''Bring Me His Ears'' by Clarence E. Mulford (story reading txt) 📖

Indians, a tall, strapping Delaware, stooping to be less conspicuous, whose face was the dirtiest in the atejo, suddenly stiffened and then forced himself to relax into his former lazy slouch. The rattle of an imported Dearborn, which at all times had to be watched closely to keep its metal parts from being stripped off and stolen, filled the street as the vehicle rocked along the ruts toward them, drawn by two good horses and driven by one Joseph Cooper, of St. Louis, Missouri. At his side sat his niece, looking with wondering and disapproving eyes about her, her pretty face improved by its coat of healthy tan, but marred somewhat by the look of worry it so plainly showed. She appeared sad and wistful, but at times her thoughts leaped far away and brought her fleeting smiles so soft, so tender, as to banish the look of worry and for an instant set a glory there.

Her glance took in the little pack train and its stalwart guards and passed carelessly over the bending Delaware, and then returned to linger on him while one might count five. Then he and the atejo passed from sight and she looked ahead again, unseeing, for her memory was racing along a wagon road, and became a blank in a frightful, all-night storm. At her sigh Uncle Joe glanced sidewise at her and took a firmer grip on his vile native cigar, and silently cursed the day she had left St. Louis.

"Load of wheat whiskey from th' rancho, I reckon," he said, and pulled sharply on the reins to keep from running over a hypnotized ring of cock-fighters. "How your paw can live all th' year 'round in this fester of a town is a puzzle to me. I'd rather be in a St. Louis jail. Cigar?" he sneered, yanking it from his mouth and regarding it with palpitant disgust. He savagely hurled it from him. "Hell!"

A tangle of arms and legs rolled out of a rum shop and fought impotently in the dust of the street, and sotted faces grinned down at them from the crowded door. A flaky-skinned beggar slouched from behind the corner of the building and held out an imploring hand, which the driver's contemptuous denial turned into a clenched fist afloat in a sea of Spanish maledictions.

The pack train having reached its destination, the two pairs of guards, clutching their "writin'" from Turley, departed in hot haste to claim their payment, and not long thereafter, rifleless, wandered about on foot to see the sights, gaping and curious. In the hand of each was a whiskey jug, the cynosure of all eyes. The Plaza Publica seemed to fascinate them, for they spent most of their time there; and when they passed the guard house in the palacio they generously replied to the coaxing banter of the guard off watch, and went on again with lightened jugs. Here as elsewhere they sensed a poorly hidden feeling of unrest, and hid their smiles; somewhere north of Texas the Tejanos rode with vengeance in their hearts and certain death in their heretic rifles. No one knew how close they might be, or what moment they would storm into the town behind their deadly weapons. But the fear was largely apathetic, for these people, between the Apache and Comanche raids of year after year, had suckled fear from their mothers' breasts.

Finally, apprehensive of the attention they were receiving, the strange Indians left the plaza and sought refuge with the mules of the atejo, to remain there until after dark; and at their passing, groups of excited women or quarreling children resumed their gambling in the streets and all was serene again.

Gambling here was no fugitive evader of the law, no crime to be enjoyed in secret, but was an institution legalized and flourishing. There even was a public gaming house, where civil officers, traders, merchants, travelers, and the clergy grouped avidly around the monte tables and played at fever heat, momentarily beyond the reach of any other obsession. Regularly the governor and his wife graced the temple of chance with their august persons and held informal levees among the tables, making the place a Mecca for favor-seekers and sycophants, and a golden treasury for the "house." At this time, so soon after the arrival of two great caravans and the collection of so much impost, part of which stuck to every finger that handled it, the play ran high throughout the crowded room.

The round of festivities attending the arrival of the wagon trains were not yet stilled, and fandangoes nightly gave hilarity a safety valve. Great lumbering carretas, their wheels cut from solid sections of tree trunks and the whole vehicle devoid of even a single scrap of precious iron, shrieked and rattled through the dark streets, filled with shoddy cavaliers and dazzling women, whose dresses seemed planned to tempt the resolutions of a saint. Rebosa or lace mantilla over full, rounded, dark and satiny breasts; fans wielded with an inherited art, to coax and repel the victims of great and smouldering eyes of jet, which melted one moment to blaze the next—this was the magic segment of the clock's round. Now the eyesores of the squalid town were hidden from critical sight, and the alluring softness and mystery of an ancient Spanish city made one forget the almost unforgetable. Life and Death danced hand in hand; Love and Hate bowed and curtsied, and the mad green fires of Jealousy flickered or flared; while the poverty and the sordid tragedies of the day gave place to tingling Romance in the feathery night. Violins and guitars caressed the darkness with throbbing strains, catching the breath, tingling the nerves and turning dull flesh to pulsing ecstasy.

To the fandango came a flower of a far-off French-American metropolis, strangely listless; and here felt her blood slowly transmute to wine and every nerve become a harp-string to make sad music for her soul.

