Bandit's Trail Page 12

  “Señor Valdivia, I am ready to hear an apology.”

  The estanciero leaned back in his chair, and, folding his hands together, he smiled so mirthlessly, so cruelly up at the cowpuncher that Dupont felt his blood turn cold. It made the play that he was acting a trifle too realistic. Yet he could have no doubt but that the Argentinean was simply stepping into the role upon which they had agreed beforehand.

  “I am waiting.”

  “You will grow tired, señor.”

  “You will not retract it, Señor Valdivia?”

  “Tush,” the Argentinean said, waving his hand. “The man is mad.”

  “Then,” said Dupont, “it is necessary for me to tell you that you are insolent, Señor Valdivia.”

  Slinger spoke without stirring in his place. “Crisco, you’d better go and sit quiet for a while and think things over.”

  “I have had ample time for thought,” Dupont said. “Señor Valdivia, I will go farther, if it is necessary. I shall wait outside after I have packed my things. If you have any more to say to me or any explanation to make, I shall be there.”

  With that, he strode from the room with a black face. As he went, he heard Valdivia saying with a laugh: “The fool thinks that I will go out and draw a gun on him.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  He did as he had promised. He packed his blanket roll, and outside the house he waited, walking up and down in the white-hot sun, but Valdivia, of course, did not appear. Only, once or twice, he saw the face of a house mozo appear at a window, grinning, and disappear again.

  So he walked slowly away. His position was already complicated. All that he owned was now carried over his shoulder. Even Twilight was not his, but it might be that he could take the horse before orders reached the corrals.

  He went straight to them, therefore, and called Twilight with a sharp whistle. The stallion trotted eagerly across the corral to him, whinnying softly, and then a voice spoke from behind.

  “Señor El Crisco.”

  He turned and saw a gaucho standing lazily against the corner of a shed, with a long rifle leaning against his side carelessly.

  “Aye?” called Dupont.

  “Have you come to say adiós to Twilight?”

  The orders had reached the corral, therefore, and the horse would be refused him. It flashed into his mind that he might leap upon the bare back of the stallion and make away, but it would probably mean an interchange of shots with the gaucho, and no matter what he did in his wild career that lay before him, he must not stain his hands with blood.

  So he went back into the shed, and, taking down the saddle that, at least, was his, he walked out through the open door past three or four more of the cowhands of the camp, all grinning faintly and maliciously behind their cigarettes. That morning he had been in highest favor with them all, but now the rumor had spread, and he was deserted.

  Here, again, was a little too much reality for his comfort, and, as he stepped out onto the thick dust of the road toward the camp town, his mind was blank with dismay. In ten minutes the great estancia was already growing into a solidly compacted and blurred group of buildings behind him. The saddle weighed heavily upon one shoulder and his pack upon the other. There was the burden of the rifle, too, and the heavy Colt tugging down from his cartridge belt. The perspiration began to course down his face in streams.

  The Kid turned from the deep dust of the road at last, to find easier going in the fields, and almost at once, as he stepped among the puna grass—that harsh and forbidding provender that only Argentine cattle will relish—he hit something before him with the toe of his boot, something soft and horribly alive.

  He looked down and saw a five-inch tarantula, a hairy monster of the insect world, sprawled upon its back with its eight thick legs beating the air. It regained its feet instantly, and, whether blinded with dust and fury or out of tigerish instinct, rushed with unavoidable speed at the foot that had overturned it. He felt distinctly, through the thin leather of his boot, the tug and impress of the horny falces of the creature, and, kicking it far away, Dupont went drearily and shudderingly back to the road, for it seemed to him like an early token of what his adventures were to be. The very dumb things of this country were against him.

  There is nothing like perspiration and hard labor, however, to sweep idle moods out of the brain. When he had covered another mile, he came upon a group of willows, or sauces as the natives called them. Under these he searched the grass, with the recent horror of the tarantula still in his mind. When he had made sure that all was well, he sat down, but still that creeping dread invaded his mind from time to time.

  From this place he could still see the shapeless mound of the estancia in the distance. When the night came, he must go back to it if he could, steal Twilight, or at least try desperately to do so, and by that very act draw down the vengeance of the estanciero upon his head.

  But there could be no doubt that they would be on their guard against him. Certainly from the very beginning Valdivia was not making his path easy in the world of crime into which he had adventured. Doubtless there was good reason for his attitude. If Dupont could not conquer such a small problem as the theft of Twilight, how could he be expected to deal with El Tigre, the invincible?

  That greater matter made this shrink in importance, and Dupont, as he contemplated it, found his spirits rising. All the while, the heat of the midafternoon grew greater and greater. It seemed to reflect in waves from the ground; the stir of the wind simply served to burn his face and the long hours dragged slowly on until, springing up from a different quarter of the horizon, a touch of a fresh breeze came.

  And when the evening arrived at last, what had seemed impossible before grew probable. He waited until the last sunset glow was ending, and then he stepped forward on his return trip. He left pack and saddle behind him. If he could reach the back of Twilight, he would regain this spot where his belongings lay well ahead of the pursuit that would be sweeping after him.

