The Fugitive (7 page)

There had been a rattling of horses' hoofs outside, and a stir of voices. Now his daughter Lila came running in to him.

“Andres Castellar is dead!” was the first thing that she wailed to him.

Then she shrank away and waited, for Andres Castellar was one of the bravest and most trusted men of her father's band. That morning, he and a few others had gone up into the mountains for a day's hunting, taking with them the new man, that richly famous Valentin Guadalvo, who had recently filled the country with his deeds, flashing here and there across Venduras.

Don Guido removed the mouthpiece from his lips and emitted fragrant smoke. “Valentin Guadalvo killed him, then?”

His daughter looked at him in utter wonder. “Is it true, señor?” she said. “Do you know things when they happen? Do you see everything?”

He waved a magisterial hand without answering, for Don Guido made it a rule never to commit himself as to his own weaknesses and limitations. “Why did not the others bring me word of it?”

“They were afraid. And now Gualterio has rushed into the mountains with more men to avenge Andres. Ah, is it not dreadful?”

She turned up her face in a pious horror, and her father watched the sun turn her hair to flaming gold.

“This is very well,” he said.

She stared at him again. She had never been able to understand this father of hers. Even in his talkative humors, he was strange enough. In his silences, he was more mysterious to her than an oracle.

“When Don Valentin returns . . . ,” he began.

“Alas, señor, will his ghost come to haunt us?”

“Who spoke of ghosts?”

“But even though he has been able to kill Andres, how can he stand against that terrible Gualterio? Oh, no, he must be dead even now.”

“When Don Valentin returns,” he went on, not regarding her, “you may see him before I do. And then you must be sure to smile at him. Because, my child, that will be a sign that I am not angry, and I do not wish him to doubt me.”

She left him and stole back to the grave circle of waiting men. “Even Gualterio will not be able to kill Don Valentin,” she whispered to them. “My father has said so.”

Perhaps other men in other countries would have smiled, hearing such powers of prophecy attributed to anyone. But these fellows did not smile. They knew their leader far too well to question his wisdom. But an air of tense expectancy settled over the village, and all eyes scanned the hillsides anxiously.

Presently they saw the return of the hunters. First came the mules, driven along with shrill-voiced, brown-footed boys, and carrying the quartered bodies of five deer, the fruit of the hunt. Behind these came a group of three: Andres Castellar in the middle, and upon one side his brother Gualterio, on the other Valentin Guadalvo himself.

Who could say, after this, that Guido de los Pazos did not possess the gift of second sight?

It was no dead Andres, then, who came back to the village. But there was a bandage around his shoulder and the first swift rumor, as the riders came in, was that there had been a fight, indeed. When Gualterio reached the hunters, there had been another battle, but bloodless, this time. In both Don Valentin had conquered. But who could think that there had ever been strife among them to see Andres smiling faintly, and Gualterio laughing? No, they came in like the three best comrades in the world.

Someone ventured to question the fierce and battle-scarred Gualterio. He merely shrugged his shoulders. “Is it any shame,” he said, “to be beaten by a mountain lion? Besides, I have now two brothers, instead of one.”

Stephen Macdona had gone into the house of the chieftain, and at the door he met the blue eyes and the golden hair of Lila.

“My father knew that you would come back safely,” she said. “I, also, am glad, señor.” This she said, obeying the very letter of her father's command, for she smiled up into the brown eyes of Stephen.

He went in to de los Pazos, leaving the girl behind him with a slender hand still pressed against her lips.

“And it was a pleasant hunt?” Don Guido asked, when he had placed a box of long, brown-coated, oily Havanas before his guest. “A hot day, but a happy one, señor?”

“We found some deer and brought them back with us,” said Stephen. “It was a fine day and . . . you have a glorious lot of fighting men, Don Guido!”

“I selected them with care,” admitted de los Pazos.

“However, I am curious about one thing.”

“Ask whatever you choose.”

