by Max Brand
The words of another great man dinted upon the brain of Carreño, El Tigre saying: I told you he was a cur, and now you feel his teeth.
He recalled still more—the conversation of Valdivia in that New Orleans hotel—how long ago it seemed. But that had been merely many words strung together, and words did not have much meaning to Carreño. Here were actions that even a child could comprehend.
He reached the estancia, where he was called at once into the room of Don Sebastian. There he found the estanciero walking back and forth, singing to himself in an ecstasy of happiness.
“It is ended, Carreño,” said the rich man. “The work of twenty years is ended. The triumph of El Tigre has failed at last. Now I have the second self of Dolores in my hands, and El Tigre himself is a dead man.”
“Dead!” gasped out Carreño.
“To all intents and purposes. Sit down, Carreño, and write this letter.”
It was not a long letter. It had the modest brevity of a conqueror, informing the authorities that, by the grace of fortune and owing to certain stratagems and finesses, Don Sebastian had been able to put his hands, at one stroke, upon both of those terrible miscreants—El Crisco and El Tigre. They were now resting at his home. They would be safely guarded there until a strong escort arrived to remove them to prison.
“Señor,” breathed Carreño. “You are not sending even Charles Dupont to prison?”
“Not? Of course I am, Carreño.”
“But this service …”
“Why, my lad, for the services of Dupont I am very grateful … to my own adroitness that knew how to use the gringo. But now he ceases to be a tool. His existence begins to be a danger to me. Therefore, I make all haste to remove that danger from my path. Very good. By the day after tomorrow, at the latest, the escort will arrive. And … you, Carreño, will receive a part of the reward. And the reward upon the heads of both these men will be a fortune for every one of you, even when it has been divided into eighteen parts. Remember that.”
Carreño went stumbling from the room to make a clean copy of that letter, but, as he worked, he found that his pen was stammering and halting. Three times he blotted the page shamefully and finally he sat back and rested his poor head between his hands. He was going mad, he felt. He looked over the three attempts he had made. The words had come out upon the paper in spite of himself.
“Gentlemen,“ ran the first version, “it is my happiness to inform you that by treason …”
He had, of course, started a new letter at that point.
Gentlemen,
El Crisco and Carlos Milaro, the celebrated outlaws and murderers and thieves, have today been fortunately captured on my premises through treason …
Why could he not write it just as the voice of the estanciero had dictated it to him?
But the third attempt ran:
Gentlemen,
It is my pleasure to inform you of an event of some importance to the republic. Charles Dupont, known as El Crisco, and Carlos Milaro, the two famous outlaws, have been captured on my premises. It was accomplished by the assistance of a dozen of my men acting under my supervision. They were betrayed by foul treason …
“I am going mad,” Carreño gasped out, and started up from his chair. “The pen is bewitched. It writes of its own volition and out of its own mind. What has come upon me?”
He went to the window and leaned into the cool of the night, but still there was a fever in his thoughts. The bewildered face of handsome Charles Dupont rose before him, as that hero had stood in the hut, surrounded by his captors. And, following an irresistible impulse, he went to confront that captain of the Pampas face to face.
The cellar of the estancia had been converted into a prison. There were certain deep storerooms built of strong blocks of stone, damp, cold, and unhealthy. In two of these the two prisoners had been confined. The masonry was strong enough to hold them, and, if they dug through the masonry, they would have solid masses of earth beyond. And if they strove to break through the narrow gratings that brought air into that subterranean chamber, or if they strove to come out through the doorway, they were hemmed in by armed guards, standing watch not more than two hours together, and then changed for another set of watchers, so that the sentinels might be always fresh. To make surety doubly sure, they were kept in strong ropes.
In the long, low corridor that ran past the rooms that now served as prison cells, Carreño found none other than Pedro LeBon in command. Night and day until these important captives were taken from his charge, LeBon was to stay by them. He was stretched now upon a cot that had been placed in the corridor for his repose, since he could not be expected to keep his eyes open both day and night, but at the first alarm he was to be wakened. A man was stationed constantly at his side for that purpose, and to transmit any orders that he might give.
There was no opposition to Carreño when he entered the corridor. The hardy gauchos twitched up their thick eyebrows, surprised at seeing the delicate secretary among such dank and moldy surroundings. But he was so known to carry the will of the estanciero that they would as soon have questioned Valdivia himself as to have stopped his secretary.
He went straight to LeBon and touched his shoulder. The manager of the great estanciero opened one eye, then coughed and sat up straight, frowning at the secretary.
“Well, Carreño?” he asked.
“I am to be admitted to El Crisco.”
“You? Alone?”
Carreño frowned in turn. He knew how to take upon himself dignity, not for himself but for the sake of his master.
“At once!” he said sharply. “And let me have a lantern, LeBon.”
The manager hesitated no longer. However strange this might be, it was folly to question the authority of the secretary in any matter whatsoever. Who in the household did not know that Valdivia chose to unburden his mind to this stupid, fat fellow and to him alone? With his own hand he unlocked the door, gave the lantern, and closed the door again behind the secretary.
