Night Maneuvers

The night air was soft and very still.  Sounds carried far.  With no light but that of the gently shimmering constellations, deep black pools of shadow collected around the alder and oak, the willow and cottonwood, that grew along the riverbank.  Heading east, Zorro crossed the river, grateful that the spring floods had subsided, then turned south toward the de la Vega lands, riding slowly with the injured man, trying to make as little noise as possible, knowing that nearly every soldier in the pueblo, aside from those he had wounded, would still be out searching the dark countryside for him.  He hoped to reach the home of an Indian goatherd named Manuel who had served the de la Vegas for many years.

Though he would have preferred to take Don Guillermo directly to the casa grande, he knew his father’s house guests, due to arrive the next day, would make it hard for him to care for the man, even with Bernardo’s help. Moreover, he realized that the patrón might not even make it that far.  Even now he felt like dead weight, and Padre Felipe certainly wouldn’t be able to help any more than he already had.  Even though Zorro had gagged him, tied him up and left him in the storage room as planned, Capitan Acevedo might easily suspect that their coincidental arrival at the cuartel had been a bit too carefully timed.

Zorro was just about to turn off the path and onto a trail that led into the hills when he heard the sound of hoof beats coming down the trail.

"Sergeant, aren’t we gonna stop and rest now?"

"Soon, Corporal ," came the familiar sounding voice.  "But first we must wait until the others catch up to us."

"Sí, Sergeant.  But how can we track somebody when it is so dark?"

"Your job, Corporal, is not to ask how.  Your job is to do as you are told.  Entiendes?"

"Sí, Sergeant," Reyes sighed.

Zorro ducked quickly behind a nearby boulder and into the dark shroud of the underbrush that skirted it.  Tornado shook his head and snorted gently, but they must not have heard him over the sound of their own horses.  Running his hand down the side of the stallion’s neck, Zorro slid off, leaving Don Guillermo slumped over the saddle.  Then, with a quick caress that brought the animal’s head to nuzzle his chest and face, he moved silently down the left side of the boulder.

The night was so dark that they might have been able to smell him before they saw him.  But he was sure they would react to practically any sound.  Then, from up the trail, he heard what sounded like two more men on horseback.

"Who goes there?" asked Garcia nervously.

"Lugo and Ibarra, Sergeant," came the reply.

"You see, Corporal," said Garcia, sighing in relief.  "Here come some of the others now."

"But why are we all so spread out?" asked Reyes plaintively. "Even if we find Zorro, no one will be able to capture him single-handedly."

"Because our chances of seeing him are better this way, Corporal."

"But I can’t see anything."

Behind him, Zorro heard Tornado shift his weight just enough to elicit a groan from Don Guillermo.  He knew he couldn’t stay much longer where he was.  But then, he didn’t really have to.  He had heard all he needed to hear.  A line of soldiers was strung out along the trail, probably all the way up to Manuel’s house.  He would have to cut across the open countryside—a dangerous thing to do, especially with Tornado carrying the weight of two men.  One ill-placed snake hole might well be the end of the stallion, and of them.

But at the moment, he appeared to have no other choice. Quietly, he retreated along the base of the boulder again, took the stallion’s bridle and maneuvered him as slowly as possible up the hillside away from the trail.  Once he thought he was far enough away to have at least a good head start if the soldiers detected him, he swung up into the saddle again, and, keeping the north star behind him, began carefully picking his way through the thickening undergrowth.

"Well, I must say that your skill with a blade is most impressive," said Capitan Acevedo magnanimously.  He wasn’t often vindicated in defeat, but he was clearly enjoying the fact that, despite their best efforts, these two men had not been able to capture el Zorro either.

"He’s a dead man," said Endicott through clenched teeth. He was stretched out, now, on a bed in the room he had rented at the inn, the doctor applying steady pressure to the wound in his side to stop the flow of blood.

"Señor Endicott," the doctor was saying, "you must lie still, Señor, or you may start to bleed again. Luckily the blade was very sharp, so the wound probably will not fester.  But just as an added precaution . . . ."  He removed a small bottle from his bag and carefully dabbed ellagic acid around the neat slice.  Then he began to stitch as Endicott drank deeply from a bottle of brandy.

Marigál, for his part, seemed quite serene.  He had helped the doctor remove a slug from the leg of one of the soldiers earlier.   Unfortunately, another young man had not been so lucky.  A slug in his chest had simply done too much damage.  Marigál had held the man gently in his arms, listening to him.  Then, he had crossed himself and, with a small vial of oil slipped from a coat pocket, dabbed the man’s eyes, ears, nostrils, lips, and hands, speaking softly in Latin.

Acevedo had not seen any reason to doubt that Marigál was a priest.  His papers seemed to be all in order, and with priests like Padre Felipe around, it was small wonder he wanted his identify kept secret.  Still, it was reassuring to see him actually perform his office.  Acevedo also felt better about keeping the jewelry they had confiscated from the prisoner, knowing that a priest had delivered it into his hands.  And he felt better about releasing Padre Felipe, since, after the look that passed between them, he felt certain that Marigál would deal with this disloyal defender of thieves and murderers in good time through the Church.

