Zorro Hunts A Jackal - Unconsciousness

"Craven!" Zorro hissed. As he spoke, his blade darted forward again, and the letter Z was now completed. Felipe Garzo darted back against the wall to make his last desperate stand.

Now the guards were pounding at the door, howling to know whether they should enter.

"Help! – Zorro is here!" Felipe Garzo's last cry strangled in his throat.

But Señor Zorro had not slain him. He had merely disarmed him neatly, then run his blade through a shoulder. Garzo dropped to the floor, moaning more with fright than with pain, disarmed and helpless, expecting a death blow at any moment.

"Quiet, or you die!" Zorro hissed at him.

Then Felipe Garzo did a foul thing. He still clutched his dagger in his left hand; and now he transferred it swiftly to his right, hurling it straight at the masked man before him, in open defiance of all rules of fair combat. Instantly, Zorro darted aside, and the flying weapon glanced from the steel of his blade.

"Scum!" Zorro cried, and his blade flashed again, and came back red.

Nor had he struck to kill this time – but only to give a wound that would bring unconsciousness. For if, as Zorro believed, this "horse trader" was a proud swordsman of the governor's retinue, to go through life shamed with Zorro's brand would be a sterner lesson to him, and to other bravos like him, than a swift and painless death.

Zorro whirled away from his fallen adversary, even as he heard the voice of Capitán Torello shouting for his men to get through the door. From his pouch, he took the little bottle, and for a time worked swiftly at the wall, and on the face of the fallen man.


- Zorro Hunts A Jackal, Chapter 4