The further adventures of Zorro

Barbados, who had been drinking heavily of the rich, stolen wine since the culmination of the fight with the caballeros and the crew of the trading schooner, had reached the stage where he was surly, mean, dangerous. The sensational escape of Señor Zorro had been as oil poured upon flames with the pirate chief. He roared and cursed like a fiend after Captain Ramón had ridden away in pursuit, cuffed some of his men out of the way, and then stood with his fists planted against his hips, his feet wide apart, a black look in his face, his tiny eyes glittering ominously as he glanced toward the adobe building wherein the caballero prisoners were quartered.

Sanchez and the others who knew Barbados best had been busy keeping out of his way and so escaping trouble, but now Barbados bellowed loudly for his lieutenant, and Sanchez was forced to disclose himself. He approached his chief warily, ready to turn and run if Barbados was in a belligerent mood; but he saw at a glance that what wrath Barbados was enjoying was not directed toward his second in command.

“Sanchez! Fiend of the fiends!” he shouted. “By my naked blade, it is in my mind that we are growing weary because of the lack of sport.”

“Then we must have sport,” Sanchez said. “If you’ve anything to suggest—”

“We have prisoners,” Barbados remarked, licking his thick lips, “and it is possible that a little torture would not be amiss. Say, roasting at the stake for one of those high-born caballeros whose blood is gentle.”

“Ha!” Sanchez grunted. “It is an excellent idea—if we draw out the man’s agony.”

“The drawing out of his agony can be accomplished without a great deal of trouble,” Barbados declared. “We’ll make him squirm and squeal.”

“But there is an ambush to be prepared for the soldiers,” Sanchez suggested.

“There will be ample time for that at a later hour,” replied the pirate chief. “It will take some time for those troopers to gallop out here from San Diego de Alcála. We can fight better if we have more wine to drink and some sort of sport to watch before giving battle.”

“And which of the caballeros shall be roasted?” Sanchez wanted to know. “All of them are valuable men from the standpoint of ransom.”

“Ha! One can be spared,” said Barbados. “Not a man in that adobe but has very rich relatives. What sum we lose from the one we roast we can fasten on the others. We’ll force them to gamble and decide the victim themselves. That is a happy thought. Come with me and fetch half a dozen trusted men along.”

Barbados, having arrived at a decision, started straight for the adobe building as Sanchez shouted to some of the men nearest. The pirate chief unfastened the outer door and entered with the others at his heels. Then he unlocked the inner door and threw it open.

The caballeros were sprawled around the room, talking to one another in low tones, and they turned and looked at Barbados as he stood before them, much as men might have looked at an intruder. Scorn was in every face, and the pirate chief was quick to notice it.

“So you raised a din and attracted our attention, and thus aided this Señor Zorro to escape!” Barbados accused. “It is in my mind that there must be some punishment for that.”

The caballeros turned from him again and began talking to one another once more as though Barbados had not addressed them. He growled a curse low down in his throat and took another step toward them, glaring ferociously.

“I have here a pack of cards properly shuffled,” Barbados said, his glare changing to a fiendish grin. “I’ll put them on this bench, and you prisoners will form into a line, walk past the bench, and each draw a card. The man who draws the first deuce will be the victim.”

“Victim of what?” one asked.

“Of torture!” Barbados roared. “The stake! Roasting! My men demand sport, and I am the one to give it to them. It is an even thing for you—the gods of chance will decide.”

“And suppose, señor,” said Don Audre Ruiz, stepping forward with a great deal of sarcasm and scorn in his manner, “that we do not care to play your game?”

“Ha! The solution of the difficulty is easy if you do not,” Barbados assured him. “In such case, since you seem to be the leader here, we’ll torture you and thereafter two others picked out at random.”

“Death is close behind you, pirate, if you do this thing!” Don Audre warned.

“But you will not be here to see it if you are roasted first,” the pirate chief reminded him. “Line up, prisoners! Do caballeros shake with fear at such a time?”

Don Audre Ruiz took another step forward and sneered in the face of Barbados. “Caballeros are not aware of the existence of such a thing as fear!” he declared. “If there is no other way, put down your pack of cards. But if you have courage and the spirit of fair play, let me fight it out with any two of your crew of fiends—a dagger against long blades.”

“Do I resemble a fool?” Barbados requested to know. “Have I but half a mind? Run a needless chance when we have you powerless already? Ha! A caballero might do such a fool thing, but I am not a caballero.”

“A blind man could see that,” Don Audre retorted.

“Ha! More of your insults and I’ll roast the lot of you! Line up! Here are the cards.”

