The gambler shook his head. “In a gen’ral way—so gen’ral that I couldn’t tell jest how I got it—I’ve sorter gathered that he once croaked a man. But whether ’twas before or after he took up the profesh I couldn’t say. In the natural order of things, a rustler’s bound, sooner or later, to down some prying fool. There’s so many that try to mix in his business. But if it was before, Bull done it—I’ll bet you the gent had it coming.”
[II: OVER THE BORDER]
That night the Three put up at the cantina in the little adobe town of Las Bocas, where, by reason of occasional largesses to the leader of the revolutionary faction that happened to be on top, a welcome was always certain. Just now it was more particularly so because the present jefe-politico, a Carranzista, varied his political activities by acting as “fence” in the disposal of their plunder.
In accordance with his advice, the following afternoon found them approaching the American border at a point far west of their usual sphere of operations. While they journeyed the sun slid down its western slant till it hung like a smoky lamp in the far dust of the desert. Behind them the sea of sage still ran off to distant mountains, but the sunset glow washed its dust away, draping the land in a royal robe. Ahead the grade was rising imperceptibly but steadily to a sparse grass country where the sage, palo verde, and yucca gave place to huge sahuaros that strewed the plain with their fluted barrels like the jade columns of some vast ruin. Among them roamed the flocks and herds of a pink-walled hacienda that nestled in a grove of lordly cottonwoods. As they rode past, the Three noted with appraising glances the sleek hides of a fine bunch of steers.
“Dress a thousand pounds of beef apiece,” Jake opined.
“Worth eighty pesos, gold, on the hoof, in El Paso,” Sliver yearningly added.
But their interest went no further—for reasons that appeared when, at sundown, they rode past the concrete pillar that marked the international boundary. Rustler that he was, drunkard and gambler, utterly worthless if the reports current on the New Mexican ranges were to be believed, Sliver’s eye nevertheless lit up at the sight of it; the glow on his hard face was not all sunset reflection.
“The good old U.S.,” he commented. “Some country!”
“He wasn’t talking that way las’ time we crossed.” Jake winked at Bull.
“Guess not. He was cussing Cristobel Columbo for ever having discovered it.”