Dick Dorling's Ride Into San Tomas.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXVIII, Issue XXI, 24 May 1902, Page 1048

Dick Dorling's Ride Into San Tomas.

WIT® BRITISH PLUCK—AND SOME

PEPPER.

“Oft course. Dad, you’ve a perfect right to planse yourself, and, after all. yau should know more about the fellow than I do. As you say, I’ve only been in Spain a few days. For ali that there’s something about that greasy Spaniard of yours I don’t like.”

Mr Dorling laughed good-humour-c-ily. His son Dick had only reached San Lucar from England the week before, and already he appeared to have formed a very poor opinion of the Spaniard in general and of the trusted Felipe in particular. “I'iMt’ve not known the Spaniard long enough to do him justice, my boy,’’ remarked Mr Dorling. “No doubt you’ll find that Felipe improves on acquaintance.” “I hope so, Dad,” returned Dick, auuing grimly; “at present I would trust the fellow as far as I could •brow a bull by the tail, and no further.”

"Phew!" laughed the merchant, “if Felipe is the. rogue you take him to be I fancy the people at the San To.nas branch will have to whistle for • heir month’s wages to-morrow. I’m going- to send him over with the cash to Morgan, my manager, there.” "Dad!” ejaculated Dick earnestly, "let me take the money. It might be sale with Felipe; it will be safe with me. Where is this San Tomas? Not above 50 miles inland, is it? I can nip over on my bike, and ” "Steady, lad, steady!” laughed Mr Dorling. "1 on don’t seem to understand that a 50 miles run on a bicycle in ibis country is a different thing altogether from a spin on the hard roads of Old England. The road to San Tomas is little better than a track over the hills, and you might meet worse characters even than Felix-" +’,» 4r>nrnev. No, no. m” boy, I think we’d better trust to Felipe and his mule.”

Dick, however, was not to be lightly put off. He didn’t care what the roads were like, he said. If time was

a consideration surely a boy and a Dicycle should be able to beat a man and a mule.

“Besides,” continued Dick, “I shall be able to see something of the country. I can take my camera along and Hullo!” he suddenly broke off, “what’s that?”

Springing to his feet, Dick threw open the door of the room. There was a sound of hurrying steps outside and the boy was just in time to see a figure drop over the verandah. “Felipe!” gasped Dick. “He was listening at the door!”

"Nonsense!” ejaculated Mr Dorling. 'Tou must have been mistaken. Felipe would scarcely dare ”

-ill the same he touched the bell ‘•nd instructed one of his clerks to send up the Spaniard. A moment later Felipe bowed himse.f into the room.

“What wefe you doing on the verandah just now, Felipe?” demanded Mr Dorling.

lhe Spaniard raised his eyes in will-feigned astonishment. Then, with a shifty glance from father to son, he began: ‘ The young senor mistakes ”

indeed!” gasped Mr Dorling. “How came you to know- that the young senor had anything to do with the matter?”

I* airly caught, Felipe then confessed that he had been on the verandah. He haa even passed the door of the room, but had “heard nothing.” “That will do,” remarked Mr Dorliug severely. “I’ll meet you in the cluee in a few minutes.” The Spaniard left the room, and Sir Dorling turned to Dick. “You shall go to San Tomas tomorrow, Dick,” was all he said. 11. Ten minutes later Felipe left the office of Dorling and Co. for ever. When “carpeted” by his employer he. had chosen to be impertinent, and had been promptly discharged. >s he left the premises the Spaniard turned and, shaking his fist at the window of Dick’s room, hissed out: “Ben vienes, si vienes solo!” Dick overheard the little speech,

though he did not know enough of the language to grasp its import. “What’s the fellow mean, Diego?" he asked of a junior clerk who happened to be near. “ ‘Ben vienes, si vieues solo!’ ” repeated Diego. “ ‘Thou comest well, if thou comest alone!’ The senor would do well to heed the warning. Felipe is a dangerous man!”

“1 shall go to San Tomas to-mor-row,” returned Dick, “if a hundred Felipes bar the road. Who and what is the fellow?”

“Until to-day he was an overseer in the packing-room of the San Tomas branch,” said Diego. “His home is on the hills this side San Tomas, where, in his spare time, he may always be found with his dogs. Felipe has many dogs—fierce, fighting dogs. He breeds, and sells them. Now the senor understands! He will not go to San Tomas!” “Won’t he?” was the instant rejoinder. “You don’t know Dick Dorling. Not a word of this to your master, Diego. It would only upset him and do no good.”

