Bandit's Trail Page 4

  The Argentinean stirred in a deep upholstered chair and yawned above his newspaper. “Tell Mister Dupont that Mister Valdivia will be able to see him within ten minutes.”

  “Mister Valdivia,” translated Carreño, “will be unable to see Mister Dupont for ten minutes.” He hung up and turned to his master with the usual wonder in his eyes.

  “Say it, amigo,” Valdivia said, smiling.

  “I cannot help but wonder,” Carreño said, “unless you have found something exceedingly interesting in the newspaper.”

  “Bah!” exclaimed Valdivia. “Newspapers are the invention of the devil. They are intended to make the human race weak-minded.”

  “Exactly,” Carreño murmured feebly, fumbling to follow the thought of the master.

  “Which is something you cannot understand. Let it go. But I tell you, Carreño, that newspapers exist and grow more popular only because they skillfully nourish an illusion that they convey to the reader all of importance that happened in the world the day before.”

  “Exactly,” Carreño said, still more baffled.

  “Whereas,” said the master, “they convey nothing, saving the price of wheat and barley … the latest notes issued to foreign embassies … sporting returns … and a few of these foolish surface evidences of life. But all that lies beneath is unnoticed.”

  Señor Valdivia rose and paced the room. He was dressed in immaculate whites, with wing collar and a blue bowtie, faintly dotted with a dust of orange. As he walked, he studied how the sharp creases of the trousers broke in folds above the knees.

  As he walked, he continued the conversation. “As a matter of fact, nothing that is truly of importance gets into a newspaper, unless it is by accident. For what is truly of importance in this odd little world of ours is what takes place in the hearts and souls of individuals. What made the cloud upon the brow of my taxi driver of last night is of greater importance than the note that was sent by England to France and that fills the headlines this morning. What the prime minister of England had for breakfast, for all we know, may have dictated the contents of that note. Let us understand, then, when and what he had for breakfast. All of these things are of the greatest significance. But the note itself is so many words. What lies beneath them?”

  “Exactly,” Carreño agreed, the perspiration standing on his fat brow as he strove to follow the master. He added: “But concerning Dupont.”

  “What concerning him?”

  “Why must he be made to wait?”

  “For full and sufficient reasons. Dupont is a shrewd fellow. Unless I watch the fall of every card, he will begin to suspect that he is necessary to me.”

  “Exactly,” Carreño said, rolling his eyes wildly.

  “And, if I am to use him, he must suspect nothing. He must feel only that I desire to take him out of the greatness of my heart to the Argentine.”

  “To the Argentine!” Carreño gasped.

  “I said … to the Argentine.”

  “E-Exactly,” stammered Carreño. “And yet … but of course these American cowpunchers are of use on our ranches.”

  “Tush,” Valdivia said. “Do you think that I could only use such a man as Dupont as a cowpuncher? Such a heart of honor and such a soul of fire? Tush, Carreño, you have passed into your second childhood.” And he leaned upon the back of a chair, laughing merrily.

  It may be observed that the fat secretary was retained in his important office for the very reason of his fatness of body and of brain. A more intelligent person would have been an entity to be considered, but Carreño, to the master, was simply a creature who took the place of a blank wall. Carreño served to reflect the thoughts of Valdivia and show them back to him in highlights.

  He was paid a salary, which was greater than the salary that would have been paid to an intelligent man. The reason was that whereas the diligence of an intelligent man could have been bought and that alone, in the case of Carreño, Valdivia was buying mind and body and soul. The check that came to Carreño each month was so great that, figuratively speaking, he bowed the knees of his heart and wondered over the greatness and the goodness of his master. He would rather have cut out his tongue than repeat a single syllable of the utterances of Valdivia, partly because he did not understand most of them and partly because it flattered and tickled the very cockles of his heart when he understood and knew that the master was opening his conscience before him.

