The Fugitive (11 page)

 

Out of the midnight, Stephen Macdona came to the door of the hovel where Constancia was a prisoner, and she herself heard him parley with the old woman.

“Is Señorita Alvarez here?”

“Yes, Don Valentin. But she . . .”

“No more talk. Tell her that I wish to speak with her. Quickly. Then go off and study this by the light of the moon. Quickly.”

“De los Pazos has told me.”

“Here is something more. Forget de los Pazos. These are new orders, so far as you are concerned.”

The hand of the crone touched the shoulder of Constancia. “Waken and dress quickly. It is Don Valentin

himself.”

The old woman was gone; Constancia, as she dressed, heard the harsh, dry coughing of her guardian outside the house, hurrying away.

She came from the inner room and saw the black silhouette of a man in the outer doorway.

When he saw her, he said in a shaken voice: “Will you come out of this darkness under the open sky, Constancia?”

She went silently past him and stood beside the hedge, with the narrow cypress behind her pointing like a dark finger at the white stars above. Yonder, in the black square of the plaza, the dying fire had sunk to a sullen red eye that watched them.

“I have tried to keep away from you,” he said, standing at a little distance. “I went out and rode up and down through the valley. I have even tried to leave the valley, Constancia, but I could not. I have lost my pride. I am beaten. I have come back here to surrender.”

“You say it fiercely,” said the girl.

“Because I despise myself. But I cannot help it. I love you to a madness, Constancia. When I saw you in the circle about the fire, willing to dance with those ruffians, I felt that I had dragged you down and degraded you to that. And it snatched away the last bit of my sense and self-control. I began to pity you. Then I was helpless.”

“What shall I say?”

“Tell me whatever you please. Tell me that I am a fool for confessing these things to you.”

“I only remind you that, when we sat together on the deck of the
Santa Lucia,
you told me then that the sort of man who won me would treat me . . . as you treated your horse, Don Valentin.”

“I believe it still. Only a man strong enough to do that can conquer you. But I am not strong enough. I tell you, Constancia, when I saw you in the tattered dress and with the tawdry spangles thrown over you, it stabbed me to the heart. And when I saw the red rose in your hair, and the red of your lips, parted and panting, I lost myself. I have not come in hope. But only to confess. I am surely beaten. You may use me as you wish to use me.”

She thought of the shadowy rush of horsemen out of the night and the splendid form of Guadalvo at their head. He had been like a king; now he was like a slave. She was dizzy and weak with the shock of the contrast.

“Then tell me first what you are.”

“I am a penniless adventurer and wanderer. I have no home, no family, no friends. I was driven away from my country because I would have no law but my own pleasure, and I killed men like mountain grouse. My name is Stephen Macdona. Everything else that I have seemed to be is a pretense and a lie.”

She was very glad that she had the cypress behind her. She put back a hand now, gripped a slender branch, and steadied herself. “Then tell me this . . . it was you who suggested to de los Pazos that he come to my father's ranch and steal me away in the place of his daughter. De los Pazos would never have dared to think of such a thing by himself. It was you?”

“It was I,” he admitted.

“And then you determined that you would break my spirit as you had broken the spirit of Christy, before me?”

“Yes, I thought that that was the only way in which you could ever come to love any man. To be mastered, Constancia.”

“And when I was proud and surrounded with servants and with wealth . . . why, then you could treat me coldly enough. But when I went and danced by the firelight, like any beggar might have . . .”

“Yes. I could not stand it. There was one thing that unnerved me. A scratch along your cheek. I know that I am a fool. But you see, I am telling you the whole truth. I want you to know what I am . . . a very weak man, but loving you enormously, Constancia.”

She raised her hand, and he bowed his head a little. “You took me from my father's house, and it is only right that you should take me back again. Will you do that, Stephen Macdona?”

He struck a hand across his face. “Listen to me,” he said. “Guido de los Pazos has been like an older brother to me. There is no kindness that he has not offered to me. Now, if I steal you away from him, I am stealing his own daughter, also.”

