But he had failed to count on the streak of good humor that crosscuts even a bandit nature. “We are the richer by a hundred pesos by him.” Ilarian, the fellow who had tried to cut his throat, grinned at the others. “Let us lift him over there in the shade.”
“’Tis hard on thee, amigo,” the fellow went on, after they moved him. “’Tis hard to have thy girl snatched thus away. But have no fear”—though he caught only an occasional word of Spanish, the gestures, helped out by a gross leer, threw light brilliant as lightning on his meaning—“we will avenge thee. These days the pretty ones go to the strong. He has not got her yet. Adios—and better luck!”
As, laughing loudly, they left him, all the romance that had colored, for him, the Mexican revolutions, drained away, leaving him with clear, cold vision to face its dread facts—the tragic realities even then in course where the smoke columns rose, far away, under brazen skies. In agony of fear for Lee that transcended physical torture he watched them go.
[XXXI: “BRAINS WIN”]
Two days later Bull awoke from a wild nightmare through which drunken faces, infuriated faces, maudlin women faces, had whirled in a mad phantasmagoria, devil’s dance of singing, drinking, swearing, fighting. As though it were another, he dimly saw himself hurling men through a window while glass crashed and furniture crumbled around him. More clearly, a second picture stood out—of a big black rustler—to wit, himself—set up against a wall before a firing-squad. He even saw the rifles aimed, and yet—his brain cool and that enormous desire gone, he lay in a little cell-like adobe room. Light streamed over the sheet across the doorway, and as, rising, he looked out into the patio of the German Club he heard far off the boom of cannon punctuating the staccato pulsations of rifle-fire.
“The battle’s on!”
As the thought passed through his mind it was killed by sudden agony, poignant, though mental, as physical pain. His great hands went up and covered his face, but could not shut out despair. “My God! I’ve fallen down!”
Outside people were moving and talking. But he paid no heed; just stood, face buried in his hands, till he recognized the “dean’s” voice.
“Well, come on, fellows! They’re going to it again. Let’s get out where we can see.”
“I’ll take a look at Diogenes first,” came the voice of his friend. “You chaps go on. I’ll catch up.”