The Black Rider (11 page)

“You see, child, that when you speak of finding room on my estate, you may have as much as any prince…and more! And still, I shall never notice what you have taken!”

To this lordly tale the girl listened with a faint smile.

“There is one rock on which all of those plans would split,” she said.

“And that?” asked Torreño.

“Don Carlos.”

“Ah? What of him?”

“Which of us would rule him?”

Torreño’s face grew dark with angry blood.

“He shall rule himself,
señorita”

She waved her hand. “That is folly,
señor.
I can twist him around my finger; and your very breath makes his
whole strong body tremble like a dead leaf! Which would prove the stronger with him? Which of us would he dread the most? Which would he prefer…that I should laugh at him or that you should rage at him? I cannot tell. But I feel,
señor
, that after a time I should be too strong for you. Therefore I advise you for your own sake. Break off this unhappy marriage.”

There was enough of the fox in Torreño to appreciate craft in others. He looked at Lucia with a glint of appreciation in his eyes.

“If I were twenty years younger…yes, or ten…there would be no question of Carlos. I myself should marry you, Lucia!”

“There would be no peace in your house.”

“For a year, for two years, no! But after that, I would give you commands by mere glances and liftings of the finger! So! Your voice would never be heard except in answer to my questions. Ah, yes. It would be that way!”

“But since you are too old for this battle, do you think that Carlos has strength for it?”

“I shall teach him,” said Torreño. “In the meantime, our grip is on you. You are in our cage. We have thrown the net over your head. Beat your wings, sing your song, but escape if you can, my dear! But you cannot. You belong to me; you belong to Carlos. There is the end! In a few months, a few years…what is a little time?…you will learn to curl up in your nest! All will be well!”

To this she made no answer, but she smiled at him in a way that made his heart fall.

“Tell me, Lucia,” he said, “what manner of man could make you love him?”

She answered instantly: “One who could fill me with fear.”

“And have you seen such a man in all the world?”

“One.”

“And what was he?”

She was silent again, and Torreño stared at her in real bewilderment. But here their interview ended. Filled with a whimsical impulse, he went to Carlos and told him everything, word for word.

“Would you have her under these conditions?”

“I love her,” said Carlos sadly. “And if love can breed love, she will come to care for me before the end!”

“Bah!” said the elder man. “The mailed fist is the thing for her!”

After that, the great Torreño gave little thought either to his son or to Lucia herself. He had before him what he felt to be more important matters, the details leading to the celebration of the marriage itself, which was to take place within three or four days after their arrival. And so, on the following day, they arrived at Casa Torreño itself.

It was like a child’s dream of a castle. Through a shallow little valley a stream ran and pooled its waters in a spacious lake. Beside the lake was a village of white adobe houses; above the village the road wound to the fiat top of a great hill, and on the plateau stood the house itself, built of hewn stone. And at one side, a great square tower arose against the sky.

“Why will you have such a fortress and such a dungeon keep for a house?” asked Lucia.

“So that all the people in the plains may look up to this in clear weather and see the top of the tower…you see that it is painted white? And so they know that the eye of their master is on them while they work, while they sleep!”

The instant they were in view over the top of the hills, a bell in the great house began to ring, and its larger
voice was taken up by the jangle of other bells in the hollow where the village lay. People appeared, streaming from the Casa Torreño, and out of the village a gay-colored procession started up the road. Torreño looked triumphantly toward the girl, but her face was a blank. The next instant he had broken into curses. For the most inopportune interruption came to break up the solemnity of this occasion. At the last rest house there had been added to his train some couple of fleet greyhounds, and they had been brought along on the leash all day without finding anything to their liking in the way of game. But just at this instant their sharp voices were raised; Hernandez Guadalmo was heard loudly ordering them to be slipped, and in another instant half a dozen of the lean-bodied hunting dogs were straining across the hills after a flying hare. Behind them rushed Guadalmo and a few others of his immediate train; the followers of Torreño had far too much wit to leave the ranks at such a moment as this.

