Roy Bean's Gold

by W R. Garwood

  The dark-brown cake is laid

  Upon a plate of spotless white;

  And the eye of him who tastes it

  Now flashes with delight!

  Oh, cake that’s buttered for me,

  Why can I not partake?

  Oh, my heart, my heart is breaking

  For the love of buckwheat cake!

  I was tackling the second chorus with a lot of feeling and rubbing my middle with reminiscence when. . . .

  “¡Alto!” A small, portly Mexican, with enormous black mustaches and a gray sombrero, so big he looked just about like a toadstool astride a horse, rode up from a dry wash leveling a big Colt Dragoon dead at me.

  “I hear your music, señor. if one might call it that.” For a long moment the man kept his weapon trained straight at the middle of my belt buckle, and then, with a twisted smile lurking under his mustache, he lowered his weapon, and I did the same with my hands. “Pardon. By San Fernando’s red nightshirt, I thought you might be from some bandit gang, for we are close to Murieta’s country.” He flung a brown hand wide at the rolling acres of sagebrush and Apache plume stretching off into purple distance toward the San Bernardino and Chuckwalla Mountains to the southwest, then holstered his big pistol.

  And when the little stranger tucked away his weapon in its long red holster, I caught sight of a badge of some sort pinned to his yellow suspenders.

  I told him in a few words who I was, where I hailed from, more or less, and where I was headed.

  “Sí.” He bobbed his mushroom of a sombrero, punched the badge on his galluses with a broad thumb, and introduced himself as Salvador Salazar, sheriff of Alameda County, which was about next door to San Francisco. He’d been, he said, out on a jaunt of two hundred miles and more scouting for some bandits who’d been raising hob along the coast highways and mining camps.

  According to this fat little Mex sheriff, we were just a little less than one hundred miles northwest of the town of Los Angeles, The Angels. But, said the sheriff, there were not many angels around those parts. “No angels, amigo, but plenty of diablos, let me tell you. And I’ve been chasing some for weeks. All the others of my company got saddle-sore and went back to their home ranchos.” He grinned slyly at me. “But what can one expect from the Yankees. Now you have the look of one lucky hombre. For what you tell me, you’ve come many miles across plenty damn’ dangerous lands yourself. If you’d have traveled those sandy hells a month later, you’d surely have dried up along with the water holes and blown away.”

  I admitted I figured I was a bit more than lucky to be where I was.

  “See any hostiles? Apache, perhaps? I hear those accursed Comanches have been seen up north again.”

  “Had a run-in with one bunch back below Vermilion Cliffs in Arizona a couple of weeks back,” I told him, but I didn’t mention Jeff. One gander at that pie-plate badge and hearing Murieta mentioned was enough to put me on my guard.

  From what this Salazar said, I’d got myself another trail pardner, for he was riding over to Los Angeles and thereabouts to check in with the local law before heading back up to his own bailiwick.

  So now I found myself riding side-by-side and taking meals with Juan Ley—John Law—which was an odd turn of things, seeing I’d darned near become right-hand man to an outlaw by the name of Kirker!

  Chapter Seven

  After the blazing, empty deserts, huge stretches of lonely mesas, and strings of brackish water holes, California was surely easy on the eyes with its rolling hills and bright green meadows, all ringed with groves of big, handsome trees—black oak, maple, and sycamore. The long grasses began to be spangled with flowers of every sort, yellow daisies, wild red roses, and dozens of other posies such as the big California poppies and golden coneflowers, all trying to outbloom the others.

  Here was no wilderness of cactus, Joshua, and mesquite, with its sly bobcats and howling coyotes. This was a country teeming with wildlife of every sort from blacktail deer, antelope, and even some elk to feisty chipmunk and loping rabbit. Birds filled the timber and whirled up into skies, from loud-mouthed jays to pretty little wrens and dozens upon dozens of quail.

  Yes, I was glad to be out of that wilderness and back into a land the good Lord Himself wouldn’t have been ashamed to admit He had a hand in making.

  It was also mighty pleasant to have Salazar along, after all the long, lonesome days on the trail, for the pudgy, little lawman was a lively saddle pardner, always ready with a story or a joke—unlike Jeff Kirker, who had to down half a bottle of liquor to get himself in any sort of a cheerful frame of mind. But then I guess six dead troopers weighed pretty heavy on him most of the time.

