The Fugitive

by Max Brand

  He built himself a little fire and roasted his meal, and no man ever enjoyed food more, as he sat there upon his heels, watching the honest sheriff and his dusty posse toiling across the flat beneath him on his trail. After picking the last bone of that big, fat bird—with the others a half rifle shot away, and spurring wildly to get at him—he mounted Christy and slid away into the wilderness.

  They headed him off at Caxton Pass. He turned back and tried the western trails. They stopped him again with numbers at the edge of Lake Tucker, and it was said that surely at least two bullets had been shot into him at that encounter. But here rumor lied, for he went unscathed.

  He made a pause, helped himself to a prosperous rancher’s wallet and best rifle, and continued toward the south. They nearly snagged him not two miles from the Río, then hunted grandly north and west again, while the newspapers published bulletins every day, morning and evening, to tell how the war against the desperado was continuing. And every young boy, north and south and east and west, prayed daily that the hero might be spared.

  Stephen Macdona was having the very best time that he had ever had. Yet, when two posses nearly caught him on successive days, and when Christy began to grow thin and lost the sharper edge of her speed, he saw that something radical would have to be done.

  He went up into the mountains and lived for eight months like a hermit. He grew in that time a luxurious young beard and a mustache. His good clothes turned ragged, and the mare became a glossy thing of beauty again, ready to flirt her heels in the face of the world.

  Then he caught a stray mule, made up a pretended pack, and tramped across 1,200 miles of desert and mountain and farmland, with the mare led at the side of the mule. When they asked him questions, Christy was a wild horse that he had caught and that he would sell, when he found a man to ride her. Would you like to try? They tried, but he had taught her to buck like a young fiend, and no one ever managed to stick in the saddle.

  Stephen Macdona passed across the country and drifted south and south and east and east, until he found himself at his goal—a seaport, with a dumpy steamer lying in the harbor bound for Central America.

  He bought new clothes, trimmed his beard and mustache to a fashionable semblance, shipped Christy, and walked on board himself with the air of a young duke traveling incognito.

  What had Mother Nature done to him now, driving him away from his native land, which he watched that evening, as it turned blue and soft in the distance? She had done this much—she had made him laugh softly and sweetly to himself, and let him think of sundry industrious and antlike toilers who were still floundering here and there among the mountains, laboring at broken trails, following false clues, and forever trailing a man about twenty-four years old, six feet tall, 180 pounds in weight, looks a little younger than his age, of a gay nature and very prone to laughter, smooth shaven, handsome, dark hair and eyes.

  But that was no longer a description of the fugitive. Now, under the name of Valentin Guadalvo, there appeared a gentleman who looked some twenty-eight or thirty years, with a neatly cut imperial and a well-shaped mustache, with lips that smiled but rarely laughed, a gentleman speaking the most fluent Spanish, a man of ease and quiet deportment.

  Who could have looked in him for the fire-eating young Macdona? Certainly no one aboard the steamer, Santa Lucia, regarded him with any suspicion. Most wonderful of all, even that exquisitely beautiful mare, Christy, was not eyed with any undue curiosity. She had a Negro from New Orleans to look after her—a rascal who was a fugitive, also, due to certain eccentricities connected with betting at the races. He knew horseflesh.

  “Give this Christy girl another inch of legs,” said George, the Negro, “and she’d be winning frequent on the track. There ain’t any doubt about that.”

  They steamed south and west, with the old boat rebuffing the waves at the rate of nine knots an hour, and her wake sweltering slowly in the rear while the skies grew hotter and closer. The warm gulf winds brought a sense of drowsy comfort to all on board the ship.

  Stephen Macdona, alias Valentin Guadalvo, lounged in cool flannels and smoked rich Havanas on the deck, turning his brown, sparkling eyes on everyone who passed by him. He liked them all, simply because they were human creatures like himself. He liked the ship and felt grateful to her for the steady way in which she bucked through the waves and put precious leagues between the hungry sheriff and him. He liked the sun, because of its strength, and the sea, because of its delightful blueness, and its foaming waves that crisped about the bow. For the wind that was ever playing about the head of the ship he felt almost a personal affection and affinity. She was a wild thing, yonder wind, and a wanderer without a home, a gay and reckless wanderer, like this same Valentin Guadalvo. But of all the things living and dead that lay under the eye of Stephen, that which he approved of most highly was Constancia Alvarez.

  He would not give himself many glances at her; indeed, there were not so very many chances. When she walked the deck, it was always at the side of a billowy old lady, dressed in black, who often obscured the view. Her deck chair was in a quiet and most removed part of the deck where, to see her, one would have to stand directly in front of her place and stare. And Stephen never stared—except when he was about to draw a gun.

  But he saw her now and then, and every glance added something to the picture of her that was lodged in his brain. Other young men on the boat, without exception, had attempted to make themselves agreeable to her, but she had avoided them with perfect ease. She could make her glance as dead as the eye of an Egyptian mummy and as cold as ice. After a time, she was left alone to take her turns on the deck, to lounge in her chair, and to remain in her cabin, the best on the old ship. The other gentlemen aboard hid their chagrin under a mask of surliness and swore that she was a stupid face of frost and not worth the knowing. But for Stephen, she remained like a touch of salt that makes food edible. No one could have known that he was watching her, when she went past. His glance always seemed fixed at something far away, but all the time he was adding some new feature.

