Drowsy and heavy-eyed from lost sleep, the Mexican agent stood in the doorway of his box-car station. Anxiety and fear shadowed his face.
“Wicked times, señor. Up and down the line they are robbing and murdering, Valles’s defeated soldados. Many gringos have been slain. Early in the night a company of fifty dropped off here and are gone, mad with hate, to loot the gringo haciendas.”
Appalled, Bull stared at the distant mountains.
[XXXIV: ---------------------?]
Left alone on the trail, Gordon suffered his own agonies—the poignant anguishes of youth unmitigated by the fatalism or philosophy of experience. Time and again his spirit rose in furious rebellion against the frightful injustice of fate. Eyes starting with the strain, sweat pouring from his brow, he rolled in successive paroxysms, vainly striving to burst his bonds—only to subside each time into a coma of utter despair. Then, as the very violence of his exertions cleared the blood from his brain, he did that which an older head would have done at first—lay still and began to think.
How to get loose! There must be some way! He had once seen a prisoner in a “movie” burn off his bonds with a fire of hay started by the coals from his pipe. But if it were possible—outside of a “movie”—where were the hay and pipe? An attempt to cut the riata by abrasion on a stone behind him produced only a sore on his wrists. Yet there must be some way! If he could only loosen them by flexing and reflexing his muscles! He stopped thinking, at this point, and lay staring downhill.
His struggles had carried him to within a few feet of the dead revolutionist. Before leaving, his followers had looted the body of its guns, bandolier of cartridges, but had left the belt. Under the body Gordon now caught a glimpse of his knife.
To roll downhill was simple. With his butting shoulders, it was no trick to move the body till the knife came up into position where he could draw it with his teeth. But thereafter—a knife in the teeth could not be used to free hands bound behind one’s back!
He looked about him. The problem was simple. If the knife could be held firmly so that he could turn and rub the wrist-cords against the edge. Presently his eye lit on the stump of a palo verde that had been bruised and split off by the slip of some passing beast. Working his way over to it, he bent and carefully placed the horn handle in the split, edge up, point resting at an angle of forty-five on the ground. Then, shuffling around, he felt delicately till the razor edge came squarely between his wrists. Very lightly, in mortal dread of a miscarriage, he sawed, sawed, sawed until his hands suddenly split apart. One slash at his ankles and he was upon his feet.
His first thought was to run, wildly, madly, after Lee. Then his usual good judgment resumed command. The revolutionists were mounted and had an hour’s start! He must have a horse! And with the thought there rose a mental picture of the arriero they had seen at the fonda.