“And your own hope of a pardon?”

“Ah, do you think that would trouble me?”

“Look, Stephen Macdona. The night is running away. Will you take me off with you?”

“You tear up my honor like a pieces of paper covered with scribbling. Is there no other thing that will make you forgive me?”

“Nothing.”

“Constancia, if I do this thing, you will despise me afterward. Tell me if that is not true? Oh, I shall talk no more. Be ready in two minutes . . . the horses will be there . . . behind that clump of poplars.”

He was gone, hurrying through the night.

Constancia, watching under the shadow of the cypress, presently saw two glimmering shapes of horses drawn toward the poplars that had been pointed out beforehand. Then she went, hurrying. She found Christy waiting, and a tall and powerfully made gray horse—that same magnificent creature that had been stolen from her father's ranch. Once in the saddles upon the backs of this pair, there was no question of them being overtaken in their flight.

She was helped in silence to her place on the back of the gray. Stephen Macdona mounted Christy, and it seemed that the horses turned of their own accord up the long side trail that wove across the wall of the valley. There was not a word between them. They worked their way steadily up to a high shoulder of the mountain above. Looking back, they could see the valley, half in shadow and half in the moon, with thin white ribbons of waterfalls leaving the opposite cliff. The murmur of the cascades came up to them like the faintest of voices. Below, pointing east, there was the downward ravine that would lead to the great plains and to safety, for her. She looked to Macdona, as he rode with her out of the shadow and into the moonshine, and she had never seen such torture as was on his face.

She checked the gray. Christy stopped, also.

“Are we free to go on?” she asked him.

“Yes, and quickly in the name of heaven. I want to turn my back on that valley and my conscience.”

She loosed the reins, but drew them tightly again before the gray could take a step. A strange pain was wringing her heart. “Stephen,” she said, “if you go on with me, you have left your honor behind you forever.”

“Yes.”

“But what if your honor should become my honor,also?”

Christy seemed to whirl back of her own accord, and here was Stephen Macdona sitting his saddle, facing her.

“Tell me quickly, Constancia. My brain whirls. I cannot think my way through this thing. What do you mean?”

“I mean that I am a foolish, weak girl. I thought that I wanted to match strength with you and conquer you, Stephen. But now . . . I see that I am breaking my own heart.”

“Constancia, Constancia, by all that's wonderful and beautiful and dear in the world . . . you are crying.”

“I am a great fool, Stephen. But I cannot . . . help it.”

“Does it mean that you care for me, then?”

She made an impulsive gesture with both hands. “If you had half an eye, Stephen, you would have seen from the very first instant that I loved you. Take me back to the valley. I would rather die than have you break your faith with Don Guido.”

They went slowly, slowly down the slope again, with many pauses. Just as they reached the valley floor a swirl of horsemen came rushing toward them. There was a chorus of shouts. To left and right the wild riders sheered away and left them facing Guido de los Pazos.

“It was too fine a night, Guido,” said Stephen Macdona. “We went out to watch the valley in the moon.”

 

On the balcony before his library sat Señor Don Rudolfo Alvarez. His guest, who was none other than that same Diego Catalon who had recently resigned from the presidency because his mines were more important to him than political glory, smoked one of Don Rudolfo's best Havanas and looked with him across the softness of the night. It was not complete darkness. There was just a stain of color in the west, and only the brightest stars and planets were visible.

“When I look back upon your life, Don Rudolfo,” said the politic guest, “I see one clever stroke after another. Until, at last, you have completed the picture of a successful man. That much is entirely clear. But let us go a little further. There is often a flaw in the finest diamond. And it seems to me that there is one weakness in your career.”

Don Rudolfo lifted his brows in the dimness of the evening. “So?” he said.

“May I speak outright, like an old friend?”

“By all means.”

