The Black Rider (3 page)

“That is a great flute player…that is a true musician!” said the lady.

He gaped at her for a moment. Something that his father had said was recurring to his not over-alert brain. Indeed, this was very like the hawk which knew what duller fowl could not. How had she been able to pick up that liquid, tiny sound through the jingling, stamping, creaking, shouting of the caravan?

It made her seem tall—though she was very small. It made her eye like the eye of an eagle, though it was only of the mildest blue.

He was filled with awe, and with astonishment. He had never felt such an emotion before, not even in the presence of his father, of whom he was terribly afraid.

“Who is it?” asked the girl. “It must be a man famous in this part of the country.”

He could not tell her. He shouted to his father. But Don Francisco could not say who it might be. Neither did any of the others in the train have a guess to venture.

“I shall ride off to find him,” said Don Carlos. “I shall be back in a moment.”

“No,” said the girl. “I shall go myself.”

Among the led horses, of which there were half a dozen or more, there were two always kept saddled and ready for her in case she should choose to change from the carriage. She had not shown the slightest inclination to leave that lumbering vehicle before. Now, therefore, everyone watched with the greatest attention, and the silent eagerness of born horsemen, while she dismounted from the coach and stood before the two horses. One was a bay, beautiful as a picture, but a useless creature except for a gift of soft gaits. The other was a roan, ugly in color, but chosen because of its rare and eager spirit, combined with perfect manners, and a mouth as sensitive as the mouth of a human being.

“Let us see,” said Don Francisco when those horses were selected for her special use, “if she can tell a horse from a horse. If she can do that, she can be happy in this wild country even if she were the bride of a beggar!”

Now he rode close up.

“There is a right one and a wrong one,” he said.

He took a ring from his finger. There was an emerald in it.

“You shall have this, my child, if you prove yourself wise!”

She gave him a steady glance, once again without a smile. Then she turned back to the others and regarded their heads.

“Not their heads only,” entreated Don Carlos, anxious that she might make a good impression upon his father. And of the two heads that of the bay was far the more beautiful. “Look at the whole body…the legs…the bone…the hard muscle, Lucia!”

She shrugged her shoulders. “I shall ride this one,” she said, and laid her hand on the nose of the roan.

There was a little shout from the whole cavalcade. For she had run the gantlet unscathed! But Don Francisco was almost scowling on her as he gave her the ring. And he muttered to his son: “A hawk! A hawk! Poor Carlos!”

Don Carlos did not quite follow the meaning that might be hidden away under this. He was too delighted by her victory. And, in another moment, she was galloping away at his side across the hills.

It was even farther than he had guessed, but the music led them across two ranges of the little rolling hills, and on the second range they saw their man seated cross-legged under a tree, with the flute at his lips and his agile fingers dancing over it.

He was a tall man with a white band of cloth around his long, black hair to keep it away from his face, and clean white trousers which extended to his heels. There was a sash around his waist. Altogether he was a romantic figure in such a setting among the olive-drab hills.

“Look!” said Don Carlos, as they drew rein.

At their approach, the musician had jumped up and whistled sharply. And at once the sheep which were feeding in that pasture land came running toward him,
a rush of gray white which pooled around his feet, bleating and babbling.

The Indian, as he arose, was revealed as a tall man, slender-waisted, broad shouldered—with the form of an athlete and the air of a gravely reserved thinker.

“He looks,” said the girl, “like a hero.”

“He?” said Don Carlos. “He is only an Indian.”

“He is not like the others,” she said, looking thoughtfully at her fiancé.

“The others are mere root grubbers, ditch diggers,” said the son of the lord of the land, shrugging his shoulders. “This fellow is different…yes. You can tell that he is a Navajo by that band around his hair and his white trousers. The Navajos
are
different. Most of them are men. But no Navajo with an ounce of blood in his veins would be herding sheep for a white man. This man is probably an outcast, a coward, perhaps a fool, certainly a knave!”

She gave Don Carlos one look, a long one; she gave the Indian another glance, a short one.

