“About five months earlier, Gillespie had set out from Washington carrying correspondence for several West Coast dignitaries. Gillespie fancied himself something of an espionage specialist. He tried to slip across northern Mexico disguised—rather conspicuously—as a traveling salesman.”
Clem sighed disparagingly. “The costume didn’t fool any of the Mexicans Gillespie came across. Fearing capture, he decided to eat the paper the letters were written on to prevent them from falling into the wrong hands. Of course, before beginning this high-fiber meal, he diligently committed their contents to memory.”
Clem gummed his lips distastefully. “Now, you might wonder what valuable secrets were contained in these precious communiqués . . . so conscientiously carried across hostile enemy territory.”
He shrugged his shoulders. “Seeing as most of these letters were not preserved for posterity”—he paused to make another sour contorted facial expression—“we’ll just have to speculate.”
Clearing his throat, Clem continued, “Gillespie delivered his first messages to the U.S. Navy’s Commodore Sloat, who picked him up at Mazatlan on Mexico’s southwest coast. Nothing in the regurgitated contents of Gillespie’s stomach appear to have altered Sloat’s standing orders, which were to maintain a conciliatory stance vis-à-vis the California Territory until he received clear information of a U.S. declaration of war with Mexico.
“Next,” Clem said, stroking his mustache, “Gillespie proceeded to Monterey and Yerba Buena to convey messages to Larkin and Leidesdorff. Once again, there is no evidence to indicate the Polk administration had changed its strategic stance on California. If anything, by the time Gillespie reached the Bay Area, the situation in Texas had become even more delicate. The two nations were approaching the brink of war. As a last-ditch effort to avoid a formal military conflict, the White House had sent a special envoy to the Mexican capital to make a final offer to purchase the land north of the Rio Grande.”
My Clem apparition strode back and forth in front of the boulder, stroking his chin thoughtfully. “I reckon the White House’s message to Larkin and Leidesdorff went something like this: Stay the course, keep a lid on the pot, and for goodness’ sake, don’t start anything out there before we’re good and ready for it back here.”
Clem scratched his head of thinning hair with his free hand. “Frémont was Gillespie’s last courier stop in Northern California. The delivery of Frémont’s letters was more of a courtesy, really, to the powerful Senator Benton and his lovely daughter, Jessie.
“Only Frémont and Gillespie know the precise words that were conveyed that cold, wet Oregon night, but it seems unlikely Frémont’s wife or father-in-law had written to urge him to instigate an uprising in Northern California that would instantly destabilize the territory.”
Clem blew out a loud guffaw. “The Pathfinder, however, worked his own interpretation of the information he received from Gillespie. He was reading between the lines, so to speak—an interesting prospect when the words are floating around in someone else’s stomach.”
Glancing up at the statue, Clem shook his head. “Frémont was likely far more interested in pumping Gillespie for information about his travels through Mexico than the messages he brought from home. Regardless, after spending one night around his campfire with the, ahem, traveling salesman, Frémont immediately abandoned his Oregon mapmaking mission and reversed course to Sutter’s Fort. There was no need for further deliberation. Frémont knew exactly what he must do next.”
Clem returned his gaze back down to me. “His return to the Sacramento Valley would only serve to aggravate an already tense situation. It was a move that was calculated to do so.”
I sighed as my mental vision of Clem disappeared into the pattering raindrops. Sucking in my lower lip, my face puckered in frustration. Was there nothing more? Had I come to the end of the trail and found nothing?
With Clem gone, I was left staring at the grizzly bear on the plaque beneath the statue. Leaning forward, I peered into the bear’s bronze face and ran my fingers over the ridges of its feet.
If there were no further clues, all I had left to go on was the strange repositioning of the bear from the original flag and Oscar’s handwritten note in the DeVoto book:
Local Indians, passing through Sonoma after the revolt, ridiculed the animal on the flag, calling it a pig or a stoat.
