Bandit's Trail Page 11

  “He has a head,” answered Slinger.

  “He has a tongue, too,” Dupont added. “He thinks nothing of talking back to Valdivia.”

  Slinger grinned sidewise at his companion, his eyes squinting, as though he were inviting Crisco to see something that was already apparent to others.

  “Maybe you’ve picked up something, Crisco?” he asked slyly.

  “About what?”

  “LeBon.”

  “The gauchos talk pretty freely with me, but they haven’t said anything about LeBon. Why?”

  “Well, there ain’t much use talkin’. I guess he’s as much the boss around here as Valdivia is.”

  “How?”

  “I dunno. I’m just guessin’ what a lot of others have guessed before me. LeBon has something on Valdivia and Valdivia ain’t got the nerve to fire him.”

  “You’re wrong,” Dupont answered with great confidence. “Valdivia isn’t the man to be run by blackmail. Not him. If there was ever a fine fellow in the world, it’s this Valdivia, partner.”

  Slinger grunted. Having communed with his thoughts for a time, at last he said simply: “Go right on thinkin’ that, friend. I hope you don’t have no bad luck.”

  “What are you driving at?” Dupont asked sharply.

  “Nothin’. I’ve said my say. You lay low and wait for Valdivia to show his hand.”

  Dupont could draw nothing more from his companion, and at this unsatisfactory point he was forced to let the conversation rest. So they watched the sunset deepening and darkening. Finally there was only a delicate rim of light along the horizon—the pale afterglow that comes before the full blackness of the night. From the houses, where the racing had stopped, they could hear the twanging of strings and the lulling sound of singing—deep undercurrents of men’s voices and one girl weaving a silver thread of melody over the rest. The hot day had ended. Now a few quiet breathing spaces of coolness and of rest—then sleep.

  In twenty minutes the estancia was black with darkness and with silence.

  “He’ll never come tonight,” Dupont said, balancing his revolver delicately in his hand.

  “Why not?”

  “Why, the estancia is like a fortress now.”

  “This here is El Tigre … he ain’t no kind of man you’ve ever met up with before,” Jeff Slinger said with a devout meaning.

  “One noise of a gun,” Dupont said, “will bring a couple of hundred men around the estancia.”

  “And maybe half of them two hundred are gents that would like to see El Tigre win.”

  “You mean … even here?”

  “That’s what I mean, old son.”

  “It isn’t possible, Slinger.”

  “Ain’t it?”

  “He hasn’t enough money to bribe all these men.”

  “He don’t bribe ’em with money. He’s a hero to them. That’s what bribes ’em. Besides, he buys ’em up by scarin’ ’em to death. You wait and see. I’d put my bet on El Tigre.”

  It amazed and startled Dupont to hear such a speech. For a foolish instant he almost suspected Slinger himself of being one of the bandit’s sympathizers.

  “Them two that told who Francesca was,” Slinger muttered at last, “they’re sleepin’ darn’ little and darn’ cold tonight. And maybe they ain’t goin’ to wake up no more in the mornin’.”

  “In heaven’s name, Slinger, how could this fellow come at the house?”

  “Why not this way?”

  “But the first shot we fire …”

  “Suppose we got no time to fire?”

  “He’ll have to hypnotize me, then.”

  “Maybe he will. Only … don’t be too sure when you play ag’in’ El Tigre. That devil has brains.”

  There were two paths winding through the garden toward the house. Dupont sat in one; Slinger, just far enough away in the dark to be a visible shadow, sat in the other. Sometimes they rose to pace up and down and so kept the chill of the night air out of their bodies. Sometimes they walked across to exchange a word.

  Until midnight the watch was easy enough, and exciting enough in suspense to keep them easily awake, but after midnight the spirits of even the most determined will suddenly begin to droop. A slumberous ache invades the muscles and the mind grows unnerved. Dupont found himself yawning. The long busy day made his whole body crave rest. Moments of dizziness came upon him, out of which he roused himself with a guilty start, feeling as if he had been asleep on his feet, and all the shrubs in the garden a moment later would again waver and grow blurred.

