by Max Brand
THE BATTLE FOR CHRISTY
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
MAX
BRAND®
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.
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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
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
The Fugitive
Uncle Chris Turns North
The Crystal Game
The Fugitive
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.
Chapter 1
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 M
other 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.
It might have been said very honestly that he had done nothing a whit worse than a hundred other youths of his day and age were doing, but it was different in the case of young Macdona. When men looked upon that magnificent brow and upon that glorious body, they told themselves that it was a bitter crime that such a grand engine should be put to such base uses. Moreover, there was an innate dignity about the person and the manner of this youngster, even in his gayest moods, so that people could not help taking him very seriously.
For instance, every boy in the county had fallen wildly in love with pretty little Elena Ramirez in that romantic Mexican house by the river. Her father, like a sensible man, had told himself that one cannot rear roses without making the world stop to stare. But when Stephen Macdona appeared on the scene, it was different. He took the youngster aside and asked him about his intentions. And why was it, pray, that Stephen came so regularly, three and four times a week, to see Elena?
“I am learning Spanish, you know,” said Stephen instantly, and he kept his smile out of his brown, serious eyes.
Señor Ramirez grew worried. He let as much be known by two or three of Elena’s Mexican wooers, and so they waited for Stephen in the cool of the evening by the riverbank. It was a memorable occasion for several reasons, three of which were the bodies of the assailants. The coroner, of course, pronounced it self-defense, but he could not help indulging in the request that Stephen might defend himself just a little less vigorously on the next occasion, if there ever should be one.
Alas, there were many more. For one of the important results of this evening’s amusement was that Stephen made a grand new discovery, which was to the effect that cards had their place in the scheme of this joyful world, and so did the riding of wild horses, and so did trick target shooting, and so did the hunting of grizzlies, and the following of the puma into its dark lair—but all of these were as merest nothings compared to the supreme joy of finding oneself standing before mature men armed to the teeth, and resolute to fight.
A grand appetite is bound to be fed. You would say that, after that first affair by the river, other men in that county would be somewhat wary of the manner in which they crossed the path of Stephen. To be sure, they were. But this cleverly devised world is so arranged that he who wants trouble can usually find it. Through the town in which Stephen lived, strangers from other parts of the cattle country were constantly passing—men with keen, quick eyes and lightning hands, inured to their work by long practice. Among so many, all perfectly sure of themselves, there were some who were bound to fall foul of Stephen.
The end would have come much earlier than it actually did were it not for the fact that Stephen’s shooting improved. He did not have to aim for head or heart. A shoulder or a leg would do nearly as well. And if there were a doctor’s bill, it was less than the cost of a burial.
However, even these matters mounted and mounted. Add little to little and finally you will hit your million. So it was with young Macdona. One day a grave deputation called upon Stephen. They addressed him with respect, but with firmness also. They understood, of course, that he had been unlucky, that much trouble had come his way, that he would willingly have avoided it. But after all, the nerves of the people in that community were beginning to be a bit fine drawn. They suggested firmly that he should take a vacation. They suggested that a change of air would probably be wonderfully beneficial.
Stephen agreed with them, sympathized with them—but did not leave. A week later a rough fellow from Denver lay wounded and cursing in the street—cursing his gun that had hung in the draw. It was always that way with the men who stood up to Stephen. Something happened to their guns before they got out of the holsters; something always slipped.
Another deputation called on Stephen, but he was not at home. He had gone whirling off up the country a
nd he came back in a month with a perfect beauty of a wild young mare, which he named Christy. She was a black chestnut, darker than polished mahogany, with a dappling, like leopard spots, showing plainly when the light struck her from the right angle. Stephen loved her with a passionate devotion, as he loved all things that were fair to look upon. For many a day after that he was too busy grooming his new treasure and teaching her tricks to pay much attention to the rest of the world.
One bright, clear morning, as he rode Christy down the street, he encountered three men, riding sternly abreast, three silent, gloomy men who carried rifles. They were not Indians or Mexicans or half-breeds. They were purest white, except for the tan that the desert sun had given to them. No one knew exactly how the trouble began—Stephen least of all—but it was some ridiculous thing about the right of way. Suddenly a gun flashed in the early sun, and the wild, sweet madness of battle was flaming across the brain of Stephen Macdona.
When it cleared a little, two figures were writhing in the street, staining the dust with an ugly crimson. But the third man lay upon his back, with his arms thrown wide, and his blank eyes looking mildly up to the sun of heaven, seeing nothing at all.
Stephen took note of this. He took note, also, that most unfortunately there were no living witnesses to this affair except himself and the three. And what they would have to say might be the hanging of him.
Discretion had never been a promising virtue in Stephen, but on this morning it suddenly took possession of him. He gave mute thanks to God that he happened to have the sleek and supple speed of Christy beneath him, and he rode straight out toward the mountain desert, not even pausing to take his new rifle as he passed his house.
Chapter 2
Seeing Stephen riding across the desert in this fashion, with nothing but a brace of revolvers in his holsters and a very few dollars in his purse, what had Mother Nature to say for herself, she who had searched among her best gifts, to squander them all upon this rapscallion? Certainly she must have hid her head with shame. Yet there was no shame in Stephen. It must be recorded that he was whistling as he galloped down the trail, only stopping his music to shoot a mountain partridge as it rose on heavy, humming wings out of the thicket before him.
