XVITHOROUGHBREDS ENTER
‘Cuando sali de la Habana,Valgame Dios—’
‘Cuando sali de la Habana,Valgame Dios—’
‘Cuando sali de la Habana,Valgame Dios—’
‘Cuando sali de la Habana,
Valgame Dios—’
Weeksafterward in old Mexico. He hadn’t moved straight down toward Nacimiento and San Pasquali, where Monte Vallejo was last heard of, but had followed the Border west, leaving the main highway, sinking himself into the country. He was taking it easy, learning the language from the voices in the daytime and his Spanish book at night. Days of learning—getting to know the feel of the people, learning Mamie, and that was not all—learning himself. No more leather-store; he wasn’t dreaming. An old fear that something was wrong about him, even anatomically wrong, in relation to a saddle, had pretty well died out. Sometimes he even fancied that Mamie answered his rein, as if it were old man Leadley’s velvety touch.
‘Era la que me mirabaDiciendo adios’
‘Era la que me mirabaDiciendo adios’
‘Era la que me mirabaDiciendo adios’
‘Era la que me miraba
Diciendo adios’
That song was like an ever-continued story. A woman’s voice with guitar, this time, and the old wistfulness came over Elbert—the same that he had felt in the Plaza of Los Angeles. Here hewas in a little native plaza—far from travel-lines, not even sure of the name of the town, yet he had to stop and think that all he had wanted so restlessly a while back, had come to pass. At least, he was working out the old dream day by day, Sonora at her sleepiest and dustiest now, days interminably long and changelessly hot.
Though the fierce daylight had faded out the shine from her bright bay coat, Mamie was hardening to the road, and the man was coming to know some of her movements and whims, if not all. Gradually Elbert perceived also that she was aware of many of his. He never tethered her at night, yet she never strayed. He hadn’t been able to learn the lip-and-finger call, the way Bob Leadley had shown him, but there was a whistle in the handle of the sheath-knife he carried, and a blast from that brought the mare in from the sweetest herbage.
He liked the nights in the open, Mamie grinding at her forage the last thing—drowsiest sound in the world to him. And her early call; out of the deepest sleep he would hear that. But by the time his eyes were open, the mare was merely to be seen feeding at a distance, her head turned away. If he dozed again, a more peremptory summons would sound, but Mamie was apparently calling to the hazy hills, her farthest concern to do with him.
One morning he didn’t doze a second time, but covertly watched. About ten minutes after first call, the mare stopped feeding and came toward him, her hind feet lifting high and quickly, like a race horse, under the big blanket. Suddenly she stopped, blatted her loudest toward Elbert’s partly covered head, but wheeled on the instant and was cropping again.... Fearless and winsome, a walk-trot mare, ready to go, ready to keep on, invariably increasing the pace as his hand idled at the reins, or his thoughts roamed away. Often Elbert would come to himself finding Mamie in a full ten-mile trot, when he had not been paying attention for several minutes. The pace seemed to steal upon her, and would end in a run if he did not bring her down.
One day it occurred to him that she never dropped into a walk from a trot, or back into a trot from a gallop, unless pulled up. There was no exception that he could remember. But the black night at San Pasquali had left a double-died complex at the core of Mamie’s emotional self. The sound of a motor car made her unreasonable at once. She would have been glad to do the day’s work over again any night, to get away from a town where machines had penetrated. Her one other deranging influence was an oil derrick. One of these attenuated triangles spoiled her whole horizon, like a finger of doom.
Gradually his rides took him farther south and west. Plenty to hear of Monte Vallejo, the bandit, of whom the peons of some districts were passionately fond. But never a word of a possible white man who rode with him. It would be a matter of luck, Elbert often thought, that would bring him up with Bart, if that ever happened. What he needed now, more than knowledge of Spanish, or anything else, and he came to know this very well, was sheer patience to carry on. It wasn’t possible to ask questions about Monte Vallejo, without the people becoming suspicious at once. They thought he was somehow interested in helping the rurales, who did much of the hard work in keeping the districts in order, and yet were disliked as a matter of course by the people. Elbert often wondered what he could ever do single-handed, when the rurales for years had failed to bring in the bandit. Also General Cordano, who commanded the military of the whole country-side, was Vallejo’s sworn enemy for political reasons, and yet with all his soldiers had been unable to put a stop to the activity of the bandit.
Everywhere it was related that the notorious Monte had the best horses in Sonora. Elbert was in a way to hear much of this, because the people seemed inevitably reminded of the point by his own coming to their different towns. It wasn’thimself who attracted the people, however, nor held their eyes. It was Mamie whom they gathered to see, looking her over, even bringing lanterns in the evening, ever drawing near and saying to each other:
‘Monte Vallejo would like that mare,’ or, ‘Monte Vallejo rides a horse like that.’
Many weeks passed before his task became actual. He had been as far as a hundred and fifty miles southwest, and had made a big circle north again toward the Border, when word sped from town to town that Monte Vallejo had held up a westbound Yuma Pacific train in the San Isidro Gorge, not primarily to loot the passengers—that was incidental—but to relieve two express coaches of a string of thoroughbreds en-route to the running meeting at Tia Juana.
At this very time, Elbert was in the little town of San Isidro, less than twenty miles from the scene of the hold-up.
Southwest with his new saddle-stock, the master of the road and his band were said to be galloping with three troops of rurales beating the trail behind—the latter stung and aroused as never before. Gold bar couldn’t have challenged the mounted police like this theft of bang-tails.
Elbert got it all as straight as he could in his mind that night, and the next morning before full light, he filled his saddle-bags with what provisionshe could procure in San Isidro and rode out, following the trail which a northern squad of rurales had taken after the bandit. He tried not to appear in too much of a hurry, but Mamie unquestionably felt the force of this fresh clue and the excitement in the air. Sonora was really wrought up. The entire body of rurales had taken the road to make a sure job of it this time. Meanwhile the people kept it a secret where the bandit’s picket lines were stretched, and fixed their faces for a great laugh at the expense of the mounted police.
But the hour had evidently arrived for an astonishing turn of affairs. The second day out from San Isidro, Elbert became aware of a persistent rumor to the effect that Monte Vallejo was having trouble covering ground with his new string of horses. They were sprint-bred, but few of them took to steady distance work, so important in the present flight. On the third day, the most incredible of all announcements shocked Sonora—that Monte Vallejo and seven of his men had been captured a few miles beyond Arecibo; that they had been brought back to that town, and were being held there under a guard of rurales, as well as watched over by the little garrison of Cordano’s soldiers located at that point.
No trial; only an order from General Cordano was awaited, it was said. Upon the receipt ofthis, Monte and his seven, without reservation, would be put to death in el cuartel at Arecibo. ‘A mere formality,’ the natives moaned, intimating that supplying the paper would be a pleasant task for General Cordano. This ‘mere formality’ sunk into Elbert’s head. Later the news reached him that another wing of Monte’s band had been taken. The rurales were having their turn of luck at last.