Bandit's Trail Page 14

  There was a little interval of silence after this. Finally the oldest of the original quartet said sullenly: “My wife is a sick woman, señor.”

  “You have time to ride home and say good bye to her,” said the half-breed, shrugging his wide shoulders.

  “My wife is a sick woman, señor,” repeated the other, frowning blackly.

  “What is your name?” snapped out the leader.

  “Roca.”

  “Señor Roca, how many times have you served?”

  “Three times,” Roca answered, staring at the table.

  “Then,” said the other, “you should know that an order is an order.”

  “How long is a man to be in this business?” growled out Roca. “Forever?”

  “Bah!” sneered the leader. “Did you ask that when you tried to join?”

  “A young man cannot be expected to think of everything.”

  “But you are old enough now not to act like a fool and talk like a fool. Señor Roca, mount your horse and within the hour be with us on the east road a mile from the town. Do you hear me?”

  Roca rose without a word and stumbled across the floor of the fonda, a lumbering, work-deadened hulk of a man. One could tell by the stoop of his shoulders and the helpless swinging of his big hands at his side that he lived by the curse of Cain. Dupont, looking after him, pitied the fellow with all his heart. The more so since this was some illegal business, manifestly, for which men were being gathered from the town.

  “Roca!” called the wide-shouldered man.

  The other turned and lumbered back to the table, his face more scowling than ever, but a little pale, thought Dupont.

  “There is another thing to consider, amigo,” said the leader, turning in his chair and looking abruptly up into the eyes of the big fellow.

  “So?”

  “Consider that if your wife is sick, you, too, might become sick … might become even sicker if certain things were not done. That is all, amigo.”

  Roca glowered down at him, balling one heavy fist. Then he turned on his heel and went out from the place.

  “Who is this Roca?” asked the leader.

  “He works by the day in the town and on the estancias near the town,” answered one.

  “You,” the short man said, and pointed a sudden finger at the youngest of the group, a thin-faced, rat-eyed boy of nineteen.

  “Sí, señor,” muttered he who had been so designated.

  “Follow this Roca. There are times when men are apt to talk. You will be so far away that he cannot see you. You will be so close that you hear every word he speaks. And if he talks too much …” He ended by reaching his hand around to the small of his back. It was a significant gesture, for at the back of the belt the gauchos wear their long, heavy-handled knives.

  The other rose without a word, but with a grin of pleasure, and went with a light step from the room.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  There was more than one doubt in the mind of Charles Dupont as he jogged Twilight down the road toward the meeting place, but whether the dreadful form of El Tigre were to emerge from this night’s affair or not, at least he had entered into the underworld of Argentine crime, and it was in this world that he must expect to meet with the famous bandit.

  He found them already assembled. Even Roca must have been there, for, although he could not distinguish faces in the cloudy dark, he could count five men waiting. When he joined them, not a word of greeting was spoken. But they turned the heads of their horses eastward and struck away at a round canter. He could at least recognize the squat form and the wide shoulders of the leader riding in the front. For his own part, he would be content to remain in the rear throughout the adventure. He had no desire to break laws.

  For two hours that journey continued, with hardly a word spoken. And the only sound came from the throat of one of the men in whom he recognized, at last, the slender, catlike youngster who had been previously detailed to follow and keep watch upon Roca. He was a happy youth, and as he rode, he could not help breaking out into song so loud and piercing that the leader presently shouted back a harsh order that reduced the boy to humming. A man who sang was a man who would talk. Dupont singled him out for conversation.

  He was ready enough to talk and he told a story that was as brief as it was vivid. He had worked cattle until a year or so before; he had ended an argument with the majordomo of a camp by running his knife between the ribs of the man. Luckily the majordomo recovered, and the boy spent only six months in prison for this first offense, but in prison he had learned enough from other criminals to convince him that the way to make money is not to labor for it. So he had looked about him for something to do and had presently found it.

  “You could hardly have found a better way of making money easily,” ventured Dupont.

  “Easily, señor?” said the boy. “Why, we can make money, but no one makes it easily when he works under El Tigre. Is it not so?”

  The heart of Charles Dupont swelled and sang. Oh, lucky instinct that had led him into this affair. He was on the trail of El Tigre at the last. He might soon even be in the presence of that leader.

  Now they came in view of a short line of lights stretched across the horizon, looking much like an oddly even line of stars, but as they drew nearer, the line stretched out on either side, and after a time there could be no doubt that they had come within view of a town. Perhaps they were to be a part of a raid of some importance.

  They approached the black and shapeless outline of a house around which there were a number of figures of horses and of men—a small house, part of whose roof had fallen in, as Dupont could tell by the outline against the sky. A voice hailed them while they were still at a little distance, and a form rose out of the ground, as it were, with the starlight glimmering along the barrel of a rifle.

  The leader approaching this sentinel apparently satisfied his doubts in a word or two, after which he ordered his men to remain where they were and rode on toward the house.

  “It was well done.” Dupont said to his talkative companion, “that manner in which El Tigre took his daughter away from Valdivia.”

