Bandit's Trail Page 13

  “You see,” said Valdivia, secretly swelling with delight, but making his brow as dark as possible, “you see that this man was even more dangerous than we thought. Here, in a strange land, he has been able to escape from the hands of the law and, more than that, from the labors of a thousand head-hunters who are eager for the reward that I have offered.”

  “He is a terrible man!” Carreño exclaimed. “You have heard about the thing that he did yesterday?”

  “What thing, Carreño?”

  “It makes the blood cold and the heart sick even to name it, or to think it?”

  “Very well. Turn my blood cold, Carreño.”

  “He came to the house of an old man who had two sons. He was hungry and made them cook him a great meal. When the meal was ended, he made them bring him all the money that they had in their home. When he had filled his pockets with their silver and their gold …”

  “You told me it was a poor man, Carreño?”

  “A very poor man, señor.”

  “Yet there was a plunder of gold and of silver in his house?”

  “I only tell you the story as it was told to me.”

  “Who told it to you?”

  “Word was brought to town. The young Vereal heard the story. He brought it back to the estancia.”

  “Ah? He heard the story from another man who had heard it, and now you tell it to me?”

  “Am I wrong to do so?”

  “By no means. Continue to believe all that you hear in this world, Carreño. It will fill your life with variety and with interest, I assure you.”

  To this exhortation Juan listened, nodding solemnly. He did not quite know what his master meant, but he knew that when he did not understand, the best thing was simply to nod and to pretend agreement.

  “Continue the story, Carreño.”

  “It is too terrible, señor. But it seems that after this devil, this Charles Dupont, had eaten the food of the three poor men and then plundered them of all the money they had, he drew a gun and fired. He murdered all the three.”

  “Horrible,” agreed the estanciero. “Did the neighbors make no effort to attack him before he could escape, after firing three murderous bullets?”

  “There were no neighbors. The house stood by itself in the midst of the Pampas. It was not until the next morning that the event was discovered by a chance traveler who went that way and, stopping at the door, found the three dead men and the floor covered with sticky black pools. Is it not a beastly crime, señor?”

  “But, Carreño, who were the witnesses of it?”

  “Ah?”

  “Who saw Dupont do the murder? The house stood alone, and all three who were in it were destroyed. Who remained to give witness against Dupont?”

  “You must understand, señor, that only two days before a man on a beautiful horse that looked much like Twilight was seen at the town of Cherasco, which lay only twenty-five miles from the hut where these three were murdered so foully. No, there can be no doubt but that Señor Crisco is the guilty man.

  The estanciero placed a hand across the lower part of his face and stared at the floor. “Does everyone agree that it must have been he?”

  “Of course.”

  “Might not some other person have come past?”

  “Ah, señor, you are charitable even to those who wrong you and your countrymen … you are charitable even to terrible bandits and killers of men. Is not that a wrong thing, patrón?”

  “Perhaps … perhaps,” said the master in a stifled voice. “Then people will have no more regard for Dupont than for a wild beast.”

  “They will shoot him on sight, there is no doubt.”

  “Well, he brought it upon his own head,” the estanciero said, thinking aloud.

  “Ah?” murmured Carreño. “That is very true. His crimes have raised the hands of all men against him. And to think, señor, that you must owe your life to him …”

  At this, Valdivia started a little. “You are a fool, Carreño,” he declared hotly.

  Carreño was stunned.

  “What else have you heard of this … brigand?” asked the master at the last.

  “There is a story that he bears a charmed life.”

  “Tush! That is foolish talk.”

  “I only repeat what I hear … what I hear from honest men. I never repeat what fools might tell me, señor.”

  “Of course not. A fellow of your penetration knows how to sift the evidence. Is it not so, Carreño?”

  Once more a little bewildered, Carreño nodded a slow agreement. “However,” he said, “there really cannot be much doubt about the charmed life.”

  “Tell me, then. What is the proof?”

  “In the bar of a fonda … I have forgotten the name of the town, but I think … let me see, señor …”

  “Never mind the name. Continue.”

  “There were half a dozen drinking. They were all true gauchos. They all had knives. They all were wearing guns. A masked man stepped into the doorway with a gun in each hand and ordered them to stand up and hold their hands above their heads. They obeyed this robber, but while they stood there, one or two of their friends came to enter the bar and saw the robber standing there. They leaped upon him from behind, and, at this, the six other gauchos rushed at him. But it was like trying to hold an eel. He twisted from their hands as though they were children and he a giant. He leaped upon his horse and rode slowly down the road, as though he scorned them too much really to flee from them. Now listen to me, patrón. These eight men took their rifles and their revolvers and fired as straight and as fast as they could … and all were good marksmen. But they did not strike the horseman. Is not that enough proof that his life is charmed?”

  “A very strange thing it sounds.”

  “A miracle, señor. Not one of the eight men would ever ride to hunt El Crisco again. They swear that he is the devil.”

  “Tush! This talk of the devil is very silly … but, well, when was this?”

  “Four days ago.”

  “And where?”

