Bandit's Trail

by Max Brand

  “Whatever you ask …”

  “Hush. It is not for me, but for Milaro. You are rich, as I said before. Valdivia, justice can be turned aside with money. There are great brains in the law that may be hired. There are newspapers that may be influenced. Could you secure … say a long term of imprisonment … for Milaro?”

  “I could,” said the estanciero. “And I would, my friend. Put your faith in that.” And hastily he poured himself another dram and tossed it off, then shrugged his shoulders and was able to face his companion once more and to proceed with the conference. Now,” he said more briskly, “let me hear the plan?”

  “It is simple … and devilish,” Dupont said heavily. “When I ride off tonight, follow behind me with half a dozen of your best men. Do you understand? I shall lead you to a small shack not five miles from the estancia. On your own ground. Keep your men back until you hear a pistol shot. It will mean that I have secured El Tigre and it is safe for you to ride in. Or else it will mean that I have failed to secure him and that he has put a bullet through me. God knows which would be for the better.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  A half dozen would not suit with the mind of the estanciero. From the puestos there were called forth a full dozen and a half of well-tried and trusted gauchos, and they were mounted and carefully equipped with revolvers and with rifles. For who could tell what the night would bring forth? And, when this was done, with the trembling Carreño beside him, Don Sebastian himself set forth at the head of the troop and followed the dim figure of El Crisco, who rode before them through the chill starlight.

  They saw a hut, its squat outlines half lost against a gentle swell of rising ground. To that hut rode El Crisco. They saw a door or barrier in place of a door, opened enough to let forth one red ray of firelight. Then El Crisco disappeared into the interior and the long wait began, with the ears of Don Sebastian straining to catch the expected report of a revolver—straining foolishly, for he knew that, if a shot were fired at that distance, he could hear it as clearly as the booming of a cannon.

  As for Dupont, he entered the hut and found El Tigre sitting like an Indian, cross-legged, before the small fire, while in the corner at some distance lay Francesca, wrapped in a blanket. At this sight, the cowpuncher began to step on tiptoe, but El Tigre smiled at him and shook his head, as much as to say: “It is no use. She will waken.”

  Indeed, at that instant she sat bolt erect among the blankets and laughed at Dupont in the very midst of a clumsily cautious step.

  “I have lost the knack of a light step,” said El Crisco, finding himself unable to smile.

  “You will find, Charles,” said the outlaw, “that a woman can always hear the step of some one man …”

  “Father!” cried Francesca.

  “Ah,” said the father, “I have struck out a spark and started a fire.”

  “What did you say?” Dupont asked, frowning.

  “Nothing for the ears of a deaf man,” said Milaro. “Ah, Charles, someday …”

  “Father!” cried the girl again, and shook off the blanket and half rose.

  “Well,” muttered the older man, chuckling softly, “I have said more than enough for some. But for the deaf and the blind …” He broke off, still chuckling.

  Dupont, looking at the girl, saw that she was a rosy red, frowning and smiling at once, and looking at her father rather than at him.

  “What is it all about?” he asked.

  At this, she flashed a glance at him and began to smile suddenly. “Nothing,” she said. “Nothing, of course. It is just one of father’s old-fashioned jokes.”

  “As old,” El Tigre said, “as the story of man and woman.”

  Dupont stared at him, bewildered. To his heavy conscience there seemed to be a grave meaning hidden behind this playfulness. What could they have guessed? But if they had guessed at the truth, though the grim Milaro might smile, surely the girl would not be able to. At length, he shook his head and gave up the problem. He sat down by the fire and stretched out his hands toward it.

  “You are cold, Charles,” said the older man. And he tossed some fresh wood upon the fire, while Dupont writhed inwardly. From the very first, upon the smallest occasions, these touches of gentleness in the celebrated man-killer had moved him to the heart, but tonight it was a touch of the most exquisite misery.

  “I am well enough,” he said tersely.

  Francesca, rising from her bed, swept a blanket about her graceful body. She stood above them, the firelight playing softly over her face. “It is hard to warm a cold heart, Father,” she said. “You are wasting the wood on Charles.”

  The cowpuncher glanced up to her and he saw what portrait painters have seen before, that a woman is always loveliest when her face is viewed from beneath. Oh, cunning flatterers who paint the lady descending the staircase, her slender hand upon the balustrade, her head proudly lifted. So stood Francesca, one hand held above the fluttering warmth of the fire. He hastily abased his eyes. But looking down, he could not shut her beauty away from his heart of hearts.

  “Why, my girl,” the outlaw was saying, still chuckling as he spoke, “these Americans take fire slowly. But when they begin to burn, the fire never dies.”

  “Hush,” Francesca said, and stamped.

  But when the cowpuncher glanced up at her again, surprised at this small passion, he saw that she was smiling through her anger. Her glance touched his with a pleasant shock, and he wondered as he saw her hastily avert her eyes.

  Here the outlaw jerked up his head. “Was that the neigh of a horse?” he asked sharply.

  “Yes. It is a horse pasture that we are in,” answered Dupont calmly enough, though his heart was thundering.