  “Bah!” cried the youngster. “It was very simple. Twenty men of El Tigre were among the workers on Valdivia’s estancia. He knew the very mind of Don Sebastian, and all the hinges that it turned on.”

  It was a thing that Dupont had guessed before, and certainly it made the ease with which the bandit and his men had approached the great estancia more understandable. His companion now turned the talk upon the locust invasion, which would keep the cattle of that district eating hay from stacks and silos during the rest of the season. In ten minutes more there was a general stir of men about the ruined house, and their leader returned to them. He gathered his men together in a group about him and told them, briefly, what was planned for that night, and what part they were to take in it.

  It was an attack upon a flourishing bank in this little city, a bank that had recently won much hatred and some notoriety by the cruel methods of its controlling directors, for it had shut down with an iron hand upon those whose mortgages were overdue, and had foreclosed on one after another among the small farmers and ranchers who lived on a patch of ground and a handful of cows. Their work was to blockade one part of the main street of the town.

  Having issued this statement, he led them on at a round pace toward the town. Other groups were leaving the ruined house and heading in the same general direction. It seemed to Dupont that he could count as many as forty figures. Surely this was robbery on a grand scale. It became almost organized war. How different from the work of a few determined and cool-headed yeggs in his own home country who, unassisted and unprotected, invaded a bank in the night and cracked the safe.

  There were half a dozen groups of the marauders. That of which Dupont made a member and each of the others chose a separate street for pie
rcing to the heart of the town. To judge by the section that he saw, it might be a place of twenty-five hundred inhabitants. It had the hastily thrown up appearance of most Argentine towns, which rise out of the ground built with adobe and corrugated iron. The unpaved streets, knee-deep in mud in the rainy season and ankle-deep in dust in the summer, were rutted and worn by the great ten-foot wheels of the Argentine carts that carry three tons as a burden. From them, in the night, as the horses waded through them at a walk, there arose an invisible cloud of dust, stinging the eyes, choking the nose.

  The town slept. There were no street lamps. Only the ugly houses pushed their facades up against the sky on either hand, obscure and lumpish forms. Or the windows here and there flashed back the starlight with astonishing brilliance, like polished steel. So perfectly did the carpeting of dust muffle the sounds of the falling hoofs that one could hardly hear the noises from his neighbor’s horse as he rode. There was only the squeaking of leather now and again, or the loud snort of a horse as it cleared the dust from its flaring nostrils. Neither could they hear a sound from the other parts of the town through which the various sections of El Tigre’s band were now moving. Silently they were drawing to a focus where they could work their mischief.

  And the successes of El Tigre seemed now more understandable to Dupont. The leader, having chosen his point of attack, needed only to send a sudden call into the neighborhood of the place and summon at once sufficient men for his purposes. Once those purposes were accomplished, he withdrew suddenly, and all his forces scattered to the four winds, settling quietly down to their former lives after they had received the rewards of their labors.

  They came into a broad plaza. Two other groups of horsemen entered at the same time from other directions and all went about their appointed tasks without friction. The duty of that section in which Dupont was a member was simply to take up a position across the mouth of the broadest street that gave upon the plaza from the east. Here they dismounted, but when the horses were given into the hands of one of the men, it was found that Dupont would have to take that duty, for the chestnut stallion could not be managed by any of the others. He stood to one side, his right hand full of reins, and watched his companions take up their places in the shelter of doorways, their rifles cocked and pointing down the street.

  All this was done smoothly. Then the little wide-shouldered leader made a low-voiced speech. “We are to be the rear guard,” he said. “When the work is finished we are the last to leave the town. Consider, amigos, how El Tigre has honored us.”

  Dupont, his left hand on the muzzle of his horse, watched the bright eyes of Twilight stirring suspiciously as he glanced up and down the street. The other animals stood at ease, on three legs, their heads fallen, resting from their journey. But Twilight was like an arrow trembling on the string, as though he had drunk in the fears and the tremors of the human minds around him.

  A window slammed up in the second story of a house at one side of the street. There had been enough noise to disturb at least one person, for a shrill woman’s voice exclaimed: “Drunkards! Drunkards! Go home! Who is down there?”

  There was no answer from below, but presently, with a frightened gasp, she slammed down the window again and disappeared in the dark of her room. Perhaps she had seen the glint of the stars along a rifle barrel. Perhaps she had seen the group of fine horses, silhouetted against the whitewashed wall.

  “Pray this business end quickly,” Roca said, his voice husky and nervous.

  “Coward,” hissed the leader. “If you speak again …”

  The street became silent once more. In all the plaza there was not a soul in view—not another of all of the men of El Tigre. Like a cat’s brood, how silently they moved, these bandits from the great plains. But in spite of the silence, how was the alarm being spread? Had yonder woman in her room slipped back into her bed, and did she lie there with the blanket drawn over her head, trembling and hoping that the end of the world was not near? Or had she, like a shrewd matron, stolen away to give the alarm in the right quarter?