The diversion took much from the grandeur of the moment, but Hernandez Guadalmo gave no heed to that. He was as greedy a hunter of wild game as he was of man. It mattered not the size of the quarry. The hunt itself was the thing for which he lived. He followed the greyhounds over the first hills and through the next valley. He leaped his horse recklessly across the brook and plunged up the slope beyond, many a length ahead of his closest followers, for nothing they bestrode was comparable with his fine barb. Uphill, however, the hounds gained fast upon him. And the hare fled like a thing possessed of the fiend. It darted up the hill, gaining ground on the dogs at every enormous bound. It reached the more even country beyond, and here the dogs gained at each stride as the hare had gained uphill. And, with each second, the gap between Guadalmo
and his men grew greater. He was at the heels of the flying dogs when he saw something stir among the next grove of oaks. A deer, he thought at first. It burst into full view—a bay horse of matchless beauty with flying black mane and tail as it swept toward him, and on its back a tall, familiar figure—Richard Gidden come for the seventh time against him.

The seventh time! If there were any special fate in numbers, one of them must surely fall on this day! And the courage of Guadalmo wavered. There even came into his mind the thought that back yonder among his followers there would be safety—if he turned and fled to them!

But at the thought of flight—and flight before so many witnesses—his soul was steeled to face the ordeal. He caught out a horse pistol from its holster beside the saddle. He brought down the pace of his horse to a hard gallop and, taking careful aim, he fired at the advancing rider.

But still Gidden closed. There was no gun in the hand of his foe. Only the naked blade of a rapier gleamed in the hand of Gidden as he rushed in. Plainly he had determined that Guadalmo should die in the same fashion that Gidden’s brother had received a death wound from the hand of the Spaniard. He drove straight on at Guadalmo.

It seemed fate, not a mere mortal man, who bestrode that horse. Then Guadalmo threw the pistol away with an oath of fury and snatched out his own rapier. Holding it like a spear at arm’s length before him, he spurred the barb at Gidden. They met in half a dozen lightning strides. There was a double flash of light. Then, as Gidden hurtled past and swept off in a great arch away from the Spaniard, Guadalmo threw out his arm and the sword dropped from his hand.

Still he held the saddle for a moment with his head thrown back to the sky. He was like a man who sees an enraptured vision. Then he slumped sideways to the ground.

W
ith song and with dance, with shouting and with music, they brought the cavalcade to the Casa Torreño. In all the great house there was only one sad heart, and that was the heart of Lucia d’Arquista. And she, sitting behind her window, looked down across the moonlit valley and saw the bright winding of the creek and the broad silver surface of the lake, darkened at the margin by the shadows of the trees. The air was crisp in these highlands, and a cool breeze blew to her, filled with strange, pungent odors unlike the meadow perfumes of old Spain. All was huge and strong and new in this country at the other end of the world. She was oppressed by its newness; she was oppressed by its size; and for one familiar glimpse of the old land she would have given ten years of life. Even the singing and the merriment in the house oppressed her more. And her last ally was stolen from her. Anna d’Arquista had been sympathetic enough until she saw the Casa Torreño itself. But after she had walked through it, hall after hall, garden after garden; after she had seen the artificial pools, the statues brought at fearful cost, the stables large and costly as a palace in themselves, her mind was changed.

“There are marriages for love,” she had told her niece. “There are also marriages of state. The sons and the
daughters of kings submit to them happily enough. Why cannot you, Lucia?”

And the girl made no answer; it was a thing not worth argument, she felt. And the willful blind cannot be made to see.

Torreño himself was quick to see the change in the girl’s chaperone. He was at this minute closeted with her. Perhaps he was suggesting certain methods by which she could change the mind of Lucia. As for that, the girl cared nothing. Steel cannot be changed to lead even by magic.

Here the wind increased suddenly almost to a gale— then fell away to its former strength. It was as though a door had been opened and shut behind her. So she turned her head, carelessly. She saw nothing, at first, but just as she was moving back again the tail of her eye caught on a tall black figure against the wall, half obscured by the curtain. She whipped around upon him. But even before she saw his face, she had no doubt.