Chapter Thirty-Three
If Carreño had not been trembling before, the chill and the dank smell of that chamber would have set him shuddering. He raised the lantern. Its dimly circling light, with a core of shadow in the center, fell upon the form of the big cowpuncher, lying bound, hand and foot, in a corner of the room, just as he had been thrown down by those who carried him to this place. His head was jammed against the wall, so that his face was turned up to the secretary, and his big, unwinking eyes stared back at the trembling Carreño.
The effect upon poor Carreño was almost as if he were encountering a bodiless spirit. He shook so that the lantern light fell in quivering waves across the face of the fallen man.
“Ah, Carreño,” the cowpuncher said with perfect good nature, “they have made you a guard to inspect me? You see that I am kept safely, and without a pillow.”
He lay, in fact, in a thin pool of seepage water that covered that corner of the floor. The water had soaked up through his clothes. If he could survive such conditions for twenty-four hours, it would be proof of an iron constitution indeed.
“I have not come to mock at you, señor,” Carreño said, when he could speak.
“I believe you,” said the prisoner calmly. “You are a good fellow serving a bad … well, let that go.”
“You would have said … serving a bad master, señor?”
“I won’t try to convince you of that. In fact, Juan, I admire fidelity.”
The secretary lowered the lantern. “Señor El Crisco, God has sent me a plague of doubt.”
“Ah? Doubt of what?”
“God forgive me for it. Doubt of my master.”
Dupont said not a word. He could not, in fact, believe his ears.
“And I have come to you to talk to you about certain things. I do not think that you would lie to me, señor.”
“W
hy, Carreño, would you trust the word of El Crisco?” asked the cowpuncher, somewhat moved by this sudden turn of the conversation.
“I know,” Carreño said, trembling again as he spoke so that the lantern ring jingled lightly in the lantern top, “that you are a strong and terrible man, señor, and yet I have seen you make a horse love you like a dog, and I have seen you risk your life for the very same man who …”
He paused, unable to fill in his sentence, and Dupont said: “For the same man who now throws me to the dogs, Carreño.”
“It is a strange thing,” Carreño said sadly. “I have struggled to understand it.”
“And I, too, Juan.”
“What can be his purpose?”
“To give me up to the law. There is no reasonable doubt of that.”
“But why should he fear you?”
“Because, Juan, I believe that he has lied to me about El Tigre. Between you and me, I believe that the great lie was spoken there. If the truth were out, it might be seen that El Tigre was really in the right. And if I were free, and found out that Valdivia had lied to me and used me as a tool to capture a man who really needed more sympathy than persecution … why, Carreño, your master knew that I would do my humble best to run him down and kill him like the rat that I begin to suspect that he may be.”
To this terrible talk, Carreño listened with starting eyes and recoiled a little from the speaker. “That cannot be,” he breathed.
“Why else has he treated me … like this, Carreño?”
The secretary sighed. Then he shook his head.
“You see,” said the cowpuncher, “that before morning there will not be much left of me for the law to hang. The ropes are so tight that they have stopped the circulation in my arms and legs. You may look for yourself.”
The secretary, fascinated with horror, stepped closer and then groaned with sympathy, for he saw that the hands of the big man were swollen with purple blood. “It is terrible,” he whispered. “May God help me to understand.”
“Isn’t it simple? At one stroke, he gets rid of El Tigre and of me, and the girl is left in his hands.” The calm of El Crisco left him, and he ground his teeth. “The cowardly devil will force her to marry him …”
“Señor,” breathed Carreño.
“Ask yourself. Do you think that he will not?”
It was a question that the secretary had hardly dared to put to himself, but when he asked it now, the answer from his heart of hearts was exceedingly simple and straightforward. “Yes.” There was no doubt about it in his mind. All that could be done to put a pressure upon the poor girl would be accomplished by Valdivia. “But h-how,” stammered Carreño, “can he force her against her will?”
“You are too kind and true a fellow to understand. But suppose, Juan, that he offers to have her father’s sentence commuted from death to life imprisonment?”
Carreño struck a hand against his fat forehead. “I could never have thought of that.”
Dupont said nothing, but he watched the acid work, eating deep and deeper into the soul of the poor secretary of Valdivia.
“How can I be sure?” he said.
‘“Of what?”
“That my master truly had wronged El Tigre as he has … as he has, I fear, wronged you, señor?”
“What would you do if you knew?”
“The dear God would teach me what to do.”
“Let me have Pedro LeBon alone for five minutes with my hands free. I would force him, I think, to say whether or not he attacked Carlos Milaro that day twenty years ago, or whether Carlos Milaro attacked him. The whole crux of the matter is there. Did Valdivia lay an ambush to destroy Milaro? Or did Milaro like a mad fool attack the men of Valdivia for no cause except that he was furious with jealousy. Think of that, Juan.”
The secretary lifted his head, and his fat face was quivering with emotion. Never did a small soul struggle so manfully to comprehend a great and wicked truth. But by degrees he began to understand.