  Like part of one of these moments he suddenly saw Jeff Slinger waver and stagger and then fall backward at full length, though nothing living could have approached him without being seen. Then, among the shrubs just before Dupont, something stirred among the foliage.

  That instant he tipped up the muzzle of his revolver, prepared to fire. But no one sprang out to the attack. Only, in the dull night before him, something came with a soft whirring, seeming to sweep toward him like a circling pair of outstretched, thin wings, and nobody between them. He had time to note that and marvel at it with a chill dread. Then he was struck by the flying mystery across the breast. Thin arms whipped around him, tying his hands to his sides. One blow fell upon his chest and another upon his opposite hip, and as he fell backward—just as Slinger had done—he saw two men rushing toward him out of the night. The fall half stunned him. But he knew that the gun was wrenched from his clutching fingers and then a cloth was wrapped about his head, stifling and blinding him.

  A voice speaking Spanish of excellent quality—a deep, soft voice—said: “That is well, Pedro. But no knife. There must be no blood tonight. Do you understand?”

  A half audible grunt was the answer, and the two men busied themselves tying the hands of Dupont behind his back, and turning him upon his face in the sandy patch.

  Then all was silent. Not a whisper, not a stir in the garden until he heard the voice of a girl speaking no louder than a whisper, but audible even to the place where he lay.

  “Oh, my brave father.”

  “Hush, Francesca.”

  There was a light rustling, as though the open wind of the night stirred the dresses of a woman. Then soft footfalls passed. At the same time a gag was pressed between Dupont’s teeth, and the guards who stood over him stealthily withdrew. He decided to count to ten before he made a struggle to give the alarm. But by the time the count had been reached, the thick, half-stifled voice of Jeff Slinger sounded nearby, shouting: “Help! El Tigre!”

  A hundred voices, it seemed, made answer. Some from the house—some from beyond the garden. Were those extra watchers or the men of El Tigre shouting to add to the confusion?

  Then his bonds were torn away. The rope that held him was cut, and he turned in a fury to join in the pursuit.

  All was useless. By the time horses were saddled with those clumsy Argentinean saddles, the wide and silent Pampas had buried the fugitives deeply within its breast. They had the whole starry circle of the horizon before them, but in what direction should they ride? They scattered wildly here and there and everywhere. Some of them did not come back until far after dawn, and Charles Dupont was among these. But not one of the hunters had come upon the traces of El Tigre and his fleetly mounted band.

  Chapter Seventeen

  There are varieties of anger, but the most impressive of all, beyond question, is the silent fury. In such a wordless passion Charles Dupont found the rich estanciero when he returned that morning. Señor Valdivia could not remain seated in one chair. He was forced to rise and pace swiftly, restlessly across the room and back again, and all the while, out of a deathly white face, his gleaming black eyes went to and fro.

  When Dupont said that he still could not understand by what mysterious engine he had been struck down in the night and rendered helpless, the estanciero pointed withou
t a word to a boleadoras lying upon the floor of the room. There were simply three thongs connecting three balls of lead. One thong was shorter than the other.

  As a matter of fact, Dupont had seen them used before. The ball connected with the shortest thong of the three was held in the thrower’s hand who, when he had swung the strange little engine and put the longer thongs in violent circular motion, hurled it at the enemy. Its weight carried it forward like a thrown stone; its circular motion served to make it wind tightly around whatever it was thrown at. The primitive Indians had invented that singular novelty among the weapons of the world. They snared game with it. They entangled their human enemies in the same fashion. And now Dupont had received a personal demonstration of what the boleadoras could accomplish. Yet, up to the moment he saw the thing of lead and leather lying upon the floor, he could not dream what had happened to him. This was the bodiless pair of wings that had flown at him with a soft, humming sound through the dark of the night.

