Roy Bean's Gold (21 page)

I tied up my horse in front of the saloon where Salazar and I had stopped when first we got to Los Angeles, and went in for a dust-cutter before supper. Pushing through the batwings, who should I meet coming out but old Sheriff Persifer? He looked me over, and then caught sight of White Lightning.

“Well, now, Mister Bean, ain't it?” He stood in the doorway, shook my hand, and then took another gander at the hitching rack. “And, if I don't mistake, that'd be one of Dick Powers's animals. Am I right?”

“Right. Powers insisted that I borrow one of his horses so I wouldn't need to travel by stage. I'm on my way up to San Francisco on business for my brother, the
alcalde
.” It was a mite thin but it was all I could come up with in a hurry, and the old lawman seemed to swallow it down.

He clapped me on the back and went on down the steps without seeming to give White Lightning another thought.

I changed my mind about that drink, unhitched the horse as soon as the sheriff turned the corner, and rode over to the National Hotel on Los Angeles Street. There I took my meal in the bar, and then stayed put in my room for the rest of the night.

It was scarce sunup when I checked out, got my horse from the stables, and was on my way from town—without breakfast. I didn't intend on running into any more folks who seemed to take pleasure in small talk about Diamond Dick's horse—and lawmen in particular.

Threading our way through the crooked, ungraded streets in the growing light, I saw that Major Thomas Mulcahey McGuire was a man who believed in backing his spoken word with the printed variety, for I counted nearly a dozen bills pasted on adobe walls and tree trunks, proclaiming the approach of McGuire's Traveling Opera and Theatrical Company.

A few of the bills were different from those I'd viewed at the Santa Anna Taverna. The one that caused me to pull up staring was a gaudy pink and yellow—with the full-length portrait of a flashy young lady who wore skimpy tights and little more than a wide smile. And it was no one else but Dulcima!

The artist seemed to have worked from a recent tintype, and I wondered just how and where it had been taken. Without her aunt's permission or knowledge, I'd be bound. No doubt the doings of that underhanded rascal Diamond Dick Powers. Small wonder that he'd bragged of having known that young lady before she lit in San Diego.

I reached over to the tree trunk and pulled the sheet off, folding it and placing it in my pocket. I'd take a closer look at it as I rode along. I still didn't want to spend much time in getting on up the Camino Real.

By early afternoon I was as hungry as a lobo wolf when I stopped at a roadside tavern, the General Lopez, twenty miles north of Los Angeles. I sat at a rough table, under a ­vine-covered bower outside the establishment along with a half dozen ­Mexican drovers, all of us filling up on the excellent
tamales
and local beer. The cattlemen were on the way back down to Los Angeles to pick up another herd of beef cattle for the San Francisco markets.

Between mouthfuls, one of the good-natured
rancheros
remarked that his trade was booming, with cattle bought on the hoof at $15 a head fetching upwards of $50 each at San Francisco.

“These gold diggers, they come down from these hills, and they want the best. eat and drink like a pack of loco coyotes.” The round-faced
ranchero
shook his head. “That is one town,
señor
, like no other. You been there?”

I informed him I was on my way and hoped to stay there for a while, once I got there.

“You go to hunt for thees gold?”

“I might, but I'll wait and see.”

“Good thing you go now, and not last summer. You heard?”

I'd read about that June-time commotion in the
Alta California
but hadn't given it much thought beyond comparing the San Francisco brand of justice with the ruthless night riders of San Diego.

“Some vigilantes?”

“
Sí
. Not some, but damned plenty. Before these vigilantes got done, they up and hung a corral full of fellows they called hounds, and run off a thousand more. And all of 'em
Americano
no-goods, or these Australian bad
hombres
.”

“Vigilantes can raise a thunder of a lot of commotion, all right.”

The talkative
ranchero
polished off his bottle of beer and sighed. “But that is not all,
señor
. As soon as these vigilantes got done wiping up the streets with these
yanqui
badmans, they chose themselfs a bunch of real bad
hombres
to get chasing some of the really bad gangs.” He rose up, wiping his mustaches, settled his scarlet sash more comfortably around his middle, and started to join his fellow drovers out at the hitching rack.

“Just who is chasing who?”

