Free The Black Rider by Max Brand

lightning?
Señor
Guadalmo was tense with dreadful anxiety, and yet he could not avoid the sudden flash of Taki’s sword. And again there was a bee sting in the flesh above his heart. He felt a little warm trickle of blood run down inside his shirt—warm blood over a body that had turned to ice.
    He gave ground. He looked wildly up the slope above the trees, where the roofs of the house of Torreño were faintly visible. There was succor, in ample scope, so near, so near! He thought of turning and fleeing toward it, but as he watched the tigerish smoothness of the advance of Taki, he knew that he would be overtaken in a single leap. There was no escape that way. He thought of crying out—but before the sound had left his lips, the inescapable mischief which played so brightly in the hand of the tall man would be buried in his heart! And the cold perspiration streamed down the face of Guadalmo. His body was dank with it.
    “There are still others,” said Taki. “You have covered your way with killings, damnable murders made legal. You have picked quarrels with young men who had scarcely left their fencing masters after a month of practice. But above all, there was one man who had never held a straight sword in his life. He was an honest sailor, Guadalmo. An honest man, do you hear me? A breath of his was worth more than your eternal soul. He was a kind, bluff man. All who knew him, loved him. He had behind him a young wife and two small children. Ah, Guadalmo, my friend, what a devil it would have taken to murder that honorable man? And yet there was such a demon in the world. There was such a murder done. All honorable! He was challenged and met with rapiers. He was forced to fight, he thought, to defend his honor.
    His honor against a rat, a snake, a wolf! Think of it,
Señor
Guadalmo. Can you conceive it?”
    “Are you done?” snarled out Guadalmo, perceiving that the end was near. “Are you done whining? Yes, I killed him. And you are his brother? Hear me, friend. When the steel went through him, he screamed like a woman!”
    Taki groaned. “He screamed with agony of sorrow because he thought of his wife and his family…with bewilderment that such a tiny needle of a weapon should have taken his life…but never with pain or with fear. For he was a lion,
Señor
Guadalmo! And it is for his sake that I am about to touch you for the third time, and this time, you are to die! Think of him, and how he lay in your patio, panting and gasping. He had messages which he begged you to send to his wife. He would forgive you, pray for you, if you would send them. Did you send them, Guadalmo? Did you send them? A word, only, to his widow or his orphans?”
    “Bah!” gasped out the Spaniard, and lunged with all his force.
    It was attacking a will-o’-the-wisp. He closed again with a shout of despair. Then a limber hand of steel closed around his sword. He felt a wrench that twisted his wrist far to one side. Out of his wet fingers the sword was drawn, and flipped high into the air, spinning over and over, brilliant against the moon, in its fall. And Guadalmo followed it with eyes of horror and of bewilderment.
    He looked down at the leveled blade of his opponent. And then, from the rear of the clearing, a pistol spoke, a bullet hummed past and thudded heavily against the body of an oak tree, and into the open ran three men. There was a wild cry of rage from Taki. He leaped at Guadalmo with a final lunge, but the latter fell grovelingupon the ground and missed death by a fraction of a second. Over him leaped Taki—no time for a second stroke.
    Another bound brought him among the shadows of the trees—and he was gone, with a final volley whirring about him.
    And, in the meantime, it seemed that a hundred voices had suddenly begun to shout at the same time, before him and behind him.
    There was no pursuit on the part of the valiants, however. They did not care to follow the tiger into his lair among the crowded trees; they