by F. M. Parker
Mattoon spun around and fastened his sight upon Dokken. “The Beremendes’s land-grant case doesn’t come up until the middle of September. I have no intention of waiting that long to get possession of the land.”
“The commission’s calendar is full with all the cases it’s hearing, and they won’t be hurried.” Mattoon, even with all his influence, hadn’t been able to obtain preference with the Federal Land Commissioners.
“I’ve waited ten years for the stubborn Beremendes to cave in. I’ll wait no longer with them retaining possession of the land until the case is finally settled.” Mattoon didn’t need the Beremendes land to be wealthy. He desired the magnificent stretch of mountain and valley land for itself alone. He craved the land as he had never craved anything before.
“We’ve gotten rid of the brother, so now let’s destroy this last obstacle. The woman.”
Dokken knew he was not being asked for his opinion on anything Mattoon said, and he remained silent. All of the legal documents that had been filed before the Land Commission showed Dokken as the opponent of the Beremendes, but he was only fronting for Mattoon. The man laid out the strategy for gaining possession of the land and provided the money to carry it out.
“The Beremendes must be nearly bankrupt. No bank will lend them money on the rancho since the title is being contested. Both the brother and the sister have even been here to get my bank to loan them funds. I turned them down. With great sorrow, of course.”
Mattoon laughed coarsely as he moved back past Dokken and reseated himself behind his desk. “We must keep her lawyers busy so that their fees will keep mounting. Have your lawyers file motions before the commission that will keep the Mexican woman busy responding. We must make her spend money faster than she can make it.”
“I’ll see to it this morning.”
“I know what she’ll do next to obtain money,” Mattoon said. “Here is how we’ll stop her and make several thousand dollars doing it.”
* * *
In the little, whitewashed chapel beside the hacienda on the Beremendes’ rancho on Mount Mocho, the priest from Sacramento spoke praise for Ernesto and delivered his soul to the deity. The pallbearers rose from their seats and carried the casket to the family cemetery on the bluff looking down on the San Joaquin Valley.
Celeste did not cry during the eulogy or the burial. Ernesto would not have wanted that. She could hear his spirit calling for revenge. She would give him his revenge. Dokken’s life was forfeit for the death of Ernesto.
The large gathering of Mexican friends and the few that were Americans, departed, winding down the long curving road from the hacienda to the valley floor. Most turned north on the main road to Sacramento while some went off in other directions to adjoining ranchos. Celeste watched the people and their vehicles grow ever smaller with distance and finally disappear.
Restless with many things on her mind, she returned to the hacienda and changed into riding clothes, boots, leather trousers and a cotton shirt. Emerging once again, she went to the corral and saddled her favorite mount, a silver-gray mare. She swung astride.
For a moment she sat upon the mare and surveyed the buildings of the rancho constructed on a wide bench on the side of Mount Mocho. She had spent most of her life here, staying in San Francisco only a few months each year to attend school. The main structure, the hacienda, was a large U-shaped house with a flat roof and walls of two-foot-thick adobe. The inside was cool in the hot summer and the three fireplaces kept it warm in the winter. Nearby was the weaver’s hut containing looms and wheels to make thread and a rack to weave the thread into cloth. A blacksmith’s shop was to the left of the weaver’s hut. Beyond that, at a hundred yards or less, was the matanzas, the place for slaughtering cattle and sheep. Farther away still, some one-eighth mile, were the small adobe homes of the nine vaqueros that helped the Beremendes operate the rancho. In reality, she had more vaqueros than she needed to manage the small number of livestock. However the riders were men from families that had been with the Beremendes three generations. She could not tell them to leave.
A large vegetable garden lay between the weaver’s hut and the matanzas. An acequia, irrigation ditch, wound around the slope of the hill from a nearby spring and carried water to the garden. Ignacio’s oldest son, a man with his own family, was plowing the garden with a yoke of snow-white oxen. Celeste wasn’t certain whether Ignacio prized the son or the oxen most highly.
The rancho, worked diligently by the Mexican families, was nearly self-sufficient in its production of food and clothing. However, large expenses were being incurred in the courts in San Francisco. Celeste did not know how she would meet those costs. She had less than a thousand dollars in cash. She owned one hundred and fifty thousand acres of land, but with the title to that land being challenged, no bank would lend her money on it.
Her grandfather had acquired the land of the rancho in 1800 for service as a major in the Spanish Army against the Indians in southern California. The King of Spain had granted him thirty-three square leagues, 228 square miles, a huge expanse of land lying partly on the east flank of Mount Mocho in the Diablo Mountain Range and partly in the San Joaquin Valley.
When she was very small, her grandfather would show her the diseno, the map of the land grant, and describe the directions and distance of the boundaries. When she was older, they would ride and he showed her the rock cairns that marked the corners and side lines.
The Americans conquered Mexico in 1847. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed in 1848. All California and Arizona and New Mexico and much other territory was taken by the Americans. Her grandfather died that year. She often thought it was because of the shame of defeat. Her father had been wounded in the battle for Mexico City. He had made his way painfully home to California. His injuries did not heal and after languishing for months, he too had died.