  And then something happened that gave him a chance to know her better. It began with Jamaica rum, old and beautifully aromatic. The second mate could not resist this excellent drink. In addition, there was a strong headwind, cutting a bit across the starboard quarter and making the ship pitch like a sparrow in choppy flight, up and down. Too, there was a sharp-crested sea running, throwing points and ridges of foam up against the blue ocean, whirling keen volleys of spray over the rail. Finally there was a low place in the rail.

  All these elements combined. The rum had just made the second mate’s head swim; he had just reached the low place in the rail; at that very moment the ship rolled with a heavy pitch into a quartering sea.

  The mate staggered against the low rail, his legs flew out from beneath him, and his screech was stifled with amazing suddenness in the waters beneath.

  Chapter 3

  In that crowd the majority did what the majority usually does in time of emergency. Some of them clutched the edges of their chairs and stared with bulging eyes; some halted in mid-step and gaped; many screamed; some gasped; some started up; a mother caught her child into her arms; but two people acted.

  The old duenna and Constancia Alvarez were passing along that side of the ship, at the instant, taking their usual exercise. The chaperone clasped her hands with a shriek, but Constancia snatched a life buoy that hung at the rail and flung it accurately at the spot where the mate had disappeared. The buoy had not yet landed in the blue water when Stephen Macdona went over the rail and headed for the water in a graceful arc.

  The ocean heaved before him, but he went through it. Something flashed with a white twinkle beneath him—the sun gleaming on the flannels of the wretched mate, filmed over with the shadows of the brine. Stephen closed a hand in the hair of the man and started upward; clinging arms and blind, desperate legs were flung around him, so Stephen, feeling himself sink, turned and considered what to do. Striki
ng through water, one’s fist is a powerless tool. But there was still might in a sharp elbow. He drove it home against the side of the mate’s head, and then swam to the surface, bearing a leaden burden.

  By the time he had gasped out the dead air from his lungs and breathed in a fresh supply, he saw the life buoy, not a dozen strokes away. To it he clung, keeping the head of his man above the tossing of the waves while a boat was lowered to fetch them in.

  The wits of the frightened mate returned, sobriety, also, before they climbed up the side of the vessel. He was stammering out some sort of thanks to Stephen, but the latter laughed him away.

  On the deck of the steamer a pinch-faced missionary reached for his hand. “What a noble thing, Señor Guadalvo!”

  “Piffle,” said the hero, and went to his cabin to change.

  He waited in his room until the excitement should have died down a little. Then he came up and found Constancia Alvarez. “I have come to thank you for that life buoy,” he said.

  Even the duenna considered that this was introduction enough.

  They sat on the deck, that evening, watching the rail dip down to the steel-gray waters and then pitch up and cross the face of the moon with bars. The duenna was discreetly asleep in her chair.

  “I bless the mate,” said Constancia.

  “And why?” asked Stephen.

  “Because I was dying of weariness.”

  “There was no need to. I watched twenty men try to comfort you.”

  “How could I talk to them, and be reported to my father by the señora?”

  “Is he a dragon?”

  “He is two dragons.”

  “I thank the rum,” said Stephen, “and the roll of the ship that knocked him against the rail, and the lowness of the rail there, and the pitching of the waves, because they give me a chance to tell you what I have been thinking about.”

  She settled back in her chair. The shadow of her hat did not shelter her face quite as completely as she thought, and he could see her smile. Even the white moonshine could not make that smile cold.

  “The first thing that I discovered after I came on board the ship . . . shall I start at the beginning?”

  “Of course,” she said.

  “The first thing was the fragrance of jasmine.”

  “Oh, that was what you were studying, when you looked at the sky with such faraway eyes?”

  “Of course you are surprised,” said Stephen.

  “Tremendously,” said Constancia.

  They turned their heads at the same instant and, of one accord, they smiled. Her glance flickered toward the duenna, but all was well. That good lady slept, or seemed to sleep, and there was such a good understanding between Constancia and her, that either of the two amounted to the same thing.

  “The next thing that I noticed was the way the hair curls at the nape of your neck.”

  “I am old-fashioned and do my hair high.”

  “I saw nothing else for a considerable time, until one day you stopped and I saw your hand against the rail. However, I saw at a glance that was a subject I could never learn at a distance.”

  Her hand appeared from beneath the steamer rug.

  “You are a scientist, then?” said the girl.

  “I read the future by the hand,” he said, “which is a common art, isn’t it?”

  “I suppose so,” she said.

  “And would you like to know what will happen to you?”

  “I feel rather foolish. But I suppose that I would.” And she gave him her hand.

  He held it where the moonshine turned it to a transparent whiteness; he held it with the lightest and most gentle of reverent touches. All the while her curious, thoughtful eyes were studying his face.

  “Begin, then,” she said. “But I never heard of a person who could read the back of a hand.”

