The Black Rider by Max Brand Page A

eyes.
    “If I were twenty years younger…yes, or ten…there would be no question of Carlos. I myself should marry you, Lucia!”
    “There would be no peace in your house.”
    “For a year, for two years, no! But after that, I would give you commands by mere glances and liftings of the finger! So! Your voice would never be heard except in answer to my questions. Ah, yes. It would be that way!”
    “But since you are too old for this battle, do you think that Carlos has strength for it?”
    “I shall teach him,” said Torreño. “In the meantime, our grip is on you. You are in our cage. We have thrown the net over your head. Beat your wings, sing your song, but escape if you can, my dear! But you cannot. You belong to me; you belong to Carlos. There is the end! In a few months, a few years…what is a little time?…you will learn to curl up in your nest! All will be well!”
    To this she made no answer, but she smiled at him in a way that made his heart fall.
    “Tell me, Lucia,” he said, “what manner of man could make you love him?”
    She answered instantly: “One who could fill me with fear.”
    “And have you seen such a man in all the world?”
    “One.”
    “And what was he?”
    She was silent again, and Torreño stared at her in real bewilderment. But here their interview ended. Filled with a whimsical impulse, he went to Carlos and told him everything, word for word.
    “Would you have her under these conditions?”
    “I love her,” said Carlos sadly. “And if love can breed love, she will come to care for me before the end!”
    “Bah!” said the elder man. “The mailed fist is the thing for her!”
    After that, the great Torreño gave little thought either to his son or to Lucia herself. He had before him what he felt to be more important matters, the details leading to the celebration of the marriage itself, which was to take place within three or four days after their arrival. And so, on the following day, they arrived at Casa Torreño itself.
    It was like a child’s dream of a castle. Through a shallow little valley a stream ran and pooled its waters in a spacious lake. Beside the lake was a village of white adobe houses; above the village the road wound to the fiat top of a great hill, and on the plateau stood the house itself, built of hewn stone. And at one side, a great square tower arose against the sky.
    “Why will you have such a fortress and such a dungeon keep for a house?” asked Lucia.
    “So that all the people in the plains may look up to this in clear weather and see the top of the tower…you see that it is painted white? And so they know that the eye of their master is on them while they work, while they sleep!”
    The instant they were in view over the top of the hills, a bell in the great house began to ring, and its largervoice was taken up by the jangle of other bells in the hollow where the village lay. People appeared, streaming from the Casa Torreño, and out of the village a gay-colored procession started up the road. Torreño looked triumphantly toward the girl, but her face was a blank. The next instant he had broken into curses. For the most inopportune interruption came to break up the solemnity of this occasion. At the last rest house there had been added to his train some couple of fleet greyhounds, and they had been brought along on the leash all day without finding anything to their liking in the way of game. But just at this instant their sharp voices were raised; Hernandez Guadalmo was heard loudly ordering them to be slipped, and in another instant half a dozen of the lean-bodied hunting dogs were straining across the hills after a flying hare. Behind them rushed Guadalmo and a few others of his immediate train; the followers of Torreño had far too much wit to leave the ranks at such a moment as this.
    The diversion took much from the grandeur of the moment, but Hernandez Guadalmo gave no heed to that. He was as greedy a hunter of wild game as he was of