"Ouch! Damn!" Endicott winced, then added, "Sorry, Padre."

"We are almost finished, Señor," said the doctor.  "But you will have to remain quiet for at least a week or two."

"A week?!"  Endicott took another long swig of brandy, then wiped his lips with the back of his hand, clearly starting to get a bit tipsy.  "Then that’s exactly how long this Zorro has to live," he said.  "If he hasn’t already decided to leave California altogether."

"I doubt that he will get very far carrying a wounded man," said Acevedo.  "We will send out men specifically to search the nearby houses and haciendas.  If anyone is helping him, we will find out soon enough."

"You will be most amply rewarded, Capitan, for whatever help you and your soldiers might be able to provide in uncovering and apprehending those heretics who have allied themselves with this devil Zorro," said Marigál in a tone at once gentle and ominous.  "And as for you, young man," he turned to Endicott.  "You are forgiven your blasphemies, but you will now kindly refrain from any further indulgences, at least for the rest of this evening."

Taking the bottle of brandy from Endicott’s hands, he added, "The capitan is quite correct.  Zorro will not escape.  By saving the life of that heretic, and by taking the life of that soldier, he has shown himself to be an enemy of God, and God will deliver him into our hands—no matter what sorceries he might be capable of.  We need only have faith.  But I do hope, Capitan, that you will make a special point of searching the de la Vega hacienda?"

"Of course, Padre," said Acevedo.  "But why?  Do you have any particular reason to suspect them of being in league with Zorro?"

"Such weak minded intellectuals as that young de la Vega are always susceptible to the influences and temptations of Satan," said Marigál.

Manuel and his family lived in a cluster of willow reed and thatch huts at the edge of one of the Indian villages, the rancherias, located on the de la Vega lands.  Like most of the other clans in this particular settlement, their primary source of employment was herding either sheep or goats for the de la Vega hacienda.  But like most other mission trained Indians, they also tilled a small parcel of land for sustenance.  They still had ties to some of the wild Indians in the distant Sierras, but Manuel, having converted to Christianity and studied at the mission, feared returning to a way of life he had been taught to see as sinful.

In his younger days, he had run away from the mission countless times, only to be brought back, and he would probably be a fugitive still if the de la Vegas hadn’t managed to work out an arrangement with the padres.  Like many Indians, Manuel seemed to be forever stumbling over the assumptions and beliefs of a culture that made no sense to him and had little patience for him.  Among whites, he was more often than not in some kind of trouble and had been, more than once, in Zorro’s debt.  Over the years, his carefully cultivated capacity for forgiveness had worn thin, but so had his capacity for rebellion.  All that mattered to him now were his children.  Zorro knew that he was about to put them in great danger.  He also knew that Manuel would not refuse him.

He had waited until he was certain that the soldiers were too far away to pay any attention to the barking dog.  Then he slowly approached the small cluster of dome shaped huts and waited.  Soon, Manuel emerged.  Then, just as quickly, he went back inside for help.  A fire was lit.  Don Guillermo was brought inside and laid on a bed of tule mats.  As Zorro looked around him at the faces of the children, their dark eyes shining up at him, he knew they thought he could protect them from anything.

"Do not worry, Señor Zorro," said Manuel, nodding to his wife as she and the oldest girl began carefully removing the cassock that the Don still wore.  "They will care for him."

"The soldiers will be looking for him," said Zorro.  "You must be very careful, my friend.  I will return for him as soon as I can."

Manuel’s wife handed him the priest’s robe.  "Burn this," she said.  He nodded, then glanced at Zorro, as if he wanted to ask who this man was.  Was he really a priest?  What had he done to get himself in so much trouble?  But instead, he just nodded, probably not expecting the answer to make sense anyway.  Manuel’s wife, on the other hand, understood their situation better than she wanted to, as Zorro saw when, not entirely by accident, she let her eyes meet his. He could only look away.  The de la Vega family had power and influence.  Even if Don Guillermo were to be discovered in their care, they would not, at least, be killed outright, the way these people might.

"I will return for him soon," he said again.

Then he slipped quietly out the door and swung up into the saddle again, knowing that he still had a small journey ahead of him, most of it across open country in near pitch blackness.

Diego had no trouble sleeping late.  What finally woke him was the nasty cut to his right arm, which had started to hurt despite the care that Bernardo had taken to bandage it.  He hadn’t even thought about it the night before, not until after he had awakened Bernardo, who noticed the neat slash in the black silk and the blood that had already begun to dry and stiffen on his sleeve.  Only then did he realize how light-headed he felt.  But he was still convinced that it probably looked worse than it was, and he had told Bernardo not to worry.  Now he wasn’t really surprised to find it beginning to get stiff and sore.

