Captain Courtesy
Summary
California, 1840: a sun-scorched Eden where olive groves tremble beneath the cruciform shadows of mission bells, yet the air is thick with gun-smoke and the copper stink of vendetta. Orphaned when the mercenary George Granville—Yankee turned apostate—puts torch and blade to his homestead, the adolescent Leonardo Davis slips into a chrysalis of grief and emerges as El Ángel de la Frontera, a velvet-masked revenant who waylays supply trains with courteous bows and leaves behind folkloric whispers of justice. He funnels stolen doubloons into the calloused hands of widowed ranchers, defends crinolined señoritas from drunken lancers, and vanishes into the chaparral astride a black stallion whose hooves drum like war drums against the clay. At San Fernando, amid candle-lit vespers and the incense of sacramental wine, Leonardo’s flinty heart softens for Eleanor, the mission’s luminously devout ward; her quiet plea for mercy detonates his obsession with reprisal and propels him into the ranks of the California Riflemen. But Granville—now a jackal in epaulettes—learns of a Jesuit cache of bullion buried beneath the altar steps and descends with a cadre of renegade dragoons. Leonardo, torn between covenant and carnage, smashes through polychrome saints on horseback, rides through moonlit citrus groves, and rouses General Kearny’s ragtag Yankees. In a final reckoning of sabre and conscience, he pins Granville at cliff’s edge, yet Eleanor’s trembling touch turns the blade away, sealing not death but the fragile dawn of a grudging peace.
Synopsis
In 1840, while California is ruled by Mexico, American settlers are in constant danger from Mexican marauders. After a band of Mexican soldiers led by American renegade George Granville kill the parents of Leonardo Davis, he vows vengeance and begins a career as a masked highwayman who terrorizes the Mexican offenders. Because Leonardo gives his plunder to those Americans who have been robbed, and he protects the women, children, poor, and helpless from attacks, he becomes known as "Captain Courtesy." At the San Fernando Mission, Leonardo falls in love with Eleanor, the orphaned ward of Father Reinaldo. For Eleanor's sake, Leonard renounces his mission of vengeance and joins the California Riflemen. When Granville learns about a cache of gold hidden at the Mission, he organizes an attack. Leonardo crashes through the stained glass window on his horse and rides to General Stephen Kearny's troops encamped in Los Angeles, who then rout the Mexicans. When Granville boldly admits that he slew the Davises, Leonardo fights him, but Eleanor persuades him to spare Granville's life.
