The Black Stallion Mystery Page 4

  A few minutes later he came to an abrupt stop, certain he had heard rustling in the grass directly behind him. The breeze had died. What had accounted for the sound? Footsteps? Hoofbeats? Man or bull? He could not tell. Sweat trickled down his body as he stared into the darkness, every sense alert.

  He thought he heard the sharp intake of a person’s breath and the massive movement of a great body on light hoofs. Could there be both man and bull? Or was there nothing at all? The sounds—assuming they were not the product of his imagination—had stilled.

  He stood quietly, knowing it was not wise either to walk or to run. In this pasture were no cows or calves but full-grown fighting bulls, as dangerous as any other fierce animals in the world. He’d realized that before climbing the fence. And he had no weapon with which to protect himself.

  It was a bull and it was alone, separated from the herd either by a fight with another bull or … Had he actually heard footsteps as well? Had someone intentionally separated this lone bull and arranged this meeting?

  Alec listened to the movements of the bull. He could not yet see him. The wild animal was trotting now, coming toward him faster and faster. Alec had no time to run even if he had wanted to. His heart pounded madly but there was no trembling of his hands or body. His muscles were ready. He didn’t fool himself into believing that he had the strength and skill to cope with such an adversary. Standing one’s ground against an unruly horse or dog was not the same as facing a bull bred for centuries to attack.

  Yet the cavemen had managed, going naked and unarmed to hunt this very beast for food, according to González. At least they’d had a club, Alec reminded himself bitterly. He had nothing, nothing but his wits.

  Where was the moon? Would its light help or make things worse? The bull had come to a stop in the darkness, seemingly undecided which direction to take. Alec held his breath. The bull blew, whistling through his nostrils. It was different from the Black’s whistle—hoarser and more guttural. Alec heard the hoofbeats come closer, then stop again. Perhaps if the moon had not emerged from behind the clouds at that particular moment the bull might have returned to his herd. As it was, the light brightened the pasture and the two looked into each other’s eyes, the bull more surprised than Alec.

  Less than a hundred feet separated them. The bull was a big one, his neck a tremendous hump of muscle. The animal lowered his head, his great horns pointing menacingly, and pawed the ground. Then he blew again. Alec knew the attack was about to come.

  He had no more than a second to wait. Like a black thunderbolt the bull charged, the rush of his great body shaking the earth and stirring up a sudden gust of wind. Alec twisted away to avoid the horns seeking his flesh. There was a quick movement of the bull’s head and the tearing of cloth as the tip of a horn rent Alec’s white shirt at the waist. The passing body struck him hard and he fell to the ground.

  The monstrous bull was swallowed by the night but before Alec could get to his feet he’d come out of the darkness again. Alec lay flat on his stomach, knowing there was no escape.

  The bull lumbered over him, kneading his prone form with hoofs and head. Fortunately the horns struck only the ground on either side of his body. He was butted and bumped by the big head. He could only lie still, praying that if there was no movement from him the bull might stop before the horns pierced his body. He buried his face in the deep pasture grass and suddenly the bull stopped.

  Alec waited and held his breath. The bull butted a final time and the tip of a razor-sharp horn caught the back of Alec’s neck. Alec felt the blood start to run down his back. He listened to the bull, who was moving away … a stride, then another and still another … one more and he stopped. Was he turning back? Alec raised his head to find out.

  A breeze had come up and Alec saw that the bull’s eyes were upon his ripped shirt which hung loosely outside his pants. Its fluttering in the wind had attracted the bull’s attention. Suddenly the great head lowered and then the beast charged again!

  Alec sprang to his knees, tearing part of his shirt off at the same time. He held it in his hands when the bull moved upon him, knowing he had one last chance to avoid the horns. He shook the white cloth, holding it far away from his body … and the bull’s eyes and lowered head followed it, thundering past!

  As the tremendous bull slithered by him, Alec jumped to his feet. Now the bull was raging, fighting mad. He charged again and Alec could hardly believe his eyes as the savage horns passed harmlessly through the cloth once more.

  Alec pulled off the rest of his shirt to provide a larger target for the bull’s attack. Again the head was lowered and the forehoofs pawed the earth in mounting fury. Again the bull charged.

  Alec stood still and kept the waving cloth as far away from his body as possible. The horned head followed the cloth, found it, ripped it and went past. But this time instead of going on the bull turned, sending grass sods flying into the air. He came back again seeking the waving cloth and Alec barely got it into position before the bull was upon him. A horn tip caught hold of the fleshy part of his lower arm as the big body went past, brushing his own.

  The bull didn’t attack again immediately. He stood about fifty feet away, breathing a little heavily with his tongue hanging out. His eyes never left the cloth.

  Alec lowered the cloth to the ground and the eyes followed it. He moved it to the right and the eyes moved with it. Alec took a step backward and then another, trailing the cloth … and always the eyes followed it and not him. The bull moved with him, too tired to charge the cloth just then. Alec backed faster, going in the direction of the stone wall.

  Far down the pasture came the snorts and grumblings of other bulls. Alec felt the soft earth of a stream bank sucking at his ankles. All he had to do now would be to trip and fall, and it would be the end.

