by W R. Garwood
“Could have been mistaken, I guess, but I know some bandidos tried mighty hard to puncture our hides at the Las Fuentes pine woods.” I was crawfishing somewhat for I didn’t feel like tipping our Indian’s hand. He’d been mighty positive that the rider on the big gray was Joaquín Murieta. I didn’t want Josh sweating him over the fact that he knew Murieta on sight. I suspected Abraham was wise that I had handled all of the tax collections on my own hook, and he’d not peached on me.
Josh, busy totting up the tax figures, ignored my last comment. “So our high-and-mighty señorita of the Fountain Rancho paid in good old Mexican pesos. She’s one lady too keen to handle any bandido gold.” His lip curled in a way to raise my dander. Somehow I didn’t care for the way he was talking about Rosita Almada. But before I said anything, I thought to myself that it was no business of mine what he or anyone had to say about such a woman. And such a woman!
“You might as well wipe that silly grin off your face, Roy. It’s plain to see that stuck-up Mexican has her claws out for you. She’s been playing the high-toned señorita since she came back here around a year past to take up her father’s rancho. The old man, he was a Mexican officer who died just about that time. Heard there was a son somewhere, said to have been killed in the war. So without anyone at home the place had been going to rack and ruin until she showed up. That Rancho de la Fuentes used to take in hundreds of acres from an old Spanish land grant, just about half of the whole valley.”
“Place still looks pretty good,” I said.
“Don’t know where she got enough money to bring that rancho back out of it,” said Josh, squirting a stream of blue smoke at one of the candles on our table and fingering his goatee. “There’s something sort of odd about that young señorita.”
“Meaning what?” I was curious myself just what the folks around San Diego had to say about Rosita.
“Oh, I don’t know. Never had the time or inclination to pry into her affairs nor listen to much gossip. All I know is that she showed up on the stage one day with a young girl who she said was her father’s ward. But that girl is pure Anglo. You’ve seen her picture over at the Castañedas. They and the Almadas always seemed to be pretty tight. These Spanish stick together, as you know, I guess.”
“I’ve noticed,” I said, glancing at Abraham from the corner of my eye. But he was as blank as an adobe wall while he poured us more wine.
“Well, let’s see,” Josh said, thumbing through the tax book. “Looks like you’ve got less than a half dozen stops to make and you’ll have her all ship-shape. But I think you better have some protection again.”
“I’m all for that.” I took the book back and hoped I had enough of Kirker’s eagles left to finish the job.
* * * * *
I wound up my collections in the next two days, with Flea along for company, as well as Abraham to guide me to the remaining farms and ranchos. It went off without a hitch, though I was left with only a little more than $100 in my shrinking money belt. Word must have gotten around like wildfire that a brass-bound sucker was making the rounds, though not a whisper had reached the alcalde—so far.
There’d not been the slightest trouble while we rode on our way, though the hair on my neck bristled up more than once when we got near to a woods or some other possible ambush site. I’d said nothing to Flea of our recent run-in with bandits, as he seemed to be sort of trigger-happy, and I didn’t want him whaling away at some wind-tossed branch or cloud-swept shadow.
But in the late afternoon of the second day, when we’d just one more stop to make, I caught several glimpses of a distant horseman who seemed to be dogging our trail. Finally even Flea spotted that far-off speck drifting across the skyline near Spring Valley.
“Wouldn’t be Murieta?” I asked Abraham as we jogged down a slope and through a scattering of chaparral. I hadn’t said a word to the little Indian about the rider on the great gray since our mad dash through the storm, for I had a hunch that Abraham would explain in his own good time. But now it had just slipped out.
“I’m not sure,” Abraham said, watching the tiny mote as it vanished behind a ridge of blue-tinted hills. “It might be. . . .”
“You acquainted with that there gent?” Flea, nearly swallowing his cud of golden twist, had spurred his bay mare beside us, his six-gun out and in his fist.
“Put up that weapon, unless you can pick off that fellow from half a mile away,” I told Flea. “And he’s out of sight now anyway.”
