The Black Rider

by Max Brand

  The Indian smiled. And there was more scorn in that smile than in a torrent of wordy abuse. Don Carlos stormed like a leashed dog.

  “You redskinned snake,” he cried.

  “Señor” said the Indian, “I belong now to the lady; and as her servant I dare not submit to such words. Our swords were bated, señor. But I have a second knife which is not.”

  “Carlos,” said the girl, “don’t speak with him again. Taki, you must leave the sheep where they are. You must follow us. You have a horse which you love too much to keep far away from you. Where is it now?”

  “Waiting, señorita!”

  “Bring, it then.”

  He whistled high and shrill as the scream of a hawk; and then, as they waited, they heard a rush of hoofs, and a shining bay stallion whipped into view. He came up with the wind and the sun rippling in his mane and in his tail. At the side of Taki he paused, tossing up his head and snorting at the strangers.

  “Saddle and bridle him,” said the girl, “if you can. He is a glorious thing, Taki. I have never seen such a beauty…not in the king’s stables!”

  “He is saddled,” said Taki, throwing a blanket over the back of the stallion and securing it with a single cinch.

  And, fastening a light halter of thin rawhide over his head: “He is bridled,” he added.

  “Then come after us,” said the girl. “You have a fortnight of service remaining, Taki. That fortnight belongs to me!”

  V “Beginning a Fortnight of Service”

  The apartment of Lucia in the rest house, which the cavalcade reached, was like that in which she had spent her first night after leaving the ship, except that it was, perhaps, a little more complete. She herself went about restlessly examining everything. But she said not a word. It was her aunt, the pale and patient lady who had chaperoned her niece to this far land, who broke forth into eulogy and into wonder.

  “It is like a scene from some biblical story, Lucia,” she declared, “illustrated in the concrete! What a wonderful and strange country this is!”

  “A wonderful and strange Francisco Torreño,” said the girl without emotion.

  Her own chambers consisted of a large room at a corner of the house, with two small, deep windows cut through each wall; in those casement recesses were small climbing vines whose roots extended to the outside of the wall, where they were sunk in pots of rich, wet soil. There were chairs and couches, crudely made but cushioned to softness and everywhere—on chairs, on couches, on the floor beneath their feet—were fine sheepskins washed to a dazzling whiteness, and combed until they were light as a mist before the face of the moon. To the side of this chamber in one direction were two small bedchambers, each well-nigh filled with gigantic four-posters, one for Lucia and one for her aunt, Anna d’Arquista. On the other side of her reception room were two other apartments to correspond with the sleeping rooms. One was the bath; the other was a small chapel. In the making of the bath alone a very world of labor had been expended, for in digging the foundation for the house, the builders had struck a solid rock, dark green like sea water. This had been chiseled out to an appropriate depth and little steps cut in the side, so that the lady Lucia might walk down into her bath. The remainder of the floor of the bathroom was paved with great slabs of red limestone, soft and yet porous, delicate to the touch of a bared foot. And there was a red sandstone bench made of three large pieces of stone, roughly shaped but with a polished sitting surface. Into this room the servants were now bringing the heated water—an endless chain of dark-faced Indian women with earthen jars of water poised on their shoulders pacing gracefully in, each with a white flash of the eye as she passed the Señorita Lucia d’Arquista, seeing in her, indeed, the future empress who would control their destinies.

  There are few who do not care to make their first impression an agreeable one, particularly to those who are socially their inferiors. But the señorita was one of the few. If there were kindness, gentleness in her heart, she carefully disguised it. If she looked at that passing line, it was in a detached, impersonal manner, as one might look at a painting.

  And each of the serving women went on with downcast glance fixed upon the brown heels of the one who went before. And the bath was gradually filled, each earthen jar discharging a crystal stream of heated water into the bath where it was turned instantly into pale green.

  Last of all came two young girls, olive-skinned, solemn-eyed, graceful as young trees in a wind as they walked, strong as panthers, beautiful as evening. They passed into the room of the bath. They took from small, wooden boxes handfuls of a powder which they dropped into the quivering surface of the water; instantly a delicate fragrance stole through the chambers, not to be identified, languorously sweet as the perfume which a warm and lazy spring wind gathers from a whole field of mingled wild flowers. Then they came back before Lucia. They were sent by the master, they said, and they were to prepare the Señorita for the bath, if it was her pleasure.

  She spoke not to them but to her aunt in quick French: “You see, madame, that one does not live in this country; one is to be carried through life by slaves!”

  She turned her back and went to the door of the little chapel.

  “Hush, Lucia!” said Anna d’Arquista in the same language. “Hush, child. One cannot tell what ears will hear you.”

  “Ah, yes,” said the girl, without turning to answer, “you feel it, also. Even the empty air has ears and is spying on us! But look, madame, how this man who does not know a prayer has fitted up a chapel for me!”

  It was complete. There was a jeweled crucifix. There was a little gilded Madonna holding a child whose tiny hand was raised to teach. There was a tall, pointed window filled with stained glass beyond price. On the floor before the Madonna was the skin of a great mountain lion. A strange prayer rug!

  Anna d’Arquista came to look.