Small wonder that Armijo stood speechless in the sight of such a one as she, and forgot to press his questioning as to four who had somewhere left that wagon train; small wonder that he gave no heed to men in the presence of this exotic flower not yet unfolded, in whose veins the French blood of the mother coursed with the Saxon of the father, and played strange and wondrous pranks in delicate features, vivacious eyes, and hidden whimsicalities now beginning to peek forth.

The coarse sensuality of the governor's face revealed his thoughts to all the room; his eyes never had known the need to mask the sheerness of their greedy passion, and in such a moment could not dissemble. What man like him, in his place and power, with his nature, would glance twice at a lazy, dirty Indian looking in through the open door, or know that the murder beast was tearing at its moral fetters in the Delaware's seething soul? Without again taking his burning eyes from the woman before him the governor tossed, by force of habit, a copper coin through the door, alms to a beggar to bring him luck from heaven to further his plans from hell. Nor did he know the magazine his contemptuous gift had set aflame, nor see the convulsive struggle between the Delaware and three other Indians. The guard laughed sneeringly at the fight they made, three to one, over a single piece of copper: Who was to know that they fought over a hollow piece of steel, charged twice times three with leaden death? Who was to read the desperation in that furious struggle, where a beast-man fought like a fiend against his closest friends? The struggling four reeled and stumbled from the house, leading away a fiery tempest and faded into the crooning night. That open door nearly had been an Open Door, indeed!

Within the room the vivacity died in the woman's eyes, the whimsicalities drew back in sudden panic at the beast look on the governor's face; the swing was gone from the strumming music, the rhythm from the swaying dance. At once the festive room was a pit of slime, the smiling faces but mocking masks, and the dark shadow of a vulture descended like a suffocating gas. Like a flash the wall dissolved to show a long, clean trail, winding from Yesterday into Tomorrow; restful glades and creeks of shining sands, windswept prairies and a clear, blue sky; verdant glades and miles of flowers—and a tall, dark youth with smiling face, who worshiped reverently with tender eyes. She drew herself up as white streaks crossed her crimson cheeks like some darting rapier blade, and, bowing coldly to the pompous governor, stood rigidly erect and stared for a full half-minute into his astonished eyes, and made them fall. Deliberately and with unutterable scorn and loathing she turned from him to her father and her uncle, who forthwith shattered the absurd rules of pomp by showing him their broad backs and leaving at once. The room hushed as they walked toward the door, but no man stayed them, for on their faces there blazed the sign of Death.

Armijo, still staring after them, waved his hand and three men slipped out by another door, to follow and to learn what sanctuary that flower might choose. As he wheeled about and snapped a profane order the fiddlers and strummers stumbled into their stammering music; the dance went on again, with ragged rhythm, like an automaton out of gear.

Down the dark street rumbled the Dearborn, rocking perilously, the clatter of the running horses filling the narrow way with clamor. Sprinting at top speed behind it came barefoot soldiers: And then a human avalanche burst from a pitch dark passage-way. The Dearborn rocked on and turned a corner; the soldiers groped like blinded, half-stunned swimmers and as the secretive moments passed, they stumbled to their feet and staggered back again with garbled tales of prowling monsters, and crossed themselves continuously. About the time the frightened soldiers reached the house they had set out from, four Indians crept along an adobe wall and knocked a signal on the studded planks of a heavy, warehouse door. There came no creaking from its well-oiled hinges as it slowly opened, stopped, and swiftly shut again, and left the dark and smelly courtyard empty.

CHAPTER XIX

THE RENDEZVOUS

Enoch Birdsall stared in amazement at the four he had admitted, despite the remembrance of the names they had whispered through the crack of the partly opened door, the light from a single candle making gargoyles of their hideously painted faces. Alonzo Webb was peering along the barrel of a newfangled Colt, his eyes mere pin-points of concentration, his breathing nearly suspended.

Hank's low, throaty laughter filled the dim building and he slapped Tom on the shoulder. "Didn't I say I could fix us up so our own mothers wouldn't know us?" he demanded.

"God help us!" said Enoch in hopelessly inadequate accents as he groped behind him for his favorite cask. He seated himself with great deliberation. "When Turley's man Allbright brought aroun' yer rifles in a packload o' hay, I knowed we'd be seein' ye soon; an' he told us plain that four Injuns had left 'em with him. But; h—l!"

Alonzo had cautiously put away the Colt and was readjusting his facial expression to suit the changed conditions. Then he suddenly leaned back against a bale of tobacco leaf, jammed an arm tightly against his mouth, and laughed until he was limp.

Zeb Houghton glared at him in offended dignity, not knowing just what to say, but determined to say something. He felt embarrassed and slightly huffed. "Caravan have airy trouble arter we left it?" he asked.

"Trouble?" queried Enoch, a wise grin wreathing his face. "Some o' us made more profits this year