The Black Rider (7 page)

She had almost invited the blow but, when it came, it shocked her. She stiffened a little and drew back from the window.

“Your tongue,” she said, “runs faster than your horse!”

At that he made her a ceremonious bow. Certainly the lessons of the dancing master had not been entirely thrown away upon Taki. As for the girl, she did not pause to wonder over his grace but she turned in anger to her Aunt Anna and saw, from her grave, sad face, that she had overheard everything.

“I shall go instantly to
Señor
Torreño,” said the girl, “and tell him what I suspect of Taki.”

Aunt Anna d’Arquista merely shook her head.

“I think you will not, Lucia,” she said. “I pray God may rule us for the best!”

She seemed so close to tears that Lucia dared not speak again, for the moment. She stormed into her room and there she flung herself down on her bed. Her face was burning. And cold little pangs of shame shot through her heart.

She had thought that she controlled her tragedy so well that not a human being in the world could ever have guessed at it. But here was a wild Indian who had looked through her at a glance and, in a moment, had read all her secrets. She wanted to destroy him utterly. And yet, after a time, she found herself sitting up, musing, and almost smiling.

“He is a clever rascal,” said the girl to herself. “And if I were in a great need, he could help me!”

She was called for the night meal after this, and met
the guest, Guadalmo. He was a tall, wide-shouldered man of about forty, with a grim face and a gray head that might have been ten years older; but his body was still young and supple—the body of the professional duelist. He bore traces of his encounters—a ragged scar in his right cheek and another which crossed one eye and kept it half closed so that he bore, continually, a quizzical, penetrating expression. He had donned his most magnificent clothes for this occasion. He wore, above all, old-fashioned lace cuffs and a great lace collar worth a fortune in skill and labor. It made an odd setting for his forbidding features.

He was a courtly man as well as a warrior, however. And he entertained the girl with talk of Paris and the French court, full of little cuts and thrusts of gossip. He was one of those who can speak with an easy familiarity of the great men of the world and seem to bring their presences into the room. Don Carlos listened to him, agape with delight.

“Tomorrow,” said Don Carlos, “I shall beg five minutes of your time to teach me some clever thrust. I have been shamed by an Indian today, with the foils. I must have some revenge on him!”

Guadalmo raised his brows. “An Indian,” he said, “who fences?”

“The skill of a fiend incarnate,” said Torreño, breaking in. “I should give a great deal to see you cross blades with him,
señorl”

Señor
Guadalmo smiled.

“For Indians,” he said, “I keep a whip…and bullets. I advise you, my dear friends, to do the same.”

Here a door behind Guadalmo swung silently open, but he knew it by the soft sighing of the draft, and leaped violently to his feet, setting all the dishes on the table in a great jangle. He had a pistol in his hand as he
whirled, but he saw behind him only an empty threshold, dimly lighted.

“Señorl Señorl”
cried the host. “One would think that you feared the Black Rider even in the midst of my household!”

“Set a man to watch the door,” asked Guadalmo, reseating himself, but still with a pale face. “I have a profound respect for your household and your management of it,
Señor
Torreño. But when one has to do with the devil…one needs caution…caution…and again, caution!”

The effect of that fright was still ghastly in his face, but with an inward struggle he forced a smile to his lips again.

He took up a glass of white wine in which the imaged light of a candle flame was trembling; and the tremor, the girl noted, was not in the flame of the candle, but in the hand of Guadalmo. She observed and she wondered. And when a breath of air through the open window set the draperies behind her shivering and whispering, she trembled in turn, as though the ghost of the Black Rider were behind her chair!

W
ho is the Black Rider? It was the commanding question in the mind of the girl when she went out into the patio beneath the stars with the others. From the little white tent city around the main house, all the retainers of Don Francisco were waxing merry and raising songs from time to time and, at the
end of each day’s work, the followers of the worthy don received due portions of that colorless brandy which the Mexican Indian loves and which burns the brain of the white man like a blue flame. But even their singing was subdued, for Don Francisco hated all loud noise except that of his own strong voice.

