Suzanna

by Harry Sinclair Drago

  The rider held on, and shrieked to goad the horse further. Again and again the gray tried this. It availed nothing. The air grew so heavy with dust that man and beast were hidden from view temporarily. The horse snorted in rage. Up, and up, he reared, until even the wise Montesoro thought he was going over upon his back.

  In a flash the horse came down, and like lightning, dashed for the fence. The gray’s bloodshot eyes rolled. It was apparent that if he could not buck the man off, he would crush him to death against the fence. Ramon yelled for him to jump.

  Vargas’ lip curled. Now they would see the stuff of the man!

  The stranger was alive to his danger. He made no effort to turn the horse; but instead, with grace and a flourish, he swung his inside leg over the pommel. The cinches were tight; the saddle held. The gray crashed into the fence and rocked from the impact. With a badly bruised shoulder for his trouble, he backed off, and like a charging bull tried it again. But the man’s eye was too quick for the horse. Always, with a second to spare, he was free, and daring the animal to do its worst.

  From plunging into the fence, the horse changed its tactics to racing alongside it, hoping to brush off his tormenter. With all of his mighty speed he dashed around the corral until he was winded. Panting and heaving, he came to a broken halt, his head swinging from side to side.

  It became Montesoro’s turn then. With quirt and spur he made the pace. Sweat and lather dripped from the gray. He was thoroughly beaten. But the man lashed him on. It was cruel!

  Suzanna had returned to the scene of the horse-breaking astride a ragged-looking pony, daring with eyes and lips a repetition of the laughter with which the crowd had bidden her godspeed an hour before. The sight of the dashing cavalier, who outrode Don Fernando’s vaqueros with seeming ease, caused her to eye her tomboy attire disparagingly.

  Ramon had not seen Suzanna, so intently had he been watching the man in the corral. He held up his hand now for the stranger to stop. The gray was being punished needlessly. As the boy signaled, a shout of applause rang out; the rider had brought the horse to a slithering stand directly in front of where Suzanna sat her pony. With a sweep of his arm he bowed to the ground. The applause increased. Montesoro had used showman-ship of a sort these emotional children could understand.

  Vargas led away the gray. Suzanna shivered as she saw its torn, bleeding mouth. The stranger’s horsemanship had awed her, but her eyes flashed now as the man stood before her smiling.

  Montesoro had caught that flash of her eyes and the thought behind it. He grinned. He believed that nothing succeeded so well with women as a heavy hand. He assayed Suzanna more rapidly than other men had been wont to. He read the impudence in her tilted lips, the roguishness in her eyes, and because his experience with women was wide, he drew upon his ego to answer unhesitatingly many other questions about her. Enough, that she had seen him flay the horse. She would not forget that. And though evidently a peon, he found her very attractive.

  “A girl could ride that gray, now,” he said to her without further ado.

  Suzanna was not slow to retort.

  “Why did you break his heart?” she snapped. “Better that he run wild on the range than be the hang-dog he is now.”

  Montesoro smiled admiringly at her.

  “No one has ever broken you—yet, have they?” he asked his question with all the intimacy he could put into his voice.

  Suzanna laughed, but points of fire flared in her eyes. Tauntingly she said:

  “Perhaps you would like to try, eh?”

  The stranger did not put his answer into words, hut he told himself that he knew the way of these hot-heads. Give them time and a free-hand, and they would come to book as easily as the shy and demure ones.

  Ramon came up then, and his appearance put an end to the little scene. The boy had been impressed by the bit of skill and daring the tall stranger had shown. Glancing at him now, he saw him smiling, unruffled, and rather envied the man.

  The hoy was thoroughly annoyed with Suzanna for having ventured back to the corral, and without meeting her eyes he offered his arm to the stranger and led him toward his horse.

  Suzanna bit her lips angrily at this, but someone had dislodged the coyote from his hiding place and she found amusement enough in the chase which followed to soon forget Ramon’s treatment.

  “I suppose you are hound for Monterey,” the boy said to the stranger as they reached the roadside.

  “Yes, eventually,” the man declared. “California appeals to me. I rather expect to settle here.”