Stoat, stoat, stoat, I pondered as water ran down my forehead and formed a rivulet off the tip of my nose. Without the help of my glasses, the world around me was a blurry wet haze. My thoughts turned inward to the crudely drawn image from my sketchbook.
I closed my eyes, picturing the upright bear and its long, thumping tail as the details of the Bear Flag story filtered through my head. Catching my breath, I suddenly recalled an image that had drifted into my dreams the previous evening.
My eyes popped open as the bear morphed into—a kangaroo.
Chapter 41
THE OSOS
THE STATUE’S IRON face gazed down at the wet woman standing on the sidewalk below him. He read her puzzled thoughts as her head tilted, eyes closed, toward the gray sky.
I know a thing or two about this Bear Flag story, he thought proudly, feeling the furl of the stone flag across the back of his shoulders.
“When Captain John Frémont, the illustrious Pathfinder, returned to Sutter’s Fort, he learned that the Mexican Army had requisitioned a large herd of horses from Sonoma and were moving them south to Santa Clara. Frémont told us this was a clear sign that Castro was preparing to gather his troops and round up the American settlers in the Sacramento Valley. Coming from a man of such standing and experience, we took his assessment seriously. Frémont had been warning us for some time that Castro was up to no good, so when he gave the word, we were ready for action, ready to defend our homes and families—ready to declare our independence from Mexico.
“On June 10, 1846, under orders from Captain Frémont, a group of us rode out from Sutter’s Fort, tracked down the herd of horses, and ambushed the Mexican Lieutenant supervising their transfer.”
The statue’s brow furrowed as he listened to the woman’s internal commentary.
“Horse thieves? I should think not,” he huffed indignantly. “Really, whose side are you on?” He cleared his mental throat.
“We brought the horses straight back to Sutter’s,” he said defensively. “Captain Frémont declared them the property of the United States government, and it was only as a show of gratitude for our services that the members of our regiment received a few head a piece to take home to our farms.”
The statue straightened his already-stiff shoulders in affront. “Well no, I wasn’t actually there when all this happened. This is well-established folklore—stop interrupting me.”
With a last harrumph, the statue continued his tale.
“Now that we had begun our path to independence, we looked to Frémont to guide us on our next course of action. He suggested Sonoma as the best place to stake our territorial claim. That sounded like a good plan to us. Mariano Vallejo wouldn’t hurt a fly, and it had been several years since he’d had troops in his barracks. What’s more, we knew he was secretly on our side. He would not take up arms against us.”
The statue looked out across the rainy intersection as it replayed the historic events of the day. “All night, we rode through the back hills and valleys, picking up more and more men at each stop along the way. We decided our group needed a name—something fierce, fearful . . . ” The statue’s face took on a dreamy expression of reminiscence. “Something that would capture the essence of our fearless leader. After much discussion, we settled on the Osos, the grizzly bears.”
The woman on the ground below jerked as if she’d been startled by a sudden realization. The statue snorted at the image that flashed into her head.
“Kangaroos? Are you absolutely mad, woman? Why would brave patriotic men such as ourselves pick such a ridiculous animal to represent us?”
The wom
an sighed thoughtfully. As she bent toward the stroller to check on the occupants hidden beneath its nylon cover, there was a loud squawk from the opposite side of the park. The woman rose back up, pushed her wet hair away from her face, and looked out across the plaza.
Seeing nothing of concern, she wrapped her hands around the stroller’s handle and swung the buggy resolutely toward the interior of the plaza’s green square. Before she could set off down the path, however, the statue offered one last piece of information.
“If you’re interested in the Bear Flag, you really should check in at the barracks across the street. They’ve got one on display in there that goes back almost to the time of the revolt.”
Chapter 42
A DISTURBED DUCK
I BENT DOWN in front of the Bear Flag Memorial to check that the cats were still dry beneath the cover of the stroller. Isabella glared up at me, more perturbed by her reduced visibility than the moisture that had begun to collect on the surface of the cover. Rupert rolled over, exposing his stomach, hopeful that I would reach in and rub his tummy.