“Whether he is evil or good, it depends on that,” he said at the last. If he had paused, he could not have found the courage to do the thing. But he did not pause. He took out a knife, opened it, and in a trice he had slashed the bonds of El Crisco. The latter, gasping with astonishment, struggled to his feet. “God forgive me,” panted Carreño, shrinking away as the big man rose before him. “What have I done?”
The strong form of Dupont melted to the floor again. His limbs had no strength, so long had the circulation in them been stopped. He lay on the wet stones, propped upon one shaking elbow.
“You can undo what you have done, Juan,” he said heavily. “I have no strength now. I am completely in your hands.”
The courage of Carreño returned again, and with the courage there came a warm flood of pity. For here was his wild hero so stripped of strength that he was for the nonce no more than a woman. He dropped upon his knees and began to chafe the swollen hands of the outlaw. It was not long. The purple blood began to disappear. Strength came back to him in waves. And at last he rose to his feet. He tried himself with a few steps. Then he stretched his long arms.
“I am ready, Juan,” he said, “for whatever you may have in mind.”
“I will bring LeBon,” Carreño said. “It is for you to make him speak the whole truth for us.”
He passed out into the corridor. He was still trembling, but it was no longer shuddering from fear. A strong anger was taking hold upon him, and there was born in him a stern desire to find out the truth together with a fear of the truth itself. He was like a man awakened, and the strength of the newly born creature called Juan Carreño amazed him.
Never had there been such surety and command in his voice as when he said to LeBon: “Pedro, I need you in the room with El Crisco.”
“Why?” LeBon asked, dark of brow, for he had ever hated the smug-faced secretary so often vested with the authority of the master of the estancia.
“I can tell you that when you are there. There is something that must be found out …”
A flash of understanding crossed the face of LeBon. His grin had the purest essence of evil pleasure. “Ah?” he said. “If that is the case, with no more than these little cords twisted around the fingers of this El Crisco, we will make him speak about whatever you choose.”
Carreño, sickened and angered, turned his back hastily to keep the manager from reading his expression, and so he led the way back into the room, past the gauchos who stood like a fierce and irregular soldiery along the corridor.
He passed through the doorway. He shut the door hastily behind him, and at the same moment he heard a horrible choking noise. When he turned, he saw Pedro LeBon stretched upon his back along the floor. Over him crouched the terrible El Crisco with the throat of his victim caught in the crook of his arm. Carreño looked on with wonder and with terror. So it was, in his dreams, that he had seen El Crisco work. But to see the fact was far more marvelous than a dream. Here was a strong man reduced to silent surrender in the space of half a second.
El Crisco stripped the weapons from his prisoner. Then, jamming the muzzle of the revolver against the throat of the manager, he said in swift Spanish: “Señor LeBon …”
“You will die for this, El …”
“No man can die twice, no matter what he has done. Now, LeBon, we’ll have the truth about a certain day twenty years ago. On that day, LeBon, you were shot down by Carlos Milaro. Your companion was shot, also. Tell me this … did Valdivia send you to murder the man, or did Milaro attack you?”
“I have told you a hundred times … Milaro attacked me …”
“You lie, LeBon! I know enough of the truth to tell when you are speaking it. Tell me again. What happened on that day?”
The face of LeBon was working with fury and fear. “Carreño,” he said, “step back. I’ll not speak out before both of you.”
/> “But you will,” Carreño insisted. Suddenly his voice grew thick and passionate. “Dog of a LeBon,” he snarled in his throat, “I begin to guess …”
The fury of the little fat man seemed to terrify LeBon even more than the strength of El Crisco or the reputation of that outlaw. The story broke at once from his lips.
“If I speak, am I safe, El Crisco?”
“You are.”
“It was Valdivia. He called me in and opened his heart to me. He said … ‘LeBon, you are a young man … there are many between you and the managership of the estancia. But do what I tell you to do, and you become manager in a month. What would not a young man do for such a prize? I told him only to command me. He looked at me a moment as though he wondered how far he could trust me. Then he told me the whole story quickly … how he had been betrothed to Dolores Servente … how he had come to learn that Dolores did not love him because she herself had begged him to withdraw in spite of the engagement that her family had made of her hand to him. She had begged because she loved Carlos Milaro. And Valdivia wanted to brush Milaro out of his way. He told me to take another man who I could trust and wait for Milaro. And I did it. But the devil was in Milaro. His horse dodged at the moment we fired together out of the brush. Before we could take aim and fire again, he had killed my friend and shot me down, and left me there. He left me for dead.
“Afterward, Valdivia found a way to make that fight the ruin of Milaro. That is the truth. You, Carreño, let the master know that you understand a word of this truth and you are ruined in his service just as much as I am ruined. I know too much. He cannot shake me off!”
Chapter Thirty-Four
Joy is a sweet intoxicant, and Valdivia was so filled with it that he could not remain quiet. When he sat down and strove to read, the words blurred into a smudge or danced before his eyes. He was filled with music, but when he tried to sing, his trained voice made a poor interpreter of the spirit that was musical within him. He walked up and down through his room, but walking was not enough.