too much for Mamie. She went straight up and triedto keep going, Elbert at the very top, arms around her frantic throat at the narrowest—as the darkened sedan gouged forward like a speed-boat. Cal’s voice reached him:
‘... that Burton girl—she’s shootin’ the lines! Come on, Slim, it means us, too! Come on, Kid!’
Shots in the air—shots from ahead and at the sides.
He felt Mamie tottering still on her hind feet; then a jerk as if some one had given her a cut with a whip, and over she went backward. He pushed her neck from him and fell back, and knew no more, until Cal’s low tones, as he was being lifted.
‘It’s all right. Kid. Chester’s good for both of us.’
For a time, in spite of that, he thought he still had Mamie round the neck, but it was Cal’s ample chest—Slim’s Indian in an easy gallop alongside.
‘Where’s the sedan?’ he finally mumbled.
‘Lord, Kid, she’s surprised papa by this time!’