by Max Brand
And saying this, with envious eyes the majordomo watched the other slacken his pull on the reins. It was all that whip and spur could have done. Twilight bounded away as though out of a walk. One leap and his tail whisked in the face of Slinger’s mount. Another, and he was pulling away swiftly. For there was much running in Twilight that day. The little work that he had seen around the estancia had been only enough to keep him in good trim. He was used to the new diet and the saline water, by this time, and he was as ready for a duel of speed as a bird is ready to fly from a cage.
A blast of wind rose into the face of Dupont from that mad running. It curved the wide brim of his hat straight up above his eyes. In another moment he saw that he was gaining fast. But the fugitive found the same thing and at the same moment. He saw a ray of light flick up in the hand of the boy and fall again. The blood bay straightened to its work like a hero. In a trice, the black chestnut was held even. The Crisco Kid could not believe his eyes.
For he had ridden that fleet-footed stallion against the pick of picked horses; he had matched speed even with racers, and over any distance Twilight had never failed him. Yet here was Twilight held even. He straightened the great horse a little to his work. No whip or spur was needed. To punish such a runner as Twilight was merely to insult him. And still the blood bay floated ahead of them. The whip rose and fell in the hand of the youngster in the lead. That alone gave The Crisco Kid some confidence, for he told himself that a horse that can hold another even without punishment must eventually win. But on the other hand, his hundred and ninety pounds must be fully sixty more than that of the slender form before him.
For a long minute of anxiety that breathless duel continued. For half a mile the ground flew back beneath the swinging hoofs of Twilight. Then his flattened ears suddenly pricked forward and the rider knew that the race was won. Slowly, for a stern chase on sea or land is ever a long one, they began to overhaul the smaller pair that ran in front. Another moment, and the gain became perceptible. The blood bay, running gallantly as it could, must have marked the big horse gaining with every stride, and no doubt that took the heart from it, for let no one think that a horse does not race with his heart as well as his legs.
Dupont looked back. The rest of the pursuit swept far away behind him, growing smaller every instant, but every man still desperately flogging his horse with the exception of Jeff Slinger, who sat still, letting his fine animal work as it would, which was fast enough to keep well away from the two gauchos.
Something hummed sharply in The Kid’s ear, like a dozen hornets in close flight darting down a gale of wind, and as he turned his head to the front, the crack of the revolver rang before him. It shocked the red blood into his face. Then he did two things that might have been a sufficient warning to any who knew him. He sat up in the saddle a little straighter and he loosened his Colt in its holster.
To one who loves a gun, there is nothing so grimly suggestive as the smooth touch of the butt of a revolver to the hand, a butt that the fingers have polished with much use. It was not yet time to draw, however. A seat on a galloping horse is a most unsure position from which to open fire, and even on smooth ground, firing with careful deliberation, it would have been a long shot. So he leaned forward again, watching and waiting, while Twilight narrowed the distance with gigantic strides. Presently the fugitive twisted about again with a sort of tigerish suppleness as a sleeping cat turns when its tail is touched. The revolver flashed up.
If he can down me at this distance, he deserves to win, Dupont thought to himself, and rode straight on into the danger. The gun exploded, but plainly the first bullet had flown close by luck only, for this second one passed out of hearing distance.
In a hundred yards the hard-pressed youngster fired again, and then as though in an angry fury, blazed away three times more, as though enraged by the failure. And, indeed, the horses were now close enough to have made execution very possible. To The Crisco Kid, for instance, it would have been a simple thing to have emptied the saddle on the blood bay. But something in the youth and the grace of the rider restrained him. After all, violence is the privilege of childhood. Had it been a grown man, Dupont would have killed him out of hand and given the matter no further thought as simply part of a day’s work.
To be merciful, however, he must get at close quarters with the fugitive at once, before the latter was able to reload the revolver, which he was now attempting with desperate eagerness to do, holding the reins in his teeth. The first cartridge slipped from the anxious fingers. Then, as the second was drawn from the belt, Dupont shouted to Twilight and the good horse found in himself an extra burst of speed. They swept down upon the blood bay mare like an eagle stooping at a heron scurrying across the sky.
