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.




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