Barbados put the greasy pack down on the end of the bench and stood back, folding his great arms across his chest. Don Audre Ruiz glanced around at his comrades, and they began forming the line. Sergeant Gonzales, feeling a bit out of place, dropped back to the end. And then the line moved forward, and the first man turned a card and saw that it was a ten, and passed on.

One by one they advanced to the bench, picked up a card, showed it to Barbados, and moved forward again, playing with death, but with inscrutable faces.

“Ha!” the pirate chief cried. “Fortunate caballeros, eh? But one of you must draw a deuce soon. And then my men will have rare sport. We’ll see whether a caballero of gentle blood will squeal and squirm when the hot flames lick at him. We’ll let the women torment him first, and the children! Well— Ha!”

Barbados suddenly bent forward, an evil smile upon his face. Don Audre had reached the bench and had turned over his card—the deuce of spades!

Don Audre drew in his breath sharply, but his face gave never a sign of emotion. The others crowded forward.

“Ha!” Barbados shrieked. “It is well done and appropriate! You are their leader, señor, and possibly will set them an example how to die. For you we will make the fire hotter and the torment longer. We’ll see how long you can live.”

“He’ll flinch quick enough!” Sanchez cried, grinning.

Don Audre Ruiz tossed the card away and dusted his hands as though the bit of pasteboard had soiled them. Then he raised his head proudly and looked Barbados straight in the eyes.

“How soon?” Don Audre Ruiz asked.

“How soon, caballero? Now, at once, and immediately! My men crave sport!” Barbados cried. “And while they listen to your shrieks and pleas for mercy they can drink some rich wine we took from Reina de Los Angeles.”

“Are you human man enough to let me have speech with Fray Felipe before I die?” Don Audre asked.

“Want to pray with him, do you?” Barbados sneered. “I’ll have him at the stake for you. You can pray through the smoke.”

There was a sudden jostling in the crowd, and Sergeant Gonzales shouldered his way to the front.

“Foul pirate!” said he. “Murderer and fiend, let me make a deal!”

“What is this?” Barbados asked.

“I am a bigger man than the caballero here, and fatter men roast better. Also, I wear the uniform of the Governor, and you hate such uniforms. I’m twice the coward that Don Ruiz is. I’d squirm and squeal twice as much. Ha! Would it not be better sport to roast me at the stake?”

“You want to die for him?” Barbados asked.

“I offer myself in his place, since your fiends must be amused. I did not get a chance to draw a card, or surely I’d have drawn a deuce.”

Don Audre put his hand on the sergeant’s arm.

“This is useless, my friend,” he said.

“Not so!” Sergeant Gonzales declared. “You are a fine man of parts, Don Audre Ruiz, and really amount to something in the world. And I am but a big pig. There are many better men who can fill my place.”

“Whatever your birth and station, you are now, in my estimation, a caballero and a brave man,” Don Audre said.

Barbados roared his laughter.

“A hero!” he sneered. “I cannot let you take the caballero’s place, fool soldier, but, since you wish to be roasted, your wish is granted. We’ll roast you later, when we have need of more sport. These other caballeros will be ransomed, but there is nobody in the world who would ransom you for as much as a bottle of thin wine.”

“That is true, fiend of hell!” Sergeant Gonzales said.

“But it is not true!” Don Audre Ruiz cried, his face lighting. He whirled to confront the other caballeros. “Friends, promise me this last request—have your people make up a purse and ransom this soldier,” he said. “He has been the friend of Don Diego Vega for years. We used to smile at that peculiar friendship, but now I can understand. The sergeant, also, is a man of parts, and Don Diego realized it while we were blind. A last handshake, and then—”

They surged toward him, and Barbados and his men stepped back to the door and waited. There was an evil grin on the face of the pirate chief again. The gods of chance were working in his favor, he felt, when they had delivered this caballero into his hands for his evil purposes.

“Come, señor!” he ordered. “It is not gentlemanly to keep my men waiting long for their fun.”

Don Audre Ruiz shook the hands of his friends for the last time and turned away. They led him out and closed and barred the door again. They conducted him through the front room and into the open, first binding his hands behind his back.

“If you are a human being, let me see Fray Felipe,” Don Audre said.

“I’ll have him beside the stake,” Barbados promised. “He can mumble over you all he likes.”

Some of the pirates were shouting the news of what was to occur. Men came running from every direction, shouting and laughing and waving bottles, determined to see how a caballero could die. Women and children hurried from their huts.

The stake was ready, for it often had been used before, both for prisoners and pirates. It was a favorite method Barbados had of punishing traitors and those he deemed guilty of breaking some of the many laws he laid down. It stood near the sea, a long metal bar upright in the soil, the débris of many fires scattered around it and half buried in the shifting sand.

