Roy Bean's Gold (13 page)

When the song finished there came shouts of “
¡1;Viva la España!
” “
¡Viva el Mexico!
” “
¡1;Viva la señorita
Rosita!” and the uproar was tremendous.

At last some young
caballero
, two sheets to the breeze, shouted out: “
¡Viva todo el mundo!
[Long live everybody],” which bit of foolishness was followed by a gale of laughter.

When the applause and excited conversation eased off, the guests began to leave the
rancho
with many good byes, while the guitar and flute played and the rest of the little orchestra sang them on their way with a clever little drinking song:

Ah! que bonitos
Son los enanos,
Los chiquititos
Y mejcanos.

Sale la linda,
Sale la fea,
Sale el enano,
Con su zalea.

Rosita, who stood by the gate, bidding farewell to the folks, took old
Don
Hechavarría by the hand as he came up, guided by his servant. She lowered her voice but I was near enough to hear her mention Francisco by name. It was plain that the old gent was one of the few who knew that her brother was nearby, though he couldn't see him.

The Castañeda girls hurried up to bid me
buenas noches
. “We'll be back in town in a few days and Dulcima comes with us . . . so you must promise,
Señor
Roy, to be as attentive to our dear friend as you are to us.”

They playfully shoved Dulcima forward while she struck at them with her fan but smiled shyly at me.

I allowed that I'd come calling at the Casa Castañeda as usual and, feeling like a regular
don
myself, took the fingertips of each young lady and saluted them in the best fashion. When I seized Dulcima's tapered fingers, she pulled them back for an instant before surrendering them to me. I brushed them with my mustache, and, as I did, two people watched my shenanigans, besides the Castañeda sisters and some of the departing guests.

Rosita's green eyes were on me for a long moment, while Dick Powers, hand shoved in his sash, stood in the shadow of the wall staring at us.

With one last bow to the ladies, I followed the jovial, chattering crowd through the gate, hard on the heels of Powers, who'd managed to leave while I bade Rosita a good evening.

Untying my horse from the rail, I thought I saw a light in the upper story of the big old house and wondered if Joaquín Murieta stood there watching us leave, but it could have been just moonlight upon a windowpane.

“Well, Bean, I see we're heading the same way.” Mounted upon his big black stallion, Powers waited for me in the road while the traps and wagons pulled around us on the way to their ranches and farms.

“Only as far as Casa de Oro,” I said as I spurred up my horse.

Powers kept on beside me. “Golden House? That's a prime name all right.” We rode in silence for a piece, then: “Plan on staying in the vicinity for a spell?”

“Just for the night. It's a long piece back to town in the dark.”

“Not for a gent with any sand.” He opened his coat and displayed the handle of a six-shooter in his belt.

I let that pass and didn't feel that I had to show him my weapon. It was plain to see that Powers was trying to rile me for some reason, and I wasn't about to rise to his bait. “My nag can stand a rest. I pushed her pretty hard coming over. And I may do some swapping at the Misión San Carlos. They say the fathers have some prime saddle stock over there.”

“Swap your crow bait like you swapped sombreros tonight, eh?” He gave a short laugh and spurred up, leaving me by myself in the dimming moonlight.

Dick Powers didn't appear to care much for my company, and that was one hundred percent with me.

All the way to the tavern at the crossroads, my mind was in a perfect muddle. When I tried to think about Rosita's warning, I got to pondering what she'd said of her brother, the man called Joaquín Murieta. And when I began to cipher just how Joaquín Murieta could be related to the mistress of Rancho de la Fuentes, I got to thinking of the tintype girl and her odd connection with that strange family. and so it went, never landing on one subject long enough to decide what I was going to do about gold, girl, Murieta—or Rosita herself.

Several of the guests had taken the same road, and, as I loped past, they wished me the best of the coming day. More than one had felt the benefit of Kirker's gold eagles, and others had heard of my soft-headed approach to tax collecting. But to give all due credit, none that I knew of had breathed a word to anyone in San Diego—though Dick Powers had begun to sniff around for whatever he could find.

Once in a while I passed small groves of trees looming up dark and dismal-looking in the tarnished half light of the fading moon, but never did I have more than a passing doubt as to who might lurk nearby, for I was about certain that no one thereabouts made any moves unless Francisco Almada, otherwise Joaquín Murieta, told them to—and, if I was to believe Rosita Almada, and my own sixth sense, he was in or near Rancho de la Fuentes.

There was no sign of Dick Powers on the road. He was probably long on the way back to town, for as a horseman with few equals, only Murieta had the reputation for moving faster and farther in a given time. And as my thoughts drifted back to Powers, I found myself wondering why he'd come out to the Almada place uninvited. The answer seemed to be Dulcima herself.

