71
“Oh, look what I’ve found!” Miss Drexel called from the lead.
“First machine that ever tackled this road,” was young Drexel’s judgment, as they
halted to stare at the tire-tracks.
“But look at the tracks,” his sister urged. “The machine must have come right out
of the bananas and climbed the bank.”
“Some machine to climb a bank like that,” was Davies’ comment. “What it did do
was to go down the bank—take a scout after it, Charley, while Wemple and I get
Mrs. Morgan off her fractious mount. No machine ever built could travel far
through those bananas.”
The flea-bitten roan, on its four legs up-standing, continued bravely to stand until
the lady was removed, whereupon, with a long sigh, it sank down on the ground.
Mrs. Morgan likewise sighed, sat down, and regarded her tiny feet mournfully.
“Go on, boys,” she said. “Maybe you can find something at the river and send
back for me.”
But their indignant rejection of the plan never attained speech, for, at that instant,
from the green sea of banana trees beneath them, came the sudden purr of an
engine. A minute later the splutter of an exhaust told them the silencer had been
taken off. The huge-fronded banana trees were violently agitated as by the
threshing of a hidden Titan. They could identify the changing of gears and the
reversing and going ahead, until, at the end of five minutes, a long low, black car
burst from the wall of greenery and charged the soft earth bank, but the earth was
too soft, and when, two-thirds of the way up, beaten, Charley Drexel braked the
car to a standstill, the earth crumbled from under the tires, and he ran it down and
back, the way he had come, until half-buried in the bananas.
“‘A Merry Oldsmobile!”‘ Miss Drexel quoted from the popular song, clapping her
hands. “Now, Martha, your troubles are over.”
“Six-cylinder, and sounds as if it hadn’t been out of the shop a week, or may I
never ride in a machine again,” Wemple remarked, looking to Davies for
confirmation.
Davies nodded.
“It’s Allison’s,” he said. “Campos tried to shake him down for a private loan,
and—well, you know Allison. He told Campos to go to. And Campos, in revenge,
commandeered his new car. That was two days ago, before we lifted a hand at
Vera Cruz. Allison told me yesterday the last he’d heard of the car it was on a
steamboat bound up river. And here’s where they ditched it—but let’s get a hustle
on and get her into the running.”
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72
Three attempts they made, with young Drexel
at the wheel; but the soft earth and the pitch of
the grade baffled.
“She’s got the power all right,” young Drexel
protested. “But she can’t bite into that mush.”
So far, they had spread on the ground the robes
found in the car. The men now added their
coats, and Wemple, for additional traction,
unsaddled the roan, and spread the cinches,
stirrup leathers, saddle blanket, and bridle in
the way of the wheels. The car took the
treacherous slope in a rush, with churning
wheels biting into the woven fabrics; and, with
no more than a hint of hesitation, it cleared the
crest and swung into the road.
“Isn’t she the spunky devil!” Drexel exulted.
“Say, she could climb the side of a house if she
could get traction.”
“Better put on that silencer again, if you don’t want to play tag with every soldier
in the district,” Wemple ordered, as they helped Mrs. Morgan in.
The road to the Dutch gusher compelled them to go through the outskirts of
Panuco town. Indian and half breed women gazed stolidly at the strange vehicle,
while the children and barking dogs clamorously advertised its progress. Once,
passing long lines of tethered federal horses, they were challenged by a sentry; but
at Wemple’s “Throw on the juice!” the car took the rutted road at fifty miles an
hour. A shot whistled after them. But it was not the shot that made Mrs. Morgan
scream. The cause was a series of hog-wallows masked with mud, which nearly
tore the steering wheel from Drexel’s hands before he could reduce speed.
“Wonder it didn’t break an axle,” Davies growled. “Go on and take it easy,
Charley. We’re past any interference.”
