The Fugitive (2 page)

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 and 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.

 

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.

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.

 

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.