  The bull got ready to charge again and his roar shattered the night. He sniffed the air and twitched his tail. Then he moved forward, his ponderous body starting off clumsily, heavily, then shifting into a canter and finally into a full gallop. Alec shook the white cloth. The bull caught it, ripping it again. He passed by, turning as Alec turned, and came on again. Once more the thunderous body swept by Alec and came to a stop. The bull was becoming tired of charging but his fury was not yet spent.

  Alec backed into a wild cactus plant, the razor-like thorns driving deep into his legs. He moved around the plant and went on, knowing he couldn’t be too far away from the stone fence but not daring to take his eyes off the bull.

  The beast roared and charged once more. This time he did not charge straight through the cloth but hooked his horns to the right, catching the cloth and tearing it from Alec’s hands. He butted it on the ground, trampled on it, sliced it with his great horns until it was nothing but shreds. Then he turned away from it and looked at Alec.

  The moon disappeared behind the clouds and once more complete darkness enveloped the night. The very earth seemed to tremble with the thunder of the bull’s pawing, and Alec wished that he could melt into the night. Suddenly the pawing stopped. The bull blew through his nostrils, breaking the air. Now, Alec knew, the charge would come. He stepped backward … faster, ever faster.

  The barking of dogs suddenly echoed the bull’s roar and from near by came the tinkle of cattle bells worn by some of the cows in the pasture across the road. Alec took another hurried step backward. His hand touched the cold stone wall!

  He climbed as the bull charged, springing harder and higher than ever before in his life. As his fingertips reached the top of the wall and he began pulling himself up, the air beneath him was splintered by the massive horned head.

  Alec dropped down to the ground on the other side of the wall, his wounds bleeding more profusely than ever. But he was thankful to be alive. It was more than he’d counted on.

  BLACK MARÍA

  5

  Above the splash of the water from the patio fountain a rooster crowed. Angel González said, “It’s a pity I had to awaken you before the fi
rst light but …” He shrugged his big shoulders easily and gracefully without finishing the sentence.

  “It’s not hard for us,” Henry said. “Knowing the light of early morning is one of the rewards of working with horses.”

  “And bulls,” González added, smiling. “But come, let us eat so we can be on our way.” He stirred the thick black coffee at the bottom of his big cup. “María,” he called, “milk, please.”

  From outdoors came the jingle of spurs and neighs of horses. The sun reached over the patio wall and fell warmly upon the flagstone terrace. Henry waited for it to enter the open doors and windows of the dining room. Not that he was cold. He just needed a bit of cheering up and the sun might do that for him. He had a feeling something was wrong.

  “You say Alec went to his horse before I called you?” his host asked.

  “Just a few minutes before. He’s an early riser where the Black is concerned.”

  “It is good to tend one’s horse before one’s self,” the big man said. “Young Alec is to be highly admired.”

  “He’s a horseman,” Henry said simply. He toyed with his fried eggs and his gaze swept the huge dining room with its heavy antique furniture and silver plate, its mounted bull’s heads and portraits, the hanging chandelier and marble floors. He longed to be away from this house. It was too rich for his blood, as was Don Angel Rafael González.

  A great bulk hovered behind him. “More coffee, Señor?” the servant asked in hesitant English.

  “No thanks, María,” he said, smiling but not looking up at her. Like everything else in the house María was big, almost as big as González. She was as gracious as he, too—except for her ancient eyes which said, “Who are you and why do you come here?”

  Alec entered the room and Angel González greeted him while María poured steaming milk into his coffee cup. Henry noted the sudden raising of the old woman’s drooping, waxen eyelids. Her eyes disclosed the same resentment they had shown when he entered the room. But her voice did not betray her as she asked Alec graciously, “Would you prefer chocolate, Señor?” Her gray head nodded as if she knew what his answer would be.

  Alec said, “Please.”

  María’s voice was too sweet for her age, almost honey sweet, Henry decided. It put his nerves on edge. There was too much bitterness underlying the sweetness. Or was he making too much of all this?

  He turned to Alec. The boy’s shoulders were hunched forward and his left hand was sunk deep in his pocket. Such table manners weren’t typical of Alec. Neither was the turned-up collar of his polo shirt. Henry didn’t have to be told that Alec was up in arms about something and trying unsuccessfully not to show it.

  “The Black all right?” Henry asked.

  “Fine,” Alec answered. “I cleaned out his stall … that’s what took me so long.” He removed his left hand from his pocket to take the plate of freshly baked bread which María offered him.

  Henry saw the heavily bandaged arm. “What’d you do there?” he asked anxiously.

  “It’s nothing. A scratch. I got everything I needed from the tack trunk.”

  “Scratches around a stable are never nothing,” Henry said with concern. “You’d better let me look at it.”

  “It’s all right, I tell you,” Alec said sharply.

  Henry turned back to his eggs. That tone wasn’t typical of Alec, either. What was up? This house, this whole setup spelled trouble. Why?

  María placed two boiled eggs before Alec, and González said, “Here in Spain we do not eat much breakfast. Coffee is enough for me until lunch.”