  The first alarm still kept a frown upon the face of the older man for a moment, but presently he nodded. He had formed the habit of accepting the judgments of his younger ally without question since that miracle in Nabor.

  “You are very gloomy, Charles,” he said at last in that gentle tone with which he usually addressed his rescuer.

  “I?” protested Dupont. “Not at all.”

  “Yes,” said Francesca. “He has come to Argentina. But he has left his heart behind him. In the hands of one of those cold-faced American girls. I know.”

  “What do you know, Francesca?” asked the father.

  “That she is not worthy of Charles.” She leaned a little. “Tell me,” she commanded. “Is it true?”

  “You mean,” murmured Dupont, taking his mind from his sad thoughts and letting it brood with a mournful pleasure over the beauty of the girl, “you mean that I have left behind me … a woman I love?”

  “Yes, yes.”

  He shook his head. “No. I have not.” He raised his head and looked fairly at her, playing with a double truth. “I have never met a girl, indeed, that I cared for a tithe as much, Francesca, as I care for you.”

  “Aha!” chuckled El Tigre. “He is catching.”

  But the girl only sighed. “I believe it. Ah, Señor Dupont, how strange that so brave a man should have so cold a heart.” And she turned abruptly and covered herself in her rudely improvised bunk.

  Dupont stared after her in alarm. “How have I angered her?” he whispered to El Tigre.

  The outlaw answered: “Any woman would know. But I shall not tell you. And now,” he added, “tell me what luck you have had in your exploring tonight. I suppose it was to skirt around the house of Valdivia that you rode out?”

  “It was for that, of course.”

  “Come, my son. Is it not time to tell me what plan has been in your mind, to draw you here into the mouth of danger?”

  “The time has not yet come.”

  “And yet, Charles, you are sure that the spoils will be worth this trip?”

  “I think so.”

  “Can you tell me nothing?”

  �
�Only this. That I shall be able to use this before I am through.” He drew from his pack a pair of shining handcuffs.

  The eyes of El Tigre enlarged. “I think I understand,” he said. “You, too, have come to have Valdivia. You intend to take him a prisoner, amigo?”

  Dupont shrugged his shoulders. “I am afraid that I have been a fool and got handcuffs that are too large for his skinny wrists and hands. These, señor, would fit you.”

  “No, I think not.” He looked down to his brawny wrists and shook his head.

  “Let me try them, however,” insisted Dupont.

  The eyes of El Tigre lifted from the manacles and fastened upon his companion with a penetrating brilliance.

  “What is wrong, Señor Milaro?” asked Dupont.

  “Nothing … I had a thought … but of course I was wrong. Try them on my hands if you will.” And he extended those powerful hands almost eagerly toward his companion, as though anxious to show that his distrust had been the thing of an instant only, an instinctive recoiling.

  “It is a small thing,” Dupont said. “However …” And reaching forward, with two sharp metallic clicks, the handcuffs settled into place, fitted snugly over the skin, and pressed into it. At the same instant, he reached to the holster of the outlaw and snatched the revolver from the holster, then he fired his own gun into the ceiling.

  The glance of Milaro flashed upon either side, as though he sought desperately for a means of escape or an offensive weapon. Then, seeing nothing and hearing in the distance the rapid roaring of approaching hoof beats, he settled back in his place, regarding his captor with a sort of sad curiosity.

  Francesca was on her feet, crying out in alarm: “What has happened?” Then, seeing the thin steel bands that bound the hands of her father, she said: “Is it a jest, Father?”

  The older man looked up to her with a strange smile. “Listen.”

  A breath of silence passed over the hut; the noise of the approaching horsemen was distinct.

  “Our dear friend, the brave Charles, has saved me and has saved you so that he might offer us up as a ransom to the law.”

  The girl leaned against the wall, white with grief and horror. Why did she not catch up a weapon, like the little wildcat that she was? wondered Dupont. But she made no stir to resist. This blow that had fallen upon her seemed greater than she could even attempt to ward off.

  “We are the price he pays,” the outlaw said bitterly, “to make his peace with society. Ah, to think that in twenty years I have trusted only one man … and he should prove a traitor to me.”

  Dupont, sick at heart, but knowing not that he had irrevocably committed himself, stood before them with the two guns hanging loosely in his hands.

  “Señor Milaro,” he said feebly, “God be my judge. I have tried to do what is best for Francesca.”

  The girl started, and stared at Dupont with what seemed to him an inexplicable commingling of dread and hope.

  “For Francesca?” the father said. “Listen, child, we shall find that there is still honor in this man. It is to save her from this wild life that you have done this thing, Dupont?”

  “It is, señor. And to give her into the keeping of a good man.”

  “Meaning yourself?” El Tigre inquired sneeringly.

  “Meaning the same man who has sworn to me that he will spend money, like water, to get you a sentence of imprisonment, but not death.”

  “He must have more than money in his power to do that. He must be able to work a miracle. Continue, Charles. Who is this man?”

  “One who will devote his life and his power to the happiness of Francesca. Alas, Señor Milaro, a man so full of generosity and goodness of heart, that I gave him my word to serve him, even to the betrayal of you, Milaro.”