The other saw that there was no time, for the shadow of the pursuer swept across him. He turned in the saddle. Dupont caught a glimpse of a convulsed face, and the heavy gun was hurled straight at his head. He ducked it barely in time. The next stride brought him next to the pursued, and, swooping from his saddle, he caught the youngster into his strong arms.
Two strange things came to The Crisco Kid then. The first was the faintest breath of a delicate perfume. The second was the softness of the body in his arms. His iron fingers sank into that flesh until the captive cried out in pain, fumbling the while to jerk out the knife that every Argentinean wears. But Dupont, with a faint cry of horror and alarm was bringing Twilight to a halt. He slipped from the saddle and allowed the prisoner to stand free before him, making no effort, apparently, to escape the deadly blow of the knife whose handle the slender fingers were gripping.
“Señorita!” breathed Dupont. “In the name of heaven … señorita!”
The blood flared up across her face and the big eyes avoided his, glancing quickly down.
“Señor,” murmured a low musical voice. “I am sorry … I thought that it was an enemy to be dreaded. I did not know that it was a gentleman who rode behind me.”
He bowed to her, still too dazed to speak again. And as he stared, the truth of her and the beauty of her steeped deeply into his mind as a man walks far and farther into a room surrounded by wonders.
Then, with a rush, Jeff Slinger and the two gauchos were around them.
“What’ll we do to the kid?” Slinger asked, dropping a hooked knee around the pommel of his saddle and beginning to roll a cigarette.
The change in the girl was admirable. That touch of softness that had passed over her when her identity was discovered was lost again in a trice. She lifted her head, and, dropping upon her hip a hand whose exquisite delicacy should have been in itself a sufficient betrayal of her sex, she stared boldly about her at the faces of the others.
The two gauchos, grinning at the prize, now suddenly drew together and began to whisper. What they had in their minds puzzled Dupont, but he had no time to make inquiry.
“The kid is too young to get more than a lecture,” he said quietly to the majordomo.
The latter blinked at him. “How come, Crisco?” he said curiously. “This little rat turns around and blazes away at you with a gun. You come up and grab him and then … you want to turn him loose?” He shrugged his shoulders.
“He’s had enough of a scare,” said Dupont.
“Scare? The devil,” murmured the majordomo of the estancia. “The little devil ain’t scared at all. Look at him, and then tell me that he’s scared. There’s poison in this brat, partner, I know it.”
“Look here,” Dupont argued with great earnestness, “when the boy saw us coming after him, and when he hadn’t harmed us in any way, he naturally was afraid and tried to fight us off. That’s only natural, isn’t it?”
“Natural?” Jeff Slinger repeated. “That kind of nacheralness gets a rope halter in Arizona. Gets a rope for a man, and for a kid like him, it gets a quirtin’ across a bared back. That’s what this kid gets from me. I’ll teach him enough manners to make his back s
ore for a month. Doggone me if you ain’t a surprise to me, Crisco, takin’ this so easy. But you’re a happy-go-lucky sort.” With this, he drew his long-lashed quirt through his fingers and made the whip sing through the air. “Peel off your shirt, kid,” he said in swift Spanish, turning to the girl. “You get a taste of this that’ll teach you not to target practice at strangers you meet on the road.”
The girl, at this, grew a little pale. There was a single flash of her eyes at The Crisco Kid, then she stared steadily and silently back at the other.
“Wait a minute,” Dupont said. “In my part of the country, we always hated to see a horse flogged. And that goes for a man, too … to say nothing of a youngster like this. Let him go. Slinger, you’ve frightened him enough for one day. Besides, I was the target, and, if the target forgives him, I imagine that’s enough.”
