by Karla Gregory
As Zorro swung across the tavern on the chandelier, he knew that something was not right with himself. He felt absolutely rotten. His landing was anything but graceful; however, he did not have time to contemplate his form. The shot fired by the new commandanté exploded the post next to him and he ducked to escape the flying splinters of wood. Quickly, he ran to the door with the tarnished numeral "1" tacked to its worn surface and entered the room in order to make his escape. The room’s only occupant rose up in his bed, clutching his bedclothes to his chest as he watched the man in black charge through his room. Pausing only briefly at the window, Zorro saluted the elderly hacendado. "Please excuse me, Señor," he said. "I shall not disturb you long." The old don remarked at the rather hoarse voice of the outlaw, but was otherwise so startled that he spoke not a word as the most wanted man in California slipped out of his window and was gone. Almost immediately, his door burst open again as the commandanté and the soldiers crowded into the room.
"Where is he?" Capitán Pedroza shouted at the don. The man in the bed could only point a trembling finger at the window where the curtains fluttered in the breeze.
Pedroza ran over to the window and looked out. He could not see anyone in the darkness, but he heard the hoof beats of a horse as it galloped out of the pueblo. From the sounds of it, the outlaw was headed east. Pulling his head back in, Pedroza turned to his soldiers and said, "He is getting away! To horse!" He charged back through his men and led them down the stairs and out of the tavern at the run. By all that was unholy, he was going to capture or kill the masked bandit tonight. He and his soldiers were mounted in moments and stormed out of the pueblo in pursuit of their quarry.
Zorro leaned forward and gripped the reins tightly, urging his black steed to greater speed. He was sure that Pedroza was angry enough to chase him to the ends of the earth if he could. He would need to put as much distance as he could between them in order to have a chance at losing the soldiers in the darkness. He rubbed his temple as the echo of Tornado’s hooves on the roadway mirrored the pounding in his head. He closed his eyes against the headache which had plagued him for almost a day now. But there had been no time to worry about that. Pedroza seemed bent on causing trouble just in order to draw him out and Zorro had no choice but to respond. If only Pedroza had honor enough to call him out one on one, so that they could settle this thing between them, but no. He always surrounded himself with his soldiers, and there were too many for Zorro to handle all at once. All he could do is swoop in and strike quickly to set things as right as he could before riding for the hills. This was galling because this was not accomplishing anything. Pedroza was the problem and Pedroza needed to be stopped.
Suddenly, Zorro was shaken by several explosive sneezes which almost cost him his seat in the saddle. What was the matter with him, he wondered, as he struggled to keep from falling. His eyes were watering and his throat was becoming clogged with something running down the back of his throat. Sniffing mightily, he blinked and tried to clear his head. Though the night was warm, he was getting colder. He could feel the goose bumps marching up and down his arms and he shivered uncontrollably. But there was little he could do about it at the moment. He had other, more important things on his mind.
At the top of the next rise, he pulled Tornado up and looked at his back trail. Just as he suspected, Pedroza and his men were not far behind. Whirling Tornado about, Zorro took off in a new direction, veering to the northeast, toward the mountains. He would try to lose them in the wilderness there. He hoped that he would not become lost himself as he had only been in those mountains a scant few times in his life. He turned Tornado and sent him flying down an arroyo for several hundred yards and then pulled him sharply to the right, sending him clambering up the steep slope. When they reached the top, Zorro once again sent Tornado down into another arroyo which presented itself. The great stallion thundered along the bottom of this ravine, covering the ground in great strides. They repeated this maneuver several times, zigzagging back and forth, hoping to confuse the pursuers’ ability to follow them.
However, as he paused at the top of the next rise, he watched as Pedroza and his men roared up from the bottom of a ravine, not more than a half mile behind him. He and Tornado had gained a little ground, but not enough. Zorro swayed in the saddle as a wave of weakness swept over him and he leaned over, fighting nausea. Tornado pranced nervously beneath him, making it hard for him to stay in the saddle. "Whoa, boy, whoa," Zorro said, and was startled at the coarse sound of his own voice. He was dismayed to realize that he was now feeling very hot, the complete opposite from his chills before. It was maddening. Only a short time ago, he was shivering from the cold and now he was burning up. Tearing at the strings of his cape, he stripped it away from his shoulders and slung it across the saddle in front of him. Blinking and rolling his eyes to try and clear them, he urged Tornado onward. This time, he did not try to confuse his trail. This time, they made a straight line toward the mountains looming in the distance. Zorro felt that his strength was fading. It would be up to Tornado, in a race against death, to save him.
