The Black Rider by Max Brand Read Free Book Online

merely waved such fears aside with a graceful gesture.
    “You don’t understand,” she said. “And I think that I do…a little.”
    This rather mysterious speech there was no time to explain.
    “How long,” said Lucia, “were you in Europe?”
    “A year and two months,
madame.”
    “A year and two months?” echoed Lucia.
    Then she leaned back in her chair and began to smile like one who has solved a difficulty. She nodded at him again.
    “One can easily see,” she said, “how you could afford to spend so long a time on your studies.”
    He regarded her rather anxiously, but did not speak.
    “A year and two months,” said Lucia, “completed your liberal education. Well, well, it is delightful to hear ofsuch natural talents! There are some men who labor all their lives to learn how to fence, and even then they succeed only poorly. I remember that my father, even when he was quite an old man, used to spend an hour every day with the professor. He still takes fencing lessons twice a week! And I have a brother who has dreamed of nothing since he was a boy except to manage a rapier. But you, Taki, in the course of a year and two months, have reached such a point of skill that neither my father nor my brother could compare with you. I have seen them; I am sure that
Señor
Don Carlos Torreño fences as well as they do. And indeed, Don Carlos has made it the greatest work of his life…his fencing, I mean! It shows a very real and a very rare talent, Taki, that you have been able to learn so much in a short year and two months. You must have practiced very hard constantly!”
    He was still watching her with a shade of anxiety; but he answered: “I was constantly at work,
señorita!”
    “But I forget! I forget! In that time you had also your lessons in dancing, in which I suppose you progressed as well as you did in fencing? Perhaps…even better?”
    “I became a very stupid and very poor dancer,
señorita!”
    She laughed at him. “Will you tell me that when you confess that the ladies would dance with you?”
    “They were curious,
señorita
, to see the poor barbarian act like a civilized man.”
    “Nonsense,” she exclaimed, with the surety of absolute knowledge. “No woman would make herself appear ridiculous for the sake of curiosity. Not in such circles.”
    His face was covered instantly with his habitual mask.
    “However, the dancing and the fencing is not all. Byno means. There is the singular purity of your French, Taki. Most strange that one should pick up so perfect an accent in a single year. I, for instance, have worked half my life like a slave to learn that language. And still, any child could excel me! Indeed, Taki, you are very apt. You shame my father, my brother, Don Carlos, and me; you excel us so very far, Taki.”
    He answered neither word nor look but still stared past her with a sort of bland indifference.
    “But I have forgotten the most important thing of all!” she exclaimed, “and the surest proof that you are a genius, Taki. You were able to master the flute in a single year…master it to a perfect smoothness. In a single year…that difficult instrument. In a single year, Taki, to become a master flute player, a dangerous and polished fencer, a dancer of grace at least; in a single year you have equipped yourself also with the very French of Paris. What additional study was there required to add Spanish to that list, for I see that you speak it with great precision. And,” she added with a sudden change of voice, and speaking in excellent English: “What other languages are you a master of beside your own Navajo?”
    “Of none,
señorita,”
he answered, and then caught himself and bit his lip.
    “You answer me in Spanish,” she said, “but you understand the question I put in English.”
    “When I was a boy” said Taki, “I knew a trader who was from the colony of Virginia. I learned English from him.”
    She merely smiled, her eyes bright and hard as she examined