by Peter David
“Do they have hay here?” asked Diabolito.
“Yes. At the farm in the back,” said Tomas.
“Get it,” Diabolito ordered. “I want it covering the chest so that no prying eyes will have the opportunity to see what it is we are transporting.”
“It’s night,” Maria pointed out. “Who is going to be around to see it?”
“Wandering soldiers. Casual observers. We do not need anyone seeing our procession and asking why in the world we are transporting what appears to be a treasure chest. Do as I instruct.”
The pirates nodded, saluted their captain and scrambled to carry out his orders.
As that happened, Quintero let out a low moan and raised his head to glance around. “What in the hell — ?” he shouted when he saw where he was.
Diabolito approached him and put a finger to his lips. “I am giving you the option of proceeding without a gag, Captain. If you wish, I will also have my men set you to an upright position so you can ride like a gentleman, as long as you do not appeal for the help of any we pass. Because I assure you, I have my gun loaded … ”
“And you will shoot me down if I ask for aid?”
Diabolito laughed at that. “Of course not. I would shoot down whoever you appealed to to provide you rescue.”
Quintero looked appalled. “You would shoot down innocent people?”
The phrase seemed to catch Diabolito off guard. Then slowly he approached Quintero until he was less than a foot away and spoke in a low voice. “Did you know that the Bible tells us that if you feel lust in your heart, that is the same as actually committing the sin?”
“You hardly seem like a religious man,” Quintero said sarcastically.
Diabolito did not react to the bait in Quintero’s tone. “Very much so. The Bible says that to think the deed is the same as committing it. Therefore, on that basis, there is no such thing as an innocent person, because everyone has foul thoughts at one time or another.
“So we are all equal in God’s eyes, Captain. If that is the case — if in the end we are all making the journey to Hell — then why shouldn’t I afford myself fine living while I am still breathing air? And if I dispatch a few damned souls along the way, isn’t that doing God’s work as well?”
“You’re insane,” said the Captain.
“Far from it. I am just far ahead in my thinking. Now: do you wish to sit upright? Yes or no?”
“Yes,” Quintero growled.
“Gentlemen!” Diabolito called to his men. “Help the good Captain to sit upright, would you please?”
Several of his pirates came forward, aided the bound Quintero in sitting up, and then stepped back. “Find him a blanket,” ordered Diabolito. “We want to keep his hands bound, but there’s no reason to draw attention to it.”
And Quintero said the only thing that he could think of, and would forever be ashamed for even giving voice to it: “Zorro will stop you.”
The Little Devil laughed uproariously. “Zorro? Zorro couldn’t stop me, and I know this because I stopped him. Courtesy of me and, as it so happens, your sister. I defeated him at swordplay, and then the lovely Maria caused him to fall backwards to his doom. So don’t count on Senor Zorro to rescue you, Captain. Because Senor Zorro is dead.”
Chapter Eleven
Less Dead Than Believed
So this is how I die.
As his cave and the ledge and the other pirates spiraled away from him, Zorro found himself plunging to his death and feeling rather moribund about it.
It wasn’t as if Zorro had not been ready for death from the moment that he had first hidden his face behind a black mask. In any number of instances, he had gone up against the soldiers of Los Angeles and risked his life in countless duels, or running from their rifles as they fired at him. All that was needed was a soldier who was a marksman, or perhaps just lucky. Senor Zorro was no more invulnerable to bullets than any other man. A bullet in the head or heart would end him as readily as it would anybody else.
Yet whenever he had contemplated his passing, he had always assumed — hell, hoped — that it would be worthy of someone who was such an adventurer. Let him die in a sword duel with someone who was so formidable that no one could defeat him.
Or maybe something romantic. Perhaps he could die while he was involved with some fair lady. Let his heart, thudding with excitement, abruptly give out in the midst of physical pleasure. Now that would be a way to go! When the young lady tearfully described the means of Diego’s death, why, it would be a sensation! “He was doing what when he died?! Bueno! Bueno, Senor Don Diego! That is how every man should die!”
Or perhaps …
Perhaps he might even die a quiet death in a bed, surrounded by his new wife — he missed his deceased mate terribly, but one did have to move on — and his children and grandchildren. Ah, the grandchildren, whom he regularly entertained with great stories of the legendary Zorro, who had apparently retired some years earlier but had never been forgotten.
Yes. That seemed nice.
But this? To be defeated by some pirate? And a woman with a torch? What manner of end would that be for the Curse of Capistrano? And how they would relish telling the story! “Senor Zorro? That useless fool? My woman over there waved a torch at him and he was so frightened he leaped off a cliff rather than face her! A round on me, my friends, as I tell you every moment of his final battle and ignominious end!”
No! By God, no, he would not have it! He wouldn’t!
The entire flow of events went through his mind within a second, and in the next second he was yanking his whip out of its holster on his belt.
There was brush, trees and shrubbery extending from the cliff face, but between the darkness of the night, the lack of lunar illumination, and the speed with which he was plummeting, it was difficult for him to discern anything that was hurtling past him. There were large shapes but nothing he could make out in detail considering the speed with which he was falling. He was going to have to take a chance and hope for the best.