How long they flew through the night, Zorro did not know, for he was having to use all his strength to fight the nausea and the pounding pain in his head. Eventually, however, he became aware that the stallion’s breath was becoming labored though he had not slackened his pace. Swallowing against the rasping dryness of his throat, and wiping at his eyes with the back of his gloved hand, Zorro turned around and tried to locate his pursuers. He could not see them anywhere. Though it was by no means certain that he had outdistanced Pedroza and his men completely, he allowed Tornado to slacken his pace. Blearily, he looked around and found a hill nearby and sent the stallion to its top. Once there, he stopped and peered out into the moon-splashed countryside, looking for Pedroza. To his dismay, he found the commandanté and the soldiers. The darkened shadows were now more than a mile behind him, but there could be no doubt as to whom the shadows belonged.
Hoarsely, Zorro said, "I’m sorry, boy, but we must go on," as he stroked the stallion’s neck. "We must go up into the mountains. It is our only chance." Tornado snorted and threw his head up and down. He was still willing to go on and carry his master as far as he could. "Let’s go," rasped Zorro. Turning the stallion toward the mountain, they began to climb.
It was all Zorro could do to hold onto the saddle horn and keep his seat in the saddle as the land grew steeper around them. The ground became more stony and Tornado’s hooves echoed in the night as he climbed up and up. The terrain was cut by large crevices, and Zorro rode through them and around huge boulders, which lay tumbled across the landscape as though tossed there by some giant hand. His headache had now extended itself to include his whole body. His very bones seemed to ache and the nausea had not abated. But he could not stop.
Pedroza and his men followed Zorro toward the mountains. Pedroza cursed his men for being too slow and Zorro for being too swift. He was sure that his own horse was the equal of the black devil-horse belonging to Zorro, but he would not leave his soldiers behind. What good was it to import a fine new horse to chase the outlaw, he thought bitterly to himself, when his men could not keep up? Pedroza wanted Zorro more than anything in the world, but he did not wish to face the masked man alone. When Zorro was captured or killed, Pedroza would take the credit and the reward money, but he knew that he could not do it alone. No man could.
When he saw that the outlaw had disappeared after riding up onto the flank of the mountain, he pulled up. This land was even more unfamiliar to him than the lands around Los Angeles. He and his men had just begun to become familiar with some of the many landmarks around the pueblo from their pursuit of Zorro, but none of them had ever been in the mountains before. Pedroza was undecided as to what to do. It galled him to think that he would not kill the outlaw this night.
"Commandanté!" one of the men cried out.
"What is it?" Pedroza growled.
Pointing up the mountain, the soldier said, "Look! There he goes! There is El Zorro!"
Pedroza peered in the direction and soon found the black shadow. His heart leaped. The forced climb had slowed the outlaw’s progress, and they had made up a lot of ground on him. He quickly studied the mountain. To continue upward, the bandido would have to veer north. If Pedroza split his men . . . .
"Chato! You and four men go that way," he said indicating the left. "I will take the rest and go to the right. We will come up on him from both sides. He will not escape us then! Remember, he is worth the same dead or alive! Now go!"
Chato and his men thundered off to the left and began their climb. Pedroza held his nervous horse back with a tight hand on the reins and then, leading his men, began his own climb. They were not going to fail to get their man tonight.
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Zorro clamped his free arm across his stomach as he leaned over the saddle horn. He did not know what was the matter with him, only that he was very ill. However, to stop was to die, so by sheer strength of will, he kept going, but he did not know how much longer he could keep this up. His mind was in a fog and he could not think clearly. He still felt hot, but he had long ago stopped perspiring. Whether this was good or bad, he did not know. He decided that it did not matter. Nothing mattered but to keep on going.
Tornado kept up a valiant pace, following the twisting and turning trail between the rocks and boulders. His breathing was becoming very labored, but he was still strong enough to go on. At last, they came up to the top of a crevice in the rocks and scrambled out onto a large stony outcropping. The outcropping was relatively flat like a table top and more than a dozen yards across, but the edges dropped away on all sides. Tornado stopped and snorted, refusing to go any further. This roused Zorro from his foggy weariness and he looked around. On two sides, the rock dropped away into nothingness. On the third side, there was a fissure in the rock many yards wide and impossibly deep. He would have to go back. Wiping his face with his gloved hand, almost too ill to remember why he was even in this place, he turned Tornado to go back down the way they had come. But Tornado stopped and tossed his head, shaking it from side to side.
