The Fugitive

If he acted at all, he must act now. For the eight men from front and rear were hurrying up, and he would be helpless against such numbers. He sprang silently from behind his rocks. He would have come unmarked, but the quick eye of Constancia caught him, and her warning shout made the nearest of the men turn.

The man snatched at a gun as he glimpsed Stephen, but he snatched too late. A hand of iron was in his face, and he went down, with spurt of crimson from the nose and mouth. The heavy hilt of the hunting knife crunched along the head of the second man, and he rolled in the velvet dust without a sound.

One spring again, and Stephen was in Christy's saddle slashing at the rope. Alas, had it been the stoutest hemp in the world, it would have been shorn through at the first cut, but it was rawhide, almost as tough as steel, flexible as a serpent, now that it hung slack. Twice and again he slashed it, and the lariat yielded and swung away from the edge of the knife.

Then the four from the rear were around him. Half a dozen bullets had whistled around his ears, but now that they were close, they dared not fire again, for the bullets might strike Don Rudolfo or his daughter. They clubbed their rifles to smite him to the ground.

He had one backward glimpse of them and knew that the battle was lost. So he came out of the saddle as a lynx comes from the branch of a tree. Instead of teeth and claws, he had a Colt in either hand, and they were speaking while he was still in the air.

—From “The Fugitive”

Other
Leisure
books by Max Brand ®:

TWISTED BARS

TROUBLE'S MESSENGER

BAD MAN'S GULCH

THE RANGE FINDER

MOUNTAIN STORMS

THE GOLDEN CAT

PETER BLUE

MORE TALES OF THE WILD WEST

FLAMING FORTUNE

THE RUNAWAYS

BLUE KINGDOM

JOKERS EXTRA WILD

CRUSADER

SMOKING GUNS

THE LONE RIDER

THE UNTAMED WEST
(Anthology)

THE TYRANT

THE WELDING QUIRT

THE BRIGHT FACE OF DANGER

DON DIABLO

THE OUTLAW REDEEMER

THE GOLD TRAIL

THE PERIL TREK

THE MASTERMAN

TIMBER LINE

THE OVERLAND KID

THE HOUSE OF GOLD

THE GERALDI TRAIL

GUNMAN'S GOAL

CHINOOK

IN THE HILLS OF MONTEREY

THE LOST VALLEY

THE FUGITIVE'S MISSION

THE SURVIVAL OF JUAN ORO

THE GAUNTLET

STOLEN GOLD

THE WOLF STRAIN

MEN BEYOND THE LAW

BEYOND THE OUTPOSTS

THE STONE THAT SHINES

THE OATH OF OFFICE

DUST ACROSS THE RANGE/THE CROSS BRAND

THE ROCK OF KIEVER

SOFT METAL

THUNDER MOON AND THE SKY PEOPLE

RED WIND AND THUNDER MOON

THE LEGEND OF THUNDER MOON

THE QUEST OF LEE GARRISON

SAFETY McTEE

TWO SIXES

SIXTEEN IN NOME

THE FUGITIVE

A WESTERN TRIO

DORCHESTER PUBLISHING

Published by special arrangement with Golden West Literary Agency.

Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc.
200 Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10016

Copyright © 2005 by Golden West Literary Agency

“The Fugitive” by Max Brand first appeared in Street & Smith's Western Story Magazine (7/24/26). Copyright © 1926 by Street & Smith Publications, Inc. Copyright © renewed 1953 by Dorothy Faust. “Uncle Chris Turns North” by Max Brand first appeared in Street & Smith's Western Story Magazine (12/8/23). Copyright © 1923 by Street & Smith Publications, Inc. Copyright © renewed 1951 by Dorothy Faust. “The Crystal Game” by Max Brand first appeared under the title “Speedy's Crystal Game” in Street & Smith's Western Story Magazine (4/2/32). Copyright © 1932 by Street & Smith Publications, Inc. Copyright © renewed 1959 by Dorothy Faust. Copyright © 2005 by Golden West Literary Agency for restored material. Acknowledgement is made to Condé Nast Publications, Inc., for their cooperation.

The name Max Brand ® is a registered trademark with the United States Patent and Trademark Office and cannot be used for any purpose without express written permission.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author's rights is appreciated.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Trade ISBN: 978-1-4285-1861-2
E-book ISBN: 978-1-4285-0244-4

First Dorchester Publishing, Co., Inc. edition: September 2007

The “DP” logo is the property of Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc.

Printed in the United States of America.

The Fugitive

Uncle Chris Turns North

The Crystal Game

In 1926 Frederick Faust published twelve short novels and twelve serials, all but two appearing in Street & Smith's
Western Story Magazine.
“The Fugitive” appeared in the issue dated July 24, 1926, under the Max Brand byline. In it Faust made use of one of his favorite themes, the good badman. And like many of Faust's protagonists, Stephen Macdona falls outside the law, not because of anything evil in him, but rather because he had been “equipped with a resolution to do everything too much,” and because “temperance was not in him.” He is as wild in nature as his beloved horse, Christy, who is stolen from him, as is his heart, by Constancia Alvarez.