  “At a little town near Corrientes.”

  “What, Carreño? Could this man have galloped all the distance from … Corrientes to Cherasco … within two days?”

  The eye of Carreño grew vague. “A man with such powers … who can say what he can and what he cannot do?”

  The estanciero smiled very faintly. “True, Carreño.” He nodded. “But though this desperate and charmed robber was masked, they recognized him as Dupont?”

  “Beyond all doubt.”

  “By his description?”

  “He was a big man. He seemed terrible even behind his mask.”

  “Ah, yes, and then they had a chance to see the stallion. They recognized Twilight?”

  “Beyond a doubt.”

  “What was the time of the day?”

  “It was not quite dark. They could see that it was a large horse, and black. Twilight would look black at that time of the day.”

  “And these men who had been drinking, shooting in the dusk, were not able to hit the robber?”

  “Not with a single bullet.”

  “Then the case is clear, and we must say that Dupont bears a charmed life.”

  Carreño, escaping from this interrogation with such flying colors, as he thought, could not help but beam with happiness. “El Crisco has become a famous man in one short month.” He added: “He is almost as terrible as El Tigre, men say.”

  Chapter Twenty

  When the imagination of the world is struck, it paints its own pictures and has very little deference for the truth of a matter when it is mixing its colors. It paints strongly, and with a swift brush. It is not always the finest race horse that is the public’s favorite; it is not always the best boxer who packs a house; it is not always the ablest politician who collects
the greatest number of votes. For, no matter what reason tells a man, it is only when his emotions are appealed to and enlisted that he begins to speak from the heart.

  In the world of crime, the same thing is true. Captain Kidd, in some ways, was a very petty fellow. Certainly compared with many and sundry of the old buccaneers, his career was no more violent than that of a bad boy in a schoolroom. The terrible blazing forms of Morgan and Drake make him shrink into insignificance. But something in his career struck the imagination of the world, and from that day to this his name has been synonymous with cruelty, cunning, courage, and all the hard and romantic qualities that go to make up the existence of a pirate.

  And so it was with Charles Dupont, now translated into that southern world where he was better known as El Crisco. Just what it was in Kidd that appealed to the imagination would be hard to say. And what it was in Dupont that stirred the Argentineans was equally mysterious. Perhaps it was the fact that he had dared to face and insult a man so great as Sebastian Valdivia. Perhaps it was because of his mastery of a horse that was as terrible as a loaded gun to all other men. Perhaps it was the reckless ease with which he had executed his exploit and stolen Twilight away from Valdivia and Valdivia’s guards. Perhaps, more than all these things, it was because he had brought from the North all the air and the aroma of a destroyer of men. Carreño had much to say on that subject; others brought varying reports. And in short, in a trice Charles Dupont had become a celebrated desperado at the small expense of a single horse theft.

  The truth was that during the first month he remained as quiet as possible. He had with him—Valdivia’s foresight had seen to that—ample money to care for his needs. He bought what he wanted, stole nothing because he needed nothing, and drifted slowly through the country heading, in general, in the direction toward which he had heard El Tigre had made with his daughter. How was he to be discovered or suspected? The problem seemed baffling.

  At the rude and solitary hut of some small farmer, some Italian colonist, or some wild-living gaucho, there appeared in the late evening a mild-mannered gringo with a gentle voice, speaking excellent Spanish, desiring perhaps to learn the way to such and such a place, or to share the evening meal and pay for his share, or to buy provisions, or provender for his horse. And, in the night, the horse might be led to a manger in the cattle shed and given its fill of food.

  In none of these things could one recognize a desperado whose hand was against all men and against whom the hands of all men were raised. Even El Tigre, swift and secret as he was, usually moved attended by followers, and his form and his grim face were known from one end of the country to the other—by a scar in the center of his forehead that gave a lionlike frown to his face, if in no other way he could be identified. But when Dupont entered a house, his voice was the gentlest of all voices, and his gun was never in evidence. The ignorant peons, the romantic gauchos, hearing of him, expected to see a man of dash and color, cursing, drinking, raging through a whole town on a horse that lived in the air more than upon the ground.

  Therefore, by the very extravagance of the reputation that had been falsely built up around him, Dupont was sheltered. He melted obscurely into the Pampas, and people who were listening for thunder saw him pass without giving him a glance. His utter disappearance, however, helped to make imaginations run riot. He had been seen to plunge into the night mounted upon his magnificent horse, speeding away from the camp of Valdivia. The cannon had been fired and all the Argentine waited for the shell to strike. Because it did not strike, they forced themselves to believe that they saw it descend here and there. That was the original of the innumerable yarns that were built up about him in the short space of two fortnights—stories many of them even more wildly extravagant than the foolish narratives that Juan had told to Valdivia. But few had the critical coldness of Valdivia. The stories were heard, believed, repeated. The great newspapers of Buenos Aires caught up the tales and printed them in headlines. All crimes upon the Pampas were attributed to him, unless the perpetrator was actually seen and recognized. The editors, receiving twenty reports daily, selected the most terrible and printed them. El Crisco had become a tremendous legend within a single month.

