For months Rudolph Klein had been living in a little Mexican town on the
border. There were really two towns, but they were built together with
only a strip of a hundred feet between. Along this strip ran the
border itself, with a tent pitched on the American side, and patrols of
soldiers guarding it. The American side was bright and clean, orderly
and self-respecting, but only a hundred feet away, unkempt, dusty, with
adobe buildings and a notorious gambling-hell in plain view, was Mexico
itself--leisurely, improvident, not overscrupulous Mexico.
At first Rudolph was fairly contented. It amused him. He liked the
idleness of it. He liked kicking the innumerable Mexican dogs out of
his way. He liked baiting the croupiers in the "Owl." He liked wandering
into that notorious resort and shoving Hindus, Chinamen, and Mexicans
out of the way, while he flung down a silver dollar and watched the
dealers with cunning, avaricious eyes.
He liked his own situation, too. It amused him to think that here he was
safe, while only a hundred feet away he was a criminal, fugitive from
the law. He liked to go to the very border itself, and jeer at the men
on guard there.
"If I was on that side," he would say, "you'd have me in one of those
rotten uniforms, wouldn't you? Come on over, fellows. The liquor's
fine."
Then, one day, a Chinaman he had insulted gave him an unexpected shove,
and he had managed to save himself by a foot from the clutch of a
quiet-faced man in plain clothes who spent a certain amount of time
lounging on the other side of the border.
That had sobered him. He kept away from the border itself after that,
although the temptation of it drew him. After a few weeks, when the
novelty had worn off, he began to hunger for the clean little American
town across the line. He wanted to talk to some one. He wanted to boast,
to be candid. These Mexicans only laughed when he bragged to them. But
he dared not cross.
There was a high-fenced enclosure behind the "Owl," the segregated
district of the town. There, in tiny one-roomed houses built in
rows like barracks were the girls and women who had drifted to this
jumping-off place of the world. In the daytime they slept or sat on
the narrow, ramshackle porches, untidy, noisy, unspeakably wretched.
At night, however, they blossomed forth in tawdry finery, in the
dancing-space behind the gambling-tables. Some of them were fixtures.
They had drifted there from New Orleans, perhaps, or southern
California, and they lacked the initiative or the money to get away.
But most of them came in, stayed a month or two, found the place a
nightmare, with its shootings and stabbings, and then disappeared.