“I don’t agree with you,” she said.

“Why not, Lucia?”

“Because he is a musician. That’s one thing. And besides….”

“Besides what?”

“I don’t know,” she said, and added: “Talk to him, Carlos!”

This was pronounced so shortly that Don Carlos stared a little, for he had never in his life received commands except from his father who, after all, was a sort of deity of another order. However, when he looked to the girl, he found her smiling so frankly that he quite forgot he had received an order.

Now he reined his horse closer. The Indian had folded his hands and addressed his gaze to the distant
mountains, lofty, naked rock faces, spotted richly with color all dim and blended behind a veiling mist.

“Tell me, fellow,” said Don Carlos, “what is your name?”

He had asked the question, of course, in Spanish, and the Indian returned to him a dull, unintelligent stare.

“I shall ask him in Navajo,” said Don Carlos to the girl. “He has probably come here only newly. Otherwise he would have understood such a simple question. These Navajos, besides, are not such fools, you know.”

He said to the Indian, in a broad, quick guttural: “What is your name? Quickly, because we cannot stay here. What is your name and what made you learn the flute?”

Not a whit of intelligence glimmered in the steady black eyes of the other. Don Carlos flushed.

“The oaf dares to keep silence!” he said. “I shall give him a lesson that will be written in his skin the rest of his life!”

And he raised a riding whip. At the same instant, into the hand of the Indian came a long and heavy knife. He did not hold it by the hilt, but balanced it loosely in the palm of his hand, the knife blade extending over the fingers, so that it was plain he intended to throw it, and there was something in his unmoved air which gave assurance that his weapon would not miss the target. Don Carlos, with a gasp of rage and astonishment, whirled his horse away.

“The scoundrel!” he cried. “We’ll silence that flute, by heaven! Turn your face, Lucia!”

“Carlos!” she cried, riding straight between him and his intended target. “Do you mean to pistol him in cold blood?”

“Cold blood?” cried he. “I tell you, Lucia, if we did not keep these desert rats down, they would eat through
our walls and knife us in our sleep. They’d swarm over the whole land. There is only one way to treat an Indian…like a mad dog!”

Her expression, for the moment, reminded him of that of the Navajo—it was the blank of one who veils a thought.

“Here comes your father,” she said. “Perhaps he will speak for
Señor
Torreño.”

Torreño, in fact, had followed the two at a slow gait, not close enough to interfere with their privacy, but at a sufficient distance to keep his eye upon them, as though he dared not risk the safety of the two human beings who meant the most to him in the world.

H
e had no sooner come up when his son explained everything that had happened in the following way:

“I asked this Indian dog for his name in Spanish and in Navajo. He dared to remain silent.”

“So?” said Torreño. “A Navajo, however, is not a dog, but a man…or half a man.” He said gently to the tall Indian:
“Amigo
, do you know me?”

Instantly the other made answer in perfect Spanish, smooth, close-clipped, the truest Castilian: “You are my master,
señoñ
You are
Señor
Torreño.”

Torreño turned to the girl with a broad grin on his face, as much as to say: “This you see is another matter when the right man speaks!”

He added to the Indian. “And now your name?” “I am Taki, the son of….”

“That is enough. So, Taki, you have drawn a knife upon my son?”

“A knife?” said Taki blankly. “I cannot remember that!”

The girl broke into ringing laughter, a small, sweet voice in the vast silence of those hills. The music of it softened the hard heart of Torreño.

“I should have had him flayed alive,” said he. “But since he has amused you, dear girl, I shall forgive him.”

“Flayed alive?” murmured the girl. “Are such things possible here?”

“In this country,” said Torreño, “one must be a king or a slave; and to be a king one must be a tyrant. I
señorita
, am a tyrant, partly because it is necessary partly because it pleases me to be one. Where I am, there is no other word, except for the sake of conversation.”

He said this with a grave, sharp glance at her, which could not avoid giving the words a certain meaning. Whether she understood or not, however, could not be seen, for again her face wore an expression as grave and as unreadable as the Indian’s. Torreño turned back to the culprit.

