by Max Brand
Then she saw Elena Blanca and started forward with a glad cry. You would have thought that Elena was really something more than a mere peg upon which the notoriety of Catalina Mirandos had been hung. The men grinned in pleasant understanding. It was, of course, the general idea that Catalina was so terribly fond of the mare, and the white mare was so terribly fond of her, that when that beautiful companionship was interrupted Catalina could not help but offer any reward in the world to the lucky man who could bring back the mare to her.
Elena Blanca, like the little devil that she was, now threw a monkey wrench into the idyll by beginning to rear, paw the air, and prance around when she saw her mistress, acting as though her one passionate desire was to smash the fair Catalina to a pulp. Catalina had no idea of letting herself come too close to the white devil.
“See what they have done to her! They have made her into a savage beast!” Catalina cried out, with tears in her eyes—she always had tears at her command. She clasped her hands together.
As for the men, they were busy controlling that little white flash of a mare. There was only one pair of eyes that remained fixed upon Catalina. Glancing down toward the rear of the crowd, she encountered the quizzical smile of Peggy Kilmer, the sheriff’s daughter. The flush deepened upon the cheek of Catalina.
She knew that Peggy understood. What men could never understand, the quick glance of a woman could unravel. Catalina knew that her mystery was open as the day to the glance of this girl. She sighed, turned a little away, and wished that the freckled face of Peggy Kilmer were any place in the world other than here.
Now came tall José Rézan and stood before her, looking stupidly guilty and ill at ease. She drew Rézan with her into the house of her father. The crowd gave its last shout as they disappeared together.
Inside, they encountered the wicked-tongued Señor Mirandos himself. He said: “So she is taking the bear to escape from the lion. Is that it, José?”
His daughter made answer with an ugly look, and then she drew José on to the living room and sat him down beside the great open window.
“José, my José,” she said, “what a hero you are. And how did you manage to do it?”
“We met him and took Elena from him by force,” Rézan said, “and that was all that there was to it.”
“And he was not so terrible, then, as a fighter? There was no one really hurt?”
It might have seemed, to a discriminating eye, that there was a shade of disappointment in the eye of the girl as her lover answered: “No one was hurt. He looked merely simple. One could see that he was a half-wit. He looked like a man only half awake.”
“But how could he have captured Elena, if he has only half of a normal man’s wits?”
“Because he rides the fastest mare that I ever saw, and the strongest. We tried to catch her…to keep him from following us. She simply laughed at us. I have never seen such speed.”
“Then he will follow?” exclaimed the girl. “Oh, José, be careful. You are all mine, now, and you must take the greatest care of yourself!”
Rézan could not help smiling, remembering the rope that bound Sandy Sweyn and his two guards posted in the valley. “There is no fear,” he said. “You shall not see him here. He will not follow.”
“And yet,” Catalina said, “I can hardly believe that he may not find a way…if he had wits enough to capture Elena, you know.”
In one thing more Rézan felt himself enormously lucky. When he pressed for the wedding day, Catalina was willing to discard a long preparation. It might be tomorrow, she said, and the face of Rézan lighted with a consummate joy.
As the day was turning toward the dusk he rose to depart. Before he reached the door of Casa Mirandos there was a rattle of hoof beats outside in the patio, then a babbling of voices at the door. The door opened. A man staggered in before them, his face drawn, his head tied in a crimson rag.
“Carlos!” Rézan cried. “What has happened?”
“Sandy Sweyn!” gasped out the other. “He has broken through us.”
Rézan pushed him into a chair and brushed the chattering servants from the room.
“It is one of the two whom I left to guard the head of the valley and keep back Sweyn,” he explained to the girl. “Now we must find out what has happened.”
Thirty-Eight
As for Catalina, exclamations of pity and of distress poured from her lips. As she hurried to bring wine, warm water, and to make a clean bandage for the head of this Carlos, it seemed to that hardy vaquero that she was an angel of mercy, sent from heaven to relieve the woes of man. In the eye of the girl there was a profound satisfaction.
Sandy Sweyn, seeing that he was a half-wit and a fool, of course, should not be permitted to claim the reward that she had offered to him who brought back the little white mare. At the same time, she was consumed with curiosity about him.
Of all the cavaliers who had ridden forth to perform this great feat, it had remained to this mysterious Sandy Sweyn to conquer. It seemed hardly right that he should be caught like a foolish bird in a net at the very moment when he had almost brought the horse back to her. It seemed very wrong, indeed.
Now it appeared that the foolish goose of a man was a bit of an eagle, also. The net that had held him had been broken through, and, as he burst to liberty, here was one mark of his talons. Her eyes kindled like that of a kindred bird of prey.
Carlos, comforted with wine and a soft bandage, could speak once more.
“Mateo and I watched from among the rocks in the very places where you put us, señor. We did not sleep, I can tell you. We did not think that Sweyn could break away from two such men as our friends, Pedro and Valentino. Is not Valentino a great fighter? However, we watched well, if only because the señor had entrusted this duty to us.”
“I want no more compliments,” Rézan said tersely. “Let me hear what happened.”
