The Fugitive by Max Brand Read Free Book Online Page A

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.

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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