Joaquin heard a banging. Some thumps.
More banging.
Eventually he heard the distinctive caw of a seagull, and noticed that the heat was drying up, the ground beneath them hardening. A steady roar sounded in the distance, the gentle and rhythmic rise and fall of waves.
They were heading for the shore.
Another wagon approached. Joaquin heard the rickety-clack-rickety-clack of its wheels. Raised voices burst from above.
“Say now, preacher!” called McGivens in a shrill mocking voice. “Save any souls today? Make yourself some money? The Lord wouldn’t want you and your boy there going without, now would he? Gotta keep your strength up, stay well fed, make your clothing nice and fine as an inspiration to others, yes! Something the lowly masses can aspire to, don’t you know.” He laughed. “My daddy was a preacher man. He done taught me everything I needed to know about the mysteries of the Almighty. You do the same for that boy of yours, maybe someday he’ll reward you same way I did my pappy.”
McGivens released a hailstorm of mad cackles, which his men dutifully and promptly echoed. Through it all, the pair on the other wagon remained dead quiet.
Smart choice, thought Joaquin. For some reason, McGivens had been looking for a fight, as if the preacher’s wagon had been set in his path to test him.
Another man, this one with a drawl thick as molasses muttered, “So—did ya get your pappy a present?”
There was nothing but silence from above. Joaquin pictured McGivens’s men exchanging cold cruel looks. A jarring thwap jolted the quiet, McGivens slapping his companion on the back.
“Well, Horatio, that there’s a tale, and it’s got itself a lesson at the end, a moral if you will,” expounded McGivens. “Like a sermon. You mind if I sermonize with you a moment?”
“Sure, boss,” Horatio said brightly.
Joaquin listened carefully as the scarred, wooden-teethed madman settled into his story.
“I suppose you’ve noticed this here scar of mine,” said Jacob McGivens. “Believe it or not, I wasn’t born this way. This mark is my cross to bear for the rest of my days, have no doubt. But it wasn’t the Lord who gave it to me. Like so many things, I have my pappy to thank for it. He made damn sure that I wouldn’t be able to look into a mirror without thinking of him.
“What was my sin, you ask? I did what was asked of me, what the Lord meant for me to do. I just did it a little too well, that’s all…
“Like I said, daddy was a preacher man. Fire and brimstone. The End of Days. I must have been the only young’n in history to have the four horsemen rocking my little crib at night. I worshipped my pappy. What son doesn’t? I watched him in the pulpit, the veins about to pop out of his head as he preached, white knuckles on his fists…why, you’d think he’d caught evil incarnate in his grasp and was choking the life from it the way he carried on.
“It wasn’t enough for me to just watch my pappy. I wanted to be just like him. I had the face of an angel in those days. You wouldn’t believe it, but it’s true, I swear it on the same stack o’ Bibles I’d stick under your feet ’fore I kicked ’em loose and hung you dead. Can I get an amen?”
“Amen!” his men shouted.
“Good. Keep that up. I knew the sermons and I shouted them from the sidelines. It wasn’t long before the people started noticing me, and started listening more to me than to my pappy. He thought it was right funny, at first. But I made him proud and we both knew it. That was all I wanted, all that mattered to me. Hell, I don’t even know if I believed in the Almighty in those days, my pappy, he was God enough, far as I was concerned. His face was the mountain, his the glory.
“When he dressed me up right and put me in front of the pulpit, our congregation grew. People flocked from all around to hear me. In the space of six months, we’d gone from livin’ in a shack to rentin’ the finest house on the highest hill in town.
“That was right about when my pappy started drinkin’. He told me, ‘I’m gonna take your act’—that’s what he called it—‘on the road! We’ll let people far and wide glory in the way the Lord has touched you.’ I wanted to be happy about that, but there was anger in his eyes, what I now understand was jealousy.
“We traveled for years. I saw wonders. I also saw tragedies that done broke my heart. I so wanted to lay my hands on the hurts of all them poor sufferin’ people and heal them with a simple prayer. I told my pappy that, and a strange light came into his eyes. ‘Well, son, that there is an idea,’ he said. ‘Maybe we should try that.’