  Salazar seemed to be of tougher stuff than Kirker. He didn’t seem to let dead men bother him much—Mexicans or those shot in the war. And he didn’t need any sort of bottled help to uncork his tongue. So we yarned through the days and evenings as we camped in lush meadows or rode along silvery-clear creeks and little streams, whittling down the miles to Los Angeles, our nearest port of call. And while we gossiped and talked, Salazar got most of my life and times out of me, though I kept Jeff Kirker from my story, only mentioning him as the fellow who’d got himself killed by Indians back in Arizona.

  As I said, Salazar wasn’t a bit shy in talking about himself. He’d come from a big hacienda near San Francisco, growing up there as a plain peasant kid. Tired of all the work and mighty little money—a peso a day—he ran off at sixteen, joining the Mexican army and was at the Alamo fight. Later he fought Yanks all the way from Sonoma to Monterey, but he took it all in a day’s work—like chasing down fellow Mexicans who’d gone on their own warpath after losing to the Americanos.

  “Some hombres can’t seem to play the cards old Señor Luck deals,” said Salazar. “I think I’m a reasonable fellow myself. I just take what the good saints provide each day, along with my dinner, and go on about my affairs. I could bellyache and holler that we poor Californios got kicked good and hard in the tail bone. Me, I take vengeance from life itself. it’s the best way!” He squeezed the air with both hands, rolled his eyes at the sky, and then grinned.

  “Speaking of cards,” Salazar went on, “I think, maybe, you play some cards pretty close to the vest, young señor.” He twiddled at his mustaches. “Sí, you’re a young compañero but you can keep some things to yourself, heh?”

  I started to open my mouth, but he reached over to poke me in the ribs, and I knew he’d spotted that hefty money belt under my ragged hickory shirt. “Don’t mistake me. Each of us has his secret or two,” he said. “It’s solo bueno to have your own, but be on your guard.”

  I wasn’t sure what he was aiming at, but took it to be a friendly hint to watch my mouth and my money.

  * * * * *

  The night before we fetched up at Los Angeles, Salazar finally got around to mentioning his peculiar topknot, a thing I’d noticed the first time he’d doffed his big flopping sombrero.

  I’d never spoken of his vanished scalp, feeling it wasn’t up to me to remark on any of his beauty flaws.

  “You’ve admired my tonsure,” he said as he made a face but downed my boiler-plate coffee. “That’s quite all right, for by the arrows of San Sebastian I tell you right here and now there’s not too many hombres around minus part of their head. And that little decoration came from those red hell fiends when they pounced on a wagon train I was leading into Aguangua.”

  Right there I recollected what brother Josh, a better than average book reader, used to say: “Life’s sometimes a damn’ sight odder than any storybook.” And I was grabbed good and strong with a hunch that this fat, little Mexican was talking about the same raid where Big Wolf captured his medicine hand—and where that little girl had been scooped up at the last minute by the Mexican Lancers. Now this might sound a bit far-fetched, but a person has got to remember that the old Southwest was pretty scant on population at the time I’m telling about, and some folks were just bound to cross trails.

  Late the nex
t afternoon we reined in at a fine little water hole a scant five miles from Los Angeles. When we were lounging in the shade of a great gnarled old black oak and letting the kinks unwind, I got out the tintype and tossed it over to the sheriff without a word.

  “Ah, demonio.” Salazar yanked away his headgear and beat a tattoo with a stubby knuckle on his scalped noggin. “Sí, that little one and I were the only ones. the only ones left alive after those diablos got through with their hellish work!” His black eyes bulged out of his dark face. “Those Comanches would have done us up proplamente but for the intervention of blessed San Miguel, who hurled the Lancers upon those diablos rojos!”

  It puzzled me a mite just how he knew what particular saint was on duty, but only asked where that little girl had gone.

  “Colonel Francisco Almada of the Lancers took her to the Convent of Santa María, north of San Diego. Myself. I was tended there by the sisters and saw her with those gentle hand-women of the Lord.”