“Wran,” Isabella called out sharply. She reached up to paw at the netting over her head.
“Don’t worry,” I said soothingly. “We’re headed back to the van.”
Just then, there was a loud squawk from the opposite side of the park, and I was again struck by the impression that someone, somewhere in the trees, was watching me. Anxiously, I craned my head to look around the edge of the monument, but the plaza’s park was just as rain-soaked and empty of pedestrian traffic as before.
As I gripped the handle of the stroller and angled it in the direction of the van, I glanced up at the statue. It’s fiercely proud expression looked out toward the street corner and, beyond, a collection of historical buildings. I twisted around to follow the eyes of the statue, staring first at the Sonoma Mission and then at the barracks next door. Squinting through the downpour, I saw what appeared to be lights on inside the barracks.
“Just one more stop,” I murmured down to Isabella as I turned the stroller toward the nearest street corner.
“Wrao,” she replied, sounding pleased.
HAROLD WOMBLER’S PICKUP rolled slowly through the rainy streets of Sonoma, its cracked—and leaking—windshield a watery portal to the outside world. His windshield wipers wagged back and forth ineffectually. At this state of wear, they were more for show than function.
Harold clamped down on his dentures as his wrinkled hands gripped the steering wheel, trying to guide his balding tires across the slick road. He needed to find a parking place soon. The truck wasn’t really safe to drive in these conditions.
He glanced down at his amphibian passengers. The frogs gazed happily at the water droplets streaking across the windshield. “You two can’t get enough of this weather,” he said with a chuckle.
Harold circled his dilapidated truck around the exterior of the plaza until he found a large white van parked across from a small bistro. He swung the pickup into a slot next to the van and let the engine idle as he craned his neck to look out through the truck’s back window.
Beneath the restaurant’s waterlogged awning, Harold’s eyes honed in on the curly hair of a patron seated at a table near the front window. The man’s long, stringy arms flailed about as his head bobbed and swayed. Monty was presumably relaying his experience at the starting line earlier that day to the gentleman seated across the table.
Harold grimaced to himself as he shifted his gaze to Monty’s dining companion.
“So that’s what a life coach looks like,” he mused to his frog companions.
Harold untwisted his torso and reached for the gearshift. As his face turned toward the plaza, he saw a woman with long brown hair pushing a cat stroller along a sidewalk. She was headed toward the opposite side of the park—to the Bear Flag Memorial, he presumed.
“Something doesn’t feel right about this,” Harold muttered uneasily as he cut the engine and engaged the parking brake.
“You two stay in here,” he said, slipping a few crickets into the frogs’ terrarium. All this rain, Harold thought with a painful wince as he locked the cab of the truck and hobbled off across the plaza, was not good for his arthritis.
The woman reached the memorial and circled around to its front side. She appeared to be focusing all of her attention on the statue and the plaque on the boulder beneath it, but Harold stayed off the main path, just in case, to avoid being seen. He sneaked around the edge of a pond, gimping from tree to tree as quickly as he could.
“She’s taking an awfully long time to find this one,” he grumbled under his breath. “Come on,” he said impatiently. “It’s not that well hidden.”
Harold didn’t see the mother duck and her brood of goslings until it was too late. He was concentrating so keenly on the woman standing in front of the monument that he nearly stepped on the feathery pile of young fowl. The mother duck squawked loudly and flapped her wings as if she were about to charge him. He dove face first into the wet grass, silently cursing the bird.
“I’ll stuff a pillow with you and your lot . . .” Harold muttered threateningly.
After a long minute, he slowly lifted his head. The mother duck was still eying him fiercely, but the woman had turned away from the Bear Flag Memorial and was crossing the street for the historic Sonoma Barracks.
“What’s she headed over there for?” he asked, his concern mounting.
Harold’s gaze traveled across to the barracks’ breezeway entrance. He issued a troubled grunt at the sight of a rotund man with enormous side-whiskers standing inside beneath the eaves.