  “I begin to have a thought,” groaned Milaro. “Francesca, it is the dog, Valdivia!”

  “No, no!” screamed the girl. “I will die …”

  Out of her hand the knife was torn by Dupont, who stood panting and stammering above her, holding her close and helpless with his arm. “Do you hear?” he pleaded. “In the world there is no finer man and no truer gentleman. He is …”

  But Francesca, clinging to him suddenly, wept upon his breast like a child.

  Closer swept the noise of the horses, the shouting of the wild riders.

  “Listen to me, Charles,” El Tigre said in that same dull and hopeless voice with which he had been speaking before, “you have been tricked by a cur.”

  “Señor Milaro, I would not have spoken of it … but confess that when you robbed him of the woman he loved …”

  “Robbed him? I?”

  “Did you not? And try to murder his men?”

  The voice of El Tigre rose to a hollow thunder. “In the name of God, Charles, what are you saying?”

  “Did you not? Confess, Milaro. One of them is still living. LeBon is still living.”

  “He is one of the two rats who laid an ambush for me. Did I steal Dolores? Ah, Charles, he would have bought away from me the woman who loved me, and when she fled with me, he hounded us both with his men. It was his pursuit that drove us out and away just before Francesca was born. It was exposure to the night that killed my sweet Dolores. All of that was the work of Valdivia. Charles! Charles! I have told you that he was a cur. You will feel his teeth yet.”

  As he spoke, the barrier at the doorway was torn down. Into the hut crowded half a dozen men, coming with staring eyes of terror, with rifles and revolvers extended stiffly in their hands, so great was their fear of the two men who they saw.

  “Señor Val-Valdivia,” stammered one of the leaders. “Here is a great miracle. Here are both El Tigre and El Crisco. Not one … but both.”

  And the answer of Valdivia rang high with exultation in the rear of the party: “Seize them both and make them safe. This is a great day for the law of the land. My lads, the reward … every penny of it is to be divided among you.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  It was done in a trice. That last command had stunned Dupont and left him momentarily helpless. Before he could recover, the girl was plucked rudely away from him and he was bound hand and foot. He did not recover from his daze until Valdivia himself made his way into the hut, his face white, his eyes burning with an ecstasy of pleasure. That roving glance flashed across the hut and settled instantly on the girl. He could not speak. He could only point, and, in answer, a gaucho leaped at her as though she had been a wild young tigress. He caught her by the arms. At the same moment the loaded butt of Valdivia’s riding crop crashed on the fellow’s head and dropped him on the ground.

  “Gently,” Valdivia ordered. “It is the lady of the estancia who you see before you. Gently, my lads.”

  “Señor Valdivia,” Dupont said, the blackness of helpless rage beginning to sweep across his eyes, “is this a jest? Am I to be bound like a criminal?”

  “Faugh!” snarled out Valdivia. “The murdering gringo wishes for different treatment. He shall have it.” And he struck him a cutting blow across his face with the lash of the quirt. It required the strength of four men to hold back Dupont as he lurched at the Argentinean.

  “You see, Charles,” said El Tigre, who had submitted to fate without a murmur, “you see it is as I have said. He is a cur, and now you feel his teeth. Is it not so?”

  “Be silent,” Valdivia snapped. “Carlos,” he added, with a voice whose incredible malignity made the blood of the younger man turn cold, “I have waited … and waited … but now God gives you into my hand. It is enough. Yes, it is almost enough to have made the waiting worthwhile. My men, take them out. Señorita Francesca, will you come with me?”

  He reached to take her arm, and, with a glance of unutterable loathing, she submitted. They passed out from the hut into the night leaving behind them one loiterer with a stunned face and dull eyes—Juan Carreño.

 
; The sound of horses began and grew faint in the distance. Still, with the dying firelight upon his face, Carreño pondered and struggled to understand, and could not. That destroying wraith, that soul keen and terrible as a sword, that same El Crisco who had been the hero of all his daydreams of late, had been taken, unresisting, before his eyes. It was not possible, and yet he had seen it. The foundations of the universe, for poor Carreño, were shaken to their base. The world was now chaos indeed.

  He was like some reader of Homer who, having come to love the noble Hector, reads with disdain and with disbelief, how that hero shrunk from the spear of fierce Diomedes. It could not have been.

  So it was with Carreño. How could that bold, wild spirit of El Crisco that had made a trail of destruction across Argentina be reduced without so much as a single blow?

  Then a cold and dismal explanation crept into the slow mind of the secretary. It was treason. It was the basest treachery that had disarmed the great warrior. And whose treason? That of Señor Don Sebastian Valdivia himself. It was not possible for Carreño to digest this thought in a moment.

  He rode wildly back toward the estancia, but, as his horse galloped and the wind of its running struck into the face of the poor secretary, he saw the truth more and more clearly. The thing from which he fled stood up in his mind’s eye, clearly.

  He had listened at the door of the library. He had heard enough snatches of the talk of his master with El Crisco to understand what was planned. All for Valdivia, El Crisco had planned this coup. And now, by Valdivia, he was undone, and taken a prisoner to be swung at the end of a rope at the due pleasure of the cruel law.