An Ambush For Zorro - Shooting

He rode carefully through the shadows, away from town and away from the highway. Finally he turned toward where the highway curved between two hills. Screened by thick brush on a hillside, he looked down upon the camping ground.

A small fire was burning, and the oxen handlers were squatting around it, eating and drinking from a wineskin. The night breeze carried their voices to Zorro, but he understood only a snatch of talk now and then:

“…Señor Vallejo will do the handsome thing by us if he succeeds in this . . . ’tis outrageous to doff our uniforms and be oxen goaders …we are more fortunate than our comrades in the cart … but they were out of the pelting rain at least.”

So those men supposed to be oxen goaders were soldiers also, Zorro realized. Four of them, and possibly half a dozen more armed troopers in the cart beneath the covering of skins. And, for all Zorro knew, perhaps Sergeant Garcia and some of the troopers from Reina de Los Angeles were in ambush in the vicinity also.

Zorro got a pistol from his sash, aimed carefully and fired. The bullet zipped into the embers of the fire and sent them flying into the faces of the men squatting around it. The ominous crack of the weapon sang in their ears as it was echoed among the rocks. None had seen the flash of the pistol.

They sprang up in alarm and ran toward the carts, shouting at one another, their words betraying the presence of the hidden men. Zorro moved his black horse along the screen of brush and down nearer the highway. From this new position he fired again, after reloading his weapon. The second pistol remained in his sash untouched.

This time, the bullet thudded into the side of one of the carts. And this time one of the men had seen the pistol’s flash. He yelled and pointed. Zorro gave a wild yell that rang among the rocks with multiplied sound, and at a curve where the light of the moon was cut off he rode across the highway and upon higher ground on the opposite side.

From a new point of vantage, he looked down upon the camp. He could hear the men jabbering. Those hidden in the cart had not been decoyed out of it by his shots. The oxen goaders grew quiet. They kept to the shadows cast by the carts. They were watching, listening.

Zorro aimed his pistol and fired again, and yelled as he fired. The bullet struck a rock beside the road and screamed its song of ricochet. And now from the cart came men carrying muskets, six of them, and they darted to cover in the darkness and opened fire at the hillside.

Zorro rode behind rocks and sought cover and listened to the fusillade. He could understand the feelings of the men down in the camp. An unknown was shooting at them, a bullet might fly at them from any direction. They faced a mysterious enemy they could not even see.

He changed position and fired again. Once more his bullet struck a rock and glanced into the brush with a nasty whine. And again the muskets spoke until they were emptied of their charges, and the slugs from them whistled harmlessly among the rocks and clumps of brush on the hillside.

The wind was sweeping the sounds of firing along the curving highway, driving the echoes of gunfire toward the town. Then one of the men rushed across the highway to where a riding mule had been tethered for the night, and a moment later was bending low over the mule’s neck and racing along the sloppy road toward Reina de Los Angeles. He was carrying news of the mysterious attack to Señor José Vallejo, Zorro guessed.

Along the hillside, Zorro started riding cautiously toward the town. Before he had gone far, he heard hoofs pounding the road below him.


- An Ambush For Zorro