“You are known in this country, Don Guido. You have done enough to fill the lives of half a dozen men.And yet you can settle down here peacefully in the mountains . . . for how long? How is that managed? Why have they not sent men up here to take you?”

“In part,” said the bandit, “you have answered yourself. I am known in this country.” He made a slight pause as he drew on the water pipe and crossed his legs. Then he continued: “Besides, they have sent men for me, once or twice. The men found me, but only part of them went back to tell what they had seen.”

He waved toward the white-headed mountains. “Consider, my friend, that in the throat of one of those passes, half a dozen men could make hot work for a hundred. They would need a little army to take me. And a little army is an expensive thing. And while the little army was away catching me, might not some clever politician make a revolution? You see how this thing is.”

“I begin to see.” Stephen smiled. “So you might go on here forever?”

“One never can tell,” answered the leader. “I live each day for its own sake.”

“If President Smith sends an army out to catch you, Senator Jones takes the lucky chance to raise a revolution and the good work of bandit-catching will have been done by Smith for Jones. That is very neat.”

“Venduras is Venduras,” said Don Guido. “We have our own little ways in the world. Besides, I am moderate. I take what I need and not what I want. My own goatherds on the mountains, you see, furnish milk and cheese and flesh enough for my men, and for me. If we need more, why, you have seen the deer that run in our valleys. The streams are crowded with trout. Watercress grows in the pools. We have our patches of maize here and there, enough to make our tortillas. What more do we want? A little money, to be sure. I must have enough of that to satisfy my brave men. But that is soon done. When the silver is brought down on the backs of the mules from the higher mountains, if I stop a train here and there and take a few loads, is that a great crime? No, because what I take in moderation, others might take in gross. And no other bandit dares to show his head in these mountains except my men. Some call me a thief, to be sure, but then there are others who call me a chief of police. Or again, if some owner of a ranch grows too fat and proud and like a tyrant in the lowlands, I slip down on him in the night, and, when I come back, he finds that he has become thin between dark and dawn.”

He settled back in his chair and smiled at the young man, who watched him with smiling lips and fiery eyes.

“Don Guido,” he said, “I begin to understand you very well.”

“Now the first thing,” said the leader, “is that mare of yours. We will start at once to . . .”

“De los Pazos,” broke in Stephen, “it seems to me that everything is for me, in this arrangement. Suppose, then, that I take the mare and ride away?”

“We are gamblers,” answered Don Guido. “And this is a risk which I must take.”

“This is very fine, frank, generous talk. I have to answer it in the same tone. This is a jolly life that you lead up here . . . a free and cheerful life, Don Guido, but I shall not stay with you long. Enough to make some return for Christy . . . and then we say good-bye.”

“Tomorrow”—the brigand smiled—“takes care of itself.”

 

In the cool of the evening Señor Don Rudolfo Alvarez always sat on his balcony. He retired there shortly after the last meal of the day and remained there to think in peace. For he could look from this balcony across the flower-starred gloom of the patio gardens beneath, and beyond the walls of the patio to the level thousands of his acres, patched with lights here and there, where his villages stood. Beyond these nearer beauties arose the hills where the great forests that he owned were slumbering, and beyond these still stood the mighty mountains, unseen, except where their outlines blotted out the stars.

It was an old habit with General Alvarez. He felt that it surrounded him with dignity and calm. In a way, he aspired to be considered a sort of George Washington of Venduras. So he maintained these evening vigils, and, after dark, the fragrance of his Havanas crept down and mingled with the perfumes in the patio, and sometimes, a little later, the soft murmur of his snoring descended, also. However, the general never dreamed that the servants dared to smile, even behind his back. He was a rare soul, who saw so few faults in himself that he could not guess where others might criticize him.

On this evening, he had finished his first cigar and had wrapped the goatskin rug closer about his knees as the night breeze grew a little chillier. He looked drowsily forth across the dark until he was not at all sure where the lights of his outermost villages ended and the stars of heaven began. Just at this moment he was drawn rudely back to the earth by the sharp tapping of heels that crossed the floor of his library, behind. There was only one person with authority to break in upon him in this fashion.