“Murieta?”
“Whosomever,” I said, while Abraham said nothing at all.
Then I made my last collection—contribution—to the alcalde’s tax fund and we three rode back into San Diego while the wild lilac covering the hills turned from smoky blue to crimson in the flaming Pacific sunset.
With my job of collecting done, I spent most of the next week pretty profitably, hanging around my brother’s cantina and the other saloon, bucking the tiger and playing close-to-the-vest poker.
Sánchez, Josh’s scar-faced constable, worked part time at the American Flag as bouncer and sometimes dealer. One day found us in a game of stud with some of the locals. After a hand or two, he braced me. “And how do you like our California by now, Señor Roy?”
I’d never taken much to the big devil. “Pretty well, but I don’t take very kindly to having your friends doing their damnedest to drygulch me. especially the one on the big steel-dust stallion.”
He began to cloud up like a thunderstorm but then his jaw dropped, and even the scar on his chin turned a sort of yellow white.
“You saw that one?” It was as if I’d said that I’d bumped into the Old Nick himself outside the door.
“So I guess.” I hadn’t told anyone but Josh about the affair and I knew that Abraham had stayed mum. So it seemed to come to Sánchez as a real jolt.
“Ah, that diablo!” Sánchez got himself up and called one of the regular dealers over while he stalked to the bar and began to work on his private bottle.
As Josh had said, Emilio Sánchez had one big respect for Murieta.
The game went on until suppertime, with a few polite questions from the players concerning my run-in with Murieta, which I turned off as pretty much of a joke.
But Sánchez never bent his ear toward us and never left his spot at the bar until his bottle was bone dry.
When I got out of the game, fifty pesos to the good, Sánchez lurched past me toward the door, muttering something about hombres and noche.
Men of the night? Then I recalled that placard on the hanged man.
“I don’t know just what was about,” said Josh when I quizzed him at our evening meal. “Looks to me like Sánchez had himself too much liquor. Said he was working away at a bottle all afternoon, didn’t you?”
“Yes, but I was thinking that it had something to do with those poor devils we fetched in when I first came to town. the ones you had Sánchez plant over in Boot Hill.”
“Well”—Josh helped himself to another plate of grub—“you may be right. That message on them was signed ‘Men of the Night’, wasn’t it?” He looked sideways at me, and then nodded at Abraham for another round of wine, while he began to talk about some actress named Lottie Crabtree.
Somehow I had a feeling that my brother would just as soon not talk about night riders and stretched necks at the supper table, so I dropped it—for the time being.
When I rode over to the Casa Castañeda on Calhoun Street for our regular Tuesday morning jaunt, I found both Castañeda sisters already up and waiting for me on their mounts.
“Señor Roy, my and don’t you look the brillante one in your bonito new white sombrero,” said Estrellita, laughing as her sister shied a riding crop at her to be still.
“Señor Roy, pardon that little minx. she knows you still mourn for that sombrero espléndido you lost when that horse estúpido bolted with you in that storm.” Lucia spurred her black mare over to me and put a hand on mine. “You must never mind that tease. I think your new top
per is most becoming.” She glanced at her sister and her eyes sparkled with mischief. “Besides, I have something to make you forget any number of old sombreros.”
Estrellita gave a cry and shook her finger at Lucia. “You very bad thing, you! You know we agreed to both tell Señor Roy when we rode together . . . and. . . .”
“Never you mind, you tease.” Lucia bent toward me, whispering: “Our dear Dulcima arrives on the coach from the north this very Tuesday afternoon, before the supper hour.”
“Sí, and we are asked to come over to Rancho de la Fuentes this Saturday eve for a grand baile,” her sister rattled on, trying to get in her share of the news. “Her aunt has sent an invitation to us and others in town and about the country.”
“She tells us in her note, Señor Roy, that you have had a personal invitation from her when you were at the rancho last week. which you never told us, you sly rogue,” Lucia chattered away, breaking in on her lively sister. “Señorita Almada also sends another word to you. that she expects to see you again. . . .”
