California Gold (106 page)

“So I am learning.”

Obregón touched Marquez’s forehead. “Christ save us. It’s like a hot coal.”

“Yes, sir. I fear that if he doesn’t have a doctor, and medicine, he’ll die.”

“You are right, I think.” Again the elderly Mexican scanned the hazy flatland. “The
padrón
of my ranch would not summon a doctor for him, that much I know. But we can make a place for him in our barracks. It’s better than most. You get on that side and help me lift him.”

The frame barracks, occupying one side of a large treeless yard a mile from the Bowles-Raisin road, baked in the hot sun. Dragging Marquez between them, Obregón and Mukerji crossed the yard, passing a water trough with an upright spigot at the end. Obregón’s eyes moved back and forth watchfully.

In the distance, bright fans of water churned from noisy pumps, irrigating the arbors. Farther away, a huge chugging Hart-Parr tractor plowed a fallow field, its great steel tires giving off occasional flashes in the sun. Marquez’s eyelids fluttered. Sensing that someone was helping him, he tried to move his feet and slipped from Mukerji’s grasp, dropping on his side in the yellow dust.

“Pick him up—quickly,” Obregón whispered. “The
padrón
rides the property every day about this hour. He mustn’t see this man. You either. He’d turn you out.”

“No,” Mukerji said.

“What’s that?”

“I said, no, he won’t turn us out.”

“You’re sure, are you?” Obregón said crossly.

“Yes, I am sure. You see, this man was once a Roman Catholic priest. A holy man, full of Christian love. He taught the Wobblies to be passive and not fight back when attacked. I learned quickly that he was wrong. Before we left Fresno, I went to our friend Mr. Frank Little. He gave me something.”

Gopal Mukerji undid two buttons of his sweat-soaked shirt. The astonished Obregón saw a small revolver concealed against the man’s belly.

“I have bullets too,” Mukerji said. “No one will move Diego until he’s better.”

Obregón stared at the Hindustani with a keen new appreciation. Then the sight of a dust plume down a side road roused him. “It’s the
padrón,
Tarbox. Let’s get him inside; we can argue later.”

They dragged Diego Marquez to the barracks stoop, where a stout black-haired woman and two barefoot children regarded the activity with mild surprise. Obregón gestured for her to open the heavy door. As the sound of a horse grew audible, they hauled Marquez from the blinding sunlight through the shade of the stoop to the cool dark of the interior. The woman closed the door from outside, leaning against the whitewashed siding and the painted wooden sign, which said
CUARTEL
beneath a faded
JMC
cartouche.

O
N MARCH 6, FREMONT
Older called at Greenwich Street. Mack had come north at the end of February. Now he received his friend in the first-floor office.

“No more stays. No more appeals. Tomorrow’s the day,” Older said. “Abe Ruef finally goes to San Quentin.”

“It’s taken long enough.”

“I grant you that. I thought you’d like to come down to the county jail to watch the transfer. The caravan leaves at half past twelve.”

“What do you mean,
caravan
?”

“It’s turning into a blasted carnival. Reporters cordially invited. Honest Abe is the biggest and most celebrated con ever to be locked up in Q. His cell mates can’t wait to meet him. He’s already lined up a cushy job in the jute mill.”

“I’ll be there if I can.” Mack jotted a note. In the next room, a telephone rang. Alex Muller’s muffled voice could be heard answering.

Older tapped the arm of the visitor’s chair. “The transfer isn’t the only reason I came by. I want to be open with you and Rudy and everyone else in the reform group—”

“Open about what?”

“Ruef’s fourteen-year sentence will net down to nine years with good behavior. The present rule states that a prisoner isn’t eligible for parole until half the sentence is served. I intend to campaign to get that rule set aside. I’m going to use the full resources of the
Bulletin.
”

Mack leaned back. “I don’t believe I’m hearing this.”

“Abe Ruef has been tried and convicted. He’s a ruined man. His political apparatus is destroyed—he’ll never wield power again. Why humiliate him?”

“Because he’s a damn crook who bled this city for years.”

“And we drew his blood too. We needn’t wallow in it.” From a card case Older brought a folded sheet of paper, which he gave to Mack.

“What’s this?”

“Notes for an editorial.”

Mack deciphered Older’s hand with difficulty.

