The Fugitive by Max Brand Read Free Book Online Page B

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.
    Stephen Macdona listened and smiled. He bought a flagon of dreadful pulque, downed it at a draft, and then he continued his quest.
    Christy was not in the railroad village. She had been shipped on toward the mountains, and the rumor went that she had been heavily guarded. So, that night, when the freight pulled pantingly out of the yard and up the first severe grade, Macdona lay upon the beams and closed his eyes to keep out the flying cinders. They had not yet shaken him from the trail.
    He made half the distance to the mountains, on that first stage. When the freight stopped in the cool of the morning, he went out to forage for food. It was a very rash thing to attempt, and he paid the penalty of his rashness. For a fat policeman saw him and, without asking questions, emptied a revolver at him as Macdona zigzagged down the street and around the corner. He heard the route of the pursuit behind him, and therefore he simply dived through the back window of a hovel and into the midst of a humble family circle, sitting around the breakfast pot.
    So Macdona squatted in a corner of the room with a gun resting on his knee.
    â€œEat,” said Stephen.
    And they ate, while he helped himself to a remnant of roast kid that remained from a feast of the night before. When the pursuit poured past that door, a voice shouted a query.
    â€œYou have seen nothing except your breakfast,” Stephen whispered.
    â€œWe have seen nothing except our breakfast,” said the man of the house in a trembling but loud voice.
    And the crowd rushed on.
    An hour later—“Here is one peso for my breakfast and four for this lodging,” said Macdona. “I am the man who attacked the party of Señor Alvarez, and, if you help to catch me, you will have some thousands more to reward you for your work over me.” And he left by the window through which he had entered. It would be pleasant to state that his frankness disarmed the host. But truth is that he had not gone fifty yards before the wild clamor was raised.
    He found a saddled horse in the next street with a stalwart youth climbing into the stirrups. Macdona plucked him out again and tossed him over his shoulders. Then he rode for the hills.
    They hunted him, hot and close, all that day, and just as he was safely distancing them, on the third horse he had borrowed for the day’s riding, a random party of vaqueros came down and blocked his way. They had not placed themselves across that trail on purpose. But they smelled mischief while it was still a long distance off, and their guns were out. Most willingly would Stephen have given them the road, but the rocks climbed upward on either hand into the heart of the sky. Even a mountain goat would have turned dizzy with one glance along their polished sides.
    He bent over the pommel of the saddle and spurred straight ahead, his guns flashing from either hand. Three went down, and one, perhaps, would never rise again. But they had had enough. There were