by Max Brand
Stephen listened with patience and accompanied them to the veterinary inspector. It was a purely honorary post. No one in Venduras had ever dreamed that such a thing as disease might be brought into the country by foreign cattle until the last president wished to find another easy post with which to reward one of his minor followers. So the necessity of a veterinary inspector was discovered at once.
The school in which this doctor had been trained consisted in a degree as banker’s clerk; this was followed by a year of service in the police; he left the force to follow the fortunes of various candidates for political honors, all of whom failed lamentably with the exception of the very last. So, tired from a dozen years of poverty, rags, starvation, and fighting, he sank with a sigh into this comfortable post.
He was to be seen ordinarily with his feet displayed on the windowsill, a cigar of unspeakable badness fuming between his teeth. But when a ship came in, he put on his uniform coat and put away the bottle of mescal, which was otherwise beside him. He had never done anything about the arrival of the ships and the cattle aboard them, but, when he put on his uniform coat, he felt vaguely comforted and important. Sometimes he took a turn up and down before his office, with his hands clasped behind his back, and was seen to chew his cigar with a savage insight and determination.
The inspector received Stephen Macdona in a Napoléonic attitude, with one hand twirling his mustache and the other resting upon the hilt of his sword. They all had swords in Venduras. To be without one was a sign that one was a nobody—at least, in a governmental sense.
The patience of Stephen was a little thinner than one of those spiderwebs that are invisible except when they are drenched with the morning dew. He said: “You are to examine my horse, señor, or are you to examine me?”
Stephen spoke an excellent brand of Spanish, for pretty Elena Ramirez had been well schooled. The veterinary inspector stared. But, after all, his orders were precise. And the great Oñate himself waited beyond to receive the mare. He turned his attention to the mare and again he blinked. Although he was prepared to do his duty, he had not expected to see such a beauty as this. For this horse he could understand how anything might happen, including a revolution in Venduras. However, he walked around her and laid a hand on her shoulder, frowning at the ground in critical thought while he fingered the supple steel of her muscles.
On such a horse, I am an eagle, ran the thoughts of the inspector. I range through the country. I dash here and there. I take what I wish. No man may follow me. But after all, he concluded, my office is comfortable, and winter nights in the mountains are very cold.
“This is a critical case,” he said out loud. “I shall have to continue the examination.” And he had the mare led away.
Stephen Macdona would have followed, but seven bright, tawdry uniforms barred his path, so he retreated and sat down to wait, anticipating the thing that was to come.
The veterinary came back, shaking his head. “Do you know, señor, that you have brought a dreadful blight into the country?”
“My horse is sick, is she not?” Stephen hissed through his teeth.
“She is mortally sick,” said the veterinary.
“I had an idea that I was about to lose her.”
“She will be destroyed and the body burned at once.”
“Very well,” said Stephen. “I shall be present to watch.
“That,” said the veterinary, “is not ordered.” And he turned on his heel.
Again Stephen would have followed, but again seven tawdry uniforms barred his path.
Stephen retired to a corner of the plaza and smoked a cigarette. After all, he was not well furnished with money, but he saw that a time had come to use what he had. He stood up at the end of a half hour, and found the veterinary in his office.
The latter was in the act of producing a bottle of mescal, which he hastily put away again as he scowled at his visitor.
Stephen said: “I was grieved, Señor Colonel, to learn that my mare is sick.”
“That was unfortunate,” said the other.
“But the air of Venduras is so wonderfully healthy,” Stephen continued, wiping away three or four mosquitoes that had clustered on his hot forehead, “so wonderfully healthy that perhaps she has already entirely recovered and may now be just as healthy as ever.”
“You speak of miracles,” said the veterinary.
“However,” Stephen said, “I believe that this is the very land of miracles. Will you not go and see if one has not been accomplished?” And he placed fifty dollars in the hands of the doctor.
The eye of the latter burned. The currency of Venduras went up and down like a bird in flight, but chiefly it went down. A peso today was apt to be half a peso tomorrow. And although the veterinary inspector had very little use for the Estados Unidos, he was sure that the fields of heaven grew American greenbacks. He stared at this money and he counted the figures in the corners of each leaf. The very heart of this citizen was stirred, but then he remembered Oñate and all that Oñate represented. He balled the money into a knot and hurled it through the doorway. “Dog!” shouted the veterinary inspector. “Do you offer me a bribe?”
The patience of Stephen had already been rubbed thinner than thin. Now the last thread of it snapped. He saw only one thing, and that was the protruding midriff of the inspector, bulging against the buttons of his uniform coat so tightly that Stephen could not help wondering if this balloon might be burst, and if his was the hand appointed for the pricking of the bubble. With 180 pounds of concentrated might and fury, he smote the inspector just upon the sixth button, counting from the top.
