XXII
FRAMED IN A DOBE GATEWAY
North, they were riding straight north, though the going for a way was a bit heavy through the sand and stones.
‘Not so fast quite!’ Bart warned. ‘The other three can’t keep up—’
Elbert was bending forward because the rurales were following, their shots still in the air. His heart was filled with elation that Mamie had given the warning, and that their course had turned north. He had forgotten the three of Bart’s men still riding with them. More shots from behind, a queer gulping cough from Bart.
‘Are you hurt?’ Elbert called.
‘Yes, one of ’em got me. I’ve—been—hit—before—but not so close in—’
Elbert’s hand tightened; his eyes still held to the north star. ‘Can you ride a ways?’
‘Sure. Long as you do—’
‘Don’t forget to give me a warning, if you’re going to—’
‘I’m not going to fall, amigo mio! They’ll never get us now, but our three behind—we’re ridin’ too fast for their ponies!’
Elbert did not look back; nor did he check Mamie’s speed. This was the instant he realized he was in command of affairs, if anybody was. His momentary concern wasn’t with the three bandits, whipping their ponies to hold the pace, but with the one who called him “amigo mio” and bent forward now as if pushing the saddle from him.
The sorrel galloped at Mamie’s side with great easy leaps. To keep going with Bart was Elbert’s game, not with this remnant of Vallejo’s band; to keep going north with Bart at any price; to turn loose the horses faster and faster, their heads to the north—if only Bart could stay in his seat! The river road running north assumed clearer outline—wheel-tracks, a hardening pebbled way. Again from his companion:
‘We’re ridin’ too fast for the others, Mister—’
‘I think we’d better not wait for anybody now, Bart. This is a running match right now, while you’re in the saddle. Who’s got the stuff—that’s what we’re going to find out—Mamie here or your Mallet-head!’
A chuckle in answer. ‘You’re the doctor!’
Elbert bent forward. ‘I say, Mamie, we’re off!’ She knew that tone—a wide-open throttle, it meant, and the big sorrel settled lower at the left, his fish eye fixed on her nose.
Now part of Elbert’s private reaction to the headlong pace was the sense that he had been fixing for this race all his life—a sort of climax of all days, and his eyes glanced often up to old Polaris, as if the north star were a silver cup for the winner. A distance-course, seconds pounding on into minutes, the minutes into tens, dusk of earliest morning blent with the low moon’s rays; only two horses in the finish, silence as deep from behind now as from the desolate foothills ahead—a friend to stick by at his left—white smile, two slits of black for eyes, body hanging forward.
Every little while: ‘Don’t fall, Bart! Give me a word if you’re slipping!’
‘I’m not going to fall, Mister—’
The river had narrowed to a creek; the road to a path; the blowing horses pelted forward on rising ground—
Then it was all as queer as a dream. Breaking day, a face framed in a dobe gateway, a face by the side of the road. Just a glimpse—girl or child or woman, he did not know—but a face in the ashen light—oval beauty in the gateway of a dobe wall! Elbert’s head flung back as they passed, but the face was gone. That instant thickly from Bart:
‘Pull up, pardner!’
Elbert’s hand went out to the left, as he drew Mamie sharply in with the other. The look of death was on Bart’s face; his lips moved.
‘Big town ahead—Fonseca—three miles or so. Rurales—they’ll be waitin’ for us there—’ The gamy head rocked back, the spine drooping sideways.
‘We’re not going there,’ said Elbert, leaping down. ‘God, how you’ve sat it out! You can fall now—I’m underneath!’
‘I’m not goin’ to fall—’ Bart mumbled, but his hand relaxed on the pommel.
Elbert looked forward and back; not a sign of life either way, but the face at the dobe gate was strangely before his inner eyes. Something queerly to do with the song of the corn-dust maiden in that far doorway, it seemed to have for him. His face lifted to the cold gray of the dawn-lit sky. Rurales still following possibly ... ‘mere formality’ ... blank wall ... oval beauty.
Now he was carrying Bart back, leading both horses.
‘I’m taking a chance to get you a berth,’ he gasped, coming in sight of the dobe gateway, now empty.
An aperture in a dobe wall for a gate—face gone. Over the gate as he led the horses into the yard, his eye caught the letters formed of faded tile, ‘El Relicario.’ He fancied the movement of a dress through a low arbor ahead. Still with his burden, he moved toward it.
She was there—in the doorway of a broad low dobe ruin. He seemed at first to see only her wide eyes. And then his Spanish came to him and words inspired by another’s need—pressure he had never felt back of an effort before.
‘Look, Señorita—he must have shelter and care—my companion! Will you not give help to him? I will pay a great price!’
The girl made no sound, her eyes fixed on Bart’s back, where Elbert’s hands pressed a dark saturation.
‘May I take him into your house for shelter, Señorita?’ he panted.
She led the way indoors, halting in a large, all but empty room.
‘There are those who want his life,’ Elbert said unsteadily under his burden. ‘May I not take him farther in?’
She turned instantly toward an inner door.