Across the Mesa

by Helen Bagg

He was not, however, built for private life. Some of us are like that. We need the excitement and the stimulus of action to bring out our better points. Also, Pachuca’s friends were not of the sort who cared much for the quiet life. In those few months of association with the great Villa, he had met men of various kinds; men who were honestly trying to do something for Mexico; men who were dishonestly trying to do something for themselves; and men who were in such a truly desperate frame of mind after ten years of revolution, banditry, and general upset, that they scarcely knew what they were doing.

Pachuca, who for all his aristocratic blood, was an exceedingly good mixer, had enjoyed these various and sundry associations and in the quiet of private life he yearned for them. Very much as a celebrated actress feels the lure of the footlights after she has left them for matrimony and the fireside, very much as the superannuated fire horse is said to react to the alarm, so Pachuca yearned for the agreeable persons with whom he had foregathered since leaving the army.

When there were rumors of another revolution, he began to think of looking up some of these exceedingly live wires, and seeing what could be done for Freedom, Mexico, and Juan Pachuca. It was with the idea of informing himself as to these matters that he had taken the journey which had resulted in his meeting with Polly Street, and the fortnight which she had spent in Athens had been used to accomplish a number of things.

Himself rather a good judge of which way the political cat might be expected to jump at this particular crisis, Pachuca had decided to throw in his lot with the Obregonistas. He knew Obregon, knew his hold on the people, his popularity with the labor party, and it looked to him very much as though that general of fascinating Irish ancestry had a good chance of being Mexico’s next president.

At the same time he realized perfectly that his own reputation with the Obregonistas was not good. Various tales current among Mexicans of political standing, in regard to his relations with Villa, would be very much against him, and services rendered the Carranza government would hardly be likely to stand him in good stead. Pachuca wanted to stand well with the new party if he stood with them at all. He intended that the next president of Mexico should confer upon him an office of distinction, and offices of this sort must be earned, not only in Mexico but anywhere. In the great republic near by which Pachuca hoped some day to visit, preferably on a state mission, things were handled in this way also. If he could bring to the revolutionary chiefs of the new party men, arms, and money, he might hope for a warm reception.

During the fortnight referred to he had communicated with one Angel Gonzales, previously mentioned, who had also quarreled with Villa and been rigorously persecuted by him. Gonzales was at the head of a small band which he was quite willing to consolidate with Pachuca’s men, and they had agreed to meet and discuss ways and means. It was toward this rendezvous that Pachuca had been journeying when he stopped to raid the Athens mining camp.

To be stopped at such a time was not to be endured. Pachuca looked around the small room angrily. He looked out of the window. It was a bad drop but not an impossible one. An athlete might manage it, he supposed, but he was not an athlete—he was a gentleman and a soldier. It would be a nasty thing to try it and to break a leg. He had never tried breaking a leg but he remembered having heard the family physician say that a broken leg meant a six weeks’ vacation and he had no mind for a vacation on those terms.

He went to the door—locked, of course, he had heard the girl turn the key, but one might burst it open. He tried, several times, but the door held maddeningly. There was no transom, no other door—nothing but the plastered walls and the window. He turned again to the window, and threw it open. The cool night air came in refreshingly. In the distance, the dark shapes of the mountains stood out forbiddingly in the moonlight. Millions of stars winked and twinkled. Gaunt cacti reared their ungainly shapes—beautiful because of their very ugliness.

Somewhere over in those mountains Angel Gonzales was wending a torturous path to meet him. Angel would swear and rage when he did not come. Then he would probably annex Pachuca’s men and their plunder and go cheerfully on his way. That would be Angel’s idea of the philosophical manner of handling the situation. Juan ground his white teeth in a fury. Again he hung out of the window. The moonlight was so glaring that he was easily visible had anyone been watching, but all the lights in Athens were out and the inhabitants in bed.

Pachuca swung lightly out of the window and with a very cattish agility caught the sill with both hands and lowered himself. He looked down. It was the devil of a drop. Ten chances to one he would turn an ankle at the very least. He made a wry face. One does not do things successfully when one does them in this frame of mind. With an effort surprising in one so slight he drew himself back into the window again. There must be another way. It was positively not on the cards for him to be fooled in this stupid manner. He could see his car standing near the corral and the sight urged him to greater efforts.