  “All this,” she said, “for a single night’s resting place! What a miracle of wealth, what a king this Torreño is! And who knows, Lucia? There may be a religious reverence in his heart, also!”

  “A religious fiddlesticks,” said Lucia. “If a man has jewels, he shows them, does he not? All that he cares for in this place is the cost of making it. Look in the bath! How many hand strokes to make it…for this one evening only, perhaps!”

  “It is wonderful, Lucia.”

  “Aye,” said the girl, turning suddenly and throwing out her hands, “and beautiful, too! If one may be a queen, even over barbarians, why not?”

  She went toward her bedroom and the two attendants followed, with stony faces. And poor Anna d’Arquista sank into a chair and laid her head in her hands, and wept. For she loved her niece with all her heart, having mothered her, or tried to, for ten years. But where was all this swelling discontent in the girl pointing? To disaster, she felt, but disaster of what sort she hardly knew. It was a wretched business, she felt, and had always felt since the moment Lucia had been sold to this stranger from a strange land, sold not because the head of the d’Arquista family lacked money or lacked power, but because he was avaricious of more.

  A curtain had been drawn across the bedroom door. Behind it she could hear voices—that of Lucia, like a small crystal bell, and then the soft, husky tones of the half-breed girls. They came out. The masks of stone had fallen from the attendants. They were smiling. Their happy eyes watched over their mistress as she walked a little before them, wrapped in a robe of blue silk, delicately brocaded. They entered the bath, the curtain was drawn; and then out to Anna d’Arquista floated noises of splashing water, and laughter sweet as the singing of birds—laughter from three throats!

  Oh, to be young, thought Anna d’Arquista. What a miracle! What a miracle of grace and gracious power!

  And to be beautiful! What virtue of a saint could balance against that gift? Aye, what could be surer of heaven itself, in the end? She pressed her cold thin hands over her heart, because the ache in it made her faint.

  Then, stealthily, she slipped into the chap
el. She kneeled on the tawny lion skin. She rested her forehead against the altar of red limestone, and she prayed, or tried to pray. Afterward, she went back into the room, but time had hurried past her more quickly than she knew. That bath was ended; Lucia had been dressed; all the weariness of the day had been smoothed from her face; her eyes were filled with a reckless light.

  “Find Taki,” she said. “Send him to me.”

  They were gone instantly, hurrying to the door; then, as it closed behind them, the scurry of their running feet was faintly heard as they raced, to be first in filling this command of their new mistress.

  “They are sweet children,” said Lucia.

  Such a child to speak with love and with pity of children! And yet, to be sure, there was always something old in her niece. There was always a power of knowledge which made even Anna d’Arquista feel sometimes like a foolish infant.

  Another step came to the door and a hand knocked once.

  “That is Taki,” said the girl, her face brightening. “You have heard me tell about him. You have not seen him yet. When he comes in, watch his steps. They are like a tiger’s! As swift, as strong, as noiseless. He is a dreadful creature, Aunt Anna!”

  She called: “Come!”

  The door opened; Taki glided in before them. There he stood in front of the closed door, his arms folded across his breast, his eyes upon the floor submissively— but it was the submission of a trained lion which passes through attitudes that have no meaning in its heart.

  “Look!” Lucia whispered. “He is magnificent, is he not?”

  “And terrible,” breathed the other.

  He seemed larger, indeed, than he had before. Among the open hills he fitted more easily into the picture. Here he seemed inches taller, stronger. Where his arms were folded, the muscles bulged beneath the sleeves of his shirt.

  “You have come quickly, Taki,” she said.

  “I have been waiting,” he said.

  “You knew that I would send?”

  “Yes, mistress.”

  She paused a moment, thoughtfully.

  “That word, Taki,” she said, “comes awkwardly from you, I think.”

  “I have been a free man…mistress,” he said.

  “Do you think that my service will be very hard?” she asked him.

  “Ah,” he said, with a stern smile touching his lips, “even to be the slave of a man is a knife in the heart of a slave!”

  She started at this.

  “I think,” she said to Anna d’Arquista, “that the rascal is impertinent!”

  “Hush! Peace!” gasped out Anna d’Arquista. “If you rouse him, he will murder us both, crash through the wall, and escape!’

  Lucia d’Arquista laughed, but she shivered, also, and seemed to find that thrill of dread not unpleasant.

  “And to serve a woman, any woman,” she said, “is infinitely worse than to serve the worst of men?”

  He remained silent.

  “Did you hear me, Taki?”

  He said at last: “Why should I speak when your answer is already in your own mind?”

  And his eyes, for the first time, flashed up from the floor and looked into her own, not with a fleeting glance, but steadily, quietly

  VI “Lucia’s Servant Interviewed”

  It made the lady frown; then it made her flush. As for Aunt Anna, she was covered with terror.

  “You are terribly unwise, my dear!” she whispered to her niece.

  But Lucia merely waved such fears aside with a graceful gesture.

  “You don’t understand,” she said. “And I think that I do…a little.”

  This rather mysterious speech there was no time to explain.

  “How long,” said Lucia, “were you in Europe?”

  “A year and two months, madame.”

  “A year and two months?” echoed Lucia.