“Well, they got themselfs a
yanqui bandido
hunter named Harry Love. He's riding around in circles after Joaquín, who's said to be back in thees north. And there's that Salvador Salazar, Sheriff of Alameda County. Salazar's one
bueno hombre cazador
. He's already run down Three-Fingered García, and Manuel Soto. Thees Captain Love and Salazar are now in and out of town with their posses, busy looking for Joaquín.” He pulled on his sombrero, then wagged his head. “But I bet you they never catch thees Joaquín. He's one foxy
hombre
, all right.”

Mounting up, I thought that drover really had no idea at all of just how foxy Joaquín Murieta really was. If this Captain Love or my old
amigo
Salazar ran down Joaquín, I only hoped it would be the right one. In spite of the trick young Almada had played on me that night at the Casa de Oro, I still kept a sneaking liking for him. Besides that, he'd once chased some of his rascals off my neck—and he was Rosita's brother.

The remainder of the day I made good time on the road and lay over for the night at a clean little
taverna
, the Bunch of Grapes, on the south slope of the Santa Ines Mountains about ten miles south of Santa Barbara.

The following morning as I was nearing the great bay that rimmed the town of Santa Barbara, I came upon a mighty odd
carreta
, driven by a hulking, one-eyed Negro dressed in a pair of old Army pants and a seedy-looking yellow coat. I rode up alongside the cart and passed the time of day with the black man, who told me he'd come out to California with the first batch of gold hunters. When he'd gone busted as a miner, he went back to his old trade as a barber, making himself $10 a shave, day after day.

“I'se always got an eye out for oppotunity,” said the man, who'd introduced himself as Peter Biggs. He blinked that good eye at me with a knowing sort of wink, while the paler of the two stared straight up the road past his gray mule's drooping ears. “Oncet I almos' gobbled deh market in aigs up along ol Featheh Rivuh. Aigs wuz goin' at moh dehn three dolluhs each, when you could get 'em. I give ovuh my barbuh woik, took evey blame' cent I could lay hands on, and went up and down deh Sacrementuh Rivuh a-buyin' aigs, aigs, aigs. Plumb clean out all of ol' Sam Brannon's penny-ante stohs, until I had ebbry aig in dat end of deh hull territory. I spen ovuh twelf hundred dolluhs, but I was King of Aigs.” He touched up his mule with a limber switch and the cart creaked ahead more briskly, while some kind of infernal growling eased out from under the wagon's patched and wrinkled canvas.

Before I could inquire as to what in tunket that noise was all about, Biggs winked again. “Oppotunity!” He motioned for me to ride nearer and pulled aside one section of the faded canvas.

From their wicker cages under the wagon bow, dozens of cats glared out at the daylight and myself. Yellow cats yowled, black cats spat, brindle and spotted cats hissed, striped cats as well as fat cats, lean cats and in-between cats fumed, raved, and swore at the world and all its inhabitants in every sort of cat language and dialect—when they weren't cussing out their nearest neighbors.

“What . . . ?”

“Like I tole you, Mistuh Bean, oppotunity. Rats sometime gits big as hosses up at Frisco. Some of dem rats even tote off stray dorgs when no one's lookin'. Frisco folk plum honin' foh cats, so I done rustle up ovuh a hundred cats from around Los Angeles and points south. Dis is my fustest load. I'se gonna peddle dese cats at one hundred dolluhs per cat. and gonna git it, see iffen I don't!”

I could only stare at that bale of cats and nod. “But. what about those eggs?” I had to say something.

Biggs smiled sadly as some memory seemed to smite his broad black brow. “Went at it too hefty. Yassuh, dun ovuhstock. When I finally got dat flock of aigs toted to camp, all nice and easy, on a pair of slow-steppin' mules, with 'em all wrapped like diamonts in bales of sawdust from Mistuh Suttuh's mill, half de minuhs in all of Featheh Rivuh was a-waitin', dere tongues jus' hangin' out for an aig.”

“And what?” I pulled off a bit from the wagon as a pair of fiery-eyed cats were doing their utmost to reach out and spur up White Lightning.

