Captain Fly-by-Night

by Johnston McCulley

He was within half a hundred yards of the Indians about the fire, but they seemed to be giving all their attention to the preparation of food, trusting sentinels posted on every road and trail to give warning of approach.

He came to another horse tethered to the fence, a splendid animal belonging to the rancho. It evidently was being used by some chief or scout, for saddle and bridle were on it, and remembering that he would need a second horse, he untied the beast, led it back to his own, and fastened it again.

Then he went forward once more, this time swinging far out to one side and reaching a clump of palms planted long ago by Señor Fernandez for a windbreak. From there he could get a good view of the house. The patio was filled with Indians; hostiles were on the front veranda; they slept against the walls and roamed through the vegetable garden on the other side of the building.

A room in the front of the house was illuminated, but none except Indians were in it, and they seemed to be servants. To the rear was an additional half-storey, and here was another room with a light in it; and as the caballero watched the windows he saw a shadow cast on the curtains.

The draperies were heavy and of brocaded stuff, yet the outlines of the shadow could be discerned plainly. Here was no squaw or hostile brave—here was a white woman dressed in the mode of the times, and the shadow, passing and repassing before the window, told the caballero she paced the room in an agony of fear.

Now he stretched himself on the ground and began worming his way forward like an Indian, stopping every few feet to listen, keeping to the shadows, ready to curl up and pretend to be asleep if any came near, hoping he would be taken for a sleeping hostile. Fifty feet from the side of the house he stopped, disheartened as he realised the futility of the plan. No human being could reach the house and enter without being seen, not with Indians scattered every few feet along the walls and others continually running back and forth from the veranda to the patio. He would have to resort to a trick.

But tricks were not easily planned under such conditions. No expedient could he contrive; every plan was rejected as being worse than useless.

He heard a commotion behind him, and realised that the hostiles were driving up the horses of the rancho in preparation for to-morrow night’s raid. Two or three hundred head were in the drove now milling near the fence before the house. Cries of relief came from the herders as they sprang over the fence and hurried toward the house for wine and food; and relief came to the caballero as he crouched in the shadows, for now he believed the way was clear.

He slipped back to the clump of palms, made another circle, and so gained the fence, to climb it and slip along it silently until he came to bars directly before the ranch-house. Working swiftly to throw them down, he then slipped back again and circled the drove until he was behind the high-spirited, half-frightened animals.

He grasped pistol in one hand; zarape in the other. A moment of silence, then a shot, a screech, the snort of a frightened steed, the sudden crowding of those nearest him—then the drove was in frenzied fear—rearing, kicking, plunging—striving to flee from this unknown horror that had come behind them out of the night.