They swung into the Dutch camp and into the beginning of their real troubles. The
refugee steamboat had departed down river from the Asphodel camp; Chill II had
disappeared, the superintendent knew not how, along with the body of Peter
Tonsburg; and the superintendent was dubious of their remaining.
“I’ve got to consider the owners,” he told them. “This is the biggest well in
Mexico, and you know it—a hundred and eighty-five thousand barrels daily flow.
I’ve no right to risk it. We have no trouble with the Mexicans. It’s you Americans.
If you stay here, I’ll have to protect you. And I can’t protect you, anyway. We’ll all
DUTCH COURAGE AND OTHER STORIES
73
lose our lives and they’ll destroy the well in the bargain. And if they fire it, it
means the entire Eba&ncedilla;o oil field. The strata’s too broken. We’re flowing
twenty thousand barrels now, and we can’t pinch down any further. As it is, the
oil’s coming up outside the pipe. And we can’t have a fight. We’ve got to keep the
oil moving.”
The men nodded. It was cold-blooded logic; but there was no fault to it.
The harassed expression eased on the superintendent’s face, and he almost
beamed on them for agreeing with him.
“You’ve got a good machine there,” he continued. “The ferry’s at the bank at
Panuco, and once you’re across, the rebels aren’t so thick on the north shore. Why,
you can beat the steamboat back to Tampico by hours. And it hasn’t rained for
days. The road won’t be at all bad.”
“Which is all very good,” Davies observed to Wemple as they approached
Panuco, “except for the fact that the road on the other side was never built for
automobiles, much less for a long-bodied one like this. I wish it were the Four
instead of the Six.”
“And it would bother you with a Four to negotiate that hill at Aliso where the road
switchbacks above the river.”
“And we’re going to do it with a Six or lose a perfectly good Six in trying,” Beth
Drexel laughed to them.
Avoiding the cavalry camp, they entered Panuco with all the speed the ruts
permitted, swinging dizzy corners to the squawking of chickens and barking of
dogs. To gain the ferry, they had to pass down one side of the great plaza which
was the heart of the city. Peon soldiers, drowsing in the sun or clustering around
the cantinas, stared stupidly at them as they flashed past. Then a drunken major
shouted a challenge from the doorway of a cantina and began vociferating orders,
and as they left the plaza behind they could hear rising the familiar mob-cry “Kill
the Gringos!”
“If any shooting begins, you women get down in the bottom of the car,” Davies
commanded. “And there’s the ferry all right. Be careful, Charley.”
The machine plunged directly down the bank through a cut so deep that it was
more like a chute, struck the gangplank with a terrific bump, and seemed fairly to
leap on board. The ferry was scarcely longer than the machine, and Drexel,
visibly shaken by the closeness of the shave, managed to stop only when six
inches remained between the front wheels and overboard.
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It was a cable ferry, operated by gasoline, and, while Wemple cast off the
mooring lines, Davies was making swift acquaintance with the engine. The third
turn-over started it, and he threw it into gear with the windlass that began winding
up the cable from the river’s bottom.
By the time they were in midstream a score of horsemen rode out on the bank
they had just left and opened a scattering fire. The party crowded in the shelter of
the car and listened to the occasional ricochet of a bullet. Once, only, the car was
struck.
“Here!—what are you up to?” Wemple demanded suddenly of Drexel, who had
exposed himself to fish a rifle out of the car.
“Going to show the skunks what shooting is,” was his answer.
“No, you don t,” Wemple said. “We’re not here to fight, but to get this party to
Tampico.” He remembered Peter Tonsburg’s remark. “Whose business is to live,
Charley—that’s our business. Anybody can get killed. It’s too easy these days.”
Still under fire, they moored at the north shore, and when Davies had tossed
overboard the igniter from the ferry engine and commandeered ten gallons of its
surplus gasoline, they took the steep, soft road up the bank in a rush.
“Look at her climb,” Drexel uttered gleefully. “That Aliso hill won’t bother us at