Celeste’s mother, the Senora Beremendes, had managed the rancho for ten years, until Ernesto had become a man and began to help her. Her mother and brother had continued to run cattle and sheep, even on the valley bottom with its rich soil. Several of the other ranchers cleared the bottom land of brush and grew wheat, a grain not only golden in color but worth much gold for export. The wheat, hardened in the dry, warm air, kept wholesome for months and was shipped all over the world for a high profit. In 1861, the ships that brought coal and iron from Liverpool, England, to San Francisco carried three million bushels of wheat back on their return voyage across the ocean.
Under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the United States government was bound to honor all legitimate titles to land in the areas ceded by Mexico. In 1851, the Americans established a Federal Land Commission in San Francisco to hear Mexican claims for land. The Beremendes filed their grant documents with the Americans for the land that had been in their family for more than half a century.
That was when their trouble to clear title began. A strange American, John Dokken, appeared with documents proclaiming the land the Beremendes claimed was in reality part of the Armendarez Land Grant that he had purchased from Carlo Armendarez. Lieutenant Armendarez had been under the command of her grandfather in the battle with the Indians, and had bravely helped rout the foe. On Major Beremendes’s recommendation, the King had given Armendarez a land grant of fifty thousand acres immediately adjacent to the Beremendes Land Grant. Carlo Armendarez had returned to Spain and never saw his grant. Over the years, he had leased the land to various ranchers. Upon Armendarez’s death at an old age in Spain, Dokken appeared in San Francisco in possession of the grant. Strangely, the land described in the Armendarez Grant included the Beremendes land. Dokken’s lawyers argued that the Beremendes’s Grant documents and map were fraudulent, and further, that the description of the grant did not conform to the markers on the ground. That latter claim was true, for the boundaries of the grant had been laid out without the benefit of survey instruments. Until now those discrepancies had meant nothing because everyone respected the old rock cairns as the true boun
dary markers. In a court of law, the lack of conformity between the written description and the ground markers had become very significant.
Celeste was certain the land description in the Armendarez Grant had been altered. She had had several experts examine the Armendarez document, but they had arrived at conflicting opinions as to whether or not the document had been modified. She was still attempting to find the copies of the grants that should be in the official records in Spain, for a copy was kept of all the King’s grants. To date and after much searching, the copies had not been discovered. She wondered if it was possible that Dokken had somehow reached out from America and destroyed the grant copies. Still she had a strong claim on the land, that of possession, for the Beremendes had used the land for more than half a century without a protest from Armendarez. This would, when the case was finally heard, substantially strengthen her case before the Land Commission.
All the legal arguments and maneuvering to defend the Beremendes’s title for eleven years had nearly destroyed the family fortune, but she would somehow hold on. She knew that should she win before the Land Commission, that would be only the first step for her enemies would appeal the decision to a higher court, even to the Supreme Court. Dokken seemed to have unlimited funds to do that.
Celeste felt the full weight of the task of managing the rancho now that Ernesto was dead. Riding always helped soothe her when she had problems so she spoke to the mare. The willing animal left the corral at a trot. Celeste rode south over grass covered hills studded with patches of brush and short oak trees. When she reached a wide shelf of the mountain where the land was smoother, she raised the mare to a gallop. The sweep of air past Celeste’s face and the feel of the mare’s back between her legs lessened the turmoil and worry in her mind. She reached out and petted the mare on the side of the neck. “We’ll make it, girl, somehow.”
Celeste shifted her attention to the immediate needs of the rancho and began to evaluate the condition of the cattle and sheep she passed by. Only a few hundred cattle and perhaps 6,000 sheep remained of the vast herds that once grazed the Beremendes’s land. Most had been sold for funds to pay for defense of the land title. To make matters worse, two years past in 1860, the bottom had fallen out of the livestock market. Prices had plummeted to a third of what they had been. The price of wool had remained firm and that kept the rancho going.
Celeste rode down from the mountain and into the San Joaquin Valley, the great oval depression some four hundred miles north to south and fifty miles east to west and lying between the Coast Range and the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Table flat, the valley’s fertile soil was now producing a tremendous quantity of wheat for the Union Army fighting a civil war in the east.
She halted at the border of her land. Lying before her mile after mile for as far as she could see to the north, east, and south, there was nothing except a plain of wheat turning from green to gold, maturing swiftly under the warm, yellow sun. The owners of that wheat would reap a fortune in a few days.
The Beremendes’s rancho extended down from high on Mount Mocho and encompassed forty thousand acres of the bottom land. She must without fail have a substantial portion of that land cleared of brush, leveled, and ready to sow with the seed of wheat in time for next year’s crop. There must be a way to accomplish that large task. But how?
Chapter 6
The lone horseman held his weary mount at a gallop as the shadows grew and darkened in the hollows. He had been riding for two days, not following any road but moving cross-country through the brush studded land. For the past three hours, he had been upon the Beremendes’s rancho. He topped a ridge and halted to stare warily ahead.