"Go on," rasped Zorro, urging Tornado. "You must go." Still, Tornado refused. Blinking and fighting his nausea, Zorro slapped Tornado sharply on the rump to make him go. They could not stay here in this exposed place.
A pistol shot rang out and Tornado screamed defiantly and reared halfway up. Zorro barely held on as the stallion rose and fell back to land on four feet. The pistol shot seemed to rouse Zorro from his lethargy, and his mind cleared enough to take stock of the situation. There were two groups of soldiers coming at him and he was cut off from any retreat. The soldiers were too far away to be within range, but the pistol shot had been a notice to him that his pursuers had caught up with him. Though he knew it was useless, he rode Tornado around the edges of the outcropping. He could not see the bottom on any side. He pulled his rifle from its saddle holster.
Pedroza was elated. He could see that the outlaw was trapped on the stony outcrop. There was no escape. He would capture the most famous bandit in all of California and his fortune would be made. And besides all that, he would settle the score with the man for all the humiliations he had endured since coming to Los Angeles. Glancing about, he could see that his men were in position. Some had dismounted and gone forward on foot, holding their rifles or pistols at the ready. However, all of them were staying just out of the range of the rifle that they could see in the hands of Zorro. None of them wanted to take his bullet.
Riding closer, Pedroza called out, "Surrender, Señor Zorro! There is no escape! Throw down your weapons and you will live a little while longer!"
To his surprise, the outlaw said not a word, but just sat on his horse with the rifle pointed in Pedroza’s general direction. The implication was clear. If Pedroza came any closer, he would be the recipient of Zorro’s only bullet. Pedroza frowned as he thought. He wanted Zorro, but he did not want to take a chance of dying in the attempt. He would send some of his men in, and one way or another, Zorro would be dead when it was over. He might lose one or two men, but what did that matter? They were soldiers and dying was their duty was it not?
"Chato! You, and those two behind you, charge him. He only has one shot. You will be sure to get him. That’s an order!" Pedroza glared at Chato who swallowed hard.
"Sí, mí commandanté!" said Chato, saluting Pedroza with the pistol in his hand. "Come on!" he called out to his companions.
Zorro watched all of this with the tendrils of illness induced fog trying to reclaim his mind. He was trapped, but he would not go down without a fight. His only regret was that Pedroza was not man enough to charge him himself. He swallowed again in a dry throat and shook his head hard in order to try and clear his mind again. But it seemed that it was nearly impossible. He was just too ill. After that, everything became surreal. Everything seemed to be moving in slow motion. The three soldiers began their charge, but they had to ride single file due to the narrow crevice which led to the top of the outcrop where Zorro waited. In the bright moonlight, Zorro could see the whites of the eyes of the first horse as it clambered toward him and he could see the determined eyes of the man who rode it. Chato was his name. He was the worst of the lot, right behind Pedroza. Zorro could see the man’s pistol pointed right at him. It only remained for the soldier to come within range and he would fire. Zorro swayed in the saddle and almost lost his balance as he was swept by a wave of dizziness. He used his waning strength to steady himself just as Chato came up to the point in the crevice which was only shoulder deep on his horse and the most narrow. Zorro found himself staring down the barrel of Chato’s pistol. By instinct more than conscious thought, Zorro fired.
Pedroza watched the whole thing unfold and could not believe what he was seeing. Chato and his men were charging the outlaw’s position and the masked man fired his rifle. The bullet took Chato in the right shoulder, throwing him backwards off of his horse, right into the path of the other soldiers. Chato’s pistol discharged, the shot going wildly off into the night. However, Chato’s left hand had not let go of the reins of his horse, and he wrenched the beast’s head around, causing it to stumble and fall on top of him. The other two soldiers were suddenly thrown into disarray as their horses stumbled and fell over Chato’s body and ran into his horse, which now blocked the crevice. There was a complete scramble going on in the crevice. Neither of the other two soldiers could fire on Zorro.
While the other soldiers gaped in amazement, immobilized for a fraction of a moment, Pedroza watched as Zorro spun Tornado around and galloped the few yards to the farthest end of the outcrop. What was the mad man going to do? Leap off into the void? Commit suicide?
Calling on his waning strength, Zorro spun Tornado around and sent him galloping toward the only avenue of escape. Tornado’s steel shod hooves thundered on the stone, yellow-white sparks striking off into the night. They were headed for the far side of the outcropping . . . toward the fissure. Placing his final trust in his faithful black steed, Zorro asked him to do the impossible. Tornado gathered himself and leaped.