  “Such a man,” went on Valdivia, “in another day would have been a great captain. Thousands would have followed him to war. Kings would have consulted him. And for the purity of his heart, a priest might have confessed to him as other people confess to a priest. Such a man, had his thoughts been given another bent, might have been a saint … duly canonized. Consider only what he did in the case of the dog, Carew.”

  “It was very strange,” Carreño sighed.

  “What would you have done?”

  “Killed him, certainly, at the least.”

  “But to let him go freely, Carreño. Think of that. To let him go free, with no hindrance. To put the entire blame for the attack upon the dead man, whose life was already forfeit to the law. What will you make of that?”

  “I have pondered over it. It is most unusual.”

  “You are right. For once in ten thousand times, you are very right. Because, my friend, do you think that Carew will repay his benefactor with even so much as the most naked gratitude?”

  “One could expect so much and very much more.”

  “And be deceived Carew will hate him. Because to be forgiven by him that one has attempted to wrong is the most deadly and the most damning of injuries. One may forgive hatred, but scorn never.”

  “It is very true, señor.”

  “If Carew hated this fellow before, he now loathes him. Poison has entered his blood. To be revenged upon his benefactor, even for that benefaction, he would follow Dupont around the world.”

  “Concerning that,” Carreño said, “is it not odd that this man who all the others knew only as The Crisco Kid should have told you his true name?”

  “Tush,” murmured Valdivia. “This is nothing. You must understand that he knew, instantly, that he was speaking to a gentleman, and therefore he could not use anything but his true name.”

  “Ah?” said Carreño, glad to thresh out something that had often troubled him of late. “But what could have induced such a man, with some culture, with some education, to go to the Far West of his country and live as a simple cowpuncher?”

  “To answer that properly,” the master said, “one would have to be an Anglo-Saxon, with the brain and the soul of an Anglo-Saxon, which we may daily thank the Creator we do not possess. But suppose I put it in this fashion … having displeased his parents in some small affair … perhaps of the heart … this man feels that he is disinherited. You have no idea, Carreño, how finely strung are the sensibilities of these English … of these Americans. A hint is to them like a blow. A gesture is an insult. A word is a catastrophe. It is buried in their hearts. It is never referred to. It is never forgotten. So, because of a nothing, this foolish boy has probably left his home and has come, by the grace of God, into my hands.” He rubbed those thin, graceful hands together, exulting over the mere thought

  “Are you sure that you have him?”

  “I shall be sure before I have ended my conversation with him this day.”

  “Then, if it is of such importance, why do you make this proud man wait?”

  “Because he must feel that every moment of my time is employed with matters greater than he. Otherwise, he would cease to value me.”

  “Ah?” Carreño said, again at sea. He added: “But I cannot see for what you could use him?”

  “I shall tell you this only. I shall use him in a matter that is of greater importance to me than the welfare of all my physical possessions. Do you understand?”


  “Exactly,” breathed Carreño.

  But his eyes were like the eyes of a fish. Striving to comprehend, he could see nothing, saving the endless leagues of the ranch of his master, flushed with the yellow-green of new verdure, flocked with many cattle beyond the counting. How could anything upon earth be of greater importance than that ranchero? Nothing, saving, perhaps, the fabulous fortune of yonder captains of American finance of whom one could read but could not conceive—figures great as the wealth of a whole nation, well-nigh.

  “I shall use him,” continued the master, “as the knight in the old days used his sword. It saved his body. It also saved his soul. Consider this for a time. You will not understand, but it will do you good to consider it.”

  “Exactly,” Carreño said, and sighed.

  “As for another thing, you must understand that I have proved the temper of the steel before I have used it. I had the great thought first when I saw him standing in the corral at the side of the stallion. For a man who can control a horse will also be able to control a man and many men. I saw then that he was a true weapon for my use, but still I wished to make sure.”

  “You mean, señor, that you had seen him manage the horse, Twilight?”

  “To use your own word … exactly! But I had guessed at more than this. I had guessed at powers locked up within the heart and the soul of this man. He who can love a horse can love a man. Will you understand, Carreño, that it was through love that he had conquered the stallion?”

