by Max Brand
With all his soul he wanted to talk with Francesca. Even if she raged at him, her passion would be beautiful, and there was in his mind the perfect confidence that he knew with what silent, delicate weapon to subdue her spirit when the time came. Yet he had resolved that he would not see her on this first night. He would wait until tomorrow.
But in the meantime, he was raging with excitement. All the old Castilian blood in his veins thrilled with the exquisite joy of tyrannical cruelty. What is so keen as hate? And what hatred is so perfect as that which men have for those whom they have injured? What robbed man hates the thief so much as the thief hates his victim?
So it was with Valdivia. When he thought of the one man whose life he had ruined twenty years before and who now lay helpless in his hands, his heart swelled. That was the source of his music. And when he thought of him who had been his blind tool to bring El Tigre into his power, he could hardly keep from song. It was terrible, it was beautiful, and it was perfect.
But he must break the silence that lay too heavily around. He pressed the button that rang the bell in Carreño’s room. There was no response. He opened the door and shouted: “Carreño!”
There was no answer.
“The fat fool has gone to the wine cellar,” Valdivia muttered, and strode into the secretary’s room to make sure of his absence. He would make the rascal sweat for this. He would cancel that promised increase in salary.
He opened the door—the secretary was not there and on his desk were several sheets of paper, with a few lines scribbled upon each one. He leaned above them and read:
Gentlemen,
It is my pleasure to inform you of an event of some importance to the republic …
This Carreño, the master thought to himself, is the master of more power of style than I had thought.
He continued to read:
Charles Dupont, known as El Crisco, and Carlos Milaro, the two fatuous 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 …
The estanciero started back and gripped instinctively the handle of his knife, for he was enough a citizen of his country to know and love the uses of that grim weapon. He felt, at first, that he had lost his reason. But when he leaned again, there lay the written words of the incompleted last sentence before him.
What he first felt was a touch of cowardly fear. What he next felt was a wave of blind, tyrannical fury. He would crush Carreño until the fat little coward squirmed and shrank in his terror.
He went out from the room and the first thing he encountered in the great hall of the house was a group of his gauchos, armed to the teeth and lolling in the old Spanish chairs, upholstered in fine old leather.
“Well?” asked the estanciero, furious at this sight. “Who has sent you here?”
“Señor Carreño has sent us.”
“Is the fool drunk?” the great man snarled out. “Is the blockhead gone mad, or simply drunk? He sent you up here?”
“He did, señor.”
“For what purpose? To wait for your turn to stand guard?”
“We have been standing guard, señor. It was his will …”
“To bring in a new change?”
“No, señor …”
“What?” yelled Valdivia. “Is not the corridor in the cellar guarded now?”
“For only five minutes, señor, since he told us …”
“Death and hell, I am served by fools or devils! I will have your skins for this! I’ll have your skins! Not guard the corridor?”
“We were sent to wait here … there was something about interviewing Señor El Crisco …”
A shout came from the lips of Valdivia. “Interview! Who would interview him? Who would dare to speak to him or enter the room where he is kept without my authority?”
“Señor, God knows we have always thought that he came carrying to us your own mind.”
“You are fools to think so … my mind … in that fat idiot … that … but the heavens above me, what has happened? Some of you down to the cellar … five minutes did you say? I have lost my wits and the whole world has lost its senses at the same time. Down to the cellar. Some of you follow me.”
With this, he whirled upon his heel and darted off toward the farthest wing of the house, followed by half a dozen of his gauchos, who ran, pale with fear on account of the fury of the master, and half guessing at calamity before they came to it.
He reached the door of the room of the girl.
Two armed men stood guard before it.
“Have you heard a sound in there?” asked the estanciero.
“Nothing.”
“Now, heaven be praised. However … to be doubly sure …” He rapped at the door.
There was no answer.
“Francesca?”
Not a word of reply.
Snatching a revolver from the hand of a gaucho, Valdivia shattered the lock with a bullet and cast open the door—in time to see Francesca Milaro in the act of whirling a cloak around her shoulders and leaping into the deep casement of her window that overlooked the garden of the house, and just beyond her, illumined by the pale moonlight, the astonished estanciero saw none other than the face of El Tigre, plainly distinguishable.