It was Mateo who, looking down the valley, caught sight of the blue roan mare and her rider coming with incredible speed up the rise of the ground. Mateo called a soft warning; he moved to get into a better position, to command the direction from which Sandy Sweyn was riding. The two vaqueros came to a brief and clear understanding. Since this man had been able, in spite of his limited wits, to elude the bonds and the guns of their companions, Valentino and Pedro, since Valentino was a known man of prowess with weapons, Mateo and Carlos had decided that it would be far better if they made no attempt to destroy this fellow after a parley, but to shoot as soon as he had ridden into pointblank range. They prepared their guns and watched the stranger dip out of sight for the last time before rising up into the danger of their weapons—he and his blue roan. However, he did not rise at once.
“I am a patient man,” Carlos said. “But the moments began to seem long. I have sat to wait for a rabbit to come out of its covert. I have outwaited even a snake in its hole. But as we sat there to keep watch among the rocks, a lair of crows kept scolding at us from a blasted pine tree nearby. Their voices seemed to be calling attention to us. I made a sign to Mateo that I would go forward a little to see what I could see. Mateo agreed.
“So I slipped away…a snake could not have made less noise, I swear to you, señor. You would have found no fault with me, if you could have seen with what care I went about this work. I pushed my rifle slowly before me. Not even the ear of an owl could have detected me. I came, after much labor, to an edge of the rocks, and when I looked down, I saw the blue roan mare…and her saddle was empty. At that, I guessed that Señor Sweyn, having seen the narrow passage between the rocks ahead of him, may have guessed that there was a danger there, and so he had gone ahead to examine the place.
“When I made up my mind to this, I turned at once, and I went back toward my friend, Mateo, as fast as I could. All was silent, for the crows were making noise no longer. When I came to the place, suddenly there was a great form of a man leap
ing up and at me from the crevice where only Mateo had been crouching before. I tried to fire my rifle at him, but there was no time. He held a rock in his hand, and he threw it. That made the wound that you see along the side of my head. I fell into a darkness. When I wakened, I crawled to Mateo, and I found him lying, breathing, but very sick. There was a canteen filled with water beside him. And there was a little flask of whiskey. The Señor Sweyn, had left these things for him.
“I asked poor Mateo what had happened. He said that a little after I had started, just as the crows stopped their chattering, something leaped on him from behind. A hand was pressed over his mouth that kept him from crying out…another arm passed around his body and crushed him until he felt his ribs giving way. He heard a voice behind him saying that, if he remained quiet and made no sound, all would be well with him. If he attempted to give a warning, he would be shot instantly.
“Poor Mateo. There was no need of giving him such warnings. He was too sick to pay any attention to anything in the world except himself. His ribs had been broken by that terrible bear hug. He could barely whisper to me, even so long after it had happened. He said that there was such a power in the arm of that man that he could not believe a human being had done it. It was really as though a terrible machine were crushing him, and he heard his ribs pop like pipe stems.
“After that, I gave him a little of the whiskey, and I dragged him under the shadow of the old pine tree out of the sun. He screamed when I lifted him, but I could not leave him to be baked there. Then I took my horse and galloped him as fast as I could make it all the way to your house. When they told me that you were here, I spurred hard to get to you. I have told you everything, señor. There is nothing left out. Will you believe me?”
“I believe you,” Rézan said. “There is only one thing. It is nonsense to say that he might have looked ahead and judged from the narrowness of the rocks, there, that the place was guarded. How was he to tell? There were a hundred other places that I might have guarded. No, no, Carlos, you have told everything except the most important thing of all…the thing in which you were to blame. Confess to me that just as this Sandy Sweyn was coming close to you, either you or Mateo stood up and showed yourself foolishly or else you made a noise that warned him.”
Carlos grew pale with protestation. He threw his arms high above his head. “I swear to you, señor, as I hope for heaven hereafter, that we did not stir. We could not have shown ourselves.”
“Humph!” Rézan exclaimed, unimpressed. “How could you see him so clearly without giving him a chance to see you?”
“Because, señor, each of us had chosen a place where there was only a narrow chink between two rocks, and, looking down through those chinks, there was not half an inch of our faces to be seen. That half inch was covered with black shadow. No, señor, if you will come back with me to the place where we were hidden, I shall point out the very spot. Believe me that I do not lie.”
“Consider this, my friend,” Rézan said, frowning, “there is a mystery in the story as you tell it. There is a great mystery. You swear that you could not be seen and that you made no noise?”
“No, señor. Neither of us stirred. Even if we had, the noise that the cursed chattering of the crows made would have covered us. Even so, we did not stir. We knew that this man had found a way to break from Pedro and Valentino. We knew that they had as great an advantage over him as we had in our secret places. Therefore, we were determined to throw away no chances, and, believe me, we did not. No, señor, we did not show ourselves, and we did not make any noise.”
“Your horses, then?”
“Our horses were half a mile away. I myself took them and tethered them there.”
José Rézan shook his head. “I want to believe you, Carlos,” he said. “I know that you are honest, and I think that you are trying to tell me what you believe to be the truth. But there is something left out of your story. In some way Sandy Sweyn received a warning that there was danger waiting for him up there among those rocks, and, after he had received that warning, he dismounted and stole ahead on foot with the greatest caution to see what the danger could be. Your own surety was, of course, what ruined the two of you…that and your foolish maneuver forward to see what had happened to him. The great question that remains is…how did he get his warning?”
