by Max Brand
“Lemme tell you why, old-timer,” Slinger said.
“I’m listening.”
“And lookin’ at her. She’s too pretty for you to hear me while you look at her.” He took Dupont by a muscular shoulder and turned him around until they were face to face. “Now listen.”
“I’m listening, Slinger.”
“When Valdivia hears about this, he’ll be the happiest man in the Argentine. Do you know why?”
What Valdivia had told him rushed back across the brain of the young cowpuncher, but he said nothing. It did not seem possible that Valdivia had demeaned himself so far as to confide the secrets of his heart to every man working on his staff.
“Tell me,” he said curtly.
“Because this here is bait that El Tigre will have to rise for, and, when he comes, we’ll trap the old devil. You understand?”
“You’ll take her back to the ranch for that purpose?” Dupont said slowly. “To trap her father?”
“Does that sound sort of sneaky to you? Lemme tell you, partner, that, if you knowed about El Tigre what the rest of us know, you’d see that nothin’ good could be on the earth that has any of his blood in it. That’s a fact. She looks all right. I tell you, she’s all wrong. Why, you seen her turn and empty a gun at you. She’d’ve killed you and laughed about it afterward. She’s a snake, old son. Speakin’ by an’ large, I’d go as easy with a woman as anybody. But the daughter of El Tigre … she don’t figger in that class. She goes back to the ranch with us. I guess you’ll call that fair enough?”
There was a ring of almost hysterical terror in the voice of the girl. “No, no! Señor … señor!”
“I want to do what’s right for you,” Dupont said slowly to the girl. “But what can I do better than to take you where you will be safely cared for?”
“Ah, señor, brave and honorable señor … you hear him say it. He hates me. I am not a woman to him.”
“To Slinger? Perhaps not. But he is only the majordomo. From Señor Valdivia,” he added with a little warmth creeping into his tone as he remembered how the estanciero had spoken of the girl, “you will receive the courtesy that a gentleman should extend to a lady. I give you my word of honor for that.”
“And my father?” she said to him.
“Ah,” Charles Dupont said, his brows clouding a little, “that is quite another matter. I believe that your father has never taken any great care of the wishes of others. Why should I now take any great care for him and what he desires? It is only for you that I think, señorita. And I swear that I cannot see how I can serve you better than to take you to the house of Señor Valdivia.
“Ah!” cried the girl, and she added savagely: “You fool! You blind fool! You blind, blind fool!”
Dupont bowed to her, his jaw hard set. And then he stepped back as though he thereby resigned her to the control of Jeff Slinger. She herself seemed to realize that abuse was not the thing. He saw her beat her hands together in self-reproach. Then her lips parted, but, although her eyes spoke to him, she said not a word, as though she realized that she had ruined her cause.
After that, with no more argument, she mounted her horse and rode on ahead between the two gauchos. As for Dupont he fell behind and the majordomo dropped in at his side. Whatever might have been the secret emotions of Slinger, he chose to put on an air of great good nature.
“We come pretty near to a run-in, back there,” he said genially to Dupont. “But I’m glad that we had the sense to pull up our horses at the last minute. Besides, Crisco, I tell you straight. She ain’t worth fighting for. Look at her now. Them gauchos are watchin’ her like mice watchin’ a cat.”
It seemed apparent to Dupont, as he stared at the trio ahead of him, that the two rough riders of the Argentine were indeed afraid of their prisoner, for though she no longer carried a weapon, they rode each at a little distance from her side, and their heads were continually turned toward her as though they expected her to work some calamity upon them at any instant. Yet he knew that the pair were resolute fellows and had for that very reason been picked out by Slinger to accompany him in his rides of inspection. Even these chosen men stood in manifest awe of the daughter of El Tigre.
“Right now,” Slinger continued, “that pair are wishin’ that they hadn’t told me what they knew her to be. They’re figgerin’ that one of these days El Tigre will sink a knife into ’em while they’re sleepin’ … and maybe he will.”
“How can he be such a man?” Dupont asked.
“Ain’t there enough devil in her to make you see what her father must be?” Slinger asked curiously. He added: “I see how it is. Because she’s got a pretty face, you can’t see no harm in her. Is it that way, Crisco?”
Dupont shook his head, for he had become very thoughtful. After all, she had been tigerish enough to fill him with dread and awe when he had ridden down upon her from behind. But since that first moment it seemed to Dupont that he had seen glimpses of something more than the fury.
“Blood’ll tell,” Slinger declared.
Perhaps it would, and yet all her masculine impetuosity seemed merely to accent her femininity to Dupont. And what could be more charming than the careless manner with which she rode between her two guards now, chattering first to the one and then to the other, while they answered never a word?
Chapter Fifteen
When they reached the estancia, half buried among the trees, the gauchos disappeared at a gallop toward the corral where, no doubt, the whole story would be revealed with many fanciful embroiderings. So Jeff Slinger and Dupont brought the girl into the house and waited there until Señor Don Sebastian Valdivia should come to them.