“Enough like the devil!” Slinger burst out, coloring with impatience. “Stand aside, Crisco. If the little fool ain’t goin’ to strip himself, I’ll do it for him.” And he urged his horse straight at the girl.
The Crisco Kid stepped swiftly in between. “Hold up,” he cautioned gravely.
Slinger reined in his horse with a jerk and glowered down at his compatriot. “I’m a patient sort of gent,” he said to Dupont in a trembling voice of passion that quite denied his assertion. “Doggone me if I ain’t a quiet gent, but you push me pretty far, Crisco. You make a doggone’ fool out of me this way. The gauchos seen me start to do this here job, and they’ll think I’m a poor pup if I don’t finish it. I’m the boss on the place next to LeBon, old-timer. Remember that.”
“I’m remembering it. I’m simply giving you some good advice, Slinger.” It was quietly spoken, but the challenge was very apparent, for Crisco had not stirred from his position protecting the girl. And Slinger grew a dark and ugly red and, as always happened when he became greatly excited, the scar tissue along the side of his face began to pucker, so that his mouth was drawn into a terrific smile.
“Crisco,” he said, “d’you know what this means?”
“That you’ll use your head, I hope,” the latter said smoothly.
“It means,” snarled out Slinger suddenly, “that I’m goin’ to have my way about it.”
Now, in the old days, Slinger had been a man of some reputation, and that reputation had not grown less since his advent into the southern land. He had ammunition in plenty and targets enough to keep his hand and his eye in good trim. Being braved before the gauchos had infuriated him to the point where he would have drawn a gun on Crisco without another thought, but one thing held him back. For after all, Slinger was a discreet fellow. It was through discretion that he had risen to his present post of preference out of the ranks of common cowpunchers.
And now, at the very instant when the hot blood was raging through his brain, he recalled certain tales that had been brought home by the men who had accompanied Valdivia to the States. The gossiping Carreño, above all, had told how two gunmen, men of reputation wider than the boundaries of the state, had closed in on The Crisco Kid and driven him to bay, and how one man had died and another had fallen and been allowed to go free through the contemptuous confidence and generosity of the conqueror. Remembering these things, Slinger thought again and changed his tactics.
“I got to have my way, here, young fellow,” he said sternly to The Crisco Kid. “If you ain’t goin’ to get out of my way, I give the word to my two boys, yonder, and we’ll have to lift you out of the way.”
“Really?” The Crisco Kid said, smiling without amusement in his eyes. “You’ll lift me out of the way?”
“Don’t be a jackass, Crisco!” the majordomo yelled hastily, and the perspiration began to start out on his forehead. “You ain’t goin’ to stand up ag’in’ three men for the sake of a little rip of a fool kid that …”
“Three men?” The Crisco Kid said, apparently running his eye over the majordomo and yet at the same time apparently never taking it from him in a tigerish watchfulness. “Three men? It doesn’t look to me as though there were more than a man and a half, partner.” It was a sharply stinging insult, and The Crisco Kid added rather hastily: “You being the man and the other two the half, you know.”
Jeff Slinger rubbed a hand across his brow. Half an instant before he felt that he had been driven against the wall and that he would have to fight for the sake of his honor. But the final speech left him a way out.
“Crisco,” he said, “I’d ought to force you …”
“You’re too fine a fellow to do that, Jeff, or to take advantage of numbers.”
Slinger sighed. It was plain that Crisco was opening a way for the majordomo to retreat from his former haughtiness. And though Slinger promised himself that he would never forget this humiliation, yet he was very glad of the opportunity to withdraw.
“I’d only like to know,” he said, “why you stick up for the worthless little brat the way you do.”
“He’s young,” answered Crisco. “That’s the main thing. Besides, he has a straight pair of eyes. I like courage … in a kid like that.”
“Looks like impudence to me,” the majordomo said. “Still … I ain’t a man to fight you about nothin’.”
The two gauchos both gestured.
“Señor …” they said to Slinger, and he rode toward them hastily as though glad to turn away.