He had time no more than to cry out, and then he received a stunning blow in the face that felled him like a log in the very pathway of his men, who stumbled over him as they struggled through the doorway. Half a dozen shots were fired, but the fugitive was already hurtling through the window in the rear of the girl and her father. It was the second captive—it was El Crisco—and with a yell of dismay the gauchos recognized him as he fled. Their guns were useless in their hands from that moment. If he and El Tigre could wish bonds of stout well-tied ropes off their limbs and melt away through thick walls of stone, it was as foolish and dangerous to oppose them as to oppose the devil.
They recoiled. They ran in a scattered group to the window, with the estanciero shouting and cursing as he staggered to his feet and followed.
What they saw was a group of four horses, swiftly mounted at the garden gate, and bearing four forms away through the night beneath the stars and across the long mystery of the Pampas.
* * * * *
They stood at the prow of the old tramp freighter as it nosed its way between the rolling hills north of the Golden Gate and the stern, rocky bluffs to the south of that famous entrance to the harbor of San Francisco Bay. They stood in a close group, as old companions do when they enter upon a strange land. There was Carlos Milaro standing in the very angle of the bows, in front as he must always be, no matter what was on hand. At his right hand was the fat form of Juan Carreño. He was not quite so fat. His face was a little browner. And there was a new expression of manliness perceptible in his features, as though he had grown years older in the last few weeks. But in his eyes there was the same light of quiet and contented worship. He had found a new god to replace the lost deity from his domestic heaven. It was Carlos Milaro, upon whose rugged features his gaze dwelt in quiet contemplation. And what joy to poor Carreño that this great man, this unspeakable hero, should lay his knotted hand upon the soft shoulder of Juan as they came thus into the new land.
As for Mrs. Charles Dupont and her husband, though they stood very close to the other two, it was easy to see that there was a wall, a great boundary dividing them from the companions. It was, perhaps, the happiness that they were breathing even out of the air—a mysterious ether, for their benefit created. It was, perhaps, the difference with which they looked upon the land before them.
“Francesca, you come into a rich land with a poor husband.”
“Ah,” she said, “I hate money.”
“But we will make it together.”
“Of course we will, my dear.”
“And, Francesca …”
“Yes.”
“I hardly know what I wanted to say … except … what a beautiful world it is.”
And as the ship drove on, they passed through the Golden Gate and came into view on the wide, blue waters of the bay, dancing in the bright sun of California—and far off, like a flare of gold on the Berkeley Hills, the fields of poppies in the east.
the end
About the Author
Max Brand is the best-known pen name of Frederick Faust, creator of Dr. KildSare, Destry, and many other fictional characters popular with readers and viewers worldwide. Faust wrote for a variety of audiences in many genres. His enormous output, totaling approximately thirty million words or the equivalent of five hundred thirty ordinary books, covered nearly every field: crime, fantasy, historical romance, espionage, Westerns, science fiction, adventure, animal stories, love, war, and fashionable society, big business and big medicine. Eighty motion pictures have been based on his work along with many radio and television programs. For good measure he also published four volumes of poetry. Perhaps no other author has reached more people in more different ways.
Born in Seattle in 1892, orphaned early, Faust grew up in the rural San Joaquin Valley of California. At Berkeley he became a student rebel and one-man literary movement, contributing prodigiously to all campus publications. Denied a degree because of unconventional conduct, he embarked on a series of adventures culminating in New York City where, after a period of near starvation, he received simultaneous recognition as a serious poet and successful author of fiction. Later, he traveled widely, making his home in New York, then in Florence, and finally in Los Angeles.
Once the United States entered the Second World War, Faust abandoned his lucrative writing career and his work as a screenwriter to serve as a war correspondent with the infantry in Italy, despite his fifty-one years and a bad heart. He was killed during a night attack on a hilltop village held by the German army. New books based on magazine serials or unpublished manuscripts or restored versions continue to appear so that, alive or dead, he has averaged a new book every four months for seventy-five years. Beyond this, some work by him is newly reprinted every week of every year in one or another format somewhere in the world. A great deal more about this author and his work can be found in The Max Brand Companion (Greenwood Press, 1997) edited by Jon Tuska and Vicki Piekarski. His website is www.MaxBrandOnline.com.