Outlaw's Pursuit

by Max Brand

  “A good horse, son,” I repeated, “that can carry me and carry me fast.”

  He looked over my bulk, and then grinned. “Old Brinsly, he got up half a dozen of the San Marin hosses a while back,” said the boy. “Maybe you’d want to pay the price of one of them?”

  The name stuck in my throat. San Marin! I remembered where I had last seen it.

  “What are the San Marin horses?” I asked him.

  “Ain’t you heard? They’re the get of that Comanche hoss. Pa says they can’t be beat. But the price of ’em can’t be beat, neither. Nothing less than five hundred. That’s all they want!”

  “I’d like to look at them for fun,” I said. “Where’s the Brinsly place?”

  He pointed it out to me—a wedge of roof rising out of the horizon mist, and I started off to see the Comanche horses. It was a stiff five-mile walk to the place, and yet I had my reward. The very first pasture into which I looked contained six horses of a build that I thought I recognized. I had seen that cut of horse between me and the dawn colors some twenty days before—horses that seemed half Arab and half thoroughbred. They were all bay and chestnut—the colors of hot blood, and they were made according to a style that filled the eye. They were not big—I suppose that the tallest of them was not two inches over fifteen hands—but I did not have to ask if they could carry weight. What quarters, what shoulders, what powerful short coupling. I suppose that to some they would have seemed a little short of leg—rather pony built. But I noticed the fine taper from haunch to hock, and I told myself that this was running stock. I like a horse with brains, too, and these animals had intelligence. They looked back at me out of their deer-like eyes.

  I went to the house and asked the cook for Mr. Brinsly.

  “What for?” he said.

  “I want to buy one of his San Marin horses,” I said.

  It made his jaw drop, and presently, after he had hurried back into the house, a thin-faced man of middle age with the look and the voice of a gentleman came out to me.

  He did not show his surprise or his curiosity at the sight of me. He merely said: “I’m sorry but these horses of mine are not for sale. I brought them up here at a considerable expense and great cost of trouble.”

  But what I noticed most of all was that he did not look at me as I was accustomed to have people look. He did not stare at me with the words Hugo Ames forming on his lips. And I saw that I could thank my broken razor of six weeks before. So I told him frankly my trouble was that my weight broke down an average horse and that I saw his San Marin stock looked like weight carriers.

  He took me out to the pasture, at that, and he seemed glad enough to talk about them. It was his hope, he told me, to breed them gradually until they had replaced all the common stock on his ranch, and he pointed them out to me one by one until his finger stopped with a low-built chestnut mare.

  “I could let you have her,” he said. “Except that I would not sell her to any man. There is too much devil in her. I even hesitate about breeding her, for the fiend that was in Comanche is in her, full stock.”

  I looked at her again. She was not as pretty as the others, but her ample and powerful lines appealed to me. I asked him his price. As for her temper, I did not care for that. It is my theory that no horse is bad because of wrong instincts, but simply because it has been maltreated by people. And I felt there was plenty of time for me to tame Sandy, which he said was her name. So I asked him to name a price, and he put on a high one—$750.

  She was driven into the corral and I looked her over—perfectly sound, six years old, in the maturity of her strength, and with a wicked eye that promised me bad temper, to be sure, but the endurance that a great many mean horses possess. I paid Mr. Brinsly his $750 and bought an old saddle and bridle from him, also. Then I inquired about San Marin and told him that I had come down from the north.

  There was still a long journey ahead of me. 500 miles, according to Brinsly.

  But that distance did not daunt me. I was more and more convinced that this was exactly the type of horse that I had seen ridden by the four who I had trailed, so I started down the road with Sandy on a lead rope behind me, to the great disappointment of Mr. Brinsly, who had expected me to try her paces at once.

  I had not such pride, however. I ride about as well as most men, but I am no genius in the saddle. I decided that when I mounted Sandy, I would have her more or less at my mercy.