The inspector had had time to reach for his gun, but by the time his hand closed on the butt of it, his whole body was benumbed in every nerve, and he himself was hurled upward and backward. He catapulted over a chair, crashing against the adobe wall, and half a dozen rain-rotted bricks of it crumbled under the impact.
By the time he had gathered enough breath to shriek—“Treason! Murder!”—the villain was away. Still he was too helpless to rise. He could only lie on his back and writhe and gasp and fire bullets through the roof of his office, praying that the slugs, descending, might find human targets.
The seven gentlemen in bright uniforms caught a fleeting glimpse of the form of Stephen disappearing past the farther corner of the plaza. When they learned what was wrong, they started on horseback to find him, for this was work exactly to their taste. However, the streets of the seaport town were exceedingly twisting and winding, and, before they were well under way, Stephen was in the jungle that pressed just against the back of the little city.
He had taken his little traveling pack with him. Now he squatted on his heels by the edge of a marshy stream and shaved off his beard and mustaches, shaved them with a sigh, feeling that he was denuding himself of a very precious dignity. However, Christy was in the balance.
Not half an hour later, a muleteer, driving his pack animals up the narrow road from the town, was seized from behind. Before he could turn his head, a coat was clapped over eyes and mouth. Presently he lay on his face in the dust, with the major portion of his clothes stripped from him. And half an hour after that, a ragged young man—tall, strong, light of stride, with a face sun-browned above but strangely pale below, entered the town again with a pack at his back, a whistle trilling from his lips. Stephen was on the trail of Christy.
He passed straight across the plaza and under the eyes of the inspector. The latter gave him not a glance, and Stephen felt that he had equipped himself with a bulletproof disguise. He went on toward the corrals that stretched behind the warehouses, to learn what he could learn. As he walked, he felt more and more that this was a country of many possibilities—if only one could learn the right ropes to follow and the correct strings to pull. Perhaps, in the end, he would be very much at home here.
But in the meantime—Christy.
Chapter 7
There was no trace of beautiful Christy in the corrals. She seeme
d to have vanished like a vision. So he went to a little cheap café and ate stale bread and tamales of a wonderful and fiery pungency and drank pulque not too fresh. He learned something there.
There was no rich citizen in this town. There was really not a single person of the first rank in the place. As for the rich and the distinguished, of course they dwelt in the interior, in the great and beautiful city of Venduras, with the snow-topped mountains standing in a cool circle around it. But who would choose to swelter here by the sea, if he could avoid it?
Stephen Macdona, drawing breaths of that humid air with difficulty, could not help agreeing.
There was only one great highway that led from the town toward the uplands and the great city beyond the blue mountains. Along that highway Christy must pass, because certainly she had been stolen from him by the veterinary inspector, not for his own use but to be sold to some other dignitary of real importance. Therefore, she would leave the seaport, and therefore she would travel by that highway, and, accordingly, beside that road he determined to wait—for a month, if need be.
In the dawn he was at his post. It was now livably cool, although the moisture in the air surrounded him as with a wet blanket. But the billions of insects had not yet begun to fly and to sting; their dreadful humming did not fill the air, and in the silence of the wind he was surrounded palpably.
He looked behind him to the dim blueness of the great mountains of the interior, and before him to the sparkling blue of the sea, with the whitewashed town between. For some reason, a sense of confidence filled the heart of Stephen.
In this land where the railroad, as yet, was a mere experimental affair, the rails had not been brought farther down than the farther edge of the marshes. There had been no available funds for bridging the great acreage of soft, drenched land that lay to the landward from the seaport. For that reason, the poor and the proud would all have to cross by this causeway. Only a desperate man or a strong wild beast would venture to leave the road and go by the miasmic jungles. He watched the day brighten and the sun rise. The instant it was above the horizon, it threw warmth as from a campfire into his face. But he pulled his cheap, tall-crowned hat of straw lower over his eyes and watched the road.
A caravan of mules wound up the way, with shrill oaths coming from the lips of the muleteers. Yonder, the last of the lot, was his friend of the day before, a little more ragged than the rest. However, he was taking payment for his loss out of the hide of his mule. A group of wagons followed. Then, after a considerable time, a party of horsemen, wild fellows bound for the cattle ranges. They rode little ponies as shaggy as dogs, but the brightness of their eyes and the fineness of their legs told Stephen their quality. Still he crouched behind his rocks and watched the procession grow thicker and thicker.
Presently a group of three stalwarts, well mounted, heavily armed, passed at a moderate pace up the road. It was easy to see, from the glances that they cast behind them, that they were the outposts of persons of importance who followed in the rear. Those persons came now into his view, but, before he knew a human face, he saw the bright body of Christy.