One needs a strong sense of self-righteousness to hold the key to another man’s cell. One should be very sure of his own rectitude before he feels a pharisaical gladness over the humiliation of Abe Ruef.

“Fremont, what is this? What’s going on?”

“Business, Mack. Business is what’s going on. I went to Ruef’s cell yesterday and arranged a deal with him. As soon as he’s settled in prison, he’ll start drafting his memoirs. To be published exclusively in the
Bulletin
.”

Mack’s mouth dropped. First came a searing anger, and he was about to remind Older that Ruef’s hirelings had lamed Jim. Then a sad and cynical resignation sapped the impulse; Jim was gone.

“What’s your angle?” he said instead. “ ‘Confessions of a repentant boss’?”

Older ignored the sarcasm. “Exactly.”

“Good Lord.” Mack shook his head. Alex Muller banged the door back in his haste to enter the room.

“Sir? It’s Jesse Tarbox on the wire. Extremely urgent.”

“Excuse me a minute.” After Mack left, Fremont Older took the opportunity to slip out the front way with scarcely a sound.

“Found them this morning,” Jesse Tarbox said. His sinewy face was red and sun-blistered, his khaki shirt sweated through at the armpits and across the back. He rapped his riding crop on his thigh. “Two of them. Wobblies run out of Fresno. One’s a crazy rag-head, the other a Spic named Marquez. The rag-head’s packing a pistol.”

He listened.

“Actually it was my
segundo
Mr. Keeter who found them.” Over by the office door, Homer Keeter stood idly scratching his crotch. He was a sandy-haired lout with a broom straw in the corner of his mouth.

“We’re trying to keep it quiet—Christ knows what some of the hotheads around here would do if they found out.”
Tar and feather me first, probably.
“The problem is the rag-head’s got that gun, and he says I can’t touch the Spic because he’s bad sick. On top of that, he’s a priest. Or he used to be. Can you feature that, a Wobbly priest?”

He listened.

“That’s right—Marquez.”

He listened.

“No, sir, I can’t just order them out. I tried.” Homer Keeter snorted; he’d been the one sent into the barracks with orders for the Wobblies to vacate.

Tarbox listened.

“Goddamn it, Mr. Chance, that isn’t fair. I didn’t just let it happen. My best foreman, Obregón, he picked them up and took them in. I’d like to flay the hide off Obregón but he’s got eighteen relatives in that barracks.”
And I’m scared of every one of them.

He listened.

“I know it’s my responsibility but I don’t know what the hell to do,” he shouted. “That’s why I called.”

He listened, slapping his crop against his riding breeches.

“All right, sir. Yes, sir. I’ll sit tight until you get here but please make it fast. Yes,
sir
.”

Jesse Tarbox hung up the earpiece carelessly, and it fell off the hook, banging the wall at the end of its cord. When he tried to hang it up again, he broke the hook. Swearing, he let the earpiece dangle.

“I don’t know why I work for that snotty son of a bitch.”

“Because he pays top dollar, that’s why.”

“He’s coming down here personally.”

“I gathered.”

“Be here sometime tomorrow.”

“Well, he better hurry, because we got fifty greasers in that barracks, and you can’t count on all of ’em keeping their mouths shut. Any of our neighbors find out we’re hidin’ two Wobblies on this ranch, we are in trouble.”

“Shit, that’s what I told him,” Jesse Tarbox said. He hit his crop on the desk so hard, Homer Keeter jumped.

Mack checked the timetables. All the trains in the next few hours were locals, so he decided it would be faster to drive the Packard. He made good time for a while, but south of Stockton, just across the Stanislaus County line, a tire blew out. The Packard’s headlamps veered wildly toward the left, and as the auto bounded for the shoulder, Mack hauled on the wheel to keep it out of the ditch. The rear end slewed. He tramped on the brake and killed the engine.

The Packard shook once and settled, an enormous cloud of tan dust slowly ascending into the purple twilight. He heard coyotes barking in the distance. He’d sure as hell guessed wrong about taking the car. He could either change the tire and keep driving, or hike to the nearest depot and wait. He certainly wasn’t going to hike and wait.

Mack threw his fedora on the seat next to him and leaned his forehead on the wheel. The cool evening air laved his face. He felt grubby from hours of driving, and hungry, but he’d brought no food. There was a dairy barn about half a mile on, and he wondered if he could cadge a drink of milk or a butt of bread.