  “I hear you say it,” the secretary said. “And yet … the bridle, the bit, the spurs … these are what we use to control wild horses, are they not, señor?”

  “That, of course, is very true. But what reins, bridle, bit, or spurs did Dupont use upon Twilight? None of them. The control existed within his mind and his heart only. Be sure of that. The stallion loves him as a mare loves its foal, and the man loves the stallion as a woman loves her child. Than this, there is no greater love, and than love there is no greater power.”

  “Exactly,” Carreño said, and gasped again for breath.

  “It could be seen, also, that of that entire multitude of chosen men … all men of battle … all men born to the use of the gun, two stood out preeminent. Is it not so?”

  “Ah, yes,” whispered Carreño, glad to be upon ground where he could speak with surety and authority.

  “One was this Dupont … this Crisco Kid, as men call him in this barbarian land. One was Carew. For when Carew ran his eye along the crowd, remember what happened. Men who would have offered a thousand dollars to the Crisco Kid to buy the stallion, shook their heads and were abashed. The enmity of Carew meant more to them than the friendship of The Kid. At that moment I made up my mind that I must test the two. And test them I did.”

  “Señor?”

  “Why, Carreño, do you think that it was chance that brought The Kid and Carew so quickly together? Not at all. It was I! For I, Carreño, needed a gallant spirit and a generous one for my work, but above all I needed a formidable fighting man. Do you comprehend me?”

  “Vaguely, señor,” the poor Carreño admitted, shaking his head. “Only vaguely I fear.”

  “Have I not said it in plain words?”

  “To be sure. How could the señor speak in words that were other than very clear. And yet … how can the señor fear anything under the sun?”

  “Your imagination is haltered. Think again. Is there truly nothing that I can fear?”

  Carreño raised his head and stared at the ceiling. He thought of the power of his master, and it was as a monk might think of the power of God. For what was beyond the reach of the hand of the owner of those great stretches of Pampas, those numberless herds of cattle—each so great, so fat, so filled with energy to live, each but a pawn in the hands of this millionaire.

  “I have tried to think,” he faltered. “But I can imagine nothing.”

  “Bah,” said the master. “Open your mind. There is still one man. You have been hushed to sleep at night many a time in your childhood by the mention of his name.”

  The eyes of Carreño grew suddenly great, but still he stared at his master half without comprehension, as though a human being should have dared to match his forces against the mighty hand of the enemy of man—Satan himself.

  “Speak it, Carreño. I think that surely it is now in your brain, because I can guess by the rolling of your eyes.”

  “Señor, it was only a foolish thought that came to me.”

  “Tell me the foolish thought then, my good Carreño, for sometimes the veriest fools have guessed at great matters.”

  “Señor, it would be to invite your laughter.”

  “Perhaps. And yet, have I never laughed at my good Carreño before this day?”

  “After so much has gone before, and after you have said such great things of this enemy of yours …”

  “Well?”

  “The thought came into my brain that it might be …”

  “Well?”

  “I cannot say it. The thing is too terrible.”

  “Why so?”

  “Because even to conceive that such a man is your enemy is to wish you terrible fortune.”

  “Nevertheless, Carreño, tell me the thought that came into your brain.”

  “It was this … that the only enemy that so great a man as Señor Valdivia could fear must be no other than … I dare not name the thing that I have thought. Forgive me, señor.”

  “Tush, man. There is no harm in naming a name.”

  “Then … in one terrible word … El Tigre.”

  Valdivia started a little as though, no matter how he had been prepared, the name shocked him a trifle. Then he said: “It is he.”

  “In the name of heaven, señor, how did he come to be your enemy?”

  “Ah, Carreño,” said the rich man, “he has been my mortal foe for twenty years and more.”

  “And yet you live!” Carreño cried.

