Free The Fugitive by Max Brand

drowsiness. He was filled with a coldly disturbed thought. It was as though his daughter’s eyes had been looking through him, and finding in his inmost nature something of which he himself was not aware. What could it be?
    She found Tita enjoying a covert cigarette in her own room. That worthy old woman hastily put out the cigarette, and Constancia pretended not to see.
    â€œDo you know what it is?” she cried.
    â€œAnd what, then? I thought that you would be down there much longer than this, complaining.”
    â€œIt is de los Pazos.”
    Tita clasped a little pendant ruby that glowed at her throat, and she looked about her in terror.
    â€œDe los Pazos and Guadalvo have joined hands. And Father, like a wise . . . politician . . . has sent Christy away, where they can find her more easily, you know . . . sent her away without a guard. Oh, how could a man’s pride let him do such a thing?”
    â€œYet you do not seem unhappy, child?”
    â€œWhen he has Christy will that be the end, Tita?”
    â€œWill that be the end? Will that be the end? Of what are you talking, Constancia? What should be the end?”
    Constancia sat by the window and watched the stars and clasped her hands across her throat and laughed and shuddered. “Will he stop when he has Christy . . . merely?”
    â€œOh, Constancia, are you mad? Do you mean . . . do you guess . . . would he dare?”
    â€œI have never seen the stars so bright,” crooned Constancia contentedly. “And what is that bird singing out yonder in the darkness, Tita?”
    â€œIs a screech owl a singing bird, Constancia?” asked the other, still breathless.
    â€œI never knew,” said Constancia, “that the world could be so beautiful before.”

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Chapter 11
    It was the manifest intent of Don Rudolfo to avoid trouble with the bandit if he could, but it was also most necessary that he should maintain a bold and politic front. Because, worse than death itself, he feared the compromising of his dignity as a national figure. Therefore, he made the most careful preparations to impress the public eye.
    He called in from the hills some scores of his hardy herdsmen on their shaggy, wild-eyed little ponies, all looking as formidable as tigers. He brought down from the forests and the rougher upper mountains a number of woodsmen and goatherds, more stolid than the riders and therefore, it was felt, suitable for use as a sort of infantry to be thrown about the house of Don Rudolfo and protect that house from the onset of the enemy.
    But a mere defensive campaign was not what Don Rudolfo pretended. He would have people believe him capable of still more than this. Accordingly he sent out a few scouts, riding in the direction of the supposed line of the bandit’s march. The people of the countryside were given to understand that Don Rudolfo was merely concentrating his forces before launching an irresistible attack against de los Pazos.
    However, it was never the intention of the politician to do more than strike a few attitudes for the sake of impressing his fellow countrymen. He posed as a great upholder of law and order. All the while he earnestly prayed that Don Guido would exercise discretion and good sense and forbear the battle. If the terrible de los Pazos had made an ally of Valentin Guadalvo, there could really be nothing that the pair wanted from him, Alvarez, except that same unlucky mare, Christy. So he had sent Christy out to pasture on the verge of his dominions, in an unguarded range. Let the bandits pick her up as they would. So ran the thoughts of Don Rudolfo.
    The very next day they had news of a kind that convinced him he had nothing more to fear. Word came over the wire that the government, while de los Pazos was ranging across the lowlands, had dispatched a flying column that had penetrated softly through the mountains and had reached the valley where the bandits kept their headquarters. There the men