Getting out of bed, he stretched and ran a hand through his tousled hair.  Then he caught sight of himself in the mirror on the wall above the nearby dressing table and frowned.  He looked tired.  Perhaps his father might think he was sick and let him out of socializing with their guests this evening. But it was equally possible the old man would call a doctor, and Diego knew he would have no way to explain the cut on his arm as anything other than what it was, a wound so neat and clean—and deep—that it could only have been inflicted by razor sharp tempered steel.

Pouring some fresh water from a pitcher into the basin on the dresser, he splashed his face, and, hearing him awake, Bernardo came in, wanting to inspect his handiwork.  The servant made a face as he carefully untied the soft muslin dressing and peeled it away.  Then he poured part of a kettle of hot water into the basin and produced a sponge.  The cut began to bleed again as he washed it, but the heat did wash away some of the soreness, too, so that it hurt a little less when Bernardo held the new bandage tight against it for a few moments, then tied it again securely.

As Diego shaved with what was left of the warm water, he found himself worrying about Manuel and his family.  Even if he did come up with an excuse to retire early from the evening’s festivities, what then?  He doubted the don would be able to travel, even if there had been anyplace else to take him.

Perhaps this situation seemed more disconcerting than it really was.  Left to their own devices, Garcia and his men could be counted on to overlook all but the most obvious clues.  They would no doubt arrest anyone in a blood-stained cassock stumbling along el Camino Real, or anyone in a black cape.  But they probably wouldn’t bother to go through every reed hut and thicket.

Then he remembered the look he had seen on the face of Eusepio Marigál as he had left the commandante’s office, a look that now, after several revisions, he would have described as solicitous and patient, yet coldly amused.  When he juxtaposed that look with the image of Don Guillermo’s hands, he didn’t like the result.  This was not a man who would leave either Garcia or the commandante to their own devices.

In fact, if Don Guillermo really was telling the truth, Marigál would no doubt want to make sure that he never reached the de la Vega hacienda, or that, if he did, they would all be implicated in some sort of criminal conspiracy.  Soldiers would probably be sent to search the casa grande before the day was out.

"My son, you look tired this morning," said his father, who found him outside, sitting in the courtyard eating breakfast, "Do you feel well?"

"Oh, yes." Diego weighed his words carefully.  "It is just that, I don’t think I slept very well last night—what with all the excitement in town yesterday."

"What excitement was that?"

"Didn’t I tell you?  That’s right, it must have slipped my mind—I mean, by the time we got back from the pastures.  We did pick out two of the palominos, though, fine looking animals.  Have you had a chance to see them this morning?  I am sure Señor Guzman will be pleased."

"No, no, I have not been to the stables yet this morning, but what happened in town?"

"Well, I’m not entirely sure.  We heard many rumors.  But apparently the commandante had captured some criminal who claimed to be in league with Zorro.  There was talk of kidnaping and extortion.  All very unpleasant."

Alejandro frowned thoughtfully.  "I cannot believe that Zorro would be a party to anything of that sort," he said.

"Nor can I," said Diego.  "But the man was found to be in possession of some very expensive pieces of jewelry."

"That is hardly enough to convict anyone."

"There was also a witness, a gentleman named Eusepio Marigál of Monterey."

"I see." Alejandro nodded.  "Still, how could anyone arrested by the commandante hope to better his situation by confessing to an alliance with an outlaw?"

"I agree," said Diego.  "In all honesty, father, I believe this man may be innocent.  But I do not know what we can do about it."

"I can speak to the commandante," Alejandro declared.

"I did.  He believes Señor Marigál."

"Then the governor— "

"Father, this may be something better left in the hands of the courts—and perhaps el Zorro."

"Diego," Alejandro said earnestly.  "You know I have a great deal of admiration for Zorro.  He has saved me—and you, too, for that matter—on any number of occasions.  But he is still only one man, and we cannot rely on him to do everything for us, or, don’t you see, we will lose our ability to stand up for ourselves.  Surely we need such heros to inspire us.  But a real hero inspires men, not to sit idly by while he solves their problems for them, but to follow in his footsteps.  This is something I think el Zorro understands."

Diego tried to look down before his father saw how those words had affected him.  Surely Alejandro de la Vega had long been Zorro’s inspiration.  He pressed his knuckles hard against his lips, then said, "Perhaps I should go into town again today to find out how things stand."

Alejandro nodded. "Perhaps someone could be sent to meet Don Urbino’s carriage, at any rate.  You are right, my son, we must not act rashly.  But let us send someone else.  You should rest.  I do not want to see you getting sick."

"No." Diego shook his head.  There was no point in pressing the issue.  In this conversation he had accomplished most of what he wanted to.  If soldiers should appear at the door, his father would not wonder why he hadn’t been told the news from town. Nor would he assume that Don Guillermo was guilty without first hearing him out.  Nor would he know enough about Marigál to arouse Marigál’s suspicions, and if anyone tried to accuse Alejandro of conspiracy, he would be quite believable in his outrage.

And if Zorro could not arrange to move Don Guillermo before Manuel and his family came to harm, then Zorro would just have to deal with that as best he could.