The clouds had closed down and a wind had blown up, whipping flurries of rain gustily before it, so I changed to an old dark suit, with a soft shirt and four-in-hand. With a slicker over that, and a felt hat that had been rained on in the past, I was ready for a wet night.
I took the note with me, but no gun. I had a .38 in the house but this was one night I didn’t want it. The Mexican officials sometimes take a notion to search cars crossing the border, and I’m not exactly gun-handy anyway. I’ve done all my lead-slinging via the typewriter.
With a goodnight for Nip and Tuck and with my heart hitting a little faster pace than usual, I backed my ’36 model sedan out of the garage, drove through the city and hit the Ysleta highway eastward through the Valley.
It was dark enough to call for headlights by the time I’d driven the thirteen miles to Ysleta. It was still trying to rain.
I turned south on the Zaragoza road, slowed at the bridge and was waved on by a slickered U. S. Customs’ man, pulled on to the other side where a Mexican official glanced in the back of my car and said, “Bueno, Senor,” politely.
Just across the bridge the Waterfill Gardens Cafe and picnic grounds were brightly lighted but didn’t have many customers.
I passed the Gardens and turned left on the first road as instructed by the note, and the rain was beginning to come down again.
All at once I realized what I was actually letting myself in for. Just crossing the Rio Grande from north to south somehow makes an unaccountable difference. It’s purely a mental reaction, of course. Actually, there are the same carefully tended farms, the same adobe houses on the Mexican side as on the American. Along the border the percentage of Mexicans to Americans is approximately the same on either side.
But there’s a feeling of helplessness that grips you once you leave American soil behind. After all is said and done, American citizens don’t realize what law-and-order actually means until they’re in a foreign country where it’s only an empty phrase.
You can laugh it off, and I can laugh it off, now, but it wasn’t something I could laugh off that rainy night while headed for I-didn’t-know-what at the ranch of the bull south of the Rio Grande. People do disappear in Mexico without leaving a trace behind them. Such thoughts were my companions as I drove along slowly, and my damned imagination had me jumpy.
The road was deserted and my headlights cut a narrow swath of light through rain that slanted down. I kept a sharp lookout for Burke as I drove along, thinking he might be where he could give me the high-sign, but I didn’t see him.
With Zaragoza about a quarter of a mile behind me, the road curved sharply to the left across an irrigation ditch lined with cottonwoods.
As I made the turn, my headlights picked up and outlined the figure of a woman stepping from beneath the shelter of a tree toward the road. She was facing me and her outstretched arm signalled me to stop.
There was a white face beneath the soggy brim of a hat which might have once been jaunty. I stepped on the brake because she was an American and had no business being out alone on a deserted stretch of Mexican road on a wet night.
She had the right-hand door open and was sliding in beside me before my car had stopped rolling. She said, “You’re late,” with chattering teeth, before she’d had a chance to see my face.
I turned my head sideways and the dashlight threw a faint glow over both our faces. Her teeth stopped chattering when she got a good look at me. She said:
“Oh, I’m sorry. I thought you were... someone else.”
She was good-looking, in a hard, self-possessed sort of way. Perhaps I shouldn’t say hard. I’m trying to set down my initial impression without allowing it to be colored by later events. “Self-possessed” tells the whole story. She’s the only woman I’ve ever known who could be wholly self-possessed under just those circumstances.
Her voice was cool and impersonal. She was about thirty, with widely spaced gray eyes which regarded me steadily, a wide mouth that was heavily rouged, and a firm chin. She wore a tailored linen suit which clung, rain-soaked, to an athletically firm body with its full share of curves. She seemed more curious than embarrassed as she studied my face.
I found myself apologizing: “I’m sorry too. I didn’t know you were waiting for someone, and I naturally thought...”
She said: “It does sound screwy, but I made the appointment before I knew it was going to rain.”
There was mockery in her eyes. I knew she was from the east. A New Yorker, I guessed. I couldn’t help stiffening up defensively. New Yorkers (particularly the female of the species) always put me on the defensive. I’m just a boy from the cow country, and they seem to sense it intuitively. I asked:
“Do you want to sit here out of the rain and wait for whomever you are expecting?”
She repeated, “Whomever?” with upcurved lips, as though it amused her to hear me use the correct word under the unusual circumstances.
I hate patronizing females from the east. I said: “It was merely a helpful suggestion. As a matter of fact, I’m late for an appointment as it is.”
“So am I.” The curve of amusement went away from her lips and she looked worried. “Are you going far in this direction?”
“About ten miles.”
“As far as... the Hacienda del Torro?”
I should have been surprised but I wasn’t. It was all in line with the night... with the adventure I was embarked upon. Things like that do happen once a man pushes out into the unknown. I only said:
“That happens to be my destination.”
Her eyes widened and she bit her lower lip. She was prettier than I had first thought.
She shrugged her shoulders. “Things do happen, don’t they. Would you be willing to pinch-hit for my negligent escort?”
I said: “I wouldn’t leave a she-duck stranded out on a night like this,” and stepped on the starter.
She put her hand on my arm as I reached for the gear-shift lever. There was pulsing warmth in her hand, and her voice was oddly changed to a lower, more intimate tone:
“It isn’t as simple as it sounds. I was to have been vouched for by... whomever it was I was expecting. I won’t be able to get in without someone to vouch for me. Unless you’re willing to do that, I might as well stay right here.”
There it was already. Ten miles from the hacienda, and I had bumped into something funny. I couldn’t afford to pass up anything. I said:
“Why not? You’ll be in the car with me. There’s no reason I should tell anyone I picked you up on the road.”
Her fingers closed tightly on my arm. “Hadn’t you better get started?”
I put the car in gear and eased out the clutch. I glanced at her as we pulled away from the cotton-woods, and said: “It’s going to look funny, though. You soaked to the skin and me perfectly dry. What’ll I tell them at the hacienda? That you got out in the rain to change a tire while I sat in the car with my slicker on?”
She laughed and lifted a small leather overnight bag which I hadn’t noticed before. “I brought along a change when I saw it might be wet waiting. If you’ll take the ten miles slowly, I’ll slide into the back seat and make a quick change to dry things.”
I told her to go ahead, and she climbed over into the back.
“The dome-light switch is by the door,” I told her, “if you feel the need of light.”
She thanked me matter-of-factly and switched it on. I drove slowly into the rain. I’m not going to say I made any great effort to keep my eyes off the rear-view mirror which reflected her in the dim glow of the dome-light as she undressed. What the hell? She must have known it was there, and she wasn’t making any effort to keep herself from being seen.