  He handed back the tintype and we remounted and rode down a long plain, covered with clover. Within the hour we caught sight of the City of the Angels, where it sparkled in the afternoon sunlight beside a small river. A good dozen haciendas surrounded it, with their willow-fringed gardens, each filled with grape, quince, orange, and pear along with some ancient fig trees. Old Fort Gillespie, with its American flag, loomed along the green hills beyond the town, while the cathedral sent up its twin towers into the mellow sunshine out of the cluster of white adobes and scattered two-story buildings.

  As we rode down a dirt track that doubled as a road, Salazar, who’d been mighty quiet, squinted a curious eye at me. “But how did you . . . ?”

  I was ready for that and told him I’d come across the tintype of the girl at one-eared Zuñi Jack’s trading post, halfway across Arizona.

  “Sí, that would be the old he-bear himself who rode to our rescue with the Lancers. he and holy San Miguel.”

  I had to smile behind my hand to hear Zuñi Jack labeled saddle pardner to a saint, but then it could be so, for hadn’t Jack brought along the Lancers in time to save a wistful-looking little girl—and Salazar himself?

  Riding on toward that dreamy old Spanish town with its low, grassy hills, nearly little mountains surrounding it on three sides, we were in high spirits, and I cracked a joke or two while Salazar came back with a ring-tailed roarer about some Mexican ladies and a bullfighter that would never do for mixed company.

  Arriving at Cahuenga Street, with its huge cottonwoods, we crossed what looked to be a wide alley filled with run-down saloons and billiard halls. Salazar pointed out the place as the Calle de los Negros, jerking a thumb at a bunch of roughs, both Mexican and white, who stood in front of the gaudy gambling dens, along with some fancy, but hard-looking ladies in bright dresses with shiny combs and feathery plumes on their sleek, dark heads.

  “The cursed Three-Fingered Jack and that shifty villain of a Juan Soto came out of such a hole,” Salazar growled, his usually cheerful phiz screwed up. “I haven’t a doubt but this town’s law officers have a time keeping such diablos as those back there in their places!”

  “This Murieta. where’d he spring from?”

  “Everywhere!” Salazar waved his hand in a wide circle. “Sometimes I think there must be a dozen Murietas, the way he pops up here and there.” He was about to go on, but we’d arrived in front of Wagner’s Saloon, and here the sheriff signaled me to dismount. This was, he told me, the newest place in town, with straight games run by a Yankee by the name of Dick Powers, who was one devil of a horseman as well as a sure-fire gambler.

  The bar was empty except for a scant-whiskered barkeep and several old Mexicans, drowsing over their siesta tequilas.

  We had ourselves a couple of dust cutters at the long mahogany bar, and Salazar inquired for Powers, who he said had a saloon at San Diego as well as several other towns, only to learn the gambler was at Santa Barbara.

  “This Powers came out to California with Stevenson’s New York Volunteers. They were sure some scrappers. When he was going to be discharged at the end of the war, he made himself a stake by picking up a five-thousand-dollar bet that he could ride one hundred and sixty miles in eight hours!”

  “A thundering big ride,” I said. “Who’d he bet with?”

  “Some of the best riders in southern California, vaqueros from the De la Guerra Rancho. They said it couldn’t be done, and not by any Yankee.” Salazar grinned. “Sí, that fellow Powers’s time was just six hours and a half. He used twenty-five mounts and galloped an extra mile to show them what was what.”

  “Sounds like the sort of riding this Murieta must be doing,” I said as I thought of fetching that phantom Red Rosita into the talk, but I dropped the idea when Salazar began to cloud up at the mention of Murieta.

  We finished our drinks and went back to register for the night at the Bella Union over on Los Angeles Street, turning in our animals at a corral behind the hotel. When Salazar went off to check in with the local law, I headed for the nearest barbershop.

  After a trim and a shave and an honest-to-God bath, in a tin tub in the shop’s back room, I asked for the best clothing store and was directed to the Capital Clothing Emporium up on San Gabriel.

  Standing there in front of the Emporium’s full-length mirror was a pretty hard jolt. Here I was, Roy Bean, normally broad-shouldered and broad-faced, hitting onto six feet of bone and muscle. And now I was staring at some sunken-eyed, wind-scorched, rail-thin beggar!