“At our next revival, he brought a cripple to the stage and said, ‘Jacob, pray for this poor lost soul. Put your hands on him and let the light of the Lord flow into him.’ I did—and he walked. At the next town I healed a blind man. After that, it was just a blur. But on my tenth birthday, my pappy brought out the dead man. I hadn’t thought much about this laying on of hands. It pleased my pappa and that was enough. But when I stepped up to that corpse, I was scared as scared could be. I’d seen my share of bodies. You can’t travel this land without runnin’ afoul of ’em, you just can’t. But pappy wanted me to touch this one and try to place the spark of life in his cold form. I knew that to be a blasphemy.
“I didn’t weep or nothin’. I just looked at my pappy and he looked at me. ‘Go on, now,’ he told me. I did what he wanted. And the dead man rose. It happened again in the next town, again in the next state. The Lord had touched me with the power to truly work miracles in His name and my pappy, watching the way the people lined up, puttin’ down their money whether they could afford to or not, he just got angrier, meaner…
“One night, just before a sermon was about to begin, I realized that I’d left my lucky cross behind. Fellas, you might recognize it if you saw it, you’ve seen its shape many times…
“I went to fetch it, and walked in on my daddy playin’ gin rummy with a corpse. Well, he looked like a corpse. His skin was pale, he had dark hollows under his eyes…his skin had little flecks of ice on it. I thought about that cooler we carried around for meats and stuff, and realized all someone had to do was sit in it a few minutes and their skin would feel like a dead man’s.
“My world ended in that moment. Everything I had believed in was a lie. By God how I hated my pappy then. He had betrayed me, he’d made a damned fool of me by turning my belief in God into his own little joke, and worse of all he made me question if any of my beliefs could possibly be true. And fool that I was, I told him so. There was still some of the old fire and brimstone left in him, I’ve got to say, ’cause he fought like a dog, a lantern got kicked over, and unholy hellfire burst up around us. My cross got in his hand somehow, and he held me down while he dangled it in those flames, and when it was glowing as crimson bright as the devil’s eyes, he branded me with it.
“Don’t ask me how I escaped. Let’s just say it was by the grace of the Lord.
“I wandered far and wide in the days that followed. Some people took pity on me. Others shrank at the sight on my ugly face. I didn’t much care what any of ’em did. Nothin’ mattered much to me, not life, not death. I knew my pappy was alive out there somewhere, but I didn’t even care about that, or so I told myself. It wasn’t until I was twenty years old, standing before the majesty that is Niagara Falls, that I witnessed somethin’ that made me live again.
“It was ole Sam Patch—a crazy man, if ya think about it—what they call a daredevil. He saddled up and leaped clean over the falls and lived to tell the tale. I’m here to tell ya that no one, less’n he was touched by God his own self, could do a thing like that. I reckoned in that moment that I was at a crossroads. I’d spent ten years of my life believin’ in the Almighty, and ten years believin’ in nothing at all. I thought about what Sam must have felt in that moment when he made his jump and knew he must’a come as close to heaven as any man ever had, and I made my choice.
“The rapture of the Lord moved through me like it never had before. From that day on, I lived each day as if I could not fail. I knew H
e was guidin’ my hand. How else could you explain the way I found my pappy again so easy after all those years? In just a matter of weeks I had tricked that sorry bastard into meeting me by the falls. He didn’t know it was me that had sent a message to him and he thought there was money in it. I hadn’t become a vindictive man, no sir. I promised my pappy a reward and I delivered.
“I gave him a gift. I let him experience the pure heaven that Sam Patch had felt on his glorious day. ’Course, he had to experience it after I’d tossed him off the platform. And he was screamin’ so loud the whole way down, that I can only hope that gift was received in the spirit in which it was meant. The moral of the tale, my dear friends? That naturally, life is a precious gift. Death can be one, too. It just depends on whether on not you’re the one metin’ it out…”
An explosive roar rocked the wagon. The horses whinnied and Joaquin saw something fall next to the wheels and roll aside.
One of McGivens’s men.
Horatio.
“What’d you expect, askin’ a damn fool question like that?” McGivens asked, just before bursting into another bellow of obscene laughter.