  The big woman scowled, the many wrinkles in her face deepening. “Ahh,” she snorted. “You slink into the kitchen all morning to steal cheese and shrimp and bits of bread behind my back!”

  González scowled in return. “Stealing, María?” he asked. “You mean I steal food in my own house?”

  Her sallow features suddenly softened, becoming almost angelic. Her voice was motherly with a moving sadness. “You are not well. For all of your twenty-six years I have known it and cared for you. You do not eat right or live right!”

  “Shh, María,” González said nervously. “We have guests. Let us not discuss problems of the health.” He smiled but could not control the twitching of his right cheek.

  Alec finished his eggs and turned to Henry. The trainer was still toying with his food, removing bits of pimento and olives.

  The woman went on, “They might as well know, too, that you are a sick man,” she said angrily. “It is they who want to see you killed!”

  “María!” González exclaimed sharply. “Go to the kitchen!”

  “No,” she said quietly. “They should know what they have asked you to do.” She walked around the table, nervously straightening the silver bowls and pitchers. She moved in a shuffle, wobbling from side to side on her large flat feet.

  Apparently accepting María’s refusal to leave the room, González laughed wildly and said, “She worries about the bulls and always has. I get a scratch from a becerro, a young bull barely older than a calf, and she has the priest at my bedside!”

  Alec glanced at the woman and found her brown eyes upon him. She said accusingly, “If you had not come, he would not enter the ring again. He promised!”

  González was snapping his fingers, apparently in rhythm to the woman’s voice. If he was doing it to stop her it had no effect.

  “If God was not with him, he would have been killed long before this,” she said thickly.

  “I am as big and strong and brave as a bull, María,” the man said lightly. “You know it.”

  “Strength has nothing to do with it!” she almost shouted. “And by being big you are bigger for the bull’s horns to find!”

  “You’re being ridiculous,” the big man scoffed.

  Alec clasped his bad arm. The collar of his shirt felt tight because of the bandage around his neck. He understood only too well what this woman was talking about.

  María had cocked her head, birdlike, but her eyes were as hard and cold as flint as she looked upon the man she obviously considered more of a son than an employer.

  “You are too emotional to fight the bulls,” she said. “Even as a little boy you were too close to everything you tried to do. You feel too much. You cannot become emotionally involved with the bulls or you die.”

  Alec glanced at Angel Rafael González. The big man was no longer snapping his fingers to the woman’s words. As he listened to María he was the picture of doom. And although he had silenced his fingers he had no control over the nervous tic below his eye.

  “Ten years ago it was racing cars,” she accused him. “Later it was planes. Then came the bulls! First you were content to ride with your vaqueros, using your herder’s lance to tumble young bull calves in moving them from field to field. Soon this, too, bored you. So you separated full-grown bulls from the herd and met them in the ring. Only then were you happy, for you were defying death.” She was crying when she left the room.

  González said with embarrassment, “Ridiculous accusations. It is a wonder that I stand for it. Still,” he shrugged his shoulders, “she has been everything to me, as she says, mother and father. But enough of this! Come with me while I prepare for the ring. I have already sent for El Dorado.”

  They went to his bedroom where he pulled on two pairs of long white cotton stockings beneath his pants and leather zahones. He changed his shirt and put on a short leather jacket. Both were soiled and wrinkled.

  María entered the room, her eyes dry. “See how fearful of the bulls he is!” she said scornfully. “He will not let me wash a dirty shirt because it is pale with the sand of the bull ring!”

  “I fought well in it,” González answered matter-of-factly. “Please go, María, and leave us alone.” He slipped a gold chain and cross around his neck, ignoring the woman, who hadn’t budged. Nervously he unbuttoned his jacket and reached for a cigarette in his shirt pocket. There was no doubt that he was upset regardless of all his bra
ve talk.

  By her ridicule, María sought to embarrass him still more and keep him at home. She turned upon Alec and Henry and said shrilly, “He goes because he cannot help himself, yet he is deathly afraid. You have only to look at him to know!”

  The big man took a round, wide-rimmed hat from his closet. Like the shirt and jacket it was soiled with the sweat marks of many hours spent with the bulls. “It is no time to flout one’s courage,” he said quietly, “or, for that matter, one’s superstitions.” Without looking at María he fingered the thin red chin strap, twirling the hat while he finished his cigarette.

  “Of course,” he said, glancing at Alec, “it is not so strange that one’s heart beats a little faster before such an encounter. My young friend understands what I mean, since he has many times awaited the opening of a starting gate.”

  The woman laughed loudly. “Your young friend would run for his life if the toril gate opened and he saw the bull come charging out of his darkened pen! No, it is not the same at all. Your young friend’s heart pounds fast with stimulation, yours with fear!”

  The big man finished his cigarette and stomped upon it with his boot. “I’m dry,” he said. “Get me water—and quickly.”

  María met his gaze defiantly, then poured a glass of water from a pitcher beside the bed. “You are always dry on such a day. You won’t eat for fear of being gored and requiring an operation. But you will drink water, gallons of it.”

  “That is my business.”

  “You are my business,” she answered and there was a sudden softness to her voice. “Please give me peace. Give up this dance of death.”