She came out onto the balcony with the swishing of her skirts about her like the noise of a wind through ferns. “Father, it is not true,” she said. “You haven't sent Christy away.”

Some of his sense of greatness departed suddenly from Don Rudolfo. His aura, as one might say, grew dim, and he bundled the silken softness of the goatskin tighter around him. “Sit down beside me, child.” She did not budge from before him, looking down at him with blazing eyes. He was glad of the dimness of the night, which screened his face, although some of the lamplight from within shone upon her. In these moods she was very like her mother—a little too splendid—a little too like. “There is one's duty to be considered as well as one's pleasure,” said Don Rudolfo.

“Duty? Duty?”

“To one like your father, who must think of his country as well as himself.”

“I'm not talking about the country. I'm talking about Christy . . . just when I'd taught her to take sugar from my hand . . . and . . . and I would have ridden her in another week.”

She fairly stammered in her passion, and her father looked at her with a vague uneasiness.

“If it were only this Guadalvo, he would have been nothing to your father. But when de los Pazos comes in . . . ah, that is another matter.”

“Guido de los Pazos,” echoed the girl.

Her father sighed. He had not been sure that even this name would impress her. “That same Guido,” he said.

“But de los Pazos, the bandit . . . what has he to do with Don Valentin?”

“This much . . . that they ride together, my dear. I heard it this morning. And the instant I heard it, I knew what I should have to do.”

“Guido de los Pazos,” said Constancia again, breathless.

“The party was sighted near San Lorenzo. Troops rode out.”

“And caught the wind!” cried his daughter. “Oh, that is all that they ever catch when they try to net that terrible man. Oh, go on.”

“They did catch the wind, and it proved to be a hurricane,” said her father. “They laid an ambush to surprise de los Pazos twenty miles north of San Lorenzo . . . twenty miles nearer to me and to you, my dear, if you know the map of your country.”

“Yes, yes.”

“When they had arranged their troop, there were enough of them to swallow de los Pazos and all his crew, they thought. And then they saw Don Guido coming across the plain with a little handful . . . hardly enough to be worth talking about . . . and they prepared themselves to capture the old lion at last.”

“Ah, but they never could do it!” exclaimed Constancia. “Tell me what he did?”

“Nothing but ride straight forward toward the government men. It seemed plain that he suspected nothing.”

“Ah, how splendid!” cried Constancia.

“Child, child, do you love nothing but bloodshed?”

“Quick . . . tell me everything. When he came closer . . . he slipped away?”

“He came too close to them to slip away. He came right on into the range of their rifles.”

“Dreadful.”

“Is this de los Pazos your brother that you love him so well?”

“Every brave man is my brother. Go on.”

“The troops saw that they had him in their grip. They held their fire, ready to blast Don Guido to bits. They only wondered that there were so few of the bandits with him. Forty had been reported in sight at San Lorenzo. And here were a scant dozen with him. And of the government, nearly two hundred, say the reports.”

“Two hundred, and poor Don Guido had only a dozen. But that would mean a miracle, Father.”

“Do you think so? Well, it was a miracle that came from a different direction. Just as they were ready to open fire and blow de los Pazos to bits, there was a rattle of hoofs from behind the rocks of a tall hill that lay at the side of the troops. And down came a little crowd of horsemen at full speed, each man with a pair of revolvers spouting fire and lead. As they galloped, they shouted . . . what do you think they shouted?”

“They shouted for de los Pazos. Did they not?”

“That was only part of their yell,” said Don Rudolfo. “They shouted for de los Pazos and for Guadalvo. De los Pazos and Guadalvo. They made the hills ring with their cheers. And in front of them rode a tall young man whose guns killed from either hand.”

“It was Valentin Guadalvo. And he crushed them.”

“He tore the troopers to shreds. They rode away as fast as they could, and that left the field to nothing but the bandits and the wounded. There were plenty of the latter, and plenty of dead, also.”