Herman Whitaker - Over the Border - A Novel

In all the world nothing reflects its environment more faithfully than a Mexican town. Southward, the great cities of Mexico and Guadalajara testify with their stately cathedrals, ornate public buildings, theaters, parks, and plazas, the flowering patios of lovely and luxurious homes, first to the richness of the central Mexican plateau, secondly to the fact that in normal times all the wealth of the republic drains to them. Oppositely, the northern towns with their squalid adobe streets, overrun with a plague of dirty children, dogs, vultures, pigs; desiccated by fierce heat, drowned by torrential rains; these in their place and turn are eminently characteristic of the arid desert. Save that it was a little smaller, a little dirtier, perhaps a little richer in the variety of its stenches, Las Bocas might serve as the type of all Mexican frontier towns.

As the wind blew their way, the Three smelled it from afar. But usage breeds indifference even to evil odors. If not actually homesome, the fetor bespoke a possible drink.

A quarter mile before entering the town they crossed the arroyo that gave it drink. Its waters also furnished an open-air laundry for two brown girls who knelt by its edge, pounding their soiled linen on flat boulders. These days of rampant revolution, a good girl had needs be careful, and at sight of the Three, dusty, unkempt, bearded, and gaunt from tire and travel, gringos at that, the two leaped up and fled toward the town.

Grinning at their fright, Bull and Sliver would have ridden on, but Jake, who never missed a trick, reined in his beast and began to examine the laundry with the eye of a connoisseur. Though the remainder of her be clad in rags, the humblest peona will have her lace petticoat, and the dozen or so pieces that were already spread out to dry on the neighboring bushes were really very fine.

“D’you allow to turn lady’s maid?” Sliver spoke, as Jake bent to stuff the lingerie into his saddle-bags.

“Not till Rosa’s had the refusal of it. This orter keep her satisfied for at least a month.”

Grinning, the pair of rascals spurred their jaded beasts and overtook Bull as he entered a narrow gut of a street that followed the meanderings of the original cow-path to the jefe’s house, a plastered adobe, limewashed in purple and gold, that faced the inevitable military barracks across a sorry attempt at a plaza.

If the small traders and artisans who constituted the bulk of the population had been addicted to such flights of imagination, they might have pictured the jefatura’s yawning gates as a huge gullet through which, in normal times, their substance drained in taxes, fines, and imposts to Mexico City, the nation’s stomach, there to be consumed by a hungry tribe of official hookworms. Now, of course, it was being deflected into the private pocket of the dominant revolutionary chief. Lacking the imagination, they cursed beneath their breath and waited patiently till the next revolution should bring a new tyrant to avenge them on the present oppressor.

The latest incumbent was at lunch under the peppertree in the patio when the Three dismounted at the gates. Fat and sleek and brown, his generally gross appearance was accentuated by pouched beady eyes, waxed mustache, unhealthy, erupted skin. As he sat there, shoveling in frijoles and chile , even a peon’s slack imaginings could have easily established a resemblance – if not between him and a hookworm, at least, to some greedy parasite. The irritability, blind individualism, offensive conceit, treachery, too common to Mexicans, lay hidden under the usual veneer of Spanish courtesy. The embraces, backpattings, effusive greetings with which he welcomed the Three would have graced the reception of a favorite son.

“Enter, amigos!” His welcome buzzed through the patio . “Sit down and eat. Afterward we shall look over the horses. You have bestowed them – where?”

But when he learned of their failure, the scorpion showed through the glaze of courtesy like a fly in amber. “ Carambar-r-r-aa , señores!” His read wagged in a nasty way. “I had counted on the horses – to save your alive. On my desk lies a requisition from your gringo border police, demanding your bodies. Que desgracia!” The spite that scintillated in his beads of eyes gave his words sinister significance. “One would dislike to do it, if ’twere only through hate of your Government. But one has to account to his chiefs. Already they have inquired for you, and always I made answer, ‘These are good hombres, useful to our cause.’ But deeds count more than words. Horses for their artilleria would have proved your worth. But now – ” a second nasty wag told that their failure left them as other gringos , to be despised, hated, persecuted. Having given the impression time to sink in, he suggested, “But there must be others? You will try again?”

“No use.” Bull’s gloom emphasized the denial. “This is the second time in a month that we’ve been chased across the border. They’re looking for us all along the line.”

“Si? Then must you go elsewhere. What of” – pausing, he looked cautiously around – “what of this side? In central Chihuahua there are many horse-ranchos, gringo ranches with fine blooded stock.”

“But – ”

The jefe’s shrug anticipated the objection. “Si, si! ’tis Mexico. That is what I have always told my chief – ‘these hombres bother only the gringo pigs.’” With a covert grin at the safe insult, he continued, “But a gringo is a gringo, whether here or in your United States. If they be despoiled, we shall not shed many tears. There will be a complaint, of course, to and from your Government, and much writing between departments. In the mean time we have the horses. So – ”

“But that’s Valles’s country, isn’t it?” Jake put in. “He’s a bad hombre to fool with!”

The jefe turned on him his evil grin. “What if the gringo ranchers had caught you last night? Hanging, amigo, is a dog’s death. I would prefer the fusilado of Valles’s men.”

“What if he kicks to your people? Puts in a claim for our heads? You’re working together, ain’t you?”

Once again the jefe looked around. “Listen, amigos! Between friends one may show the truth. Already there is a cloud, a little cloud, no bigger than a child’s hand arisen between us and Valles. If the horses are taken from a gringo rancho in Valles’s country, my chiefs will be the better pleased. What they have Valles cannot get in the days when the cloud grows big and black and bursts.”

Sliver, who understood more Spanish than he could speak, here nudged Bull. “Ask him if he’ll grub-stake the deal.”

“Ask nothing!” Bull’s hot eyes shot brown fire. “You heard him rubbing it into us, didn’t you? If it wasn’t that we need him I’d wring the little brown adder’s neck.” He went on, suavely, in Spanish, “My amigo questions me of the price. It will be the same – fifty pesos apiece, señor?”

Nodding, the jefe glanced impatiently back at his lunch. He appeared to have forgotten his invitation. Pleading an engagement, he bowed them out through the gates, then returned to his gorging while, hungrier, and even still thirstier, the Three rode down the street.

Usually they were not averse to an exchange of glances, or a flirtation – if the hombre was not in sight – with the brown girls who watched them from their doorways. But now their glances sought only the cantinas , whose open bars displayed a tempting array of bottles. While they looked their progress grew constantly slower, finally stopped in front of one whose owner was taking his siesta stretched out on the bar.