Captain Fly-By-Night

Captain Fly-By-Night by Johnston McCulley

Captain Fly-by-Night tells the story of a mysterious caballero who rides El Camino Real from San Francisco de Asis southward toward San Diego de Alcalá carrying a governor's pass that names no bearer. The tale opens at the Santa Barbara presidio during the siesta hour, where Sergeant Carlos Cassara wakes to find a suspicious Indian neophyte watching the highway. Soon a dust-caked caballero staggers in on foot, saddle on his back, claiming bandits killed his horse and Indian servant after he drove them off single-handed. Cassara doubts the story until a second traveller, arriving on a mule, confirms finding a field of bodies ten miles north. This second man, who calls himself Juan, also carries an unnamed governor's pass. The caballero calls himself Claudio. The two strangers agree that one must continue south immediately; they gamble with cards for the mule, and Claudio wins, riding away singing while Juan remains at Santa Barbara to await a horse. Claudio pushes the mule to near death, stops at San Fernando mission where Fray Felipe feeds him, provides a fresh horse, and warns him against an inn at Reina de Los Angeles, directing him instead to the house of Gonzales, a former pirate who gives him shelter and a discreet escort to the highway at dawn. At San Juan Capistrano the caballero meets unexpected hostility: a fray refuses to sell him a horse and sets neophytes on him. He fights his way free, recovers his guitar from the ground at a gallop, and presses on. At San Luis Rey de Francia an aged Indian gives him food and a night's rest in secret, warning him to leave before dawn. Arriving at San Diego de Alcalá, the caballero finds the entire mission community, fraile, neophyte, and townsman alike, treating him as if he does not exist. Señor Lopez, the rancho manager, explains why: the man is known up and down the coast as Captain Fly-by-Night, a gambler and seducer of fortunes, who publicly boasted he would win the newly orphaned Señorita Anita Fernandez and her late father's broad rancho even though her distant relative Rojerio Rocha was already expected to come south and marry her. The mission has decided not to drive him away by force, which would let him claim unfair treatment, but to render him invisible instead. The caballero camps by the creek, endures three days of torrential rain with no fire, food, or shelter, and is refused hospitality at the presidio as well. The lieutenant there tells him that Señorita Anita is regarded as a daughter by every soldier at the post and that the presidio stands with the mission against him. Anonymous gifts of flint and steel and then a parcel of roast mutton, wine, and honey, left by small fashionable shoes the caballero identifies as Anita's, sustain him. Six gentile Indians, warned by runners from San Luis Rey de Francia, pitch a hide teepee for him by night and bring provisions at midnight. The lieutenant sends two soldiers to watch him. When Anita finally speaks to him in the orchard, she asks him to leave before Rojerio Rocha arrives. He refuses, declaring he intends to win her or have no wife. She withdraws in anger. While at the orchard well the caballero discovers a secret tunnel left by earlier frailes, uses it to pass through the mission unseen, and maps its exits through the guest house wall and the mortuary chapel. Rojerio Rocha arrives the next morning to great celebration. The caballero recognizes him at once as Juan, the man he beat at cards in Santa Barbara, who has also made his way south. Rocha confronts the caballero, they duel, and the caballero wounds Rocha in the shoulder. The enraged neophytes charge, a shot is fired, and the caballero escapes into the hills on horseback. Simultaneously, Sergeant Cassara has been riding hard down El Camino Real, carrying word to each presidio and mission that a widespread native uprising has been discovered, that its leaders in the north have been arrested, and that Captain Fly-by-Night is identified as the chief organizer, to be taken dead or alive. Cassara reaches San Diego de Alcalá in a state of exhaustion. The caballero, hunted by soldiers and by the gentiles he has apparently been organizing, takes refuge in a cave with a gentile guide. There he learns that the uprising is real and imminent, that hundreds of warriors have gathered on the Fernandez rancho, and that the Indians plan to strike within two nights. The chiefs insist he give the order to attack immediately or they will hold him prisoner until they strike without him. Instead he escapes by spurring his horse through their campfires and vanishing into the night. He circles back, enters the presidio by scaling the rear wall, and finds Cassara alone with two soldiers, beating a captive gentile for information. Holding them at pistol point, he has the Indian bind the soldiers while he eats, sleeps three hours, and leaves Cassara a written note warning him to watch Rojerio Rocha. Before departing he tells Cassara the exact location of the hostile camp and reveals that the attack is planned for the night after next, offering the information as a genuine warning. Cassara, freed, rides to the mission and reports. Meanwhile Rocha insists on taking Anita, Señora Vallejo, Lopez, and four soldiers out to the Fernandez rancho, dismissing warnings of danger. At the rancho the overseers are found stabbed. Lopez and the four soldiers ride into the cañon where the Indian camp is hidden and are massacred. Rocha rides toward the cañon as well and is swept up by the warriors, who bring him back to the ranch-house surrounded but apparently unharmed among them, while Anita and Señora Vallejo are locked in an upstairs room. Cassara witnesses the massacre from a hilltop, rides hard back to the mission, and reports to the comandante. The garrison, a handful of soldiers, eight frailes, and a score of loyal neophytes, begins preparing to defend the mission and wait for Ensign Sanchez and his squad from Santa Barbara. Hidden in the tunnel behind the guest house fireplace, Captain Fly-by-Night has heard every word of the report, and he thinks of Anita's face and prays for night to fall quickly.

By Johnston McCulley · First published 1919 · Genre: Adventure Fiction, Historical Fiction, Swashbuckling Romance · 25 chapters · 86,707 words

First lines

His great body stretched on the dirt floor in a shady corner of the barracks-room of the presidio, his long moustache drooped, his big mouth open, Sergeant Carlos Cassara snored.

His face was purple from wine and the heat; for the air was still and stagnant this siesta hour, and empty vessels on the table near by told of the deep drinking that had been done.

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adventure · pulp fiction · early 20th century · action · masked hero · vigilante · California · Spanish colonial setting · swashbuckling · mystery · justice · Robin Hood archetype

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Captain Fly-By-Night is listed on Textopian as a novel by Johnston McCulley, dated 1919 CE.

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