Zorro Hunts A Jackal - Phosphorus

"Capitán Torello believes that the capture or slaying of Señor Zorro will mean reward and promotion for him. He thinks this Zorro is a man of quality, a caballero who plays at highwayman, and that his defeat would humble a proud family already in the ill grace of the governor, but too powerful for the governor to affront openly."

Don Diego met Bardoso's good eye with two good ones of his own. "Conversation is such tiresome stuff," he commented. "Bardoso, I recall that I asked you to procure for me a certain drug, you being a clandestine dealer in chemicals and nostrums."

"I have what you require, Don Diego."

"Bring it to my house after nightfall. Bernardo, my servant, will be in the patio."

"I shall obey, Don Diego."

[...]

While José of the Cocopahs kept close watch a few feet away, piercing the darkness with his keen eyes and straining his ears to catch the slightest sound, Don Diego Vega divested himself of certain of his garments and quickly donned others instead. Across his face he fastened a black mask with slits for the eyes. A blade was strapped at his side.

The garments he had discarded were piled neatly at the base of a tree. From a pouch he took a small bottle, which he handled carefully.

"José!"

"Señor?"

"The torch!"

"Behind this rock, señor, it may not be seen."

Don Diego dropped down behind a big rock, and there was a sudden flare as José kindled a small torch into flame. Don Diego took something from the bottle, propped a mirror against the rock, and worked diligently for a time. He was chuckling as he returned the bottle to the pouch.

"The horse?"

"Ten paces straight ahead, señor."

"You will remember everything?"

"Everything, señor."

"I go. Put out the torch. Zorro rides!"

As he spoke, he draped his form with a long black cloak of thin material. Then he darted forward, to where a black horse was waiting. Don Diego Vega was gone – and in his stead was Señor Zorro, the Fox. And it was Señor Zorro, quite another person, who got into the saddle to ride.

[...]

"We allow this Señor Garzo to do the fighting, merely seeing that Zorro does not escape if he wins," the first said. "If he bests the horse dealer, the three of us must account for him."

"He is a demon! He slips around like a ghost. It may be he is not human man at all."

It was at this moment that Señor Zorro whipped off the light cloak and stepped from behind the clump of brush. An eerie wail rumbled from his throat, grew in volume, and seemed to shatter the silence of the night. It beat back from the walls of the presidio buildings, rushed away on the hill breeze.

The three troopers sprang to their feet, alarm striking at them. They glanced around quickly, as Zorro wailed again.

And then they saw! A short distance from them, in the midst of the Stygian blackness of the night and seemingly drifting toward them, was the skull and chest of a skeleton.

Again there came that eerie wail. The apparition bore toward them. They could see the gleaming outline of the skull, the great gleaming eye sockets. The throat and shoulder bones and the upper ribs were also visible.

Brave men they might have been in physical combat. None of them would have retreated even from a superior foe. Soldiers they were, and skilled in the use of weapons; but they also were superstitious.

They could have understood a charging enemy and prepared to clash and fight it out; but when the third eerie wail came rumbling through the night at them, the gleaming skeleton apparently starting to advance toward them again, it was more than their nerves could endure.

"Dios!" one cried.

Their shrieks of superstitious fear rang out. As one man they turned and charged away toward the barracks, howling for their comrades to come to their aid, to bring blazing torches. Together the three made a tumult equal to the noise of a frenzied score.

Voices answered them from the barracks, and in front of the building the sentinel on regular post shouted for the capitán. From the guest house came the raucous bellowing of Señor Felipe Garzo. He demanded to know what was happening.

Zorro quickly wrapped the dark cloak around him again, and put the hood of it up over his head. The gleaming skeleton disappeared. Through the black night he rushed noiselessly to the corner of the guest house, and there watched the door.

Light gleamed within, and the door was hurled open. Señor Felipe Garzo stood framed in it, partly clothed, holding a flaming torch above his head with his left hand, a naked blade in his right.

"What is it?" he shouted.

The guards had rushed across the patio to the corner of the barracks, where a door had been opened for them. Out of the barracks, the other troopers were tumbling in their night clothing, shouting and clashing weapons. Capitán Torello appeared, crying for order and silence, and for somebody to tell him what had happened. Felipe Garzo left the guest house and rushed across the patio, carrying his sword and his torch.

Quickly, Zorro slipped through the guest house door and got inside the big room. In a corner was a huge clothes press, and into this he went, but for the time being kept its door half open. Thus he was able to see across the room and into the patio.

There were a dozen torches in the patio now, and troopers were commencing a search, the capitán's angry shouts urging them on. Felipe Garzo came back toward the guest house with Capitán Torello beside him.

"It was a fiery skeleton," one of the guards kept repeating. "A skeleton with flaming bones. All of us saw it, capitán. It screeched threats at us."

"And where did you see it first?"

"Over there, by the clump of brush. It seemed to be floating through the air at us. And the screech it gave–!"

"It probably came out of this empty wine jug I find here on the ground," the capitán suggested. "Strange sights and sounds may be found in a jug!"

[...]

Horses were always ready for the trail, at the presidio, and men mounted these. Others were soon made ready rapidly. Capitán Torello mounted his own horse, not stopping to finish his dressing, and making neither a brave nor an attractive picture in his present half attire.

But out of the night and past them there suddenly rode a demon on a black horse, who howled at them as he passed. The flaming upper half of a skeleton again – for Zorro had not put on his cloak.

Troopers gave cries of alarm, but their capitán silenced them.

"It is but Zorro! It is a trick!" Torello howled. "After him! A reward to the man who catches or slays him!"

And back to them, as they began their hard ride, came the mocking laugh of Zorro.

[...]

"Flaming skeleton!" Zorro chuckled as he rode. "A man may have a certain amusement by the use of phosphorus – A glow in the night!"

He laughed yet again, so that his pursuers heard as they slackened pace to negotiate a steep hill. Then Zorro increased speed a little, gradually increasing the distance between himself and the enemy – yet not so much that the pounding of his mount's hoofs could not be heard.


- Zorro Hunts A Jackal, Chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5