“Very well. Since ancient days, wise men have always realized that one of the surest ways of founding their fortunes was in making wise marriages for their children. Is not that really quite true?”

“Most undoubtedly true, my friend. Continue.”

“Very well. You could look about you in Venduras and select whatever family you chose and then make the marriage proposal for an alliance between your daughter and the heir of the other house. Is not that true?”

“I hope that it is true. Continue. I shall have something to say when you have ended.”

“Very well. You might have selected the son of some great owner of a ranch like your own, and, uniting your interests, you could have dominated the plains. Or you could have allied yourself with some of the mine owners . . . I do not mention myself. But others, still richer and stronger, perhaps. Or again, you could have selected the son of a powerful political family, such as the Vegas. Could you not?”

“All of those things were possibilities, of course.”

“But, instead of all that, you select this man from a foreign nation . . . a wild American . . . a daredevil and a hero, I grant you, but a fellow who came to you without anything much greater by way of reputation than the number of times that he had flirted with death. Now, Don Rudolfo, tell me in what way you have strengthened your position by this alliance?”

Don Rudolfo considered for a moment, eying the dark of the night. “All of these things, to be sure, I have thought of,” he said. “But I had to consider other things, also. I had to have in mind that, if I married my daughter to the son of some other rich man, people might begin to be envious, because this is an envious country of ours, Diego.”

“That is true.”

“And it might have looked as though I were trying to fasten too strong a grip on the wealth of the country. However, there is something lost in one way and gained in another. Consider this, Don Diego, that in the past year there have been waves of revolution passing here and there. Haciendas are burned to the ground, and men are murdered in their houses. All around me there have been calamities, but my lands remain unharmed. There has not been a single sheep driven away. Every cow remains to me. My horses have not been stolen, and what is the explanation, then?”

“It is true.” Don Diego sighed. “We suffer from these bandits. I cannot tell what sort of a lightning conductor you use. But it is notorious over the entire country that you are no longer harmed by them . . . not since your daughter was carried away . . . and returned to you.”

“Very true. Now I shall tell you the reason, amigo. I keep with me a young tiger, and the robbers fear him more than the devil. Because if they dare to offend him, he follows them not like an ordinary man but like one of their own kind. He runs them to the ground and slaughters them without mercy. Besides, the greatest robber of them all . . . that great de los Pazos . . . is like a father to Stephen Macdona. And I have nothing to fear. By this marriage of my daughter to the adventurer, I have made my property safe. It is better to keep a little in safety than to build a great house that may one day be burned to the ground.”

“But when this property comes into the hands of Macdona . . . will he not be a waster?”

“A conqueror is not a waster, my friend. Besides, he follows a master.”

“Is his wife his controller, then?”

“His wife? There is no such thing between them. They are like one. No, but they are the two proudest people in the world and they have both given up their pride to another thing.”

“Very well. But tell me what that thing may be.”

“Listen, and you will hear the voice of the master of them both . . . there, it begins again.”

Don Diego canted his head. And out of the distance he heard the thin, far, high-pitched crying of a child.

The year 1923 saw sixteen short novels and ten serials published by Faust under various pseudonyms, mostly in Street & Smith's
Western Story Magazine
, his primary market between 1922 and 1934. This story, “Uncle Chris Turns North,” appeared under the Max Brand pseudonym in the December 8, 1923 issue of
Western Story
. It is an unusual story about power and tyranny, in which Chris Martin, the czar of the local village, tests the extent of his reach when he takes on Willie Merchant, the hardworking young man who has fallen in love with his niece, Jennie.

 

What Willie Merchant decided, when he had finished dressing and looked at himself in the glass, was that his face was not so bad—it was his name that damned him. There was nothing spectacular even in his appearance, to be sure. That is to say, he was of about average height; his hair was between sandy and brown; his eyes were between gray and blue and looked a little green in some lights; his features were simply as average as the rest of him, except that his mouth was a little wider. He stretched that mouth with a grin, and the effect startled him.