“I have a wild thought,” Catalina interrupted, her eye flaming.
“And you, my dear?” Rézan said, smiling fondly on her.
“He heard the chattering of the crows. Do not the crows act like wicked little spies? He heard the chattering of the crows from the pine tree, and he knew by the pitch of their voices that they were not chattering at another animal but at men. Tell me, José…is not that possible?”
Rézan smiled at Carlos, and Carlos smiled at José with the superiority of man to man, looking above the head of a mere foolish woman.
“Ah, well, my dear,” Rézan said, “we suppose that all things are possible. And perhaps, after all, this Sandy Sweyn knows the language of the birds.”
He could not help breaking into laughter, and Carlos choked himself respectfully to keep from joining.
“That is not what I meant,” Catalina said, filled with fire. “And you may learn that this Sandy Sweyn is not such a fool as you all think.”
Thirty-Nine
What she had said remained keen in the mind of pretty Catalina all through the evening, and when she went up to her room that night, there were only two things of crowning importance that remained in her imagination. Neither of them had to do with José Rézan and the fact that she had most impulsively promised to marry José on the following day. Nor was it her concern at the anger and contempt of her father when Señor Mirandos had learned of the hasty decision of his child.
Rézan had so often been in her life, and out again, that she was used to him; she was also used to the anger of Señor Mirandos himself. There were two new features in her history that seared her thoughts.
The first of these was the keen glance with which Peggy Kilmer had looked straight through her armor of elaborate affectations to the truth about herself. It was a new and almost an unheard of thing for Catalina to feel that any human being had looked in upon the shadowy inside of her existence, with all its turmoil and noisy shallows. She hated Peggy Kilmer for having seen so many things so well. She hated the freckle-faced girl for the superior power that enabled her to smile at what she saw in Catalina. We chiefly rage, not at those who attack us in passion, but at those who glance aside at us in scorn. She vowed chiefly that she would be avenged upon Peggy Kilmer, for knowing too much. However, Peggy was not even the major half of her thoughts. There was another person looming larger and larger. That was Sandy Sweyn. Surely his actions on this day had hardly been like the actions of a half-wit. He had twice handled two fighting men as though they were silly children.
The report of what had happened to Valentino and Pedro had come in before the dark. They had brought in Pedro, raging with fever and sickness of mind. He would recover his wits, the doctor said, if he had plenty of time to rest and good nursing and fine food. It was the shock of that long exposure to the sun that had unsettled him. It was the dread of what might happen, rather than the pain of what actually had happened, that had undone him. However, he would soon be well again.
Valentino had nothing to say, except that, when the name of Sandy Sweyn was mentioned, he smiled to himself and showed all his gleaming teeth.
“You will be eager to have a chance at him again, Valentino,” Rézan offered, “and I shall see that you have the very first opportunity.”
“No, no, señor. I have been in the fire once. I do not wish to be burned again.”
“What, Valentino? Will you let the other men who have always looked up to you as a greater fighter without fear…will you now let them see that you are really afraid of this half-wit?”
“Half-wit?” repeated Valentino
. “Well, I would change all of my brains for his half-wit, as you call it. No, I want nothing more to do with him. If he comes near to me again, I shall put my hands into the air and say…‘Hello, friend. Do not shoot. Valentino is only a weak little child, and he will do you no harm.’ That is what I shall say to him. No, I want no more chances at Sandy Sweyn. I have had my one big chance, and that was entirely too much.”
With this astonishing speech of resignation, Valentino shrugged his sunburned shoulders and rolled another cigarette. Thereafter, he walked forth among the other vaqueros.
“You have met one who was too much for you?” said one of his friends with a rather malicious grin.
“Does not every wise hawk run away from an eagle?” Valentino responded calmly. “Nevertheless, no hawk fears a foolish crow like you.”
Which was sufficient to establish that the spirit of this Valentino was as high as ever.
All these reports had been carried to Rézan as a matter of course, and he had been forced to retell all of them to Catalina. He did not wish to, but he could not help it. She would not rest until she had dragged from him every detail, little by little.
“It is because I tremble for you, love,” Catalina said. “When I think of this dreadful man roving around through the mountains, do I not tremble for you? Tell me everything.”
Rézan told her everything, and with each syllable that she heard the eyes of pretty Catalina burned brighter and brighter. She clasped her hands together and shrank deeper and deeper into her chair. She pressed her hands against her breast and gasped out as she heard each new detail. “Ah, José, what a dreadful, dreadful man. Is there any other like him?”
“Have no fear,” José said, smiling. “You must not tremble for me. If he comes across my path, I trust that I shall be able to handle him well enough.”
She would close her eyes, overcome with her fear for his sake, as flattered José thought. In reality she was wishing to close out the sight of her lover and take home upon her mind the image of this odd fellow—whose hair was the color of golden sand and whose eyes were the color of his hair, so that you could not always tell when he was looking at you.