But first he had to change the tire. He climbed out, shed his coat, and undid his cravat. The western light winked on the blued metal of his Shopkeeper’s Colt. The delay didn’t improve his mood.

Repeatedly, the wrench or the wheel nuts slipped from his arthritic hands. All in all it took him over half an hour. When he finally got to the dairy farm, he paid for a quart of milk and half a loaf of bread and was allowed to crawl up in the haymow for an hour. Then he drove on through the vast star-strewn night. He had a powerful sense of a tide flowing against him.

At the Merced River crossing in Merced County, he found the bridge blocked by carpenters repairing sections of bridge floor that had collapsed under a wagonload of quarry stone. Mack swore and drove miles out of his way, up to Snelling. There he drove onto a barge that ferried him over the river.

It was 12:30
P.M.
and too hot for March. The gritty wind had a parched smell, as if it were August. He sweated and drove without rest, without food, steadily south.

Above Chowchilla, a Madera County deputy on horseback came galloping from a side road, firing shots in the air. Mack stopped and the deputy arrested him for reckless speeding.

Mack showed identification, then named his companies and some of his connections in the state—it meant nothing. The rural magistrate and the deputy had never heard of him.

He thought of Abe Ruef. How would he handle this? He offered the magistrate and deputy bribes of $100 each, and they suddenly became cordial and helpful, the deputy directing him to a decent café, the magistrate inviting him to relax in the swing on his front porch. Mack stifled his sulfurous rage and said no. At half past three, on the raw edge of exhaustion, he continued south.

The Packard roared into the dusty yard in the red sundown. With the day’s field work finished, families were together, barefoot children chasing each other around the trough and pump, a naked infant crawling to and fro, an imposing rooster pecking at nothing, a wiry yellow hound chasing its tail and yapping. The air smelled of warm earth and spicy cooking.

The picture of dishevelment, Mack flung himself out of the Packard and strode inside the barracks. A majority of the field-workers recognized him, the women smiling shyly and the men knuckling their foreheads. Mack fumed; he assumed Tarbox was responsible for the subservience.

The building consisted of clean, spartan living spaces off a hall that ran down its length. Some of the living spaces consisted of three rooms, some, for the bachelors, only one. Everything was freshly whitewashed, and ceiling fixtures provided electric light. The second floor was identical.

Up there, halfway down the corridor, Mack spied a young man in a turban standing in a doorway. He was brown, but not a Mexican. Mack went straight past him, noticing his wary look, and into the two-room space. The sight of Diego Marquez was a shock. He lay on a bunk, fat, sallow, and sick. Mack smelled the sweat soaking his cotton nightshirt.

He knelt by his old acquaintance and rested his palm on Marquez’s forehead. An elderly Mexican appeared at the door and stepped in.

“Soy Ramón Obregón. Buenas tardes, señor.”

“Chance.”

“Ya sé—lo he visto en fotografías.”

They shook hands, the young Indian peeking over Obregón’s shoulder. Marquez snorted and rolled his head back and forth. Then he calmed and began to snore with his mouth open.

Continuing in Spanish, Mack said, “His fever must be a hundred and four.”

“It has been thus for several days,” Obregón said. “I expected him to die. He refuses. He is a big man. Powerful, like a bull.”

“But he can’t last like this. I’ll get a doctor out here.”

“That is good,” said Mukerji in such perfect English that Mack was startled. “Diego is an excellent man. But they hate him very much in Fresno. Almost as much as they hate all Hindustani.”

“You’re the one who brought him here?”

“I am, sir.”

“How did he get this way?”

“He was arrested for speaking. They sprayed us with the cold water hose all night in the Fresno jail. Diego had suffered it once before. He was already sick. I brought him out of town.”

“I found them on the main road and took them in,” Obregón explained.

“You had no business doing that, no authority to do that.” Mack said it sharply, out of both weariness and a desire that this problem would just vanish.

Visible disappointment clouded Obregón’s face; he had heard better of J. M. Chance. “No authority, perhaps,” he replied quietly. “But a duty.” The old man’s eyes showed no subservience, no intimidation.

Mack retreated. “All right, I’ll accept that. No authority to do it, but every reason. I’ll drive up to Tarbox’s office and phone for a doctor. Let’s just keep this quiet. I don’t need any grief from the other ranchers. They think I’m too radical as it is.”