  What I did, then, was to stop at the village and load her with a heavy pack of food—a great many unnecessaries in the line of canned goods that would increase her poundage in the pack. Then I took Sandy straight ahead for a two-day march. I gave her scant chance for food or for water, and I walked her in the heaviest going that I could find. And, at the end of the second day, when she was quite down-headed with weariness, I unstrapped the pack and I risked myself in the saddle. It was exactly as I had hoped that it would be. Sandy snorted and tried a few buck jumps in the thick sand that was the place I had selected. Then she stood still and flattened her ears. I slapped her gently on the flank with my open hand, and Sandy broke into a gentle trot.

  I was delighted; my delight was a little premature, but that, however, is something which I must tell about later on. From that moment and through the rest of my journey, Sandy worked like a trooper. She reeled off her fifty miles a day through all manner of going. And on the eleventh day after I had left Mr. Brinsly’s place, I worked Sandy up a steep mountainside and saw directly beneath me the beautiful valley that bore the name of San Marin.

  I looked it up and down. It was a pleasant picture, I suppose, but I was not there to hunt for beauty. I was bent on finding José and his companion murderers, and my thoughts were of old Truck Janvers, where I had left him dead on the floor of his cabin. I reached for a gun, instinctively, and I began to finger the handle of it. For I knew that I should have work on my hands before I left the valley of San Marin.

  VIII

  It was one of those places that appear too good by far to be true. There were not even any high mountains near it to roughen its outlook. All the higher, sterner peaks stood back at a distance where the horizon blue would soften them. Beneath them were smoother heights covered with a great foresting of pines and of other evergreens, and below these again were gently rolling hills covered with pasture lands that stretched down to the bottom of the valley where San Marin curved back and forth among the green fields of alfalfa and through orchards and vineyards.

  It was the very perfection of quiet beauty, that landscape, and in the midst of it, stretched out irregularly, with an arm thrown across the Marin by means of a bridge and another village on the farther bank, was the town itself. All the walls, from this distance, were purest white, and the roofs were varying shades from pink to red. I could see the plazas, the little green shadings that mean garden places and groups of shade trees. And I could see the streets, white with dust.

  This was the hot hour of the middle day, and there was no life in the valley, no life in the town to meet the eye. It was the time of siesta, religiously kept. And I had to shake my head with force in order to remember suddenly that this was a part of our United States and not a section out of old Mexico.

  By the time that Sandy had taken me down to the town, the valley was waking. I passed half a dozen great-wheeled carts that had presumably taken vegetables into the town in the morning and were now returning empty. The drivers were a jolly lot. And all of them pointed with astonishment to me, and then to the fine mare that I was riding. No doubt the contrast was weird enough.

  When I came closer to the place, a flashing fellow rode out past me. He was like a thing out of a picture book with the wind nodding his gaudy Mexican sombrero and the sun rippling and splashing from the gold and silver laces that covered his Mexican short jacket. He was not a youth, but a fellow with a face half-dignified and half-villainous, garnished with an angular beard and waxed mustaches. He would have passed me without a look, but his glance touched on Sandy, and then he
was surprised into an exclamation of extreme wonder.

  For, in fact, he was himself riding upon a horse of the same breed, but of lines much inferior to those of my mare. I began to wonder that I had never heard of the breed until so recently. Evidently this little valley was filled with that Comanche blood. However, it is true that in the West there are a thousand odd nooks and corners cut off from the knowledge of the rest of the world by barriers of desert and mountains, as San Marin was cut off.

  The streets were typical of those of any Mexican town of the second or third rate. They were fetlock deep in liquid dust except for occasional cobbled stretches, and children played in that sea of white, and pigs hunted grunting through it and refused to budge for a passing rider. And in the deep, cool shadows of the low doorways sat squat women shouting gossip to one another, or, in the dim interiors, I saw them patting out tortillas. The spicy fragrance of peppers sifted through the air. And, on the whole, there was a sense of pleasant life—lazy life—contented life.

