He shook out his paper, settled himself as if to read.
“You are not a cattle buyer. Is it horses in which you are interested?”
“We have many horses in Russia.”
“You are from Russia, then? Not England?” Was that the accent I detected? But where could I have heard it before?
He was irritated. “Does it matter?”
“Not at all. We have had Russians in California from the beginning. I believe they had thoughts of claiming the area at one time.
“As to the name, I was simply curious, as you were. California is welcoming many strangers these days. Some come for gold, the wise ones for land, and others are simply buying or selling. Of course,” I added, “others are merely prospecting.”
“I am a traveler. The name Nesselrode intrigued me. It is uncommon.”
“So you said. I knew some Nesselrodes back east when I was a child. Quite a large family. If the name interests you, I believe I could provide their address, in Philadelphia. He is a painter, I believe, and his wife taught ballet, when there was anyone to teach.”
He folded the newspaper and put it down. “Thank you very much.”
“Not at all,” I replied. “When you want to know anything, please feel free to ask.”
He gave me a look that had a whip in it, but I smiled and he went out, his back very stiff, and when he closed the door, it was with an emphatic bang.
Feeling pleased with myself, I returned to putting books on the shelves. The streets were growing busy now, people coming and going about their trading and shopping.
That accent, now. Russian, was it? Where had I known any Russians? I hadn’t.
The thought returned. Who was Miss Nesselrode? Was his interest romantic? Her age…It gave me a sharp feeling of discomfort to realize she was not what people called a young woman any longer. Yet she was as slender and graceful as always, unchanged so far as I could see.
She came in suddenly, yet not so suddenly, for I had been hearing the distinctive click of her heels on the walk.
She closed the door behind her and glanced around, then looked at me with sudden awareness. “Hannes? What is it?”
“There was a man here…the one we saw across the street. I think he was trying to find out about you. I do not believe his interest was romantic, although I could be wrong.”
She smiled beautifully. “Romantic? I am afraid it is late for that.”
“Is it ever?” I paused. “His name was Alexis Murchison.”
She was drawing off her gloves. There was a moment of stillness.
“No,” she was thinking aloud, “it cannot be. Not after all this time.” She came through the gate in the railing that divided her desk and the shelves from the reading room, where there were easy chairs and a table. “What did you tell him?”
“What could I tell him? That you are a beautiful woman. That you own the shop. What else do I know?”
She was amused. “I haven’t told you very much, have I?”
“I do know a little more than before he came in,” I commented, “because he had a very slight accent. I was puzzled as to where I’d heard it before.” I glanced at her. “You are Russian, are you not?”
“I was once, a very long time ago. Now I am an American. A Californian.”
“But you were a Russian.”
“When I think back now, it seems another world, another life, and almost another person.”
“You will go back?”
“I cannot. You see, Hannes, I was sent to Siberia, and I escaped. There were nine of us who started and only three who made it. I was a young girl when we escaped to China. My brother was killed in Siberia before we even got away, another died of hardships, and a third was killed in Mongolia by men who robbed us. I am the last of my family, and there is nothing to which to return. And I would be arrested.”
She looked into the sunlit street, watching an old carreta rolling past. “When I reached China, I was taken in by an English family and earned my keep teaching French to their children. When I got older, I hired out as a governess. I saved my money, determined to come to America.
“I have been poor, Hannes, and I do not wish to be poor again. I work, I plan, I save.”
We sat for a long time watching the people passing, and then she said, “We were so young, Hannes, and so very naive! We wished to change everything! I was too young to take part, but I listened to my brothers and their friends. They were excited. They were filled with enthusiasm. They wanted to reform their government. They wished it to be more liberal, and to follow the path of England and France.
“My mother was English, you see, and we had spent vacations in England. We pitied our serfs and we thought our government too rigid, but we were naive, and we had no idea how deeply embedded in Russian nature were the ideas we wished to change!
“My brothers belonged to a secret society called the Union of Welfare, which had been organized among the Semonovsky Guards officers, but it came to nothing and disbanded in 1821. My oldest brother had belonged. He was transferred to Tulchin in the Ukraine, and Colonel Paul Pestel was also located there. They organized what was called the Southern Society.
“When Alexander I died, they planned a revolt, but they were idealistic dreamers, they had no contact with the troops who they believed would join them.
“It was called the Decembrist Revolt and it was put down quickly and harshly. Five men were hung, including Pestel, and of the 121 men tried for treason, 109 were under thirty-five. Some were sentenced to hard labor, some sent to Siberia.”
“But you were a young girl!”
“It made no difference. In Russia if someone in your family was involved, it was taken for granted you all were. We were sent to Siberia and we learned through sources friendly to us that we were to be eliminated. It was then we chose to escape.”
“And now?”
“I could not go back. We are still considered enemies, and the fact that some of us escaped has compounded the evil.”
“Would they come here? Would they try to get you back?”