He lashed out with the whip even as he was turning end over end. The whip wrapped itself around a huge branch and held. Zorro gripped the handle tightly as his fall was abruptly terminated. It happened so suddenly that he almost lost his hold on the handle as he swung with significant force toward the mountainside.
He slammed into the rocky wall, crying out as he felt something awful happen to his left shoulder. Pain ripped through him, and he bit down hard on his lower lip so he wouldn’t shout in agony. When he hit the wall, he bounced away from it and then swung back toward it, striking it a second time once again on his left shoulder. He could not recall any point in his life where he had hurt this much. There was a small bit of blood trickling from his mouth as his teeth sank in even more tightly.
The third time he swung toward the cliffside, he brought his feet up and terminated his swinging by placing his feet against the cliff. He was still in massive amounts of pain, but at least he’d been lucky enough to avoid completing his fall.
That was exactly what he thought right before the branch ripped free of the cliff side.
Desperately he tried to shake his whip free of the previous salvation that had betrayed him, but he couldn’t do it. The lash was thoroughly entangled with the wood and wouldn’t come free.
He muttered a loud curse and then, to his shock, he hit something that was not the ground. No, it was a mass of wood and leaves. There was a sparse forest at the bottom of the cliff, and Zorro had slammed right down into it. If he had been traveling at the speed that normally would have accompanied the fall, he would have been moving so fast that he would have crashed straight through the branches and slammed into the ground with a bone shattering impact. But the brief interval caused the branches to be able to provide support and slow Zorro’s fall. Branches snapped and cracked beneath him, jolting him right and left, and suddenly he was jerked to a halt. He looked, uncertain what had happened, and then he saw it: The branch that had snapped off the cliff wa
s now thoroughly entangled with the branches that he had just been crashing through. They were cradling it as if a long lost kinsman had just shown up unexpectedly.
He was still clutching his whip, and now he looked down to see how much further he had to fall.
He saw the ground. It was six inches below his feet.
He yanked several times on the whip and finally it dislodged from the tree and allowed him to drop to the ground, laughing as he did so, but then the pain returned to him as if it were a white-hot fist composed of thousands of heated nails. He moaned, staggering, uncertain of what had happened.
Senor Zorro reached up to the shoulder tentatively, felt deeply with his fingers, and finally figured out what had happened: He had dislocated his shoulder. It felt spongy around his upper left arm rather than the normal tautness to which he was accustomed. He could scarcely move the fingers of his left arm.
He knew what he had to do. It wasn’t going to be pleasant, but he had to endure it.
Senor Zorro was surrounded by some rather thin trees, so instead he walked over to where the bottom of the cliffside met the ground. He felt around carefully until he had discerned a bare area of rock that didn’t have undergrowth extending from it. He took in a deep breath, let it out, inhaled and exhaled again and for a few more times to build up his nerve. And then he twisted sharply at the waist and slammed his left shoulder into the rock.
He had been determined to keep silent as he did so, but he completely failed. Zorro shouted so loudly that he was convinced he had alerted the pirates to the fact of his continued existence. He had not, of course; they were hundreds of feet above and were too busy with the treasure to pay the slightest attention to a man they all assumed was dead.
He slumped against the cliff side, breathing deeply to get himself through the pain. Then he experimentally moved his fingers, and discovered that he had full motion once more. Very slowly, very carefully, he brought his left arm up above his head and down in a circle. There was a minor twinge of annoyance, but other than that there was no pain in his arm anymore. He had managed to restore his arm’s customary spot in his shoulder.
Now what? Now what?
It was a desperate question, and one to which he did not have a ready answer.
The main thing that he did not know was whether or not Miguel had made it to the pueblo and had gotten them to listen to him … assuming he hadn’t just ridden away, laughing to himself how this fool of a Zorro had believed him when he’d said that he was trying to turn his life around.
“Let’s say he did,” Zorro muttered to himself. That was certainly the best case scenario: that the pirates were even now facing arrest by the soldiers under the command of Captain Quintero.
But what if that had not happened? What if Miguel had indeed lied to him and gone off in some other direction entirely. Or what if Quintero had not believed him? The Captain was certainly stupid enough to ignore the warning of pirates in Los Angeles. If he had done so, then Zorro was going to have to do something else to try and stop them.
There was only one answer. He was going to have to get to their ship.
Where was it? At the docks, obviously. Where else?
The big question was, what had happened to the crew of the Spanish galleon they had captured? Zorro had to hope that they were still alive and well on the pirate ship, wherever in the ocean that was. He suspected that they probably were. Diabolito did not seem to be a man who wasted any opportunity to make money, and the chances that ransoming them would cause considerable prosperity — particularly if the genuine del Riego was on the ship — would have proven very tempting to the Little Devil.
So now Senor Zorro simply had to run on foot down to the docks in time to board the boat and find an ideal hiding place before the pirates made it there. The very notion seemed hopeless.
That was when he abruptly heard something crashing through the forest.