At nine o’clock on the following morning Dick, with his precious burden strapped securely to the frame of his bicycle, left the office of Dorling and Co. “Bah!” ejaculated Diego as he watched him depart, “these Englishmen are fools!”

Before leaving San Lucar, Dick had a purchase or two to make. There was nothing uncommon in the demand for a stout dog-whip, but when Dick invested in a pound of pepper, and insisted on having the stuff poured loose into his coat pockets, the worthy tradesman unconsciously echoed Diego’s sentiment.

For the first lirteen miles or so Dick found little to grumble about with regard to the road. It was passable, he told himself, if scarcely perfect.

Leaving the stately Gaudalquiver on the left, Dick found himself confronted by the frowning heights of the Sierra Nevada range. Late in the afternoon the boy, weary and perspiring, dismounted for the twentieth time and proceeded to push his machine through the loose sand and shifting stones.

“Phew!” he muttered to himself. “The pater knew what he was talking about when he described this beastly road. Anyhow, there can’t be much more of it. Unless I’ve lost my way I should be able to see San Tomas from the top of this hill.”

A few minutes later Dick had reached the summit. Far below he could distinctly make out the little village of San Tomas. “At last!” ejaculated Dick, with a sigh of satisfaction. “Just as the pater described it! The road, a vast improvement on what I’ve traversed, winds slowly down to the village. No steep bits; just a gradual descent. By Jove, I’ve a good mind to take matters easy and coast Hullo!” he suddenly broke off, “I was forgetting you, my friend.” A hundred yards or so further on the road curved slightly to the left, and round this curve, only for a moment, appeared the well-remembered features of the rascally Felipe.

Dick’s next action was a strange one. Taking his knife he cut a slit in the bottom of each of the pepperladen pockets of his coat. Then, with the whip in his teeth, and checking the flow of pepper with his disengaged hand, Dick Dorling tore down the hill at an ever-increas-ing pace. 111. “At him, Jose! Bend him, good Ramond!” Encouraged by the cries of their villainous master, half a dozen dogs of as many different breeds, sprang at the intrepid rider. At the same moment Dick released his pockets, and instantly a cloud of pepper mingled with the flying dust of the road. Before Dick could use his whip the foremost dog had seized him by the coat.

The animal didn’t hold on very long, however. With a howl of anguish and a mouth full of pepper he rolled in the road, upsetting another savage brute in so doing. Then down, right and left, hissed the heavy lash, and, to the unbounded astonishment of the ruffianly Spaniard, who knew nothing of the pepper, the whole pack drew off, apparently, as Dick subsequently put it. “to think the matter over.”

In a moment, they were off again in pursuit, followed at a wonderful pace by their furious owner. Dick Dorling, leaning over his handle bars, strained every nerve to keep the advantage he had gained. His pepper was now exhausted, and if his speed failed him he could hardly hope to beat off another attack with the whip alone. Riding as he had never ridden before, Dick still realised that over the uneven ground his pursuers were beating him. His strength was giving out, his head swam, and he rocked in the saddle as he vaguely remembered he had once done before—at the finish of that ten miles’ race at school. Once more the pack was close on his back wheel—he had. seen one hungry set of fangs under his arm — when suddenly Dick Dorling shot bolt upright in his saddle as a tremendous bellow seemed to shake the very hills. Not thirty yards in front a magnificent black bull—he was one of four to be slain in the arena at Seville on the morrow—was lowering his massive head for the charge. Dick had given up all for lost when, like a flash, the truth dawned on him. The bull came, not as an enemy, but as a friend in very need. As the black mass swept past him Dick looked back over his shoulder to see a couple of his late assailants in the air, and to hear the howl of a third as the life was stamped out of him.

Dick heard something else, too. It was the last despairing yell of the would-be thief and murderer—for Felipe had gone to his account. A few minutes later a weak, exhausted figuite staggered into the office of Dorling and Co. at San Tomas.

“A narrow squeak, Mr Morgan,” said Dick, as he reeled into the manager's ehair, "but 1 did it. The month’s wages are here.”

On the following day there was some little astonishment at Seville when it was announced that after all only three bulls would enter the arena, the fourth having been purchased at a fabulous price by “a madbrained Englishman at San Lucar!” Dick Dorling could tell you why!