The alcalde is delighted with an invitation for a birthday party at the inn with the nobility, but Mendoza got one too, while don Diego and don Alejandro doubt if the alcalde really throws a birthday party for Mendoza. Yet they all go and are, with Victoria, knocked down and tied up with a lighted fuse to a powder keg by Ricardo Quintana, who spent eight months in prison where his partner in crime (see the previous episode "The Unhappy Medium") Myatana died.

The hated colonel Mefisto Palomarez returns waving a royal re-grant of all lands in the territory- to him, so he takes residence at the de la Vega hacienda, but accepts don Alejandro's suggestion to have the document authenticated by an impartial non-land owner: sergeant Mendoza. Thanks to ever loyal Felipe, Diego learns the colonel plans to sell the pueblo to the Britton Bickel. Zorro manages to look at the parchment and finds it a brilliant forgery, but gets scarred by Palomarez with a mysterious deadly poison