Immediately he was worried, because he was unsure what sort of animal was heading his way. It could be a bear of some type, although Zorro did not hear any growling. Perhaps wolves crashing through. Whatever it was, the chances were they would see Zorro as an unwelcome intruder and deal with him accordingly. To prepare himself for possible battle, he took his sword into his right hand and yanked the whip forward with his left, so that he could ideally control the beast from the first moments of the encounter.
Seconds later, the newly arrived creature burst into view.
Zorro gave out a loud laugh. “Tornado!”
For it was indeed Zorro’s noble and dedicated steed.
He had no idea, nor would he ever learn, how exactly the trustworthy horse had managed to track him down. It was possible Tornado had seen Zorro’s plunge down the cliff face and had run toward its master’s likely landing place. Perhaps it had been able to determine Zorro’s scent. Blazes, maybe it was just wandering around the forest and had heard a crash that it was now investigating. Whatever means had been employed, Tornado had found him, and the timing could not have been better.
He vaulted onto Tornado’s back and snapped the reins. “The docks, my friend, and hurry! We have no time to lose.”
As if it understood its master’s words — which, for all Zorro knew, it did — Tornado wheeled around and began running through the forest. The horse was stepping carefully, for this was not some cleared road and it clearly didn’t want to trip over some strewn branches or roots or stumps.
Zorro’s cape fluttered in the wind as he rode, and as it did so, Zorro couldn’t help but be grateful for one thing:
At least Don Alejandro was not involved.
Chapter Twelve
Don Alejandro Gets Involved
The longer Don Alejandro sat around in Don Diego’s townhouse, the more useless he began to feel. And that sense of uselessness fed into his brain and began some very unwise and unfortunate thoughts rampaging through his gray matter.
How could he have let this del Riego force him from his own hacienda? So he could have “secret meetings” with other revolutionaries. And with the fair Maria beside him, seeming as if it did not matter to her whether Alejandro was there or not.
Don Alejandro reluctantly had to admit that aspect of this entire business galled him the most. What sort of woman was Maria to allow the man who had saved her from a robber be dismissed from his home and even seem to find the man who was exiling him to be attractive? This was just not right. More, it was infuriating. Had Don Alejandro misjudged Maria that thoroughly?
None of it made sense.
Don Alejandro hated things that made no sense.
He stood up from the chair in which he was reclining so abruptly that he startled Bernardo, who just happened to be walking by. “Bring my horse around,” he ordered the servant. “I am returning to the hacienda.”
“Shall we go along to escort you?” Bernardo asked.
He shook his head firmly. “There are matters to be discussed I would greatly prefer be done with no other ears around.”
Bernardo made a face that indicated he did not believe the Don’s intentions were especially wise. But it was not the place of a servant to gainsay his master’s desires. So it was, a few minutes later, that Don Alejandro’s favorite mount was saddled and waiting for him at the front door. He clambered onto the horse’s saddle and seconds later was riding hell bent for leather toward his family’s home.
It was late in the evening and so he was not expecting to encounter anyone along the path. Everyone in town was certainly asleep. Even Diego was …
Where was Diego?
Diego had excused himself to return to the hacienda because he had left something behind. But he had not caught up with them, and since Don Alejandro had reached Diego’s town home, he could not recall when or even if Diego had gotten there.
If he hadn’t made it home, then there were only two possibilities. The first was that he had had some sort of unfortunate accident. The second was that Zorro’s aid had been required in some situation …
&n
bsp; … maybe at the hacienda.
As irritated as Don Alejandro had been over what he saw as a personal slight and discommoding, the thought that some emergency had presented itself that only Senor Zorro could attend to made Alejandro extremely nervous. He dug in his spurs to urge greater speed from the horse as all manner of unfortunate possibilities whirled through his head. He had no idea what sort of situation could have commanded Zorro’s attention, but if it involved Maria, then it could not possibly be good. Perhaps del Riego had committed some sort of offense and Zorro needed to make it right in order to save her honor.
The potential horror show of that scenario rampaged through his imagination, distracting him, and so it was, Don Alejandro rounded a curve in the road only to come face to face with del Riego and Maria at the head of a line of men, it was all he could do to stop his horse before the thing crashed into them.
Del Riego looked extremely surprised, as did Maria. “Don Alejandro!” he cried out, sounding surprised and none too pleased. “What are you doing out here so late at night?”
Don Alejandro was not remotely interested in discussing his unexpected whereabouts. His steely gaze took in Maria and he saw that she seemed in reasonably good health. Her clothing, while surprisingly dusty, seemed not torn, nor were there any signs of bruises or other marks on her face. So it seemed reasonable to conclude that she had not been ravaged.
What the hell?
Several men back, he saw Captain Juan Quintero on a horse. His face was sallow and sour. Even more befuddling, he was sitting with his hands obscured by a blanket. “Quintero?” called Don Alejandro. “What are you doing out here? Who are all these other men? What is happening?”
Quintero said absolutely nothing. He fired a quick, irritated glance in del Riego’s direction, but otherwise offered no explanation at all.