Beneath the wagon, Joaquin shuddered. His idea of evil came from his childish images of pirates and smugglers. He could see now that he hadn’t had a clue before about the true nature of evil. The wagon came to a jarring halt. Joaquin held on, his muscles burning, his head throbbing, his mouth sore and raw. None of that would have mattered to Señor Zorro, and so Joaquin told himself that these minor discomforts should mean nothing to him. He was having an adventure! Waiting until McGivens and all his men disembarked and walked ahead, Joaquin dropped to the ground. He rolled and scrambled out behind the wagon, peering up cautiously from its rear to take in his surroundings.
To one side, the twisting road hugged the high hills, tracing a low path around them, while on the other it plunged down a sheer cliff wall toward a terrifying watery abyss. Joaquin could see the rippling foam of the ocean from here. McGivens and his posse gathered near the cliff’s edge, where two more men stood next to a gigantic wooden crane. The entire group peered down at something that stoned them into silence.
Joaquin raced up a small bank and climbed to a crop of rocks looming above, his vantage now high enough to allow him a glimpse of what had so enthralled the scarred preacher man and his mercenaries. He gasped as he beheld a secret cove knotted into the beach, high stone ridges reaching around its shallow waters like the protective arms of a craggy gray Goliath. Men from small rowboats carried crates to the base of the cliff, others signaling to those aboard a three-sailed shipping vessel anchored off the shore.
“Let’s go,” growled McGivens to his entourage.
The fiery hand of the sun reached down and clasped the flesh at the back of Joaquin’s neck as he settled back among the sheltering stones and tried to get comfortable. The heat seared the tips of his ears red while he watched the men go about their business. Sighing, he wished he’d worn a hat. His fear filtered out of him gradually as tedium took over. McGivens and his crew set about the task of hauling their crates up the cliff with the same soulless and drab exchanges that often accompanied any such operation, legitimate or not. Perhaps after McGivens’s story—and the fate of poor Horatio—everyone was simply afraid to open their mouths when it wasn’t completely necessary.
Time stretched slowly, and soon McGivens was below, supervising with his Henry Repeater in hand as a load of crates were hauled up the cliff. Leaning his rifle against a rock, he wiped his brow and swigged some water. The last of the rowboats drifted back to the great ship, which was now hauling anchor.
Joaquin dug his hand into his shirt pocket, his fingers closing around a handful of hard candies he had snatched from the kitchen this morning. He wanted something to do, and eating, even when he wasn’t particularly hungry, would at least help pass the time.
Popping a sloppy handful of the candies into his mouth, Joaquin watched as below, two men at the top of the cliff strained to operate the hand-cranked wooden crane, the mechanism’s central cable looped over a pulley at the top. He saw a fleck of emerald out of the corner of his eye and gasped as a scaly iguana sprang onto his hand, drawn by the sweetness he held. Shaking the lizard off, Joaquin whipped the remaining candies high into the air. One smacked the crane’s heavy hand-crank, and the workers whirled even as he scrambled low behind the stones for cover. He waited, sweat soaking his eyes, his arms blossoming with goose-bumps despite the heat, then cautiously peered out again.
Strange. Now only one man was operating the hand crack.
A low growl that sounded as threatening as a mountain coyote rumbled behind Joaquin. He spun—and a huge filthy hand closed over his face. Another hand hooked around his suspenders and suddenly he was hauled into the open, the first hand retreated then returned, and with it, the flashing edge of a blade settling in against his throat. He squirmed anyway as he was dragged down the bank and pitched onto the ground in front of the second machine operator.
Joaquin stared up at a pair of men possessing identical sneers, though the muscle-bound thug who had grabbed him also sported a bushy black beard, while his companion had a silver goatee.
“What’re you doin’ here, kid?” demanded old bushy face.
Joaquin’s hands closed over fistfuls of dirt as he defiantly glared at the duo. “Lookin’ at two of the ugliest guys I ever saw.”
The bushy-faced man hauled Joaquin off the ground, his white-knuckled fist reeling back to deliver a blow certain to take the boy’s head off. Before the punch could be thrown, Joaquin’s hands whipped out, clouds of dirt flying from them, sailing like angry hornets into both men’s eyes. As they lurched and staggered back, Joaquin head-butted one and smacked his elbow into the other’s neck.