  I found the barber in front of his shop, talking to the shoemaker, who was working a soft dressing into a stiff great square of leather in the sunshine. They, like the others, stopped their talk and stared at me and gaped at my horse, as though they knew perfectly well that it was a $750 purchase and that a man who looked like a tramp had very little right to be sitting in the saddle. However, I had made up my mind as to what I must do. That flash of the splendid gentleman who had passed me as I entered the town had filled me with an inspiration,

  When I sat in the barber’s chair, I did not need to be told to use Spanish on the barber. I gave him careful directions in that tongue. I had been away on a long hunting trip. I had been ill. And now I wished to be trimmed up. I would not have him shave me all over. Instead, I had him leave a short beard, trimmed to a dangerous point, and I had him leave mustaches. They were not long enough to draw out too fine, but they made a black shadow across my upper lip. Then I had my hair trimmed, also—not too short. And when all was ended I called for a mirror and regarded myself.

  It was a notable transformation. Even the wide, short nose had gained an indefinable touch of elegance. I was at a step one of the pseudo-aristocrats, and I had to bite my lip to keep from smiling. With a lace collar around my neck, I might have stepped into the frame of a seventeenth century painting. There was an odd up-angling of my eyebrows that the barber did not need to assist. It was there by nature—something not noticeable before, but now, added to the mustache and to the beard, it gave a little sinister air that was perfectly in keeping with the part that I wished to fill.

  I paid the barber liberally, and then went to a clothing store. I came in a hobo barbered to the taste of a grandee. I went out a harmonious picture. I came in a sober citizen. I came out a golden flash. I stood on the steps of the store and pushed the heavy sombrero back from my head, and, as I rolled a cigarette, I was aware of my brilliance in the sloping sun of the afternoon. Others were aware, also. A youngster driving a dusty herd of milk cows home walled his eyes at me in awe. And a pair of girls, with baskets in their hands, stopped for a single flash of me, and then hurried on, whispering together.

  I fancied myself very much in this new toggery and this new style of hair on the face. Then I went to a saddlery and outfitted Sandy with saddle and bridle after the most fashionable style in San Marin. And, when she carried me down the street after that, I could not help feeling that the silly little fool was arching her neck partly because of the little tinkling of bells at her throat latch and partly because she was really proud to have such a splendid rider on her back.

  Next to the hotel, and there I asked for a room. Oh, there was no doubt as to the effect that I made. I was implored to inscribe my name upon the register. It was done. I was begged to step up after the proprietor. And he walked sidewise in front of me like a crab—for fear he should insult me by turning his back—I felt that it was my duty to find fault. He showed me three rooms. I declared that none of them were fit to stable my horse in. And while he stood perspiring and rubbing his anxious hands together, I told him that I would take the corner room.

  “Señor Mendez,” he said, “we shall do our best to make you happy here.”

  Yes, I have forgotten to say that I had written upon the register: Francisco Mendez.

  And so I strolled down the stairs again and stood on the verandah airing myself and smoking a tailor-made cigarette, and yearning mightily in my heart for a sack of tobacco and brown papers.

  Well, I was wonderfully happy. Stolen happiness I felt that it was, and therefore doubly and trebly sweet to me. But consider that during several years I had not shown myself to other men except for a fleeting glimpse, gun in hand.

  Now, however, I could look others boldly in the face, secure in the belief that they would never recognize me, for those mustaches and the pointed beard added a good eight years to my age. I was a full thirty years or more in appearance. The only danger was my voice and my bulk which was a good deal greater than that of most men. But the long tramp had thinned my face, and I determined that it should be kept thin. The pointed beard masked the blunt, heavy lines of my jaw. And, at a stride, I felt that I had left behind me somewhere among the rude mountains the ghost of Hugo Ames upon whose head lay the burden of a $15,000 reward if he were apprehended alive or dead. There remained only a new self, resplendent and without fear of what the eyes of other men might see in me.

