The Black Rider Read Online Free

said Don Carlos. “He is only an Indian.”
    “He is not like the others,” she said, looking thoughtfully at her fiancé.
    “The others are mere root grubbers, ditch diggers,” said the son of the lord of the land, shrugging his shoulders. “This fellow is different…yes. You can tell that he is a Navajo by that band around his hair and his white trousers. The Navajos
are
different. Most of them are men. But no Navajo with an ounce of blood in his veins would be herding sheep for a white man. This man is probably an outcast, a coward, perhaps a fool, certainly a knave!”
    She gave Don Carlos one look, a long one; she gave the Indian another glance, a short one.
    “I don’t agree with you,” she said.
    “Why not, Lucia?”
    “Because he is a musician. That’s one thing. And besides….”
    “Besides what?”
    “I don’t know,” she said, and added: “Talk to him, Carlos!”
    This was pronounced so shortly that Don Carlos stared a little, for he had never in his life received commands except from his father who, after all, was a sort of deity of another order. However, when he looked to the girl, he found her smiling so frankly that he quite forgot he had received an order.
    Now he reined his horse closer. The Indian had folded his hands and addressed his gaze to the distantmountains, lofty, naked rock faces, spotted richly with color all dim and blended behind a veiling mist.
    “Tell me, fellow,” said Don Carlos, “what is your name?”
    He had asked the question, of course, in Spanish, and the Indian returned to him a dull, unintelligent stare.
    “I shall ask him in Navajo,” said Don Carlos to the girl. “He has probably come here only newly. Otherwise he would have understood such a simple question. These Navajos, besides, are not such fools, you know.”
    He said to the Indian, in a broad, quick guttural: “What is your name? Quickly, because we cannot stay here. What is your name and what made you learn the flute?”
    Not a whit of intelligence glimmered in the steady black eyes of the other. Don Carlos flushed.
    “The oaf dares to keep silence!” he said. “I shall give him a lesson that will be written in his skin the rest of his life!”
    And he raised a riding whip. At the same instant, into the hand of the Indian came a long and heavy knife. He did not hold it by the hilt, but balanced it loosely in the palm of his hand, the knife blade extending over the fingers, so that it was plain he intended to throw it, and there was something in his unmoved air which gave assurance that his weapon would not miss the target. Don Carlos, with a gasp of rage and astonishment, whirled his horse away.
    “The scoundrel!” he cried. “We’ll silence that flute, by heaven! Turn your face, Lucia!”
    “Carlos!” she cried, riding straight between him and his intended target. “Do you mean to pistol him in cold blood?”
    “Cold blood?” cried he. “I tell you, Lucia, if we did not keep these desert rats down, they would eat throughour walls and knife us in our sleep. They’d swarm over the whole land. There is only one way to treat an Indian…like a mad dog!”
    Her expression, for the moment, reminded him of that of the Navajo—it was the blank of one who veils a thought.
    “Here comes your father,” she said. “Perhaps he will speak for
Señor
Torreño.”
    Torreño, in fact, had followed the two at a slow gait, not close enough to interfere with their privacy, but at a sufficient distance to keep his eye upon them, as though he dared not risk the safety of the two human beings who meant the most to him in the world.

III “TAKI”
    H e had no sooner come up when his son explained everything that had happened in the following way:
    “I asked this Indian dog for his name in Spanish and in Navajo. He dared to remain silent.”
    “So?” said Torreño. “A Navajo, however, is not a dog, but a man…or half a man.” He said gently to the tall Indian:
“Amigo
, do you know