  “I live,” Valdivia said bitterly, “though my life has been little other than a curse. However, as I started to tell you, I knew that to match this El Tigre, I must have a man among men. At the Garrison sale I saw a bright opportunity to find a chosen warrior among many fighting men. There were two preeminent. They were Carew and Dupont. Do you think that I could rest content? I saw that if they fought in the presence of so many men, the victor must be sure to be taken by the others who stood by. Therefore, I waited until afterward and sent to Carew a short and unsigned missive that was sure to bring about a meeting between them. And, when that meeting took place, I set about making the victor my man.”

  Chapter Seven

  Carreño was a good man, as men go, but what he would have called the basest villainy in another seemed to him, in Valdivia, sheer adroitness, and he smiled upon his master as though to say: “Still I learn lessons from you, señor, in the ways of the world.” He said aloud: “But do you dream, señor, that this man Dupont might stand for an instant before El Tigre?”

  “Carreño,” the master said “an honest man is always a terrible foe … unless he is a fool. And Dupont is honest. Besides this, he will be made doubly formidable because he will know, my friend, that this task, if he undertakes it, is a well-nigh lost cause … a forlorn hope. Such desperate adventures are dear to the hearts of these Northerners. Show them a great danger and for its own sake the danger becomes a delightful thing. Show them a North or a South Pole surrounded by hundreds of leagues of terrible ice, of blizzards, of deadliest famine, and they cannot rest until they have pressed forward to find it. Hundreds die. They are forgotten. One man breaks through to victory. All the agony of a century of effort is overlooked because of the one triumph. What use is all the labor and the peril? Of what advantage is the North Pole or the South? None whatever! But the labor is its own reward simply because it is great. Danger is the fragrance in the flowers they seek … these
wild men. You will see in Charles Dupont that the great task will appeal to him because of its greatness. The more formidable he learns El Tigre to be, the more he will yearn to be at him. I admit that the chances are great against him, but, considering him as he is, I say that he has one chance in three or four to win. Do you understand?”

  Carreño studied his master’s face like an astronomer into whose ken a vast new nebula is swimming. He could not understand or name the things he felt. He only knew that he was filled with awe and reverence for such power of brain. Then a tap came at the door—it must be he, The Crisco Kid, Dupont, for his ten minutes had now elapsed. So Carreño slipped into the adjoining room.

  He would have given a great deal to have remained to hear the conversation that followed, but the walls of that old hotel were thick, and the doors were massive, of solid oak, so that he had no hope of overhearing. How great was his surprise when he found that the voices of the other two followed him rather clearly into the adjoining bedchamber to which he had retired. He could see the reason at once. Solid though the door was, it was poorly hung, so that there was a considerable gap at the bottom. To that crack the ear of the worthy Carreño was instantly pressed. He had missed the first part of the talk, but he could hear now. Sometimes he missed low-voiced fragments of the conversation, but on the whole he learned the general tenor of the talk. And he remained until his knees ached, against the hard flooring, and his head was swimming with what he heard. Still he listened.

  They talked of the horses, first of all. Dupont reported that the shipping of the animals to New Orleans had been smoothly accomplished and that the horses had, to the last one, been safely put aboard the ship.

  “Your work, then, is ended?” asked the rich man.

  “I hope,” said the deep and gentle voice of the cowpuncher, “that it has only begun. Señor Valdivia, if you have a need of an experienced cowhand on your estancia, let me go south on the boat and take care of Twilight on the way.”

  “Dupont,” Valdivia said with a sudden change of tone, “do you think that I would let you leave me? No, no, my young friend. If I bought your horse at the sale, it was only to prevent the fight that I saw impending between you and the young man, Carew. If I bought the horse and then brought it to New Orleans with the rest of the animals, it was only because I wished to bring you the first step toward the Argentine. But if I could not induce you to go with me, I always have intended to return Twilight to you. He is your horse, señor. By your courage and your gentleness you have made him yours, and no money could take him away. Indeed, Señor Dupont, if you intend to make this journey only because you wish to remain near to your horse, tell me the truth now, take Twilight, receive your pay for the work you have done for me, and then ride when and where you will.”