Obviously no questions about the Black Rider could be asked while
Señor
Guadalmo was himself present; but after an uneasy moment he bade the rest good night and withdrew to his appointed quarters for sleep; so he said. But during an interval which followed, they could hear the stir of men.

“Guadalmo is filling the house with his guards,” said Torreño. “Look! Even under his window!”

They saw two stalwarts, each with sword and carbine, take post beneath the windows of Guadalmo’s room. There they remained, huge black specters.

7 have an idea!” said the girl. “The Black Rider is one of
Señor
Guadalmo’s men with a grudge against him!”

Torreño chuckled in the bottom of his thick throat.

“My dear,” he said, “that is child’s talk. You do not know Guadalmo and his men! He has picked up the neatest set of murderers that ever wore sword and pistol since the beginning of time! There is not a one of them that does not owe his escape from the gallows to his master. They live by him; they would be hung except for him and his influence with the governor. They know it and they would fight for him as for themselves. He is their safety; he is their charm against death! Those two men yonder…I can tell the one by the feather in his hat, the other by the limp in his walk. The tall man used to cut throats in Naples; Guadalmo smuggled him aboard his ship and made off with him. The other was a soldier in the Low Countries, a gambler who made up
for his losses on the highway. He fled to Guadalmo also. So they are here. They will watch over him more tenderly than they will watch over their own souls!”

“But this Black Rider, has he never appeared except to
Señor
Guadalmo?”

“Some dozen times,” said Don Carlos. “He knows, it appears, whenever some solitary traveler sets out with a large sum of money. Then the Black Rider appears. Usually he sweeps up from behind on a horse swifter than the wind, it is said. The animal is sheathed in a light caparison of black silk. There is a hood of thin black silk covering the Rider, too. That is how he gets his name. He stops his man, takes his purse, and is gone. Sometimes they were brave and resisted, at the first. A bullet in the leg or through the shoulder always ended the fight. The Black Rider does not kill. He does not have to. He can see in the dark, it seems, and he shoots with such a nice aim that he could kill a bat on the wing at midnight!”

That was all the explanation she received concerning the Black Rider. After his first few captures, the mere terror of his presence had proved enough to paralyze all resistance. Men were benumbed with fear when he approached.

At last Lucia stood up to go to her room; and, as she turned, it seemed to her that there was a movement in the far corner of the patio.

“In the name of heaven,
Señor
Torreño!” she breathed.

The shadow stirred. A man stood upright.

“Carlos…fool…your pistol!” growled out Torreño.

“It is I…Taki!” said the shadow.

“Tie the red-face to a post and have him whipped!” commanded Torreño. “Have you turned into a spy Taki?”

“It is the command of the
señorita,”
said the Indian. “I am to stay close to her to protect her in case of harm.”

“Seven thousand devils!” thundered the other. “Am I not guard enough for her, and in my own house? Lucia, what madness is this?”

“Only
Señor
Torreño,” she said, “because he was given to me, and I did not know what other work to give him.”

“Well,” said Torreño, “you must not be afraid of the ghosts you make with your own hands. But for half of a second, I looked at him and thought…the Black Rider!”

“Is the Black Rider so large a man?”

“Larger, it is said. A very giant! A span taller than this Taki of yours. Good night!”

Don Carlos went with her to the door of her room; Taki was three paces to the rear.

“Dear Lucia,” he said, as they paused there, “now that you have seen my father and his country, do you think that you can be happy among us and our rude people?”

She looked up to him with a little twisted smile. “Ah, Carlos,” she said, “I should be afraid to say no to the son of Don Francisco!”

And she hurried on into the room with Anna d’Arquista. Don Carlos turned to speak to Taki, but that man of the silent foot had already disappeared. There was no definite quarters assigned to the Indian. He was left to shift for himself, and the place he had chosen was in a nook behind a hedge. There, from a blanket roll, he provided himself with what he wanted, which was chiefly a mask of black silk, fitting closely over his face, a pistol, and a rapier. Provided with these, he made his way back toward the house, moving swiftly but with caution and going, wherever possible, in the gloom beneath the trees, for the moon was up, now, and the open places were silvered with faint light. He came to the wall of the big, squat house and moved around it until a form loomed in front of him.

