“You tried treachery!” he cried. “Dog of a thief! You would send men about my ears, eh? I’ll strip your tough hide—”
“Mercy!” the landlord shrieked, and fell to the ground.
Señor Zorro cut at him again, bringing forth a yell more than blood. He wheeled his horse and darted at the nearest of his foes. Another pistol-ball whistled past his head, another man sprang at him with blade ready. Señor Zorro ran the man neatly through the shoulder and put spurs to his horse again. He galloped as far as the whipping-post, and there he stopped his horse and faced them for an instant.
“There are not enough of you to make a fight interesting, señores,” he cried.
He swept off his sombrero and bowed to them in nice mockery, and then he wheeled his horse again and dashed away.
XXIV
At the Hacienda of Don Alejandro
Behind him he left a tumult in the town. The shrieks of the fat landlord had aroused the pueblo. Men came running, servants hurrying at their sides and carrying torches. Women peered from the windows of the houses. Natives stood still wherever they happened to be, and shivered, for it had been their dear experience that whenever there was a tumult natives paid the price.
Many young caballeros of hot blood were there, and for some time there had been no excitement in the pueblo of Reina de Los Angeles. These young men crowded into the tavern and listened to the wails of the landlord, and some hurried to the house of the magistrado and saw his wounds, and heard him declaim on the indignity that had been offered the law, and therefore his excellency the governor.
Captain Ramón came down from the presidio, and when he heard the cause of the tumult he swore great oaths, and sent his only well man to ride along the Pala Road, overtake Sergeant Gonzales and his troopers, and bid them return and take the trail, since at the time being they were following a false scent.
But the young caballeros saw in this circumstance a chance for excitement that was to their liking, and they asked permission of the comandante to form a posse and take after the highwayman, a permission they received immediately.
Some thirty of them mounted horses, looked to weapons, and set out, with the intention of dividing into three bands of ten each when they came to forks in the trail.
The townsmen cheered them as they started, and they galloped rapidly up the hill and toward the San Gabriel road, making a deal of noise, glad that now there was a moon to let them see the foe when they approached him.
In time they separated, ten going toward San Gabriel proper, ten taking the trail that led to the hacienda of Fray Felipe, and the last ten following a road that curved down the valley to the neighborhood of a series of landed estates owned by wealthy dons of the day.
Along this road Don Diego Vega had ridden some time before, the deaf and dumb Bernardo behind him on the mule. Don Diego rode with leisure, and it was long after nightfall when he turned from the main road and followed a narrower one toward his father’s house.
Don Alejandro Vega, the head of the family, sat alone at his table, the remains of the evening meal before him, when he heard a horseman before the door. A servant ran to open it, and Don Diego entered, Bernardo following close behind him.
“Ah, Diego, my son!” the old don cried, extending his arms.
Don Diego was clasped for an instant to his father’s breast, and then he sat down beside the table and grasped a mug of wine. Having refreshed himself, he faced Don Alejandro once more.
“It has been a fatiguing journey!” he remarked.
“And the cause for it, my son?”
“I felt that I should come to the hacienda,” Don Diego said. “It is no time to be in the pueblo. Wherever a man turns, he finds naught but violence and bloodshed. This confounded Señor Zorro—”
“Ha! What of him?”
“Please do not ‘Ha!’ me, sir and father. I have been ‘Ha’d!’ at from morning until night these several days. These be turbulent times.”
“This Señor Zorro has made a visit to the Pulido hacienda and frightened everyone there. I went to my hacienda on business, and from there I went over to see old Fray Felipe, thinking I might get a chance to meditate in his presence. And who makes an appearance but a big sergeant and his troopers seeking this Señor Zorro!”
“They caught him?”
“I believe not, sir and father. I returned to the pueblo; and what think you happened there this day? They brought in Fray Felipe, accused of having swindled a dealer, and after a mockery of a trial they lashed him to a post and gave him the whip fifteen times across his back.”
“The scoundrels!” Don Alejandro cried.
“I could stand it no longer, and so I decided to pay you a visit. Wherever I turn, there is turmoil. It is enough to make a man insane. You may ask Bernardo if it is not.”
Don Alejandro glanced at the deaf and dumb native and grinned. Bernardo grinned back as a matter of course, not knowing it was no manner in which to act in the presence of a don.
“You have something else to tell me?” Don Alejandro asked his son, looking at him searchingly.
“By the saints! Now it comes! I had hoped to avoid it, father and sir.”
“Let me hear about it.”
“I paid a visit to the Pulido hacienda, and spoke with Don Carlos and his wife, also the Señorita Lolita.”
“You were pleased with the señorita?”
“She is as lovely as any girl of