  “The palm,” said Stephen, “is only important in a soft, gentle, and yielding person.”

  “And I am none of those?”

  “We’ll see what the hand says for itself about the future. At the very first glance, I see trouble.”

  “Of what sort?”

  “Oh, many kinds. Young trouble and old trouble. Tall trouble and short. Trouble with black and gray heads.”

  “But what will come of it?”

  “Much talk.”

  “That is always a terrible bore,” she admitted.

  “Exactly. Most of this talk will be about love. All of these troubles will tell you that they love you and ask you to marry them.” He leaned his head a little closer to the hand. “In fact, I see that there has been a great deal of this sort of thing already.”

  “Oh, nothing at all worth mentioning. But what is to come of the future?”

  “The worst of it all is,” he explained, “that none of these troubles, not even the old, gray-headed ones, will really know what they are talking about.”

  “What in the world do you mean by that?”

  “Why, they will think that you are like the palm of this hand, soft and yielding and gentle. As a matter of fact, you are not.”

  She sat up a little straighter. “You are an odd person,” she observed, “and I think that . . . well, go on. Tell me what I am.”

  “Here are knuckles all even, firm, strong, and straight. They tell me that your strength is even, regular, and steady, and that it will never leave you. These thin, strong fingers tell me that, when you make up your mind, you generally can take what you want. The roundness of this wrist says that there is much endurance in you. Then, there is no trembling in the fingers. But they are quick and sure and restless. See, they are always moving just a little. And they mean that you are restless, impatient, stern, cruel, gay and . . .”

  She took back her hand and stared at him.

  He continued: “And fierce, determined, cunning, and apt to be desperate if you are crossed.”

  “Señor Guadalvo!”

  “Yes, señorita.”

  “Perhaps I should be insulted, by such talk.”

  “No. Other girls would be. But you are only interested because I am telling you the truth.”

  “You are a very self-satisfied fellow. But it is the truth, and yet . . . how in the world could you ever know me? Who is our mutual friend? And . . .”

  “I’ll tell you how it is. I know a lady who is exactly like you.”

  “Ah. Do you really?” There was a cold, little rising inflection in her voice.

  “Exactly like you,” he said. “She is beautiful, as you are. Yes, even when I look at you now, when a bit of anger makes your eyes larger than usual . . . even as you are now, I think that she is more beautiful.”

  “I don’t think that we have been talking about beauty,” said the girl sternly.

  “I don’t think that we have, but this is a good time to begin, if you don’t mind. I should like to talk about it a long time. The lady of mine has a head as proud and as highly poised as yours. She has a great, bright, wild eye, like yours. Her feet can step as light as the wind. And her body is one of exquisite perfection.”

  “I think that we have talked enough about beauty,” said the girl in haste.

  “At the first glance,” said Stephen, “I fell in love with her.”

  “Ah.”

  “Yes. Hopelessly in love.”

  “Just because she was pretty, then?”

  “It was not only because of her enchanting beauty, but because she had, like you, wonderful virtues mixed with her faults.”

  “Indeed?”

  “Oh, yes. With her stubbornness there was mixed a fine patience, like yours. She was rash and headlong, like you, but, like you, she has a magnificent courage. There is no fear in her. And when I saw that brave, bright eye of hers, I loved her, and I knew that I should have to have her or die.”

  “You are still alive, however.”

  “But I have her, señorita.”

  “You have her, really?”

  “Yes, indeed. Shall I tell you how I won her?”

&nbs
p; “Yes, if you care to,” said Constancia a little more coldly than before.

  Chapter 4

  He sat forward, where he could look more fairly at her. “This is in the manner of a confession,” he said. “Does it bore you?”

  “I am wonderfully interested, of course, if you care to talk about this thing.”

  “I would not ordinarily,” he admitted. “But she is so perfectly like you that you will understand why I can confide in you. Besides, you are to learn a great lesson out of this.”

  “Of what sort, if you please?”

  “You will know that until some man woos you exactly as I wooed my own dear, you will not have met the right person to marry. I tell you as a prophet.”

  “I hear you . . . as a prophet.” The girl chuckled.

  “Very well. In the first place, I went on her trail.”

  “She was not a stationary beauty, then?”

  “No, she was a great lover. I followed on her trail for a long time, and, when I caught up with her, I took her suddenly in such a way that she could not resist me. She had to place herself in my hands.”

  “Good heavens!” exclaimed the girl.

  “She was desperate. She struggled against me with all her might. But I subdued her with a stern hand. I even went so far as to give her scarcely any food, and no water, until her spirit left her and she was so weak. . . .”

  “Can you sit here, in this century, and tell me such a thing?”

  “Of course. Take notice of every point. It will be useful for you, later on. First, I knew that I had gained a point when her hatred of me turned into fear and when she cringed at my coming.”

  “Oh, dreadful.”

  “When she cringed at my coming, I knew that I was on the way to victory. I was more stern than ever. Suddenly, one day, she submitted out of weakness and pain. Her fierceness and wildness had left her. She gave herself into my hands. The battle was ended. And after she had submitted, I had only to give her a little liberty, and she began to love me.”