“At the baile . . . ,” Estrellita began.
“Or before, if Señor Roy comes with us to the stage station, for the Señorita expects to come over in her conveyance to pick up Dulcima.”
“You know we plan to ask them to stay at our casa overnight. It will be late for them to travel back to the rancho, even if there is nearly a full moon tonight.” Estrellita got in her final shot before putting the spur to her white horse. “And Señor Roy might be asked to come for supper!”
We left town in a flurry of dust and laughter, loping down to Point Loma and a picnic lunch.
That afternoon I was standing in the small crowd at the little brown adobe station under the cottonwoods on Crabillo, along with Señor and Señorita Castañeda and their girls.
“It is getting on for five o’clock”—Lucia, who hadn’t changed her riding habit, was bouncing on the toes of her little, red riding boots—“and Señorita Almada isn’t here yet. and the stage should be arriving anytime now.”
Estrellita, fine and furbelowed in a wide white silk dress, kept her yellow fan flickering like some sort of butterfly. Suddenly she snapped it shut and waved it over the heads of the crowd, knocking several sombreros galley west. “Wrong, dear Sister. here she is now!”
A red-topped surrey, driven by the old Mexican from the rancho, drew up alongside the hitching rail, and there sat Rosita Almada in the back, a small, dark sombrero in her hand, and with her flame-colored hair blowing about her shoulders.
She saw the Castañedas and waved to them, but before she could alight, the two-mule mail hack from Los Angeles came pounding around the corner, with a pinto stallion loping along behind. It wheeled up to the station in a cloud of dust and a volley of shouts from the bearded driver.
The first person in the hack that I spotted was Salvador Salazar, his big sombrero flapping as he peered from the rig’s side curtains.
All was uproar as the driver leaped down, waving his arms, and we learned that there’d been an attempt to stop the stage—and not five miles outside of town.
“Young Bean, well met!” Salazar shouted at me over the hubbub. “Watch this scoundrel while I get my horse secured!” He tossed his Walker Colt underhand to me.
I managed to catch the heavy weapon and keep it pointed at an ugly-looking Mexican with one eye, who stood glaring at the crowd as if he’d like to eat them all.
“That there hombre is one of th’ jaspers what tried jumpin’ us at Washerwoman’s Gulch!” And the hack driver shook a big red fist under the hardcase’s flat nose. “Iffen it hadn’t ’a’ been for Sheriff Salazar and Dick Powers, there, bein’ on board, we’d ’a’ been gone goslin’s fur damn’ sure!” He pointed to a dapper-looking stranger in a dark frock coat and a gray topper who was getting out on the far side of the hack. The dude was helping a prim young lady step down beside himself and fussing with her baggage.
I was so busy staring at her, I was suddenly jolted back to the three-ring circus when Salazar grabbed his weapon out of my hand and jammed it into the robber’s mid-section.
“Hey there, borrego! So you thought you’d take yourself a stroll, did you, Juan Pico? Well and good, if you took a stroll while this gentleman stared at the ladies, eh?”
I could feel my ears getting bright red as the young woman coming around the hack with the dude looked me full in the face. It was the girl of the tintype, blue eyes clear as the summer sky and that same fine-featured face, suddenly alight with a soft rosy tint. Then she dropped her gaze and was surrounded by the lively Castañeda sisters and their parents.
“Guess I forgot what I was doing for a minute,” I told the sheriff.
“Sí, young Roy.” Salazar grinned. “I know what you are thinking. And I know, also, who that young señorita is. I must say we had a fine talk on the way down. By San Luis’s double halo, it ain’t every day that two survivors of those devils of Comanches can ride along in one coach, let me tell you.”
“Señor Bean! Señor Roy Bean, come here, if you would, please.” There was Estrellita and Lucia, arms around the girl they called Dulcima, and both waving me over to Rosita’s surrey.