Chapter Fourteen
“Ah, señor,” said the soft murmur of the girl behind Dupont, “you have been a thousand times brave and kind to me. A thousand, thousand times. I pray to God to reward you, and to forgive me for what I attempted to do to you. You have forgiven me for that. Your actions and your kind, brave words show it, señor.”
He faced her slowly, a little confused, a little red in face, but certainly far from unhappy. “You speak English well,” he said.
“Only a small bit, sir.”
She answered with a broken accent—an accent, it seemed to The Crisco Kid, that gave a fragrance and a beauty to her speech. His own blush grew far deeper. He had not dreamed that this waif of the plains would be able to follow the colloquial dialect of the rough cowpuncher.
She added: “But there is a greater trouble and a danger coming to me.” Her eyes widened as she looked past him to the three who were consulting. “Help me to my horse, señor. Let me ride away … in the name of the dear God of mercy …”
Here she was interrupted by a startled exclamation from Jeff Slinger. “Seventeen devils!” Slinger exclaimed. “D’you mean that? The young wildcat … herself?”
The courage of the girl melted away. She was clinging to The Crisco Kid.
“They know everything …” she whispered.
“Steady, steady,” he commanded. “No harm will come to you. I’ll promise you that. No, no, señorita. These are men, and therefore they are your friends to aid you, as I am your friend.”
“You do not know …” moaned the girl.
The Crisco Kid turned and confronted the majordomo, who had ridden back to them.
“I see now, Crisco,” he said to the latter, grinning very broadly as he spoke. “I guess that there ain’t any doubt that you got a lot better reasons than I’ve had. You been right, old-timer, all the time. Doggone me if I ain’t sorry for actin’ like a fool. I ought to’ve used my eyes … I ought to’ve seen … but throwin’ a gun on you the way she done … that was what set me in wrong.”
He swung down from his horse and approached the girl. There was no gentleness or courtesy in his face or in his voice, however. Indeed, it made the blood burn in the checks of Dupont to think that any American could look upon a woman in such a fashion. It was as another man might have looked upon a snake. And the long, smooth-striking muscle of his upper arm swelled and grew hard.
“You …” said Slinger to her in Spanish, “take off your hat and lemme see your face.”
A frightened hand caught at Crisco’
s arm and clung there.
“You hear me?” snapped out Slinger.
“Señor …” breathed a whisper of terror at the ear of Dupont, a whisper wild with appeal.
“Slinger,” he said through his teeth, fairly shaking with his astonishment and his fury, “are you talking to a dog or to a lady?”
The other merely shrugged his shoulders. “Don’t be a fool, Crisco,” he said. “You don’t know, but I’ll tell you something about her. The boys, yonder, recognized her at last. This here good-lookin’ kid … what do you think she is?”
“A woman,” The Crisco Kid said in the stern and yet gentle voice of one to whom that name has one meaning, and one meaning only.
“Sure she’s a woman”—the majordomo grinned—“but I’ll tell you something more that’ll make you look at her like a snake … the way I do. Crisco, she’s the daughter of old El Tigre himself.”
It staggered Charles Dupont as he had never been staggered in his life before, not even in that grim moment some weeks before when he had seen Twilight taken from him. He turned to the girl, and he saw her looking up into his face with a sort of desperate appeal, as though she still hoped against hope that he would be a protector to her, though reason told her that such a hope was folly. It made his young heart grow great.
“What if she is?” he asked. “Suppose that this El Tigre, as you call him, has some checks against his name. But what of the girl, Slinger? Does that ruin her? Has she no chance left in life because her father happens to be someone most people don’t like?”
“Why,” burst out Slinger, “the little …”
“Hold up, partner,” Dupont snapped out. “The girl understands English, you know.”
“I might’ve knowed that the little fox would. Well, partner, lemme tell you this … that takin’ her is one big bright day in your life. You know why?”
“Be brave,” Crisco said gently to the girl. “You still have a friend.”
“God bless you, señor. But he will talk you away from me, I know.”