  He chose this early moment in the twilight because he felt that they would not expect him until the night had worn toward the middle hour. He might take them half by surprise, and men are surely partly blinded toward that which they do not suspect.

  The Kid’s course was in a broad loop around the estancia, so that he might approach it from a different direction than that in which he had been seen to disappear. Who could tell what small things might be his saving or his ruin in this adventure? He passed the southern end of the house at a considerable distance; straight before him were the corrals, and he was stealing toward these when, as he turned the corner of a shed, he collided full against a gaucho carrying a saddle. The other, recoiling, tripped and fell into a sitting posture with an exclamation of surprise and of anger. Before he could make out the shape or the face of the stranger, Dupont thrust the cold muzzle of his revolver into the hollow of the man’s throat.

  “Diablo,” gasped the fallen man. “What are you?”

  “I am El Crisco,” answered Dupont, using the name by which he was most commonly called among the gauchos. “Be very quiet. I shall do you no harm … I hope.”

  There was a murmur of horror and of anger.

  “Stand up,” said Dupont, “keeping your hands above your head.” He helped the struggling man to his feet. “Now I shall borrow this for a moment.” He took the heavy-handled knife that is the constant companion of every gaucho. But there was no gun. The knife he threw a distance to the ground. “The horse,” Dupont said. “Where is the stallion, amigo mío?”

  “You can never take him,” said the gaucho, who, like a brave man, was breathing hard and gritting his teeth as he felt the shame of this overthrow.

  “I shall decide that for myself,” Dupont answered, feeling a little more at ease after the shock of that encounter. “Tell me first where he is?”

  “In that paddock just before you, Señor El Crisco.�
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  “How is he guarded?”

  “There are four men … one at every corner of the paddock.”

  Dupont groaned. Without Twilight, he felt himself stripped of two-thirds of his strength. On the back of that magnificent animal, he could fairly laugh at the horsemen who might follow him. Without Twilight, he was lost almost at once. The superior knowledge of the country that the pursuers were sure to possess would entrap him.

  “How high is the fence of that paddock?”

  The gaucho indicated above his head as high as his arm could stretch.

  “The gate, then, amigo?”

  “What of that?”

  “Is it bars or a gate?”

  “A gate, señor.”

  “Let us go forward together.”

  “In the name of I heaven, señor …”

  “It is too dark for them to make me out clearly. Besides, they will never suspect me if I saunter up at your side. They expect El Crisco to come alone.”

  The gaucho muttered something beneath his breath. “What is your name?” asked Dupont suddenly.

  “Garcia Delav—”

  “Garcia,” interrupted the cowpuncher, without waiting to hear the rest of his companion’s name, “if you are a true man to me … do you see?” He dropped two or three bills into the pocket of the other. “But if you make an outcry or lift a hand to betray me, this gun that I carry here in the pocket of my coat, as I walk a little behind you … do you see? … will send a bullet through your back and through your heart.”

  “Murder,” the gaucho whispered, shuddering.

  “What is one more dead man to me?” Dupont said with an affected coldness. “It must be as I say. Do you believe me?”

  “I believe you,” Garcia answered huskily.

  They walked on, therefore, slowly, side-by-side.

  “If they ask who I am, what will you tell them? For they must not hear my voice.”

  “You are … let me think of that … why, you are my brother … Juan Delavero.”

  “Good.”

  Presently they could espy the place. It was on ground just a shade elevated above the rest of the plain—a sufficient knoll as they approached to show the posts and the bars of the fence clearly, with a watcher at every corner, and the dim form of Twilight silhouetted against the distant luminous dust of the stars.

  They were hailed by two of the watchers at once as they approached.

  “Who is that?”

  “It is I, Garcia Delavero,” the gaucho answered smoothly enough. “And my brother Juan with me.”

  “Why are you here, amigos?”

  In spite of the fact that the part he was playing had been thrust upon him, it seemed that Garcia could not help but throw himself into the role that he had been given.

  “Perhaps the fun will begin while we are here,” he answered. “Perhaps we will see El Crisco come to take the stallion.” And he laughed. If he were nervous, his nerves merely served to make the laughter harsh and loud.

  “This El Crisco, he is not fool enough for that,” answered another of the watchers. “Delavero, keep away from the fence. That horse is a devil and will have his teeth in you.”

  Twilight, in fact, though accustomed to the four who were now watching him, flattened his ears as he saw the newcomers.

  “Well,” Garcia said, “he is gentle enough with El Crisco.”

  “Certainly that fellow has bewitched the horse. He fought like a great cat when we led him up here. Juarez was kicked twice and is in bed. His leg is broken, I think.”

  Dupont guiding the way, they came to the fence and to the gate. Against it they leaned. And the mind of Dupont was busy. What he noted most of all was that the wind was blowing steadily and quite strong in their faces—a rising night wind that might be a cold gale before the morning. Then, very gently, lest there should be a scraping sound, he began to push back the bar that slipped into a notch in the post and fastened the gate shut.

  “Juan!” cried the fourth watcher at the corral fence. “Juan, you lost money tonight at the racing?”