Chapter 43
THE SONOMA BARRACKS
THE SONOMA BARRACKS sat low and nondescript across from the northeast corner of the Sonoma Plaza. It was a two-story adobe-style building with a red tile roof, creamy white stucco, and a rickety wooden balcony that ran along the exterior of the second floor. A breezeway cut through the center of the building, forming the main entrance.
By the time of the Bear Flag Revolt in 1846, the barracks had been vacant for several years. Vallejo was left alone to guard the town’s makeshift presidio and crumbling mission. It was here, in his attached living quarters, that the Bear Flaggers found the General, still in his pajamas, at sunrise on the morning of June 14.
As I walked under the building’s broad eaves, I reflected on what I had read about Mariano Vallejo from Oscar’s history books.
By most accounts, Vallejo was an open advocate of American annexation, particularly for this portion of Northern California. Despite his posting with the Mexican Army, he saw the U.S.’s western expansion as the territory’s inevitable future.
One of Oscar’s reference texts had contained Vallejo’s black-and-white portrait. He’d been a full-figured man with a soft fleshy face and kind un-affronting eyes. He wore his facial hair curiously styled in the shape of broad swooping side-whiskers. The poufs of thick bristly growth formed watermelon-shaped slices on either cheek, giving him the whimsical appearance of a humanized walrus. Above, below, and in between the side-whiskers, he kept his skin immaculately groomed in a close shave, leaving his nose and mouth clipped free.
It was exactly this figure that the cats and I met as we entered the shadowed corridor of the barracks’ breezeway.
Isabella saw him first. “Mreo,” she murmured quietly as my eyes adjusted to the darker interior light.
I was only momentarily thrown off by his presence. There was a familiarity about him, a certain je ne sais Clem in his eyes. My Sonoma search wasn’t so fruitless after all, I thought with relief. I pushed the stroller forward, smiling timidly.
After watching Clem’s performances in Nevada City and Sutter’s Fort, I felt, somehow, as if I knew him. Subconsciously, I kept thinking of how much he reminded me of my Uncle Oscar.
“Ah, hello there,” he greeted us warmly. “Wel-kome to the Sonoma Barracks.” He bowed, spreading his arms wide. “Comandante General Mariano Vallejo at your service. I’ll be your pe
r-son-nal guide here this afternoon.”
The suit that covered his portly figure conveyed the cut of an earlier era. Its wide lapels rested smoothly across his round barrel chest. The raised collar of his starched white shirt rose to meet the dimpled roll of a double chin.
The man before me seemed slightly taller than the Twainimpersonating Clem. Perhaps, I reasoned, it was simply a matter of the elevated heel on his knee-high boots.
His voice, too, had an oddly different tenor. But I chalked that up to the artificial Spanish accent he was using, heavily trilling his Rs and overemphasizing each syllable of every word. His command of Twain’s dialect, I thought ruefully, had been better than his command of the General’s.
Vallejo’s stubby finger pointed in a swirl down to the stroller’s wet nylon cover. I grimaced guiltily as he tilted it up to inspect the cats beneath.
“Hmm,” he mused, releasing the cover. He turned to read an official state park sign near the entrance that listed the site’s rules and regulations.
“No doggies allowed,” he read slowly, before pursing his thick lips contemplatively. “But . . . no men-shon of the feline species . . . so . . . ” He clapped his hands together. “ . . . you are in the clear.” He leaned forward to look down once more into the stroller. “I can-nut say that anyone has ever tried to bring cats in here before,” he said goodnaturedly.
Isabella’s nose twitched as she stared up at him. The orange tip of her tail thumped warily against the floor of the carriage. Yawning himself awake, Rupert blinked sleepily up at the General, his blue eyes crossing as they caught sight of his distinctive side-whiskers.
Rolling the stroller over the concrete floor, I followed obediently after our guide, who stepped further into the breezeway, past a roped-off display of a small canon with spindly wooden wheels. He paused briefly to allow me to peek into the first interior room, located across from the canon.
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