A short-barreled musket was instantly thrust against his breast. Yet the voice of the guard was muffled, for fear lest he needlessly disturb the slumber of his master.

“Who is this?” he asked.

“I am the new man.”

“I know of no new man.”

The footfalls of the other sentinel, who kept guard around the corner of the wall, paused at the end of his beat. In a moment he would be back and in view of them. Taki drew in his breath and tensed his muscles.

“I have ridden all afternoon up from the harbor.”

“Ah?”

“You are Giovanni?”

“Yes.”

“I have brought you a message.”

“From whom?”

“Naples.”

“[Diablol”
breathed the other. “Are you from Naples?”

And he lowered the muzzle of his gun a trifle. In that instant Taki struck the other with bone-crushing force on the base of the jaw, and he slumped gently forward on his face. Taki stepped over him.

“Giovanni?” he heard the other guard murmur as he approached the corner of the wall.

And then the second man turned the corner and came full against Taki. He had no time to cry out. The left hand of the Indian, like a steel-clawed panther’s foot, was fixed instantly on his throat. And as his breath stopped, he snatched a knife from his belt. But Taki struck with the hilt of his rapier, and the guard turned limp in his grip.

After that, in a single minute of swift work, as one familiar with such things, he gagged them with their own garments and bound them back to back. Then he flattened himself against the wall and looked around him.

All was quiet in the house; only from the distance came an amiable, musical hum of voices from the tents; a reassuring sound of men at peace with one another and with the world. And Taki’s teeth glinted white as he smiled at the moon. Then he turned, adjusted the silken mask, laid a hand on the sill of the open window, and drew himself softly into the room.

Señor
Don Hernandez Guadalmo slept but lightly; and even that silken smooth entrance of the Indian’s had roused him. Now, as Taki turned from the window, he faced Guadalmo, who was sitting bolt upright in his bed, but so paralyzed with nightmare horror that he could not move his hand. Before he recovered, he had clapped a pistol to his head.

“Don Hernandez, son of a dog,” he said, “for the sixth time we have met.”

“God receive my soul!” murmured the wretched man.

“The devil will receive it,” said the other. “But not from this room. You must step out with me,
señorl”

“If you have murder to do, do it here! But first, let me see your face!”

“Before you die, you shall see it, I promise. And if I fail, you may use your discretion upon me. Here,
Señor
Guadalmo, is your favorite sword. I make free to borrow it. Now, step before me through that window. If you cry out, if you attempt to run, I send a bullet through your back…or an ounce of lead to mingle with your brains, my friend!”

“What reward is there in the end?”

“A chance to fight with me fairly, point to point, sword to sword, and die like a murderer, as you deserve, but also like a gentleman.”

Guadalmo fairly trembled with joy. “Is it true?”

“On the honor of one whose faith has never been broken.”

“I go as to a feast!” said the duelist. He paused only to draw on a few garments. Then he slipped through the window before Taki and was rejoined by him on the ground.

“The guards?” he queried in a whisper.

Taki pointed to a tangled heap of shadow at the corner of the wall. “They will not notice your going,
señor.”

“You have confederates who have done this?”

“Confederates? Yes, my two hands. Walk straight ahead,
señor.
I shall remain just half a pace behind you.”

“My friend, the Black Rider,” said Guadalmo, “this promises to be a notable and happy night.”

And he walked straight forward down the slope and into the hollow beneath.

H
ere,” said the Indian, “we will be very comfortable.”

Guadalmo paused. He found himself in a little level-bottomed clearing surrounded by the squat forms of oak trees, each with a dim, black pattern printed beneath it on the brown grass.

The moon was bright. A cool sea wind stirred across the hollow and brought to it the indescribable freshness of salt water. And from the highlands came the additional scent of the evergreens.