He came, at last, whistling the air that he had been playing upon his piano, walking in his very erect, sprightly fashion until, coming close to them, he caught sight of the face of the girl. He stopped in midstride and into his eyes flared a light that Dupont had never seen before, saving in the face of a gold digger who had suddenly opened up a richly promising vein. So it was with the estanciero. All the square leagues of his land and the cattle that wandered over it were as nothing compared with the girl he now saw before him. He came up to her with both his hands outstretched. But she drew herself up to her full five feet and four inches and stared at him as at a stranger.
“Francesca Milaro,” murmured Valdivia. “This is a moment of which I have dreamed.”
“I have no doubt,” the girl said acidly. “You have given up war against men, Don Sebastian. It was too hard, perhaps?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “You are determined to be absurd, child,” said the estanciero. “How could I make war against you?”
“Your four men have captured, me, señor. And here I am a prisoner.”
“Captured?” Valdivia muttered, looking to his men.
“We saw her streaking it … thought she was a boy. We took a run to see who it was … she started shooting at Crisco here. Emptied her gun, and then he rode down and nabbed her. That was it.”
“All?” the rancher said, facing Dupont with an odd expression. “The good God of prophecy was truly in me when I first saw you then. For I knew at that time that you would bring me good luck, señor, though I never could have dreamed of such luck as this … such golden good fortune, amigo.”
He spoke slowly, as a man who selects his words carefully, and even then finds what will only half express his mind.
“However, Señor Valdivia,” the girl said, “how will you answer the law when it asks how you dare to detain me here in your house?”
“Are you so friendly with the law, Francesca?” the estanciero asked rather sharply.
She tossed her head. “I have no fear of it, Don Sebastian,” she said.
“Nor I,” returned Valdivia.
“Against my will … you will keep me?” the girl asked, trembling with anger rather than terror.
“Tush,” Don Sebastian said. “Let us not talk of constraint. Let us talk of kindness. But first of all let us talk of food. You will be hungry. As I remember it, you are usually hungry, Francesca?”
“I could not eat in your house, señor. I thank you for your kindness.”
“Is there poison in the air of this house, Francesca?”
“To me, Don Sebastian, a great poison.”
It seemed to Dupont that the face of Valdivia darkened, not so much with anger as with grief, and, knowing well what was working in the mind of the estanicero, Dupont could not help sympathizing with him.
“I must have time to talk with you,” declared Valdivia. “In the meantime, my friends, I thank you, for I shall not need you at once again. Adiós for the moment.”
They turned away and Slinger passed on through the door, but Dupont lingered for an instant. For he felt upon him the wide, despairing eyes of the girl, fixed as though upon a last friend, and yet a friend to whom she could not appeal, the eyes of a captive, longing for escape.
“Tell me only one thing, Señor Valdivia,” he asked.
“A hundred, if you wish.”
“Have you the right to detain her here?”
“Tush. A right intention makes a right action. Surely you must know that.”
“I think so,” Dupont said, looking not at him but very fixedly at Francesca Milaro. “Surely I think so, or I should not leave her here with you for a single instant. Of that I assure you.”
“Ah?” murmured the proud Argentinean. “You have doubts of me, Señor Dupont?”
As for Charles Dupont, he could not at once answer, for his heart was swelling with emotion until it ached. To bring this girl into the hands of so good and so great a man as he believed Valdivia to be seemed to him to be the finest manner in which he could serve her. And yet the quiet of despair that had fallen upon her was very eloquent. So he swayed in doubt. It occurred to him to wonder suddenly that he should have to come to think entirely of the girl and not at all of the pleasure of Valdivia. But in fact nothing was in his mind saving what should be best done for this daughter of an outlawed man.
Valdivia appeared to read the conflict that raged in the mind of his companion, for he added presently: “We must talk together, I see. I shall give you reasons.” He stepped to the wall and there touched with his knuckles a great brazen gong that filled the wide corridor with long and hollow murmurings.
A female servant and a mozo came at once.
“The señorita will be taken to her chamber,” said Valdivia. “Her rooms will be in the eastern wing. See that she is cared for. Send the girl, Ruth, to attend on her. Do you understand? She is to find comfort in my house.”
The two bowed to him, frightened by the solemnity of his instructions.
Francesca Milaro paused for half a breath to give the master of the house a searching glance of scorn and to fix upon Dupont such a look of mingled doubt and hope and appeal that it made his heart leap. Then, without further complaint or resistance, as though realizing that to struggle now would be simply to compromise her dignity, she went on down the broad hallway with the two servants showing the way to her most obsequiously.
Señor Valdivia remained for a time to gaze after her, until she had disappeared through the next door. “She is like a queen, Dupont, is she not?” he said more to himself than to his companion. “She is worthy of being …” He paused before adding abruptly: “However, what I must say to you is simply this … you must not distrust me, amigo. Do you feel that I would do harm to her?”
“Surely no, señor. But if she wishes to go … have you the right to keep her here?”
“Tell me, Señor Dupont. If a child wishes to run out into a storm, would you give it free leave to go?”
