"Not to my knowledge," Don Alejandro said. "My son arrived off the highway but a short time ago."
"You did not see the fellow, Don Diego?"
"I did not," Don Diego said. "That is one stroke of good fortune that came my way."
Don Alejandro had sent for servants, and now wine mugs were on the long table, and heaps of small cakes, and the caballeros began to eat and drink. Don Diego knew well what that meant. Their pursuit of the highwayman was at an end, their enthusiasm had waned. They would sit at his father's table and drink throughout the night, gradually getting intoxicated, shout and sing and tell stories, and in the morning ride back to Reina de Los Angeles like so many heroes.
It was the custom. The chase of Señor Zorro was but a pretext for a merry time.
The servants brought great stone jugs filled with rare wine, and put them on the table, and Don Alejandro ordered that meat be fetched also. The young caballeros had a weakness for these parties at Don Alejandro's, for the don's good wife had been dead for several years, and there were no women folk except servants, and so they could make what noise they pleased throughout the night.
In time they put aside pistols and blades, and began to boast and brag, and Don Alejandro had his servants put the weapons in a far corner out of the way, for he did not wish a drunken quarrel, with a dead caballero or two in his house.
Don Diego drank and talked with them for a time, and then sat to one side and listened, as if such foolishness bored him.
"It were well for this Señor Zorro that we did not catch up with him," one cried. "Any one of us is a match for the fellow. Were the soldiers men of merit he would have been taken long before this."