She hesitated, biting her lip. “I do not think so. I was not that important. Still, I do not know. It would depend on the situation there. If by bringing one of us back to trial they could embarrass someone politically, it might be.
“You see, there were others of our family, very distant relatives but of the same name, who were very active. Count Nesselrode was at the Congress of Vienna. He was very active in the government.”
“You must be careful.”
She studied me for a moment. “Do you think of Don Isidro?”
“He is never far from my mind, but…there are other things.” I stood up suddenly. “I am restless for the desert.”
“But what is out there for you, Hannes? Beauty, of course, but what else?”
“I don’t know.” I frowned. “Maybe that’s the trouble, I just don’t know.” I walked across to the window, then turned to face her. “There’s something out there for me, something unfinished, something I must do.
“All of this”—I waved a hand—“I can feel it happening, it’s in the air. A man could become rich and successful here, but is that what I want? Or is there something else? Something my father and mother found?”
“Are you sure? Did they find anything? Or were they simply escaping from here? They had happiness with each other…we know that, but was there anything else?”
I remembered that time in the desert when Peg-Leg had found me, so long ago now. I tried to remember if I had been frightened, but could not remember fear. I had been in trouble, but I had known what I had to do, and was trying. I might even have made it.
No…no, I could not have made it. Peg-Leg had saved my life. I would have died out there, for there were too many miles and I had too little knowledge of the desert.
What was drawin
g me back? The house by the springs? The desert itself?
“Someone is coming,” Miss Nesselrode said suddenly. “Be careful!”
Stepping away from the window, I turned to face the door. It opened tentatively and a small boy peered in, a small boy with very large dark eyes and a very large straw hat. He glanced quickly from Miss Nesselrode to me, then thrust a folded paper at me and ducked out the door before I could speak.
The handwriting was familiar, the note brief:
Can you come? I need you now, desperately!
Meghan
Passing the note to Miss Nesselrode for explanation, I went out the door.
Her home was but a short distance. I could be there in minutes.
CHAPTER 41
An obviously frightened maid opened the door for me. “Oh, señor! Come quickly! But be careful!”
She pointed the way, and I crossed the patio to the galería, pausing in the doorway.
Meghan was facing me, and also facing a man whose back was toward me. There was no need for him to turn for me to know him. It was Rad Huber.
“Good morning, Meghan. I am sorry to be late.” I moved on into the room, and as he turned toward me, I said, “It has been a long time, Rad.”
He would outweigh me by forty pounds and was at least an inch taller. There was brutal power in his physique and in his features as well, but there was something else…A faint shadow of weakness, perhaps? A sense of something incomplete, unfinished?
“Get out.” He did not speak loudly, and he jerked his head toward the door. “Get out while you’re able.”
“I’m sorry, Rad, but Meghan and I have business to discuss. Captain Laurel asked me to stop by and arrange matters. Do you mind?”
He faced squarely toward me, his feet a little apart. He had always been rather obvious, and he had not changed. He was expecting a shooting, and welcomed it. The trouble was that Meghan was there, and bullets do not always go to their intended mark.
“Go ahead. State your business, then get out.”
I smiled at him. “Our business is confidential, Rad, and has nothing to do with you. I am here by invitation, Rad. Are you?
“If you will recall, there have been several hangings this past year, and at least three of them were of men who tried to force their attention on ladies. You could be next.”
“I’m courtin’ her!”
“He was asked to leave,” Meghan said. “He has only come because he knows my father is away.”
“That was one of the matters we had to discuss. Your father,” I was inventing as I went along, “wished me to find a couple of the El Monte men to be around in the event of trouble.”
Turning to Rad, I added, “A couple of the Texas boys from El Monte are coming by. It would not be wise to be around when they arrive.”
He stared at me. “Someday,” he said, “we’ll meet somewhere. It’ll be just you an’ me.”
“Of course, Rad. We’ve both known that, haven’t we? And when it is over, I shall be able to get on with so many of the important things.”
“You will get on? You will be dead.”
I smiled tolerantly. “You’re really not very good with a gun, Rad. There’s a little way you have, an odd way you use your hands. You lose time, Rad, and time is the essence of it all.”
As a matter of fact, I’d never seen Rad Huber in action, but he didn’t know that, and it was in my mind to get him worrying about himself. If he became self-conscious, he would be hesitant, slow. He might try to dismiss the idea from his mind, but it would still be there, haunting him. He might review his method of drawing a gun, trying to discover what I indicated was a bad move. I had no idea whether it would have any effect, but it was worth a chance.
“You ain’t nothin’,” he said. “You never was.”
“Ask the men who tried to steal my horses out by Coldwater,” I suggested.
He walked to the door, turned as if to speak, then walked away, spurs jingling. I waited until the outer gate closed behind him.
