Roy Bean's Gold (10 page)

Rosita Almada was all of that and a lot more: fiery, flaming red hair, flashing emerald-green eyes, perfect nose, and when she smiled at me. . . .

“
Señorita
,” I rasped when I got back some of my power of speech, “I guess you do know why I'm here and. . . .”

“And . . . I'm ready for you!” She suddenly reached under a pillow beside her, and I stiffened, waiting for the crack of a pistol or the flash of light on a dirk.

“Close your mouth,
Señor
Bean. You look so much more handsome with it closed.” Her voice rippled with a sort of laughter, and I thought those fountains out there had the same musical sound.

Taking a second look, I saw she held out a small leather bag to me in her smoothly tapered hand.

“The taxes. One hundred
pesos
, I believe.” Her voice quivered with that same sort of hidden laughter. “I know you must have heard that I am quite unapproachable. I'm sure the worthy
alcalde
, your brother, has informed you that I stand firm against all of the Yank's tax bullies. And I might have done so today but for one thing.” She paused, watching me fumble with the moneybag, then stuff it into my britches pocket.

I guessed she was waiting for me to say something. “One thing,
señorita?
”

“
Sí
, I have a most hard heart,
señor
. a flinty heart, I might say, but I have heard certain tales that may have softened it, somewhat.”

“Tales?” But I knew what she was driving at, all right.

“Yes. You have given away considerably more than you have collected. Old Colonel Hechavarría couldn't rest until he'd got the news to me . . . news that there was at least one Yankee in sympathy with our poor disinherited people.”

I didn't know how to answer beyond saying I hoped such word wouldn't get around to any of the others on my tax list, as I still hoped to pry some actual cash out of them.

“I won't trouble my mind about them,
señor
, you'll take things as they come. I can see you are that sort of a man.” She swung herself up from the hammock and stood looking at me, a sweetly languid woman who could have been anywhere from twenty to thirty or more; I didn't care a tinker's damn which.

I hurriedly got up and stood turning my silver-mounted sombrero around in my hands, and wondering if now could be the right time to fetch out Kirker's marked eagle, or if it was the proper time to mention that tintype of her young ward. Then I got the feeling that Rosita knew about Kirker's gold eagles. But why hadn't she said anything about my scattering them around the countryside to her stove-in fellow Mexicans?

Just about then a muffled bell rang out somewhere within the depths of the great ranch house. Rosita gave a slight start and her knuckles whitened on the hand holding the red fan. I saw, then, that she must have been waiting for that sound—for who made that sound. And right on top of that came the rumble of thunder—closer than when I'd arrived at Rancho de la Fuentes.

A storm was on the way, and we had ourselves a long ride back to San Diego. I only hoped that Abraham knew of some quicker route.

“You must come again under happier circumstances,
señor
.” Rosita held out her hand and I saluted those perfumed little fingertips in the best manner of a real
don
. “My ward, the little Dulcima, will be home from San Francisco within a week, and you must return for our celebration. I understand you are friends of the Castañeda girls, and that will make for a jolly time. Say you will come.”

I answered that I'd be most happy to attend, then bowed myself out and hustled down the verandah steps, while the
señorita
vanished into the house. The thunder seemed closer and the trees in garden and orchard were swaying and dipping their boughs to the sudden wind gusts.

The same old majordomo appeared from around the breeze-tossed spray of the center fountain and let me out of the great metal gate.

“
Señor
, it will storm in a minute!” Abraham shouted, ready with the horses, and we swung aboard. “Should we wait or ride for home?”

I took a hurried look at the low, wolfish clouds, and then back at the
rancho
. I didn't trust myself to be cooped up inside that place with such a woman. The good Lord only knew what I might do.

“Let's ride.”

“
Bueno
. I know of a different road that can take us back to town by a short cut.”

We put the steel to the horses and flew down the dusty road away from the
rancho
, turning off into a thick pine woods to the southeast.

On we galloped while the rumbling crack of thunder behind us swelled up like a battle. A battlefield in the sky. Mexico City all over again, I thought as we swung out of the woods and onto a mesa, heading for the crossroads Abraham was after.

At that moment, three horsemen came spurring hell-for-leather from behind a clump of oak to the south. A musket boomed out, then another! Bullets chirped overhead, like the song of some deadly little birds.

“
¡Bandidos!
” Abraham poked a finger at the trio of riders heading their horses toward us.

“Get going!” I yelled, lashing my own horse for all I was worth, Abraham following suit, and we dashed on toward the crossroads. Another gun banged, and then Abraham shouted: “
Señor
, behold!”

A rider mounted on a great gray stallion had loped out of the pine woods behind and was pounding across the mesa to cut between the pursuers and ourselves, flinging up his arm in some sort of a signal.

Glancing over my shoulder, and losing my sombrero, I was flabbergasted to see the robbers pull up and wait for the man on the big gray. Then the first raindrops struck the road with the force of bullets, and the storm broke.

“Keep going!” I shouted above the crashing storm roar, while Abraham mouthed something at me that I couldn't catch.

We finally halted in another woods, ten miles away from the attempted robbery, and huddled under some trees, but the full force of the storm had already gone brawling on out to the coast and the wide Pacific.

“Now, what were you shouting about?” I asked my companion as I sat in a wet saddle, mourning for my lost silver-mounted sombrero and still wondering about Rosita, and that damned handy stranger.

“I said,
señor
, that was Murieta. Joaquín Murieta upon his steel-dust stallion who halted those villains at the crossroads.”

“Murieta?” I stared at him and over my shoulder. “Keep riding!”

M
“urieta? You certain?” Josh waved a copy of the
Alta California
, just down from San Francisco on the stage. “Look here. It says Joaquín Murieta and his blackguards have been raiding mining camps up along the Sacramento not three days before this paper came out, and it's just two days old.”

“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?”