Falling free, he hit the ground and scrambled away, but his frantic motions only gained him a few scant yards toward the cliff’s edge before the loud angry scrape of steel on steel sang grotesquely behind him. He shot a panicked look over his shoulder and was frozen by the horrible sight of the bushy-faced man charging after him, drawing his deadly sabre. The weapon’s steel length glinted in the sun as the howling man closed the distance between them and raised the weapon to strike a killing blow.
There must be a way to stop him, thought Joaquin. What would Señor Zorro do?
A high sharp creaking arrested the mercenary’s attention just as his companion caught up with him. Grunting, both men spun, their spines stiffening in surprise. Joaquin heard a fluttering like giant wings, a bold whipping of air, and saw a black shape unfurl beyond his assailants. A heavy boot caught the heads of both men, the blow hurling them over Joaquin—to tumble off the top of the cliff.
El Zorro swung in from the crane cable and landed before the boy with a grin as the screams of the falling men echoed from below. Joaquin and his hero cut quick looks over the cliff’s edge as the bodies crashed onto the beach next to the startled McGivens. With a great moan, the dangling platform began to fall—then it snapped into place and swung like a pendulum, held fast by the crane’s emergency braking system.
Smiling down at McGivens, Zorro took a bow.
“Guard the crates!” bellowed the startled McGivens who frantically tossed up his hands to signal the lazy dogs he’d employed to climb the rocky cliff with him.
“Omigod,” Joaquin cried, “you’re Z—”
Zorro cut him off with a high sharp whistle. The brush rustled and Tornado galloped toward them as Joaquin stumbled back in awe. Zorro crossed to the stallion. Low and in Spanish—a concession he was willing to make considering the urgency at hand—he commanded, “Take him over the hill and wait for me there.”
Amazingly, Tornado knelt down, allowing Zorro to lift the startled, yet elated Joaquin into the saddle. There was so much Joaquin wanted to say to his hero, but words failed him. He clung to the stallion’s neck as Tornado galloped off.
Leaping onto the cable, Zorro effortlessly slid down its length and gracefully landed on the beach behind the gua
rds. He tapped them on the shoulders, balled his hands into fists, and knocked both out cold as they turned to face him.
Adjusting his mask, Alejandro stared down at the fallen men. You have no idea how close you came to meeting the point of my sword. If anything at all had happened to my boy…
Blanca Cortez’s cries as she cradled her husband’s lifeless body suddenly echoed in his thoughts. How many more grieving widows would there be if he did not learn exactly what was going on?
Moving fast to a crate, Zorro caught sight of a strange brand emblazoned on the lid: a blazing-eyed serpent murderously coiled around the globe. Though he’d never encountered the odd symbol before, the sight of it filled him with uneasiness. Reminded of the many harbingers of El Diablo that his brother had warned him against when he was a boy, Zorro decided that he had to know what would be contained in a box bearing such a brand. Prying open the crate, he reached inside and felt row after row of tightly packed rectangular objects. Yanking one free, he hauled it out and examined at his prize.
Resting in his gloved hand was a bar of soap. He sniffed it, utterly baffled. It smelled ordinary enough.
“Soap…” whispered the astonished Zorro. Frowning, he slipped the bar in his pouch, then whirled at a glint of harsh sunlight on silver.
He grinned. McGivens had left his Henry Repeater propped up against a nearby rock. A plan instantly forming in his mind, he snatched it up, picturing McGivens’s ugly face when the man realized what was going on. “You shouldn’t leave your toys lying around. You never know what might happen…”
A few minutes later, McGivens and his men breathlessly crested the top of the cliff and stumbled near the edge where they peered down at the pair of spread-eagle guards Zorro had laid out on the beach. Zorro waved at them once more, laughing as McGivens hurled his hat to the ground and stomped it underfoot. Zorro moved to the cover of low brush while the men were distracted, effectively vanishing from their view. He carefully made his way up the hill without being seen—as the mercenaries skidded and slid down it.
The Legend of Zorro Page 18