  “Well,” Ramon exclaimed hospitably, “if you are in no great haste why not tarry awhile? Allow me to extend the courtesy of the hacienda to you. My father will make you most welcome.”

  Montesoro was quite moved by this show of friendship.

  “You but prove the tales I have heard of California,” he said graciously. “Where else in the New World would a stranger be shown such kindness? To a certainty, I should be much pleased to accept your hospitality. I trust I disarrange no plans of yours.”

  “Perish the thought. We see all too few new faces. Vargas can manage here; let us go on to the caserio. I presume you have friends somewhere in the province?”

  “Only one; a lady whom I met in Mexico,—the charming daughter of Don Diego de Sola.”

  “Chiquita de Sola?” Ramon exclaimed questioningly, and in evident surprise.

  “But of course you would know her,” Montesoro declared. “A friar informed me this morning that your hacienda adjoined her father’s rancho.”

  “Know her?” the boy said musingly. “Indeed! We have been betrothed since childhood.”

  It was Pancho Montesoro’s turn to be surprised. Chiquita had never mentioned any such embarrassing entanglement to him. His eyes narrowed menacingly as he looked away. With a silent curse, he asked himself if he had made this trip for nothing. This boy’s father was reputed to be one of the wealthiest men in California. How was he, a penniless adventurer, to compete with him?

  He had counted most heavily on capturing the girl, and thereby gaining access to the De Sola fortune. He had been quite at ease, financially as well as otherwise, in Mexico City. Bull-fighting as a sport was yet to be introduced, in a professional way, in the Province. There was no work at hand for him here. Every plan he had made was lost to him if he failed to win Chiquita.

  While the flirtation between them had ripened into love with the girl, Montesoro had only found her beautiful, interesting,—and a means to fortune. So while what Chiquita represented had become a matter of vital interest, the girl herself disturbed him not at all. He found it possible to hate her for having compromised him in this fashion.

  “It’s about what one should expect from an aristocrat,” he muttered to himself, and so immeasurable was his ego that he saw nothing to smile at in his thought. But while Montesoro’s chagrin was great, he was gambler enough to keep his emotion from the boy. With seeming sincerity he addressed himself to Ramon.

  “You are to be congratulated,” he said. “Your future wife is one of the most queenly women I have ever had the honor of knowing.”

  CHAPTER X

  THE RULE OF A GENTLEMAN

  PANCHO MONTESORO found life at the Hacienda de Gutierrez most pleasant. Don Fernando accepted him at face value, and Doña Luz saw in him only a most agreeable young man.

  Suzanna had not left for the Mission as yet, and she found opportunities for comparing the man with Ramon and the bold Pérez. The newcomer suffered but little in this. Her inexperienced eyes being quite dazzled by his graces. Whenever he smiled at her, little chills raced down her spine. She seemed caught up and drawn to him. Several times she had almost obeyed the impulse; but, unsophisticated as she was, intuition whispered to her to beware of the fellow. Being a woman, Suzanna’s curiosity quite outweighed her caution, and she alternately advanced and retreated in the flirtation Montesoro connived to keep alive.

  On the fourth night of his stay at the hacienda, he strolled in th
e shadows of the servants’ patio, thrumming his guitar. The hour was so late that he openly dared this loss of caste.

  Suzanna, wrapped in her mantilla, sat in the deeper shadow of the doorway which led into the granary. She saw him pass without suspecting her presence. Her first impulse was to call him, and she half-raised her hand, only to let it drop again, caution bidding her beware.

  The decision was taken from her, however, for as slight as her movement had been, the man had noticed it, and turning, he sat down upon the step below her.

  He rolled a cigarette in silence, feeling sure that he impressed her with the intimacy of the situation by his very lack of speech. The cigarette lighted, he leaned towards her, and looking up into her face with veiled eyes, he whispered:

  “Mi corazón palpita per tí; no oyes?” his hand closing over hers.

  It was a pretty speech: “My heart throbs for you; can’t you hear?”

  Suzanna had always found love most pleasant, but her throat went dry now, as his flesh touched hers. With an effort she murmured:

  “Cállate! Someone will hear.”

