With two slashes she did it, one at his arms, the other at his feet. But swift as was the movement, Rafael caught it in the tail of his eye. When he turned she had dropped the knife in the grass and, though her heart stood still, she resumed her pretense of feeding Ramon. As he watched her the suspicion died out of the man’s stare. He was just about to turn again to the game when, as Ramon leaned forward to take the bite she was offering, the severed riata fell from his elbows.
Given two men in a sudden juncture, the one with a definite plan wins the lead. As the man jumped up, pointing, Ramon sprang, reached the rifles, aimed and shot him down. The others looked up, startled, and as he aimed again they pulled and fired.
“Run, querida, run!” Ramon had called it, leaping up. As he collapsed on the heap of saddles it issued again on his last dry whisper, “Run!”
It had all happened while she was scrambling up. Naturally she turned when Ramon fell and paused, horror-stricken. Not till the others were almost upon her did she turn and run—too late.
As, heart fluttering like that of a frightened quail, she ran for the wood Ilarian seized her. Wildly beating the brutal, pock-marked face, she writhed helplessly in his arms.
[XXXIII: THE DEATH IN THE NIGHT]
During the rest of the day, while the train rolled and rattled and jolted its slow way over the heated face of the desert, the correspondents stewed with Bull in their own juices in semi-darkness. At intervals there would come a stop. With the mad, blind selfishness of panic the brigada Gonzales had burned the watering-tanks as they passed. So those that followed had to draw for the engine with buckets from wells. Also there were occasional rails to be replaced which, with equal selfishness, they tore up again the moment the train passed over.
When the sun finally set in a fiery conflagration and dusk brought some cess of the heat the conductor came in with tales of wholesale desertions from the brigada Gonzales, and shortly thereafter began the dispersion of their own men. As they approached familiar country, or tempted by tales of rich loot to be taken from near-by haciendas, they began to drop off in fives, fifties, tens. Of those that had kept the corrugated-iron roof beating like a drum with their stampings and shufflings throughout the afternoon, there remained only a single solitary figure when, after dark, Bull climbed up on top to air his choked lungs.
As he sat down on the running-board the figure looked up, then moved closer. “It is thee, señor?”
Peering, Bull made out the face. It was the sentry who had spoken to him at Valles’s door. As his mind associated what the “dean” had said with the recognition he spoke quickly. “The señor Benson? Didst thou see—”