He crouched lower, like a beast about to spring, and a savage impulse set all his nerves on edge. How beautiful she was, and how true to him. For now, as the procession drew nearer, he saw her pulling back on the rope that led her along. Her neigh rang again and again to him. She was calling for her master, and he knew it as though the call had been phrased in human words. But who were these who had secured her? Perhaps they were persons who were innocent enough and had simply bought her from that trebly dyed villain, the veterinary inspector.
He saw a tall, gravely dressed gentleman, with the well-groomed mustaches of a Venduran of importance. At his side was a girl, the carriage of whose head was oddly familiar. She came closer—closer—Constancia Alvarez. A thousand plagues light on her lovely head. Innocent? No, she knew the mare as well as she knew him. Now she was turning back and murmuring baby talk to Christy. But the wild mare would have none of her, and it made the heart of Stephen swell with a savage satisfaction.
Stephen began to calculate chances. If he aimed his leap well, he would be at her side before anyone could mark him. A slash of his knife would sever the rope that tied her, and a bound would place him in the saddle. After that, both his hands would be free for his weapons, for he could guide her by the touch of his knee or the sound of his voice. Once on her back, he was seated on a strong wind that obeyed him like his own thoughts.
But it would not be easy; it would be far from simple. Behind them came four more men of the rear guard, and two in addition were close beside the mare. All, including the tall father of Constancia, were armed heavily.
As the fury grew in his mind, he thought of taking careful aim from behind his rock. At this point-blank range, he could tumble them over like the iron ducks that circle around in the shooting gallery—and with a dozen bullets in his two revolvers, how many would be left living from that party at the end of two or three seconds? Constancia and her duenna—and no others.
However, he checked that furious impulse. He had never fired from ambush before, and he would go to the end of his days without committing such a sin against manhood. Besides, it might not be necessary. One second to reach the mare; another to gain the saddle and cut the rope; another to run her down the road, hurtling through the four men of the rear guard, while his revolvers scattered death and destruction among their ranks.
He crouched there in his covert and laid his plans with cold fire in his eyes, and a cruel smile curving his lips. Ten yards away, the mare came to a sudden halt. Her hoofs braced and thrust firmly into the deep dust of the road. Her head went up. Her neigh was a call of agony and hope.
He had forgotten the wind—the cursed land breeze bringing the scent of him squarely down the road. But now she had it and presently she would go mad to get to him. Yes, now she reared—she pitched. She hurled herself backward against the rope like a frantic tigress. All was confusion. Don Rudolfo was turning back. The duenna screamed and clasped her hands. The two who had been assigned to handle the precious mare danced here and there helplessly—and the rear guard came hurrying up while the vanguard turned back.
Stephen groaned and set his teeth. If only she had been three strides nearer—but, 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 a spurt of crimson from 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 the 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 at 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.
One man spun around with a scream and clasped his body in his agonized arms. A second dropped into the roadway and clutched at his wounded thigh. And Stephen Macdona, springing through them, headed for his one chance of escape—the marsh beside the road.
He saw its black waters, filmed with green scum. To touch it
would be like touching leprosy. But yonder was the half-exposed curve of a fallen trunk. He leaped for that, felt the rotten wood crunch and sag beneath his weight, and sprang instantly again. A little ridge of mud received him, and he floundered out of sight among the trees.
Bullets followed him, but they were fired from shaking hands. All these who rode with Don Rudolfo were followers worthy of their famous master. They had been proved in the wars. But after all, they were not prepared to fight a lion, hand to hand. As for the marsh, they dreaded it hardly less than a pointed gun. Few had been known to enter it and come forth alive. If they escaped the engulfing mud, the fever poisoned them, and they died afterward. So they looked upon this sudden madman as one already dead. Why should they pursue him? They turned to the work of helping the wounded. There was plenty in that task to employ all hands.
Chapter 8
Out of the marsh, in the dusk of that day, a mudencrusted monster crawled. He staggered with weariness for even the panther-like strength in his body had been exhausted by the brief mile he had toiled through the marshes. When he came to a stretch of clean grass, he flung himself down on his back and lay gasping, his misted eyes fixed on the stars, his chest heaving convulsively.
Half an hour, and he was up again. He found a clear rill from the mountains flowing into a clean, gravel–bedded pond, and into it he dipped, clothes and all. He swam out on the farther side, refreshed and purified, and strode on up the trail toward the lights beyond.
Walking and the warm wind that blew through the night dried him. When he reached the town, he stopped at a little lunch wagon, where tortillas and tamales were for sale. Keeping to the shadows, he ate and ate to repletion, and listened to the talk.
There was only the one theme—the wild man who had attacked the great Don Rudolfo. However, this man was now dead, or as good as dead, since he had spent the day in the marshes. Strict watch had been kept. He could not have escaped. There he would perish, or else crawl out, a fever-stricken refugee, and surrender himself to the hands of the law.