Already some of the men were hurrying toward the stake with fuel. The women and children were shrieking insults at the condemned man. But Don Audre Ruiz held his head proudly, and his lips were curled in scorn. Only the unusual pallor in his face told that there was a tumult of emotions within his breast.

They lashed him to the stake and made his body fast there with ropes and leather thongs. One chain they wrapped around him to hold him fast after the ropes had been burned away. Women spat at him, children hurled at him small stones and scoops of sand. The pirates danced around him like savages, waving wine bottles and brandishing their cutlasses.

“So you think that you will not squirm and squeal, eh?” Barbados taunted. “In a very few minutes we’ll learn the truth concerning that.”

“You promised me the fray,” Don Audre Ruiz replied. “But I did not think that a pirate could keep his given word.”

“Ha! I’ll show you that I can play at having gentle blood!” Barbados laughed. “Matter of honor, eh? The fray! Fetch me the old fray, some of you!”

The dancing and drinking was continued, and more fuel was heaped around the stake and its victim. A few feet distant stood a man with a flaming torch. Barbados, his arms folded across his chest, stood waiting to give the word. And after a time old Fray Felipe thrust his way among them and reached the side of the pirate chief.

“What is this that you would do?” he demanded.

“We intend to broil this caballero until he is done properly,” Barbados replied. “Being a pious soul, he has need of a priest before he dies. So we have sent for you.”

Fray Felipe knew that there was small chance for an argument here. Ordinarily Barbados was exceedingly superstitious where a man of the church was concerned, but now wine had given him a false courage. If Fray Felipe saved Don Audre Ruiz now it would not be through an appeal to the heart of Barbados.

And so Fray Felipe did a peculiar thing—a thing that startled them all, and Don Audre most of all. He threw back his gray head and laughed.

Barbados blinked his eyes rapidly, and Sanchez swore softly beneath his breath. Had the fray gone insane suddenly? Were his wits wandering? It was a horrible thing to see an old fray laugh like that.

“So it is as I suspected,” Fray Felipe declared. “I had thought for a moment, Barbados, that you were a pirate leader in truth, a general with brains. But you play the boy.”

“How is this?” Barbados cried.

“Traitors play with you, and you walk into traps. You and your fiends spend time at such cruel sports as this while your enemies are preparing to annihilate you—”

“Fray, what is your meaning?”

“Are you blind?” Fray Felipe asked. “Are you an utter and simple fool? You have put your confidence and trust in this Captain Ramón. And at this moment he is riding back from San Diego de Alcála at the head of the troopers, perhaps.”

“Ha! I know it, fray. He is leading the soldiers into an ambush!”

“So you are such an easy dupe!” Fray Felipe said. “I know his plans, and so does the little señorita. You will form your ambush at the head of the cañon. And he will lead the troopers around it, attack you in the rear, cut you off from your camp, and annihilate you. By doing that he’ll save his face and gain favor with decent men and women and with the Governor. He’ll claim that he saved the señorita, and ask her in marriage, get her for a bride without cutting himself off forever from honest men. A man who can be traitor to one cause, Señor Pirate, can be traitor to another.”

“Lies!” Barbados thundered.

“They are not lies!” Fray Felipe declared. “And you are playing here when you should be preparing for the battle. Easy victims you’ll be for the troopers!”

Barbados seemed to hesitate. There was a quality in the fray’s words and bearing that indicated truth. Then there came a woman’s screech, and Inez thrust herself forward.

“The old fray speaks the truth!” she declared. “I overheard the commandante talking to the señorita. He told her that he was tricking you.”

“By my naked blade!” Barbados swore.

“He is doubly a traitor!” the woman screeched. “I would not trust him. Make ready to fight the soldiers. Do not be caught in a trap. The man at the stake can wait. It will not hurt him to be bound there and meditate for a time.”

Barbados suddenly seemed convinced. He began shouting his commands, and Sanchez echoed them as usual.

Men also ran to get horses and weapons.

“Catch me in a trap, eh?” Barbados cried. “I can arrange a trap myself, and not in the cañon!”

He rushed away, shrieking more orders. Don Audre Ruiz, fastened to the stake, was forgotten for the moment. Fray Felipe approached him.

“It was the only way, caballero,” the gentle fray said. “It would have been far better to have let the traitor wipe out these rogues entirely, but I had to save your life. And the soldiers will triumph when they come. Right is on their side and fights with them. Also Señor Zorro is at liberty!”

“Loose me, fray!”

“I cannot, señor. There is one chain that is too strong for me. But they have forgotten you now. I’ll search for some tool with which I can remove the chain. The ropes and the leather thongs will be easy.”

Fray Felipe bowed his head and shuffled away. Don Audre Ruiz remained lashed to the stake.