  But, ah, how marvelous it was to bathe in the presence of other men. I felt a great expanding of the heart. And at the thought of returning again to the lonely and the dreary life, my soul grew small and cold.

  A cowpuncher, inevitably American in his rolling gait and his rough clothes, turned in from the street and swallowed a grin as he saw me.

  “Hot as the devil, ain’t it, partner?” he said with great good nature.

  “Have little English, señor,” I said, and looked blankly down upon him.

  He nodded and joined another man on the verandah of the old building—a prospector by the weedy look of him and the palms of his hands, whitened with calluses.

  “By the cut of him,” said the cowpuncher, speaking freely in the English that it was presumed I did not understand, “by the cut of him, I figgered that he might be quite a man. But dog-gone me if he ain’t just greaser plain and simple.”

  “Not so simple at that,” said the other.

  “Two hundred pounds,” said one.

  “And thirty,” said the other.

  “Maybe you’re right. But him bein’ a greaser, you or me could handle him, I guess.”

  I bit my lip, and thus eradicated the smile. This was typical Western thinking on their part, and I sympathized with it. I shouted for a mozo, and, when a boy came panting out to me, I pointed out the best and largest chair and told him that it was too small and ordered another from the interior. He scampered away, and presently he came back with a leather easy chair. Still it would not do. I pointed out some imaginary dust, and, when that was removed, I deigned to stretch myself at ease.

  There was a muffled snort from the prospector. “Too fine to live outside of cotton batting.”

  What the reply was I did not know, for, at that instant, I was lost to all other sights and all other sounds except the trampling of a small cavalcade of horses and, in the midst of them, the familiar face of José!

  IX

  I carried no guns for exterior show, in this fine new costume of mine, but I made an instinctive gesture with my hands toward a pair of weapons that were ready beneath the clothes. Then I controlled my impulse. There was no need of making a fool of myself. I could not remedy matters by shooting a Negro in the streets of San Marin. For the root of the matter that I wished to discover lay not in the death of the Negro—that was only a personal spite of my own—it consisted in discovering the reason for the slaying of Truck Janvers.

  Besides, there was enough for me to look at. José was one of a cavalcade of four Negroes, all mounted upon the fine horses of the Comanche bree
d, and in front of them, not riding even these beautiful animals, but mounted upon true thoroughbreds of the finest stock, rode as pretty a girl as I had ever seen—a beauty of the highest Spanish type, with all her dark loveliness excellently set off by the golden-haired cavalier who accompanied her.

  Yes, they made as handsome a couple as I ever laid eyes on. And they passed on, chatting and laughing together. I watched them out of sight, with the dust cloud curling up behind their grim escort. Then I called for a boy again, and the mozo was instantly before me.

  “Who has just passed?” I asked.

  He did not have to ask what I meant. Apparently all eyes in San Marin had been focused upon this brilliant train.

  “It is the Señorita Caporno and her men, and Señor Vidett rode with her.”

  “Who is Señorita Caporno? Who is Señor Vidett?”

  For, I said to myself, one of the pair was the cause of the dastardly murder of Truck Janvers. One of the pair had sent four hired killers far north to find and to destroy him. I swallowed my anger. My eagerness was greater still than the heat in my blood.

  “The Señor Caporno . . .,” began the boy.

  “Is there a Señor Caporno?”

  “Ah, señor! Have you not heard of him?”

  “Never,” I admitted.

  “But he was a president. . . .”

  “A president?”

  “Ah, of a great country, señor!”

  “Send out the master,” I said to him. “I wish to hear of these people.”

  The proprietor came out at once, smiling and obsequious. I felt that it was my duty still to treat him as if he were dirt beneath my feet. How to step out of the lofty role that I had created for myself, I did not know.

  “The valley is not a complete desert,” I said. “I have seen one flower in it, señor.”

  “True, true!” he said. “You have seen the señorita.”

  “Caporno. Is not that the name?”

  “That is the name. But did the mozo tell me right? Is it possible, señor, that you have not heard of. . . ?”