  For the first time the strangeness of the Argentine took hold of his mind. Even the locust pest had been less terrible and less odd.

  “He is an agent of the devil,” Valdivia said bitterly at the last. “And the devil stands at his right hand. When I brought you with me, Dupont, I could have sworn that I was safe from him. But even you were helpless against him. If it had not been that he came for his daughter only and wished to make sure of her escape first of all, he could have gone on to enter my house and he could have murdered me in it simply enough.”

  Dupont was silent, as a proud man must be silent when his courage or his skill has been called into question.

  Valdivia passed into a sudden ecstasy of grief and rage. “What power but the devil,” he said, “could have given her to me for a single glimpse and then taken her away before she had time to more than learn to fear me? But, ah, Dupont, is she not a flower and a fragrance among women?”

  “She is, señor.”

  “It is her mother’s beauty and her mother’s grace, but her spirit is all her own.”

  “I have been thinking,” Dupont ventured gently, “of something that you once said to me.”

  The estanciero made a gesture as though to indicate that he heard his companion, though it was plain that he hardly noted him at all.

  “It was this … that a man might come at El Tigre by pretending to lead the life of an outlaw, and doing enough to bring him to the attention of El Tigre himself, until El Tigre might wish to have him in his own band.”

  “Well?”

  “Suppose that I do this thing, señor?”

  “It is too late. He knows that you are my man.”

  “He knows that I have failed you, as you and I know,” Dupont said gravely. “And therefore what could be more logical than for you and me to separate after quarreling? Suppose, for instance, that we were to have words at the table today … suppose that I were to leave. Suppose, after tonight, that you were to declare that something had been stolen from your house … is that not enough, señor, to convince others that we are no longer friends?”

  Valdivia paused in the midst of his pacing, and, with his head still lowered as though from the weight of his burden of gloom, he glanced up at his companion with glittering, bright eyes. “Dupont,” he said at last, “that would be a bold stroke. That would be a very bold stroke. It would bring the danger of the law on your head.”

  “And it would attract El Tigre, would it not?”

  “Perhaps … a little.”

  “If you were to add a price upon my head …”

  “Ha?” the Argentinean cried, and he straightened suddenly.

  “Ten thousand pesos on my head, señor. That would make me an attractive target for them to strike at. There would be some hard riding through the Pampas to get at me, would there not?”

  “Ten thousand pesos! You would be a dead man, my poor friend.”

  “Perhaps,” Dupont answered grimly. “Perhaps.”

  “Would you risk so much?”

  “With Twilight under me, I might escape from the hunters. Might I not? And, in that case, El Tigre would be sure to hear of me.”

  “He would. Dupont, I see that you are even a braver man than I have guessed.”

  “First, if I could hear the exact story of what happened between you and El Tigre …”

  The estanciero, his eye still cruelly bright with the rope that had suddenly come to him, stood nodding and thinking. “I shall tell you in a word,” he said at last. “I was betrothed to Dolores Servente … to the lovely Dolores. That was these many, many years ago. And my neighbor, who had a small estancia … my neighbor, Carlos Milaro, loved her, also. This, however, he kept hidden from me until my betrothal was announced. Then the man went mad with spite and with fury. One day, he rode over, and, after a little talk, he burst into a rage and denounced me. He said that my money was buying away from him the girl he loved and who loved him. He left my house. On his way to his own home, he encountered two of my men … Pedro LeBon and another.

  “He quarreled with them like a savage fool. You understand, Dupont, simply because they were men of mine, he stopped them on the road and began hot talk. They were fellows of high spirit. In a moment, guns were out. This Milaro even then was a devil with weapons. He badly wounded LeBon and killed the other. Then he rode on. After that he was arrested. He told a foolish story … that the two had ambushed him. That story would not hold water. He was condemned to die.