  Montesoro continued to gaze at her intently, drinking his fill of her excitement. With nothing short of artistry he turned from her and picked up his guitar and struck off into a lilting melody.

  His keen ears caught the uneasy sigh which escaped her lips as the song ended. Suzanna made to rise, but his strong arm reached out and caught. her around the waist.

  “Do I sing so illy, little bird?” he whispered.

  “’Tis late,” Suzanna protested as she fought to disengage his arm.

  The man smiled at her effort, and pulling himself up a step so that he sat heside her, he plucked a rose from a bush which twined about the door, and chucked her under the chin with it. Involuntarily, Suzanna turned up her face so that her lips were close to his. Before she could recover, he drew her close to him and held her helpless.

  “Thou most beautiful girl in the world.” he murmured. “Thine eyes are as the most precious stones; thy hair as sheer as finest silk; thy brow fairer than any gentle sun or whispering wind ever kissed. Thy lips are more perfect than a cupid’s bow, more colorful than a pomegranate.”

  It was his favorite love-speech. Chiquita de Sola had answered to the tug of it. Surely this poor peon could not deny its appeal. Great was his suprise, then, to see Suzanna’s dark, lustrous eyes molten with rage.

  “What, amor mia, you are angry? You who I liken unto a rose blooming in a dark corner of some remote rancho, with only an occasional kiss from the kindly sun? True, you bloom, but not half so fully as you would did the sun but kiss you continually.”

  “Yes; but a rose continually kissed by the sun soon withers and dies,” Suzanna exclaimed vehemently. “Unhand me!”

  “Think you then that the sun would not distemper his rays did you but come within his vision? No, no, querida! You are out of place here. Mexico City with its beautiful gardens, its bowers, its gay life, its bull-fights,—there do you belong, Suzanna—with me!”

  “So?” a voice boomed in unctious sweetness as its owner stepped forth from his concealment in back of the flower garden. “Your tongue is very glib, señor; but I am constrained to doubt its veracity.”

  Montesoro taken at such a mean advantage, reo leased Suzanna and got to his feet stealthily. Too many times in his checkered career had he extricated himself from like circumstance to be discountenanced now. The man before him was a stranger, but undoubtedly a jealous lover. Pancho knew how to impress his sort. A show of prowess had opened the way more than once. So, apparently without design, he drew his knife, and singling out a moonlight tipped rosebud which clung to a post some fifteen feet distant, he flipped his blade toward it and pierced the flower to the heart.

  The intruder turned his face then so that the light caught it. Suzanna gasped as she recognized the bandit, Benito Pérez. The outlaw smiled at her as he caught sight of her tear-filled eyes.

  “No llores,—don’t cry—little one,” he reassured her. The braggadocio and challenge of Montesoro’s act was not lost on the bandit. He had lived too long in Old Spain not to realize its significance. And yet, with the greatest indifference, he turned his back on the man, and moving so that the distance between himself and the post was much greater, he drew his knife and sent it whistling through the air, nor waited to see the quality of his aim. A dull thud followed as the knife struck and pierced the hilt of the other’s weapon.

  With varying degrees of emotion Pancho and Suzanna gazed at the quivering knives.

  “Señor,” Pérez said in tones which carried the chilling coldness of death, “the inviolate rule of a gentleman is never to take advantage of his position as one. You are a guest here.”

  “More than I dare you can say,” Montesoro answered angrily. “I haven’t the honor of your acquaintance.”

  “For your surmise,” Pérez muttered, “—it is correct. I am here without invitation. And certain it is that I would honor you in giving you acquaintance. I am Benito Pérez!”

  “The outlaw?” Pancho questioned unbelievingly.

  “Of my many titles it is the one I like the least; but I do not deny it.”

  “Now that you have turned protector,” the toreador said surlily, “you can add another to your long list. You have had good care to stay clear of me as I have ridden about the rancho properly armed.”

  “True,” Pérez grinned. “Wasted effort ever galled me. I have no time for empty pockets. Allow me, now, to bid you good-night.”