“I had me a hundred dozen aigs iffen I had one. Only one thing wrong, though. Blame aigs all done gone bad. I think ol Brannon bought hisself mighty ol' aigs and den saw to it that I got deh oldest of deh hull lot.”

“And you lost your shirt in the deal?”

“Bettuh dat den my neck! Dem boys was mighty upset and plum chase me and my mules right outta sight. I took deh hint and went on down to Los Angeles befoh I quit travelin'.” He looked sideways at his fuming feline menagerie, then brightened. “Anyways, now's I gonna make it back. For no mattuh how long I keep dese heah cats penned up, ain't none of 'em gonna spoil. Deh may be a bit mad-like, but when we gits to Frisco, rats look out!”

Wishing that dark speculator the best of luck, I rode on down into the village of Santa Barbara. From the looks of the place, the oncoming Peter Biggs could make a pile in peddling his cats to the natives, for whole streets of adobes, roofs gone and walls tumbling, gave Santa Barbara a used-up, gone-to-seed appearance. The palm trees were mainly dead and the olive and fig trees dilapidated and shabby. Even the old mission by the seashore had seen much better days, and the same thought struck me when I looked over the few folks on the dusty streets.

The sun was still over two fingers high on the horizon, and so I wasted no time in getting on out into the open country again.

We'd gone another half dozen miles before the red disk of the sun at last sank into the purple edge of the Pacific. Darkness swept in on broad, velvety wings while great flocks of geese stretched their wavering vees overhead, flying southward to the green marshes of old Mexico.

For an hour or so I navigated along by starlight, for the moon was still under. The Camino Real ran on ahead, a pale ghost of a road that led straight through a peaceful, starlit world.

Though I'd begun to think I might be forced to spend the night alongside the roadway, I presently noticed a gleam of light in the distance. It vanished as the road dipped down into a hollow and then reappeared when the road climbed upward. Then I caught the sound of a guitar and a voice singing a familiar saloon ditty.

“Looks as though we'll have ourselves a meal and a bed mighty soon,” I told the great horse. White Lightning could tell the whereabouts of any nearby stable and tavern as well as the two-legged
vagabundo
upon his back and let me know it by laying back his ears and picking up his gait.

The road slanted off into another hollow but I could still recognize that song drifting toward us from the
taverna
.

Once I loved a yaller gal, her name was Suzy Brown,
She hailed from Alabama and the fairest of her town.
Her eyes so bright . . . they shine at night,
When the moon's done gone away. . . .

Warbling the same song I'd sung many a time back in the Army, I spurred up from the hollow and came near riding headlong into a body of horsemen blocking the road in front of me. A dark knot of shadowy shapes.

“Halt! Throw up your hands!” someone sang out. There was no mistaking
that
tune, and I hauled in White Lightning and reached for the stars.

H
“ere now, let's see what we fetched in our loop.” The big, heavy figure of a man bulked in front of me as he scratched a lucifer on his saddle horn and, bending toward me, stuck the fluttering blue flame at my face.

I caught the glint of hard eyes in a beefy red face before the light sputtered out.

“Who're you, and where are you off to on such a night?” someone asked from the shadowy cluster of horsemen.

As it was a mild, starlit evening, it struck me as one damned fool question, but I was in no shape to debate its merits. “Bean's the name and I'm on my way to San Francisco for the San Diego
alcalde
,” I answered, adding: “Who are you-all to be stopping folks on the highway?” Somehow I had this bunch figured for some sort of posse. One thing certain, they weren't
Californios
, for they'd have shot me from the saddle and then hailed me.

“
Humph!
” The big man motioned me to lower my hands and growled out some sort of orders to his henchmen. “All right, Mister Bean, we've heard of your relative, though we don't know you from old Adam. We're a legitimate law force out after bandits, and that black devil of a Murieta in p'ticular. I'm nobody else but Captain Harry Love of th' State Rangers, and, seein' as you ain't up to no devilment, I'd admire you to come along and join us for supper. We're just about to put on th' old
morral
and feed some.”

He drawled another command at one of the shadowy riders, who remained on picket duty at the hilltop, while I, along with the rest of the rangers, loped up the road to the tavern.

Once we'd arrived, the musical ranger was parted from his guitar and sent back down the highway to join his lonely friend on guard.