  “That same day of his condemnation he broke from the prison and rode to the house of Servente. There he saw Dolores. Perhaps her foolish girl’s brain was turned by that romantic position … a condemned man telling her he loved her surrounded by a world of enemies. At any rate, she fled with Milaro. He took her away into the wilds to lead with him an outlaw’s life.”

  “A selfish dog,” Dupont murmured, red with anger.

  “A selfish dog,” Valdivia echoed savagely. “In the wilds Francesca was born, and there poor Dolores died, but the child was taken in the pursuit of Milaro, who had become known even then as El Tigre by his secrecy and his fierceness. She was raised by a relative. And when she was sixteen, I saw her … saw her mother’s eyes set in her face. I loved her, and determined to marry her.

  “But as though El Tigre had read my mind and waited for that time so that he could break my heart again, he appeared out of the Pampas. He saw Francesca. And he carried her away with him to make her as wild as he. And there, señor, is the simple, the sad, and the true story of my enemy, El Tigre.”

  He spoke with such a passion and with so broken a voice that Dupont stared at him, and it seemed to him that the wild story came to life, that the figures moved and breathed and spoke before him, and it seemed to him, also, that he could gather out of the darkness the dim beauty of Dolores—like Francesca, but sadder and gentler of face.

  He thanked Valdivia for that story. It gave him all the background he required. If need be and chance offered, now, he would kill El Tigre as though the man were in fact as beastly as his nickname. And he would carry Francesca back to the estancia of Valdivia by force if he could. With that determination he made ready to make his start that very day. It was quickly and easily arranged with Valdivia. Then he left the house.

  “But,” the estanciero said as Dupont left, “what shall I say, señor, to praise your great heart? And if you should will, how shall I reward you for your efforts?”

  “With your friendship, señor,” Dupont answered. “And consider, also, that I am working for the sake of two people, and not for one. There is yourself, señor, and there is Francesco Milano.”

  It seemed to him that the startled eyes of the estanciero widened and then grew narrow as though with suspicion, but he did not linger to confirm that surprising idea. He went out to turn over his plans in his mind. But after all, what plans could he form? He was attempting to locate a veteran of the world of crime whose domain
might be anywhere within three million square miles of country that was strange to the hunter. He could only offer himself like a ball to the racket of chance to be struck about here and there in the hope that the quality of the name he might make for himself would bring him to El Tigre.

  With that in his mind, he went in to the noonday meal. Pedro LeBon was not there and the majordomo, Jeff Slinger, was late, having made a trip to the camp town that morning. So the quartet, including Carreño and Valdivia, sat down together. They had not been at their chairs five minutes before the estanciero started the ball rolling.

  “You and Señor Dupont were not lucky last night,” he said apparently to Slinger, but looking directly at Dupont.

  “A boleadoras would cross the luck of any man,” Slinger said carelessly.

  “Ah?” the estanciero said. His tone was only a trifle raised, but it had a sting of cold suspicion and dislike in it, which made everyone at the table straighten in his chair and caused Carreño to gape like a frightened child as he saw the storm gathering.

  “What d’you mean, señor?” Jeff Slinger snapped, ready for trouble at any time.

  “I mean, Slinger, that you doubtless did all you could, crippled as you are, and stiffened with many accidents and injuries. But as for Señor Dupont …” He turned a little in his chair and stared coldly at the cowpuncher.

  It was very gross, very broad. Dupont was astonished that a man as neatly witted as the estanciero could not have found a more delicate fashion to open the quarrel upon which they had agreed, but he instantly rose to the bait. He pushed back his chair a trifle and frowned across the table.

  “I hope I misunderstand you, Señor Valdivia,” he said grimly.

  “I hope,” Valdivia, “that you had ears to hear me.”

  Dupont rose from his place. “It is equivalent to calling me a coward, señor, if you infer that I did not do all that could be done?”

  “I never make rude inferences when they can be helped.”