“I can only say …”
“Tush, Dupont. You are a fine fellow. You are only worried that you may not have done what is best for her in leaving her here with me. You have already forgotten or forgiven the bullets that the little minx fired at you. And a rare miracle that she did not strike you with one of them, for I have seen her shoot like any man. Even one of your own gunmen, señor. However, you forgive and you forget. She remains to you no more than a beautiful woman, and therefore you wish to serve her. But tell me, Dupont, can you serve her better than to take her from a wild beast of a father and give her into the keeping of a man who will treat her as a father should treat a child … at least until I have persuaded her to love and to marry me? Can you do more for her than this?”
When a man who may command condescends to persuade, he has won his argument before he well begins it, and that the estanciero was willing to give gentle reasons about such an important matter when he might well have called half a dozen servants to thrust Dupont off the premises was a bit of flattery that the cowpuncher appreciated at its full value. It was of a piece with all that he had seen connected with Valdivia, until at last he began to feel that all that was good and all that was honorable in the character of a man was united to make the excellences of this kindly millionaire. Certainly to make the girl the wife of such a man was to ensure her happiness. And yet what Dupont said aloud was: “She may hate me for this.”
“I am vain enough,” answered the estanciero, “to feel that eventually she will be very happy. But you must consider another thing. How can I, my friend, compel her to marry me? These are not the Dark Ages when the master of the castle owned the bodies and the souls of those who were within his walls. These are not the Dark Ages,” he repeated, and, lifting his head a little, he looked past Dupont as though his vision were piercing to the very heart of the last centuries of armor and chivalry.
“That is very true,” the cowpuncher said, a little awed by the solemnity of Valdivia. But, though he surrendered the girl into the hands of so good and gentle a man as Valdivia, he could not help feeling a stinging pang of loss. Perhaps, he thought, he would have felt just the same pang no matter to whom he had given her. There was something more than a mere selfless desire for her well-being. The moment he recognized such an emotion in his heart, he bit his lip in shame, and he withdrew at once, for who was he to rival this powerful and good man?
When he went in to the evening meal that day, he was in the sharpest expectation of meeting Francesca at the table, but she was not there. Instead, Valdivia presided in the highest good spirits. He talked with amazing frankness about the girl.
“She sits at the window of her room,” he told them. “She sits there sulking, without a word, without a movement. That is the tiger in her.”
Pedro LeBon rarely spoke, but now he said quietly: “The old tiger, Señor Valdivia, when will he be coming to carry her away with him?”
Valdivia shrugged his shoulders. “There is no doubt that he will come tonight. He would consider himself disgraced if he were to allow her to remain in our hands longer than that.”
“He will be met, then?” asked LeBon.
“Of course.”
LeBon, who was as fearless as he was quiet, smiled in a sinister fashion. “It is an excellent manner to build a foundation of happiness,” he said. “To kill the father and marry the daughter.”
“Ha?” Valdivia shouted, stung into forgetfulness of his dignity.
“I said,” LeBon answered without flinching, “that the daughter will be sure to love her husband after her father has been stifled in the trap. Is it not so, Señor Dupont?”
But The Crisco Kid was unable to answer. He was too deep in thought.
Chapter Sixteen
When the evening fell, the estancia was under siege although no enemy appeared. But somewhere in the dusk, as everyone knew, El Tigre must be roaming, and perhaps his men with him. So Valdivia made his dispositions for defense like a capable general. To enter through the house itself would be impossible. Twenty armed men garrisoned it under the command of Valdivia himself. The only other direction from which the girl’s room
could be approached was through the garden and toward her window, and in the garden Valdivia placed his two best fighting men. The one was the majordomo, Jeff Slinger. The other was The Crisco Kid, already growing celebrated in the district around the camp as Señor Dupont, who was “muy gaucho.” That is to say, he rode like a fiend and he could make a rope do all but talk. He did not use the long lazo with its eighteen yards of heavy rawhide that cut the air like a knife, but he carried, like Jeff Slinger, a thirty-five-foot hemp rope and depended upon the speed and the agility of his horse to get near enough to his prey to daub the rope on horse or cow.
These two then, as the sunset flamed red in the west and the first lonely stars began to drop down into visibility, sat at the gate that closed the garden. In the distance, half a dozen gauchos were racing their horses in the open space in front of the line of little houses where the married men lived. The distances were short; they rode either bareback or with only a square of cloth beneath them. And the shrill, harsh voices rose time and again in chattering volleys, over the rapid beating of hoofs. Another swirl of dust with the winner riding back out of it, laughing and waving his hand above his head, while the conquered followed, sawing savagely at the mouths of their mounts. Then the bets would be laid on another match. Money was nothing to these fellows. They worked like slaves from dawn to dark. Then they staked their wages upon the speed of their tired horses. Tonight, a few would go to bed happily and richer. The rest would be lost in the deeps of despair until the next night’s racing changed the luck and made all new again. Hard work, a diet of meat, a gambling game in the moment of leisure—this was their life.
Here Pedro LeBon wandered past the garden gate singing softly to himself, walking with fumbling steps.
“Drunk?” Dupont muttered to Jeff Slinger.
“Drunk as a lord.”
They breathed deeply of the smoke of their cigarettes.
“Seems to me,” Dupont said at last, “that this fellow LeBon does pretty much as he pleases on the estancia. How does that come about? Very clever with the cattle business?”