  I’d lost twenty-odd pounds riding the winding trail out of Chihuahua. In my ragged yellow hickory shirt and cactus-tattered jeans, stuffed into dusty, scuffed boots, I was surely one sorry-looking sort of a scarecrow. No wonder Salazar had thought he’d run onto a regular hardcase when we first met.

  Another of brother Josh’s second-hand sayings had something to do with new duds making some sort of a new man, so I decided to go the whole hog. I bought the best tip-top garments and extras that place had to offer and put a first-class smile on the face of the turkey-necked young gent who waited on me.

  When I sauntered out of the Capital Clothing Emporium, I might not have been a completely new man, but I was a darned sight better-dressed one.

  Scarecrow no longer, I was about as fine a dandy as could be found in the whole town. Turned out in black velvet trousers, midnight-blue silk shirt with flowing scarlet kerchief, shiny black hand-tooled boots, with the whole outfit topped off by a silver-spangled sombrero twice as stunning as the late Esteban Domingo’s, I strode down the street and called on Salazar at the Los Angeles sheriff’s office.

  I made an impression, let me tell you, and even hard-bitten old Sheriff Persifer got up on his bow legs for the introductions. He knew my brother, the alcalde of San Diego, and said as much, though I noticed he didn’t toss any bouquets toward Joshua Quincy Bean—but, I thought, politicians were always leery of each other and this must be the case.

  Bowing out like a copper-bottom grandee, I took Salazar in tow down to the finest cantina in town—the Blue Wing.

  “You are a hombre mucho diverso from the one who rode into town with me two hours past.” Salazar sat in the cantina lifting his amber glass of beer in salute. When he cocked his head admiringly, a sunbeam lanced through the shutters to touch the top of his missing scalp and give him a sort of halo, like one of his saddle-pardner saints. “Sí, you come to California looking like . . . how do you say? . . . a bummer, and here is el caballero!” He took a hefty pull of his beer, blinking at me with his bright black eyes. “If you had not a face, sincero, I’d think you carried mucho dinero from somewhere.”

  So while we sat in the Blue Wing, tackling a prime good meal, all washed down with fancy Mexican wines, I let it be known all those eagles I’d been tossing around came from my family’s venture at Chihuahua and were going to be used to start a new business at San Diego.

  “Ah, San Diego.” Salazar stuffed his face with tortilla, worked his jaws a while, and then came up for air. “Sheriff Persifer
reports some trouble down there. Just like here in town and elsewhere. He says your brother, Señor Joshua Bean, el alcalde, had to throw some of the gold seekers into his calabozo when they tried to take over his town on the way to and from the mining camps. and also that there has been robbers on the loose about that country.”

  It appeared things were lively at San Diego and that suited me, for I’d been dreading having to go back behind some counter and bow and scrape for pesos and dollars. I’d lost my appetite for being a merchant prince and made up my mind to apply for some job with the law force.

  According to Salazar, the riff-raff and toughs had been sweeping through the territory for the past year and times were getting wilder each month.

  “It’s getting to be a regular plague, let me tell you,” Salazar grunted, stuffing away more tortillas. “And now, by San Miguel’s pinfeathers, they’re arriving from every blessed corner of the world. Just as I left San Francisco, there were over one hundred abandoned ships in that harbor. Sí, sailors just row ashore and begin to hoof it for the mines. That bay up there looks like la foresta from the dozens on dozens of masts sticking up into the sky. captains and crews all out to grab off a fortune from those double-damned mines all springing out of the earth like mushrooms ever since they first found those infernal nuggets at Sutter’s Mill!” He got himself so wrought up that I was afraid he’d choke on the food, but after he wheezed a minute, and washed down that wheeze with a generous gulp of wine, he went back at his plate with a will.

  When I thought of all that gold out there just waiting for me, and without the need to sweat and strain to get it, my eyes narrowed and I smiled to myself. But Salazar, who seemed to have the knack of reading my thoughts, shook his head.

  “Gold can be a blessing, joven hombre, but I think gold will prove a curse. Sí, a curse for many a man in California.”

  I didn’t try to argue the matter, for I knew for a fact that my eagles—the entire lot of them—had brought death to seven men. And that was curse enough, I thought.