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"I swear by the saints—"

"Do not! You have done enough false swearing already. Step forward!"

The dealer complied, trembling as if with a disease; and Señor Zorro dismounted swiftly and walked around in front of his horse. The dealer's assistant was standing beside the carreta, and his face was white.

"Forward!" Señor Zorro commanded again.

Again the dealer complied; but suddenly he began to beg for mercy, for Señor Zorro had taken a mule whip from beneath his long cloak, and held it ready in his right hand, while he held the pistol in his left.

"Turn your back!" he commanded now.

"Mercy, good highwayman! Am I to be beaten as well as robbed? You would whip an honest merchant because of a thieving fray?"

The first blow fell, and the dealer shrieked with pain. His last remark appeared to have given strength to the highwayman's arm. The second blow fell, and the dealer in hides and tallow went to his knees in the dusty highroad.

Then Señor Zorro returned his pistol to his belt, and stepped forward and grasped the dealer's mop of hair with his left hand, so as to hold him up, and with the right he rained heavy blows with the mule whip upon the man's back, until his tough coat and shirt were cut to ribbons, and the blood soaked through.

"That for a man who perjures himself and has an honest fray punished!" Señor Zorro cried.

And then he gave his attention to the assistant.

"No doubt, young man, you but carried out your master's orders when you lied before the magistrado," he said, "but you must be taught to be honest and fair, no matter what the circumstances."

"Mercy, señor!" the assistant howled.

"Did you not laugh when the fray was being whipped? Are you not filled with wine now because you have been celebrating the punishment that godly man received for something he did not do?"

Señor Zorro grasped the youth by the nape of his neck, whirled him around, and sent a stiff blow at his shoulders. The boy shrieked, and then began whimpering. Five lashes in all he received, for Señor Zorro apparently did not wish to render him unconscious. And finally he hurled the boy from him, and looped his whip.

"Let us hope both of you have learned your lesson," he said. "Get into the carreta, and drive on. And when you speak of this occurrence, tell the truth, else I hear of it and punish you again! Let me not learn that you have said some fifteen or twenty men surrounded and held you while I worked with the whip!"

The apprentice sprang into the cart, and his master followed, and they whipped up and disappeared in a cloud of dust toward San Gabriel. Señor Zorro looked after them for a time, then lifted his mask and wiped the perspiration from his face, and then mounted his horse again, fastening the mule whip to the pommel of his saddle.


- The Curse of Capistrano, Chapter 22