Meghan came over to me. “Oh, Johannes! I am so sorry! I’ve gotten you into trouble again, but I just didn’t know what to do or whom to call upon!”
“Who else but me?” I took her hands. “I’d have been disappointed had you called anyone else. I hope whenever anything is wrong you will call me.”
“But because of me you’re in trouble with Rad. I was the cause of that other trouble, too.”
“We would have clashed anyway. He had started making trouble even before I sat down in your seat. You just gave him one more reason.”
“Will you have some coffee?”
The galería skirted the patio on three sides, and we sat at a table under the arches, looking out over the sunlit patio at the fountain. We talked of her father, far out on the seas bound for China, and then we talked of Kelda O’Brien and Della Court, and all that lay outside the walls seemed far away.
Despite the violence of Sonora Town and such places as the Calle de Los Negros, ours was a town of flowers, vines, and trees, an island of people and problems lying between the mountains and the sea. Despite the furor off to the north in the Mother Lode country, Los Angeles remained a pleasant cow town. Phineas Banning had opened a stage line from Wilmington to Los Angeles, and later had begun building a railroad. Many of the Californios such as Andrés Pico had become outstanding citizens, and despite the seeming quiet of the town, it was stirring with ambition, realization of possibilities.
“You should not be here alone with your father gone,” I suggested. “The talk about the El Monte boys was just talk, but why not let me get one of them to live on the premises? They are a decent lot, but very tough, and nobody wants trouble with them. There should be a man here.”
“One is coming. He will be here tomorrow.”
“Someone your father knows?”
She hesitated only a moment. “Yes, Father knows him. A friend is sending him to live in the cabin by the corrals.”
“When your father returns, I wish to talk to him again. He seemed to know more about my family than I know myself.”
She hesitated, then said, “He is afraid for you.”
“He implied something of the kind. He seemed to think trouble might come from directions I did not suspect.”
She was silent; then she added, “Father is often suspicious where he should not be.”
“Perhaps. He seemed to me to know much that I did not. Until he told me I’d not heard the story of Don Federico trying to kill the other boy aboard ship.”
“It was just a story. Father has many such stories, picked up at sea. It was just a disagreement between boys, I think.”
“I wonder what ever happened to that other boy? Don Federico is here, of course.”
“Father suspects the boy is dead. He has always intended to ask Aunt Elena.”
“She knows?”
“If anyone does. The boy was taken away by the older woman who traveled with him. Nobody seems to know where they went, but it is not important. No doubt he is somewhere about, someone we know, perhaps.”
“I do not really know Aunt Elena, but I believe I would like her very much.”
“I like her. She comes here sometimes.” After a moment’s pause she said, lifting her chin slightly, “So does Don Federico.”
“What?” I was startled.
“We met at a fandango. He’s quite a marvelous dancer.”
Unreasonably, perhaps, I felt betrayed! I gulped coffee and burned my mouth. Mentally, I swore. Who was I to object? She could see whom she wished. But when had this begun? Since her father left, I was sure.
“He can be charming when he wishes,” Meghan said. “And he seems to think a great deal of your grandfather.”
“I have not seen him since I was a small boy. That is, not to be sure of him.”
“Of course. He is older, but there is not as much difference between us as between Don Abel Stearns and his wife.”
Astonished and shaken, I protested, “You’re not thinking of marrying him?”
She smiled teasingly. “I think that is what he has in mind. A girl cannot be sure, but he has been very correct.”
After a long moment of silence I said, and my tone had changed, “He is my enemy. When I was a small boy he wanted me killed.”
“Are you really sure he was the one? It has been a long time, and you were very young.”
“I remember him well, very well.”
“You must be mistaken. Once when I mentioned you he did not seem to know who you were. He did not, he said, know many Anglos.”
Suddenly I wished to be away from here. From here, where I had most wanted to be. Beside her whom I loved or thought I loved. After all, I thought bitterly, what did I know of such things?
“He is a fine horseman,” she was saying, “and one of the most handsome men I have ever seen.”
The charm was gone. The water still fell from the fountain into its basin, the leaves still rustled, but my enemy had been here. He had sat, perhaps, where I was sitting, had drunk from the same cup.
I got to my feet. “I must go.”
Surprised, she turned from the plants she had begun to water. “Must you? But you have only just come!”
“I must ride to the ranch.”
Her eyes searched my face, but I hoped nothing showed. Who was I to object to whom she might entertain?
“I have been told of your black stallion. Have you ridden him yet?”
“Not yet. He has taken bits of food from my fingers and I have watered him from a bucket held in my hands.”
Something was gone from the afternoon. She knew it now as well as I. We stood for a moment, facing each other, each wanting to say something but finding no words.
Being alone here with Meghan—this was a dream come true. I had wanted nothing more, and the reality had been, for a short time, even greater than the dream. Turning abruptly away from her, I started for the door.
The Lonesome Gods (Louis L'Amour's Lost Treasures) Page 29