Celeste stood in the patio of the hacienda and watched the evening dusk settle upon Mount Mocho, the tallest peak of the Diablo Mountains. She was disappointed and unsettled for another day was ending, the sixth since she had sent Ignacio off to hunt Vicaro Zaragoza. Ignacio had returned on the fourth day unable to find Vicaro, but he had left messages with trusted people as she had directed.
She was about to turn and enter the hacienda when she saw the rider appear on the ridgetop beyond a shallow valley. He reined his long-legged caballo to a stop and sat in his saddle looking in the direction of the hacienda. She knew with certainty the man was Vicaro Zaragoza, the pistolero and bandit— but a bandit only to the Americans. He was a hero to her people and she felt proud of him.
He was a cautious man, Celeste thought as she left the patio and walked out to where she could be seen. She lifted an arm in greeting. A sense of pleasant anticipation came over her at once upon seeing the man again.
The rider spurred his mount and the horse instantly broke into a run. The animal swooped down into the valley with its rider and then up the slope to Celeste. The horse, a magnificent roan, came to a prancing stop in front of Celeste, its rider so firm in the saddle that he seemed to be part of the animal.
The man wore a broad-brimmed, black sombrero and closely fitting, black trousers and vest over a dark red shirt. The buttons on the jacket were of silver, and much needlework with silver thread decorated the front and back of the garment. Now his clothing was dust covered from his long ride. A large pistol hung in a holster on the man’s hip.
The man watched Celeste from the deep shadow beneath the broad brim of his sombrero. She stared up trying to make out the features of the half hidden face.
The horseman swung down from his mount. He swept off his sombrero and bowed from the waist with a graceful movement. Then he straightened and looked at Celeste with piercing eyes.
Celeste was shocked at the aged man that stood before her. Every strand of his thick hair was white. A web of wrinkles creased his face, with deep ones coalescing at the corners of his eyes where he had squinted against the sun for more than a half century.
“Senorita, I’m Vicaro Zaragoza.”
“I know you, Senor Zaragoza,” Celeste said and stepped forward extending her hand. “I am Celeste Beremendes. I remember you from long ago.”
Vicaro took Celeste’s hand, pressed the soft, warm flesh, and then released it. “You were very young the last time we met. It does me honor that you remember. The years have made you a very beautiful woman. But even when you were a girl, the image of the lovely woman you would become was already in your face.”
Those twelve years since last she had seen the pistolero had also wrought great changes in Vicaro. She thought she saw the hand tremble that held his sombrero.
“I’m pleased that Ignacio’s message reached you and that you came so quickly.”
“Your father was a friend. Once he gave me his favorite caballo to out-race the gringos that chased me. They would surely have caught and hung me. He put himself in danger that day to help me, and I never forget a friend.”
Celeste smiled. Nor an enemy.”
Vicaro returned her smile but said nothing. The truth of the statement was in his black eyes.
“Come inside and have some wine and food with me,” Celeste said. “I know you must be hungry.”
“I would like that for I have come a long ways.” Vicaro led his horse to a tie post and secured its reins to the iron ring.
Celeste guided the way into the house and to the rear to the big kitchen. There were ample remains of the evening meal and she placed them upon the long wooden table. She selected a bottle of dark, strong wine. There were serious matters to discuss.
Vicaro began to fill his plate. His hands did indeed tremble, Celeste saw it clearly now. She was very disheartened. He was now an old man who had once been very strong, and brave, and skilled with weapons. He would no longer be the greatest pistolero in all California.
Vicaro looked intently at Celeste. He smiled knowingly. “Yes, Vicaro Zaragoza has grown old.”
Celeste jerked, startled at the words of the man. He had read her thoughts exactly.
“I’m no longer a pistolero that all other men fear. My hand shakes a little, and my eyes are not now sharp like those of a hawk. I do not sea
rch for fights. But I’m still better than most men with a pistol.”
“You knew my thoughts,” Celeste said in amazement.
“A man such as myself who for years lived by fighting, must be able to know what another person is thinking, especially an enemy, then act before he does. Your thoughts were not difficult to know. Ernesto has been killed. You send for Vicaro the fast pistolero. Then you see a man with white hair. It is all very clear to me. I regret that I disappoint you, but no man should be ashamed of growing old. There are worse things, like being dead.”
“I didn’t mean to insult you with my thoughts.”
A pleasant smile came upon Vicaro’s seamed face. “No offense was taken.” The smile vanished. “I only wish I could kill your enemy the gringo, John Dokken. But he is an expert pistolero and I could only kill him from hiding, without facing him as a man. That I would never do.”
“I understand. Please eat and then we will talk about old times.”
Vicaro finished eating. He refilled his wineglass and sipping at the amber liquid, talked with Celeste of events long past. He smiled often as he described California when it was ruled by the distant government in Mexico City and life was serene and slow-paced—before the Americans marched in and conquered California and changed everything for all time, and before Vicaro became a bandit.