  “A little,” Dupont answered in a muffled voice. And he drew the fastening bar clear of the notch, so that the gate swayed gently out against him an inch or so.

  “A little …” inquired the other. “A hundred pesos, was it not?”

  “Ten,” Dupont answered gruffly.

  The other, who had been leaning against the fence, now straightened. “By heavens, Juan, you have grown half a foot since I saw you, or else my eyes are liars.”

  “The devil is in it,” Garcia whispered with a gasp. “I forgot that my brother is a small man, and you, señor, are a giant.”

  “Come back with me down the hill,” Dupont said in the same tone. “Quickly now.” He turned away, Garcia at his side.

  “Juan!” the sentinel called.

  “Your eyes …” Dupont answered, still walking away with long strides.

  “What of my eyes?”

  “They are liars, amigo.”

  There was a shout of anger from the watcher. “Juan! By heaven, friends, it is not Juan!”

  “Yes?”

  “Garcia, it is not your brother?”

  “Who could it be, then? Why should I lie?”

  “The gate!” came a sudden shout from three voices.

  Dupont glanced back. They were at a distance as great as he had wished to reach before he gave the signal, but now he saw the gate was sagging open before the wind and was already a foot ajar, while two of the guards rushed to close it. Then he gave his signal, whistling thin and shrill, and he saw the stallion start so suddenly that there was a wink and shimmer of the starlight along his silken flanks. He came like a thunderbolt. At the gate he swung a bit to one side, so that his shoulder came half against it, and the big gate was knocked wide, tumbling one of the men who had run to close it upon the ground and making the other start back with a shout of alarm. But Twilight was down the slope like a thunderbolt, indeed, neighing joyously as he ran toward the master, the master whose signal he never failed to obey.

  He hardly checked his speed as he went by, but Dupont, catching at the mane and gripping it with lucky firmness, leaped onto the back, struggled a moment to grip the slippery hide with his heels, and then shot away into the night with the last words of poor Garcia Delavero ringing at his ear.

  “You leave me a ruined man, señor.”

  Then the guns began to chatter behind him.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Who can tag the flying tail of a comet? The bullets that were blindly showered after the dim and disappearing figure on the dark stallion did not find their mark. Only luck would have brought them to the target. Neither did the wild hunt through the plains bring them to the fugitive. Not only was Twilight far fleeter and more enduring on the flat, but when a fence rose before him, the strands of barbed wire shimmering like dew-strung threads of spider silk under the moon, he leaped the obstacle that the men behind him would have to pause to cut through.

  They came back from that pursuit to a master who covered a secret delight with a mask of fury. He gathered his gauchos, his peons, and his puesteros together. He made them a speech in which he laid upon them the whip of scorn. He had been to them a father; they were to him in return ungrateful children. They allowed him to be insulted by a gringo, and then they allowed the gringo to return and steal from his corrals his finest horse, worth all the others. Worth, in fact, the life of a man. After that, they tumbled through the night, pretending that they strove to recapture the thief, but in reality only fearing that they might meet him and come within the range of his guns.

  Such was the speech of Señor Valdivia that left all who were in his hearing writhing with shame and with bitterest anger. Carreño was a stricken man, after hearing his master in such a temper, and when he attended Don Sebastian afterward, his fat body wa
s quivering with terror. But even when they were alone, Valdivia on this subject did not open his mind to his servant and secretary. It was a secret too precious and with too much import.

  The next day it was learned that the night before, in the nearest camp town, a man riding a black horse had fallen into a brawl with one of the townsmen and shot and killed him. It was at once presumed that the mysterious rider must be none other than El Crisco. So Charles Dupont was outlawed for that crime. It was then that the estanciero put the price upon his head—10,000 pesos. A great fortune to every wild-riding gaucho on the Pampas—enough to support a family forever and in luxury.

  One might have said that when he wrote the check for that sum and sent it to a bank where it was to be held in trust until it was claimed by the captor or the destroyer of the outlaw, that Valdivia was closing a noose around the throat of Dupont as truly as any hangman. So felt Valdivia himself, and he enjoyed a thrill of exquisite power as he scrawled his signature.

  “Why so much?” asked Carreño. “After all, the horse was not worth so much.”

  “It’s the principle of the thing,” the rancher said sententiously. “This Dupont is an extraordinary fellow … an extraordinary criminal. One would never have thought of him as a man of crime … seeing him day by day as we have seen him.”

  “Certainly not,” said Carreño. “And yet there was that first day when we saw him facing that man, Carew …”

  The estanciero nodded. “However, being an extraordinary man, extraordinary measures must be taken to apprehend him. Therefore I have offered the big reward. For in a manner it was my fault. I introduced this villain into the country. It is my duty to rid the country of him.”

  “Señor, you are a great patriot,” Carreño said, and he clasped his fat hands together. To him, the rancher was divine in goodness and in selfless justice.

  The reward was offered, then, and every day Valdivia waited for the news to come that his check at the bank was claimed in behalf of certain captors. But the reward was not claimed. The money lay unasked for. And the days stretched to a week, to a fortnight, to a month.