“You have drawn a knife upon my son…who is my flesh, who is me! Would you strike steel into my arm?”

“Heaven forbid,
señor”

“This Don Carlos is more than my arm. He is part of my heart. He is that part of me which will live after my death. To touch him is to touch me.”

He added aside to the girl: “That is rather neatly spoken, child, is it not?”

“A pretty speech,” said she without emotion.

“Señor
, my master,” said the Indian.

“Well?” queried Torreño.

“I have a horse,
señor!”

“You are rich, then? But what of the horse?”

“He is mine. He is my slave.”

“Ah?”

“When I whistle, he comes. When I speak, he lifts his ears. I need no bridle to control him.”

“This fellow,” said Torreño, “talks like a man of sense…if I could only understand what he is striking at!”

This was spoken, like the rest of his asides, in French. And the Navajo instantly answered for himself, in the purest French of Paris, where alone French was pure.

“I mean that the horse is my slave,
señor.”

“By the heavens!” broke out Torreño. “The fellow speaks French, also. Better French than I use myself!”

“Wait, wait!” said the girl in a hurried voice, raising her hand to stop interruptions, and staring fixedly at the Indian. “He has something more to say.”

“Aye,” said Torreño, nodding. “The horse is your slave.”

“Because he will do these things,” said the Indian, “and because he is fleeter than the horses, even, which you ride,
señor

“What! That’s a broad lie, Taki!”

At this, the other stiffened a little.

“Nevertheless,” he said, “it is true! It is a fleeter horse than any of those you ride. And it is also my slave. But,
señor
, though I value him more than gold, it is because his speed is all for me. His strength is all mine. No other man can sit on his back! To them, he is a devil.”

“You are right, Taki. That is something I can understand!”

“If he were a horse for any man to ride, I should not care. There would be a price upon him. But me he serves for love! Therefore he is priceless.”

“Very well…very well! And what has this to do with
the knife you drew on my son, the
Señor
Don Carlos Torreño? By the heavens, Taki, tell me that!”

“If a man were to take a whip to that horse of mine,
señor
, should I not be happy if he used his heels?”

Passion had been swelling in the face, in the throat of Torreño. Now it relaxed a little.

“I begin to understand! I begin to understand! You, Taki, will have only one master?”

“Señor
, you have spoken!”

“Not even if I assign you to another by express command?”

“Not even then,
señor”

“God!” thundered the Spaniard. “There is a hangman and a rope for disobedient slaves!”

“Señor”
said Taki, “death is half a second; but every day of slavery is a century of hell!”

“Ten thousand devils!” said Torreño. “He talks like a fool.”

“Or a philosopher,” said the girl, “and still more…like a brave man!”

“But are you not,” said Torreño, “at this moment in my service?”

“For another fortnight, only.”

“What?”

“It is true.”

“Taki, are you mad?”

“No,
señor”

“I employ no man except when he is bought or hired for life.”

“To me, however, you made an exception.”

“In what manner? Have I ever seen you before?”

“There was a crossing of a river,” said the other. “A dozen men were riding after one Indian. They shot his horse. He swam the river. They followed, swimming their
horses. He killed the first man ashore with his knife, took his horse, and rode on. But the horse was tired. The others behind him gained. He was not ten minutes from death by fire,
señor
, when he saw you and your party and rode to you and

“I remember, I remember!” cried Torreño, clapping his hands together. “It is all as clear as the ringing of a bell! I remember it all! You came to us with Pedro Marva and his hired fighters raging and foaming behind you. I put in between. They were very hot, but not so hot that they did not know me. Ha?”

“They knew you,
señor,”
said the Indian gravely.

Don Carlos was gaping at this story; but
Señorita
Lucia flushed and bit her lip.

“They knew me,” went on Torreño, “and when I told them that they could not have the man…because his riding pleased me…they turned around and went off, cursing. However, I paid Marva for his dead man…and all was well!”