“Señor
Gidden!” she breathed.

“It is I,” said the Black Rider.

“You escaped from Guadalmo’s men. I knew that you would! But how by magic did you ever reach this room? They have guards everywhere.”

“The same means by which I shall leave it. The hill is tunneled through from top to bottom and steps cut. It was done before the house was built…so long ago that even Torreño has forgotten them, I suppose. They brought me up to the cellar level. After that, I have been feeling my way until I reached you.”

She was trembling with fear and with delight.

“Where shall I hide you? Where shall I put you, Richard Gidden, madman! They spy on me every step I make. They have listeners at every door!”

“They know that the bird will be out of the cage if
they are not wary. But they are cautious too late. She is already gone!”

“Señor!” breathed the girl.

“What would you give,
señorita
, to be free from this house, and away on the sea?”

She paused.

“I am paying for every second of this talk,” said Gidden a little sternly. “Speak to me as if I were your inner mind. Let there be nothing between us but honesty.”

“I would give all my life!” said the girl suddenly. “You knew that or you would never have come. But I am lost. Not even a miracle could save me.”

“Yankee hands and Yankee wits will accomplish that miracle,” he said. “If you will trust yourself to me. Come to the window!”

He led her to the casement.

“Do you see the trees under that hill above the river? I have two horses there…my own and a strong black mare which
Señor
Torreño will miss out of his stable in the morning. They are saddled and bridled. In a few short hours they will take us to the sea. And in the port there is a Yankee ship loaded and waiting for a fair wind and a word from me. The wind has come. Do you feel it? There is only one thing that keeps the anchor of that skipper down and that is tidings from Richard Gidden. Will you come with me…down those same steps that I climbed to get to you?”

“If we are caught, you are a dead man,
señor.
I shall not go!”

“As well die now as later. They have marked me down. They are ten thousand to one. Sooner or later they are sure to take me if I stay in this land. Guadalmo’s men have sworn to take me!”

“Then flee, Richard Gidden! Ride for the shore and the ship of your friend.”

“And leave you here? I cannot! If they were an army I should stay near you in the hope of seeing you once in a year…a single glimpse.”

“Do you care so much, Richard?”

“I love you, Lucia.”

“And I you, Richard, even when your skin was red and you stood so tall and proud and disdainful before Torreño. I was afraid of you, afraid for you, and I knew that I could love you.”

Like two shadows that the wind moved, they swayed together, whispering.

“But I never dreamed that such a wild joy could come to me.”

“Now I fear nothing, Lucia. Nothing! I used to think when I sailed for this country that I had only one great purpose in my life, and that was to revenge the death of my poor brother. I was shipwrecked and lived among Indians. I felt that God kept me for that end alone. I was hunted for my life. And still I felt something predestined that would bring me on. But it was not to meet Guadalmo. It was to find you, my dear, and save you from the calf, Don Carlos, and the bull, his father. Save you and keep you and love you forever.”

“Richard, if….”

A footfall in the hall; she started back from him.

“It is my aunt!”

“It cannot be!”

The footfall approached, paused at the door, and then went on.

“Now,” he said, “that is a warning. Are you ready?”

“One instant. My jewels, Richard….”

“Let them be! Let them be! I am robbing Torreño of you. Let him keep the jewels. They will be a part repayment. I want you as you are, dear. Without a thing, without a penny. To be all mine!”

“If they see us as we go…if you are lost, Richard…I want to carry some weapon. They shall not have me back!”

“Hush, my dear. That is a sin. No harm shall come. Are you quite ready?”

“Yes.”

“Is there one regret?”

“None in all the world!”

T
hey slipped into the outer corridor. A door opened; a shaft—a soft yellow lamplight slipped down the wall. But the footsteps which sounded immediately went before them, almost as though leading the way And the lovers looked at one another with suffused faces, with glistening eyes, thinking the same thought.