  Pérez lifted a hand toward the casa. Montesoro snarled an oath at what he knew to be a command. “It grows late,” the robber-captain cautioned. The syllables clicked off his tongue. Pancho hesitated no longer.

  When he was gone, the bandit turned to Suzanna. “And you, little one, art surprised to find me Pérez?”

  “Your mogador betrayed you,” she answered. “Much ado I had explaining how I came by it. But your coming here—are you mad?”

  “You hold the act so rash, then?”

  “Doubly so, now. That coward will raise a cry against you. The pack will be upon you!”

  “And yet I do not flee,” Pérez said softly. “I have had tales of this torero. He convicts himself! His words are as empty as his purse. He does well to mock me with the word ‘protector.’ Is there no one here to see through the man? I am afraid for you.”

  Suzanna stared at him speechlessly at this show of solicitude in her behalf.

  “Truly,” she said when she had regained the use of her tongue, “you almost make me forget that when last we met you, yourself, were none too mindful of my innocence. Hast our robber turned friar?”

  Suzanna did not see the man’s mouth set or the look of sadness which crept into his eyes as he bowed his head. The next instant, however, Suzanna’s fingers gripped the man’s arm. Pérez had snapped erect. A cry had rang out from the casa:

  “Socorro!—Help—El bandido Pérez!”

  “Go at once!” Suzanna urged excitedly. “A dozen men will answer him.”

  “First, I shall see you safe from gossip. Hasten while I hold the ladder.”

  Stairways were a luxury confined at this early date to the houses of the masters. The workers on the hacienda ascended to their quarters above the granary by ladder. Pérez steadied the one which the girl used, and half-lifting her, he set her upon a rung waist-high with himself and sent her scrambling upward. But she had not reached the window which led into her room before the outlaw heard himself hailed, and turning, he found Ramon facing him.

  “It is you, then!” the boy cried. “Stand ready to defend yourself!”

  Ramon had been the first to answer Pancho’s cry and hear his story. Bidding his guest wait to direct the others to the scene, the boy had dashed into the patio. Pérez did not raise his voice as he addressed him.

  “For my presence here, you shall have whatever satisfaction you may demand; but not until this child is safe from the scandal mongering tongues of those who soon will be here. For
, peon or not, I hold that she is a lady. Would you have her made party to a brawl?”

  Ramon had not forgotten the taunts Pérez had tossed at him the day of the attack on the wagon, nor had he forgiven the man for his attentions to Suzanna. Hot anger had consumed him upon finding them together here in the patio of his own home.

  He cooled perceptibly as he saw Péerez wave Suzanna on. The man’s words were not in keeping with the conduct Montesoro had accused him of in his hurried tale. Ramon felt rebuffed,—a crude lout, whereas the man before him bore himself as a cavalier.

  Not until Suzanna had stepped through the window did the outlaw turn to the boy. Ramon had caught the sound of hurrying feet and he knew that in another minute the patio would be overflowing with men. Pérez had drawn his sword and stood ready to defend himself. Surely the man could not be deaf to that sound of scurrying feet. And yet, he waited with seeming unconcern for the boy to raise his blade.

  “You are more the don than I,” Ramon said to him. “I bow my head in shame that it was necessary for you to remind me of my conduct as a gentleman. Lower your weapon and go.”

  “What a lad!” Pérez murmured to himself as he gazed at Ramon. He made to turn, then, toward the arch which led to the road, but as he did so Pancho and the others confronted him.

  Without hesitation, Ramon leaped to the robher’s side. “Stand back!” he cried. “This man goes untouched.”

  “Is he not Pérez, the bandit?” Pancho demanded. “You do not mean that you are going to allow such a rich prize to slip through your fingers?”

  “He goes free!” Ramon repeated.

  Montesoro drew back dumfounded. A surprised murmur broke from the others, also. The boy walked toward them, and as he did so, he came face to face with the knives the two men had thrown. A question in his eyes, he looked at Pérez.

  “The one in your hand is mine,” the outlaw admitted.

  He reached out for it as Ramon offered it to him.

  “And this other one, imbedded in the post,—how came it here?”