  But, while his awful fame caromed and cannonaded across the big country, El Crisco himself was working deftly and secretly at the trail. He was hunting for clues that would lead him to the great outlaw, and those clues were hard to come by. By day he slept. But in the evenings he came to solitary houses, or even to little camp towns, and, tethering the stallion in the darkness, he advanced boldly among men in an inn, or fonda, and drank with them and talked and listened, ever guiding the conversation toward El Tigre.

  In this way he gathered all manner of conflicting reports. He followed them here and there across the land. He was a shuttlecock driven here and there by false news of the bandit. Until, at last, when he was beginning to despair, when he felt like a man adrift on the great ocean in a little boat, he reached his first definite tidings.

  He was sitting on the verandah of a little inn in a camp town. The sun was down, and the last of the day was making a dim stain in the west, but overhead, to illumine the sign of the place and lead the thirsty to their drink, was a great gasoline lamp shining like a miniature sun. He had been so burned and scalded by the true sun that day that even the flood of light was a torment. But he was very tired, and the chair in which he sat fitted comfortably into the hollow of his back. Therefore he remained, half troubled, half comforted, listening to the cool clinking of glasses from within the fonda, the rumble or the sharp laughter of voices of men. Footfalls sounded heavily on the planked sidewalk. Now and then a horse cantered past with hoofbeats muffled by the ankle-deep dust of the street. He was in one of those moods when the eye wanders and takes only a small part of the attention with it. He saw the signs on the opposite shops, and his eyes read them without conveying into his mind any meaning. He saw the high, false fronts of the buildings and smiled faintly, realizing that behind these imposing masks there were only squat, shapeless hulks of houses. Indeed, looking farther at either side, he could see between the facades the flat, long roofs, and the dull outlines of the main body.

  In this mood of idleness, swelling from the heat of the day that still was in the air and that still seemed to be radiating from the corrugated iron roof of the verandah, he began to watch the drift of the people past the fonda, of whom a considerable number turned in toward the door. One, at this moment, stopped short, seeming to look down to the planked sidewalk in thought, and then turned and entered the inn.

  Something of the dreaminess of Charles Dupont left him, and he began to realize that, since he had sat there, at least one other had stopped in that same manner as though, passing the inn, a sudden thought much graver than drink had called him into the place. That idea had barely come to him when still another paused, looked down at the sidewalk, and turned into the fonda.

  Here was something more than mere chance. The dark faces, the bright, suspicious eyes with which the last two had come toward the door of the inn had surely some meaning. And going to the place on the sidewalk where each had found something that arrested him and made him look down, Dupont saw no more than five scratches, such as might be made by the rolling of the sharp rowel of a spur over the wood.

  He had not the slightest doubt, however, that this was a sign that had a distinct meaning among a few of the men who passed the place. Therefore, he turned into the fonda himself.

  His suspicions were rewarded instantly. Four men sat at a corner table, and two of these were the men he had lately marked as they stopped abruptly, and then made toward the hostelry as though summoned by an irresistible power. They had certainly not been drawn together by the call of any convivial society, for, though all were now drinking red wine, it seemed to Dupont that there was surprisingly little conversation, that the faces of all were dark, and that they flashed upon one another, from time to time, glances keen with suspicio
n. The light from a lamp fell near them upon the floor, and he started a little as he saw, slicing over the dark wood, five spur scratches like those that were on the sidewalk before the fonda.

  He hesitated only a moment, and then, following an irresistible impulse, he took a glass of wine from the bar and, taking a chair with him, found a place at that corner table. As he sat down, there fell upon him a sharp focusing of eyes that seemed striving to penetrate to his very heart. He paid back those glances deliberately, slowly, turning his glance from one face to another and meeting the gleaming eyes. At this, as though half angered and yet half contented, they looked gloomily down again at their wine.

  Certainly no matter how they were called together, they did not know one another, or at least in any friendly fashion. But here a sixth man approached the table and, drawing up a chair, crowded the circle to fullness. He began to take command at once. He was a little man, but very broad of shoulders and very long of arms, and with the smoky skin and yellow-stained eyes of the half-breed.

  “Amigos,” he said, “I heard that there were only four men in this place. But here are five. Who is the fifth man?”

  Instinctively he looked at Dupont, for the fair skin and the clear blue eyes of the latter seemed to accuse him, whereas the complexions of the other four were more like his own. From all around the table the same glittering suspicion looked forth at Dupont. He took a pencil from his pocket and, without a word, drew five short lines upon the table—five such lines as he had seen on the floor and on the sidewalk—the outer ones short, the inner ones longer. Upon this the whole battery of suspicion rested for a moment, and then the latest comer said abruptly: “It is enough, señor. I am happy to have you with us. You have seen the sign in passing through the town. Is it not so?”

  “It is,” answered Dupont.

  “You also have served?”

  “I have served, señor,” said Dupont.

  “One more man is more added strength,” the half-breed said gravely. “We meet in one hour a mile from town on the east road.”