  These thoughts drifted through the mind of Dupont. He handled his revolver, grew reassured, and stared about him again across the plaza. It was deathly quiet. The white marble statue of some patriot glimmered faintly from its pedestal. The false-fronted houses stood gravely about like spectators at a fight.

  How long they were about their work—those fellows who had undertaken the task of blowing the safe in the bank? Or did they have the combination? Or was it possible that the muffled noise of the explosion would not carry across the plaza from the interior of the bank?

  Then, like a light turned on suddenly in the brain of Dupont, bringing all the sleeping terror of the night to life, he heard the terrible scream of a man who tastes sudden death and dies in midshriek. A thousand voices instantly answered.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  So it seemed to Dupont, at least. All around the plaza men began to shout, and twenty guns exploded with a rattling volley. “Saddles!” shouted El Tigre’s lieutenant.

  The gauchos shot into their seats as though great invisible hands were hurling them to their places, and then, with rifles held across the crooks of their arms, they waited. They had not long to pause. Across the plaza swept a charge of a dozen horsemen, crowding against one another, the horses weaving with the fury of full speed. Behind them were others, and as these fugitives shot past they yelled: “¡Todo es perdido! ¡Todo es perdido!”

  Down the street wailed that mournful cry and crashed back from the faces of the buildings. “All is lost! All is lost!”

  And again, as another group of El Tigre’s men shot past: “Soldiers! Ride, amigos!”

  Soldiers! That was the secret, then. Against ordinary townsfolk or against even some numbers of police, no doubt these hardy ruffians would not have hesitated to do battle, but against the disciplined courage and no doubt the overwhelming numbers of soldiers, they were helpless. So they rode like madmen back toward the Pampas.

  It was no question of courage to stay at such a time. It was every man for himself, and Dupont, turning the head of Twilight in the current of the flight, gave the stallion his head.

  After that, it was like riding through rapids in a small boat, safe, but tossed wildly about. For seeing other horses before him, and disdaining to run behind them, Twilight raged like a fiend through the press. Dodging, plunging, twisting, swerving, his ears flattened on his neck, his head stretched out, his legs flying at full speed, he drifted through the mass of the fugitives, whipping past them in groups or man by man, and, before the outskirts of the town were reached, he was running easily in the lead, bringing up his fine head and arching his neck once more in content. To be first or to be nothing was the will of Twilight.

  Then they poured out into the broad, dark plain, and funneled out widely. Behind them, solid bodies of mounted men galloped in hot pursuit. Sometimes, here and there, Dupont heard the ringing explosion of a rifle, or the dull, short bark of a revolver. Once or twice he heard yells of pain. The law was laying its whip upon the bodies of the miscreants.

  But in ten minutes he was far away from the nearest, and gaining ground at every stride. The first two or three miles of a run merely served, so it seemed, to limber the muscles of this wonderful horse. He stretched away as freely as a ship sailing before the wind. Another few minutes and all sound had died down behind him on the Pampas. They were driving on alone.

  Now he drew up the stallion, gave him a breathing spell, and then jogged on again. All his hopes had failed on this occasion. He had been brought within the very shadow of El Tigre, but had failed to see even the claws of that famous man. How many months might it be before he could have another such opportunity?

  The dawn and the aching weariness of his body put an end to reflections. He found a little tumble-down ruin of an adobe. There was good grass nearby for the grazing of Twilight, and, having hobbled that king of horses, he
threw further caution to the winds, rolled down his blankets, and was asleep instantly.

  He dreamed, at last, of fire beating against his face, and then of a kindly hand striking the flames away and covering his eyes with blessed shadow. At this, he wakened and found that the slant afternoon sun was shining boldly into the place, only broken by a figure in the doorway. Dupont came to his feet with catlike speed.

  The stranger, at this sudden movement, drew hastily back into the outer sunshine and there stood shading his startled eyes and staring into the interior of the broken-down hut. He was a tall old man with bent shoulders and legs bowed by many and many a day spent in the saddle. His long, thick, drooping mustaches were a dirty gray with age and with dust. In the distance an ancient horse stood with hanging head, too spiritless to crop the grass.

  “Señor,” explained the old fellow humbly, “I saw a horse …” He pointed to the magnificent form of Twilight. The gallant stallion, as though the work of the last twenty-four hours had been a mere pleasure jaunt, stood as lightly as a cat with his head high and his inquiring ears pricked at the stranger. Yet, had the hobbles been removed from his legs, Dupont knew the chestnut would have flown at the man with a devil in his eyes.

  “You surprised me,” Dupont answered amiably. “Come in, amigo, and escape from the sun.”

  The other hesitated for an instant, and then came with caution into the doorway, scanned the interior with careful eyes, and finally thought it safe to squat, bowlegged, in a corner and roll a cigarette.

  “You are making a long journey,” he asked Dupont.

  Questions were by no means what Dupont wanted. He decided that he would avoid any more of them by a partial avowal of the truth.

  “I have had only one long ride,” he said. “I rode from Nabor last night.”

  “Nabor!” cried the old man, and it was plain that he had heard something of the troubles in that city.