  Then she leaned back in her chair and began to smile like one who has solved a difficulty. She nodded at him again.

  “One can easily see,” she said, “how you could afford to spend so long a time on your studies.”

  He regarded her rather anxiously, but did not speak.

  “A year and two months,” said Lucia, “completed your liberal education. Well, well, it is delightful to hear of such natural talents! There are some men who labor all their lives to learn how to fence, and even then they succeed only poorly. I remember that my father, even when he was quite an old man, used to spend an hour every day with the professor. He still takes fencing lessons twice a week! And I have a brother who has dreamed of nothing since he was a boy except to manage a rapier. But you, Taki, in the course of a year and two months, have reached such a point of skill that neither my father nor my brother could compare with you. I have seen them; I am sure that Señor Don Carlos Torreño fences as well as they do. And indeed, Don Carlos has made it the greatest work of his life…his fencing, I mean! It shows a very real and a very rare talent, Taki, that you have been able to learn so much in a short year and two months. You must have practiced very hard constantly!”

  He was still watching her with a shade of anxiety; but he answered: “I was constantly at work, señorita!”

  “But I forget! I forget! In that time you had also your lessons in dancing, in which I suppose you progressed as well as you did in fencing? Perhaps…even better?”

  “I became a very stupid and very poor dancer, señorita!”

  She laughed at him. “Will you tell me that when you confess that the ladies would dance with you?”

  “They were curious, señorita, to see the poor barbarian act like a civilized man.”

  “Nonsense,” she exclaimed, with the surety of absolute knowledge. “No woman would make herself appear ridiculous for the sake of curiosity. Not in such circles.”

  His face was covered instantly with his habitual mask.

  “However, the dancing and the fencing is not all. By no means. There is the singular purity of your French, Taki. Most strange that one should pick up so perfect an accent in a single year. I, for instance, have worked half my life like a slave to learn that language. And still, any child could excel me! Indeed, Taki, you are very apt. You shame my father, my brother, Don Carlos, and me; you excel us so very far, Taki.”

  He answered neither word nor look but still stared past her with a sort of bland indifference.

  “But I have forgotten the most important thing of all!” she exclaimed, “and the surest proof that you are a genius, Taki. You were able to master the flute in a single year…master it to a perfect smoothness. In a single year…that difficult instrument. In a single year, Taki, to become a master flute player, a dangerous and polished fencer, a dancer of grace at least; in a single year you have equipped yourself also with the very French of Paris. What additional study was there required to add Spanish to that list, for I see that you speak it with great precision. And,” she added with a sudden change of voice, and speaking in excellent English: “What other languages are you a master of beside your own Navajo?”

  “Of none, señorita,” he answered, and then caught himself and bit his lip.

  “You answer me in Spanish,” she said, “but you understand the question I put in English.”

  “When I was a boy” said Taki, “I knew a trader who was from the colony of Virginia. I learned English from him.”

  She merely smiled, her eyes bright and hard as she examined him.

  “Admirable, Taki,” she said. “In all things you are excellent, in all things! Perhaps when you were a boy you also knew a missionary who taught you French, a generous soldier who instructed you in fencing, a kind Spaniard who schooled you in Spanish grammar, and some dapper dancing master who went among the Navajos to teach them ballroom steps in their spare moments! So you had received the basis of your knowledge and the year in Paris was merely to add the perfect finish to what you already knew!”

  He did not reply, standing tall and stiff before her. There was no trace of emotion in him, except that the muscl
es of his folded arms swelled and rippled.

  “That is all,” she said. “You may go now!”

  He vanished instantly.

  “Lucia, Lucia!” said her aunt. “I would never have dreamed of it. But you seemed to have proved that he has told us a great series of lies! Of course in one year he never could have accomplished what he claims.”

  Lucia was walking up and down the room, a faint smile on her lips. She did not answer at once.

  “But the first thing is to tell Señor Torreño!” said Anna d’Arquista.

  “Do you know what the señor would do?” asked the girl.

  “Punish him, of course.”

  “Punish him by stripping him naked, giving him a start of a hundred paces, and then loosing the hounds after him! I heard him tell how he occasionally disciplines unfaithful servants.”

  “He is a stern man, indeed!” said the elderly lady.

  “If he were not so rich, he would not be called merely stern!”

  “Lucia, what are you saying?”

  “What I think.”

  “Oh, my dear, how dreadful!”

  “To say what I think?”

  “No, but I mean…”

  “That I should not think? Yes, that is right. I should close my eyes. I should learn how to smile blindly. That would be the best, of course. It is sinful to see that he who is to be my father-in-law is brutal, savage, conceited, narrow.”

  “Lucia!”

  “And it is a greater sin to guess that the gallant Don Carlos is a mere fool!”

  “Ah, Lucia, God forgive me for listening to you! Child, child, what are you saying?”

  “Nothing, nothing, of course! Nothing that should be remembered. I am preparing myself to be blind and deaf the rest of my life.” She added sharply: “Because of this marriage, how many new estates will my father be able to buy, Aunt Anna? Can you guess that?”

  Aunt Anna turned gray with horror and with dread. And her niece turned the subject.