“Go along, young Bean.” Salazar nudged me with an elbow. “I’ll see you later on. I got to get this one to your brother’s calabozo.” Away he went, shoving the hulking road agent along, followed by half of the crowd, while the rest stood stockstill, listening to the hack driver jaw away just how the sheriff and Powers had stood off a trio of bandidos and dropped one of them by puncturing the robber’s horse dead center.
I skirted the bustling knot of gawkers and found myself the target of those unforgettable blue eyes. The Castañeda girls had been telling the girl of my tintype.
“Most interesting, I’m sure. But Señor Bean will have an opportunity to talk of such things when he comes to our baile on Saturday,” came the vibrant voice of Rosita from her surrey. “But now we must start out for the rancho. if we are to get there before midnight.”
She reached out and helped the new arrival into a seat beside her, while the old Mexican finished stowing the baggage onto the front seat of the rig.
There came a flurry of protests from the Castañedas, but to no avail. “Señorita Almada,” Señora Castañeda sputtered, “how can you even consider riding back to Las Fuentes now. and with such ruffians roving our countryside?”
Rosita rummaged down into a straw handbag and pulled out a Colt Baby Dragoon pistol, while the old Mexican on the front seat flourished a pair of man-sized six-shooters.
Then I saw that slow, tantalizing smile, I remembered, quiver at the corners of Rosita’s red mouth, while her brilliant green gaze swept over me. Then she murmured an order to the driver, wheels creaked, and the carriage rolled away through the yellow afternoon sunlight.
The man called Dick Powers stood with gray topper in hand, staring with a furrowed brow after the dwindling rig. Suddenly he gave a short, odd laugh. “Heaven help the highwayman who tries to meddle with that lady.”
Chapter Thirteen
The night of the baile at Fountain Rancho was just about as fine as I can remember in all my time in California. A moon, at the full, gleamed down from a cloudless sky jam-packed with millions of glittering stars, as I rode up to the gate of the big old house where it sat flooded in the silvery light and flanked by shadowy orchards and lowering black pine woods.
I’d ridden over from town in the late afternoon, taken myself a room at the Casa de Oro—House of Gold—tavern just two miles from the rancho on the crossroads and was ready for a lively evening. I’ll admit that I had a couple of second thoughts about those rascals who’d given me that merry chase a week back, and I wasn’t about to ride all the way back to San Diego in the small hours of the night—even if the feisty Señorita Almada had no qualms about jaunting through the dark.
From the look of the wagons, buggies, and saddle horses strung out along the hitching rails, I was far from being the first arrival. Over the whispering of the breeze-t
ossed fountains behind the walls came the twang and tinkle of guitars and the murmur and laughter of voices.
Dismounting, I tied up my horse and tugged at the bell pull once, twice, and then a good dozen times before I roused out the old manservant. From the whiff I got when he swung open the gate to bow me in, I figured he’d been celebrating with the botella pretty lively himself.
Just before the gate clanged shut another rider, decked out in a dark riding outfit, serape, and sombrero, came loping up. The stranger piled from his horse, flung the reins to the Mexican, then swaggered into the patio beside me.
“Say there, isn’t this our good alcalde’s relative?” The man was none other than the dude gambler Powers—my brother’s rival in the local saloon business.
I allowed as much and was about to make some talk about the fine night when we were surrounded by a noisy crowd of guests. I recognized more than one that I’d visited on my tax rounds and saw they knew me, but I was mighty glad they only bowed and smiled and went on with their visiting. They hadn’t forgotten my threats about talking out of turn.
A sudden hand tugged at mine and Estrellita Castañeda was laughing at me, and, at her side, was the girl in the tintype—and both as pretty as two just-minted gold pieces.
“Roy! Come and dance with us.” Lucia Castañeda swept up out of the dark crowd, swirling her new silver ball gown for my benefit. The music rang out in a gay little tune, and, as the partners moved out on the patio floor, I found myself dancing with Señorita Dulcima.
All I could think of as we circled and swayed around the floor, while the fiddle, flute, and guitar swelled into the silvery moonlight, was that here was the very girl I’d thought about many times through long nights on the trail, and how downright strange it was that I now held her in my arms.