 

Like the true prodigal, Mother Nature gives freely of the things that she has by her. When they are exhausted, the next guest may have to go supperless to bed, as it were. It was in exactly this manner that she fashioned Stephen Macdona. Somewhere in the not distant past there had been a “gh” on the end of that name, but Stephen's father had dropped it after he made a fortune in cattle. He felt that there was a distinction in the abbreviated word. Perhaps there was. Certainly there was distinction in his son and sole heir. What young Stephen Macdona was like in his childhood must be omitted for the sake of space, and also because it would break the heart of any young mother to think of what Stephen was, and then look at her own offspring.

Let us look, rather, at Stephen as he was when he entered his early twenties. He stood exactly at the romantic height of six feet, not a scruple more or less. Very adroitly distributed in perfect proportions were 180 pounds, sleek, smooth, and supple—not the sort of muscle that gymnastic performers wear, like rolls of padding, not the kind that heaves vast weights slowly but surely from their rooted beds, but that kind of sinewy strength that wings the runner down the track, that whips the jumper over the bar, that entangles the wrestler in a thousand lightning grips, and that strikes down the boxers with a blow as swift as the tongue of a lightning flash and a resistless as a thunderbolt.

This same Mother Nature, knowing that Stephen was destined to grow up under the torrid suns of the Southwest, furnished him with an olive skin calculated to resist the blast of the fire. She gave him features that might have been struck in marble as a flawless model. She set a quantity of rather curling, brown-black hair above his brow. Beneath it, she furnished him with brown eyes that could cast forth sparks or melt the hearts of the ladies.

Nor was that all. Having poured forth her plenty upon the matchless head and body of this favorite child, she went on with the inward equipment of his being. Surely it seemed that the evil fairy was absent when this spendthrift mother was at work. First, she turned over the shining treasures of her armory and said: “What gift is first and peerless, for that he must have.” She found that gift, the brightest of all. And she gave him courage.

Then, turning from this stern and kingly virtue, she gave him the opposite quality of kindness, which surely should go with courage always, to keep it from tyranny. Still she had not done spending. She found for him ceaseless good nature, the sunny talent of loving his fellow men; she gave him equanimity in the face of misfortune, nerves of truest steel, a heart of the most dauntless fortitude. More, she furnished him with wits as quick as the lightning that lived in her own fingertips. Generosity she gave him, mercy and tenderness. She heaped richly upon him the sense of the rightness of this world in which we find ourselves condemned to live our lives.

All of this was done by Mother Nature, and, when she ended, it was as though she rejoiced in the things that she had done and said to herself: “What is there that I can give to his soul that will make it better? What better than a soul like mine own?”

So the last gift of all was the nature of a spendthrift like herself.

Alas, poor Stephen Macdona. From the very first day of his life, it seemed as though he were equipped with a resolution to do everything too much. Temperance was not in him. As he grew older, that quality that could be laughed at in his infancy could no longer be laughed at in the boy. If it were a matter of setting forth with other mischiefs to break a window or two, there were those contented with a pane or two in a distant barn, but Stephen selected the stained glass of the western portal of the church.

If it were the baiting of the peddler that diverted the boys of the village while they stole a bunch of carrots for their pet rabbits, Stephen Macdona overturned cart and all and frightened the horse, who scampered down the street—wrecked everything.

When it came to a bit of a fistfight, such as is supposed to be good for the soul of all who wear short trousers, Stephen must elevate it to the dignity of a war. If he were entangled with a hopelessly older and bigger boy, he fought like a tiger until they bore his senseless body home. When he grew a little older and stronger in the arms, the time of defeats ended, and that of victories began. They were not little victories in little frays. Single combat no longer contented him, for he soon reached the period when no boy in town dared stand before him for an instant. Then he organized the youngsters of the west end of the village and led them against the youth of the opposite sections. How many a bruised cheekbone and cracked ear were carried homeward!

Deputations of fathers called upon the elder Mr. Macdona. He did what he could. But Nature had made him a mild man, and he was dazzled by the brilliancy of his boy. There was not always a father to foot the bill for the indiscretions of young Macdona, however. The cattleman died within a year of the death of his wife. The estate was confided to the guardianship of a partner who decided that he would make his protégé a millionaire before the year was out. It was a grand year of visions and great attempts. But when it ended, the money was mysteriously gone, and Stephen was left without an income.

However, there was always a shift and a new expedient in the wits of Stephen. He took as a foster parent the goddess of chance, worshiping her as devoutly as his nature was capable. He would not become her intimate, however; he would never learn the devices of a crooked gambler. When he played among honest fellows, he reaped a rich harvest, but, just as his capital had mounted to a comfortable sum, some clever sharp was sure to appear and scoop in all of his winnings in a single high hour of play.