When I pulled up at the tavern, there was a battered tin lantern hanging over the entrance, but no light within. I pounded away on the big oaken door and finally turned out the tavernkeeper, who came waddling with a candle, digging at his pouchy eyes with a dirty fist. As soon as he got himself around and recognized me as the
gringo
who'd come by earlier and paid hard cash for a presumably soft bed, he helped me stable the horse out back in a shed, and then led me through the bar to a room that looked out upon the road and the empty mesa beyond.

Wishing me
buenas noches
in a wheezy voice, he shuffled away to bolt the front door and left me with the guttering stump of the candle and a rickety cord-and-shuck-mattressed bed.

I tugged off my boots, squinted at my watch, and wondered if Rosita would actually follow me down to this shabby crossroads hostelry—and in just about half an hour at that.

Lying back on the creaking bed, fully dressed save for my shirt, I tried again to puzzle out the odd parade of events that had seen me practically run out of Mexico to fall in with a red-handed robber, learn—or nearly learn—the secret to a golden bonanza, discover not only the little girl in the tintype but that her very guardian was none else than Jeff Kirker's Red Rosita. And to put the cap sheaf on the whole affair, find that Rosita's brother was actually the noted bandit leader Murieta.

How I wished that Salazar had been close at hand to help me solve such a mixed-up puzzle—and what to do about my discoveries. But the little Mexican sheriff had left the bandit Juan Pico in Josh's
calabozo
until he returned from an expedition down into southern California, below the border.

And if I told Salazar that Joaquín Murieta was as close by as Rancho de la Fuentes in the person of Rosita's brother, would he laugh or take off his flopping sombrero and rub his vanished scalp?

And did I want to tell Salazar anything at all? I didn't know.

The whole matter seemed to be as wild as one of Salazar's hated penny dreadfuls, yet it was as true as the fact that I had a hole in the stocking of my right foot.

Staring at that toe, wriggling it and keeping an eye on the dwindling candle, I kept hoping that Rosita was on the way and began to get all hot under the collar, even with my shirt off.

Then came the rapid beat of hoofs—hoofs pounding down the road from the direction of Rancho de la Fuentes, and I got off the bed and pushed open the shutter to peer out. Shading my eyes, I could only make out the hazy forms of rider and mount in the dimming starlight, but knew my candle had been seen.

The figure dismounted and I heard bit and bridle jingle. Then the shadowy person drifted toward my window. I stepped back and waited, beginning to burn, again, with anticipation.

The shutter eased full open. An arm poked in through the window. Something glinted in the candlelight—a long-barreled pistol.

As I froze against the wall, my six-shooter buried under my pillow, the stranger flung a booted leg over the sill, swung up—and I was looking at Joaquín Murieta!

F
rancisco Almada stood quietly in the vague candlelight, pistol held on a line with my belt buckle, then, giving a short laugh, he thrust the weapon back into his waist sash.

“Easy,
señor
. You might as well invite me to stay, for I'm certain to be the only guest, invited or not, that you'll see tonight.”

“You took me a mite unawares like,
Señor
. . .
ah?
” I waved him to a seat on a corner of the bed and sank back down upon my creaking mattress, waiting for his next move.

“It would seem you are somewhat in doubt as to my correct identity.” Almada smiled with a flash of even white teeth. “Please be assured that my true self is that of
Don
Francisco Almada. brother of the beautiful and sometimes dangerous Rosita.”

“But you are also Murieta.” I was wondering how to get at my own firearm, but it was under my pillow—and I was sitting on top of both.

“Guilty as charged,
Señor
Bean.” Almada removed his gold-encrusted sombrero and inclined his sleek head slightly. “But have no misapprehensions as to my visit. It is necessary, for I wish you to carry a most urgent message to your brother, the
alcalde
. You'll be seeing him shortly?”

I allowed as how I'd be setting eyes on Josh about as soon as I got back to San Diego in the morning. Then, as Murieta seemed to be thinking, I looked him over. I'd seen quite a few play actors in my brief span, for I'd always had a hankering after the theater, and this dashing young fellow was about as handsome as any leading man I'd ever laid eyes upon. In a later time when folks began to make a sort of royalty out of those on the boards, he'd have been called a matinee idol. Now as he sat back on his corner of the bed, relaxed but ready to spring on the instant, like some dangerous, graceful cat, I found myself thinking that had I been some young lady I'd have come close to swooning, seeing those piercing black eyes flash under their long lashes and his handsomely regular features darken and brighten with each turn of our talk.

There was only one minor flaw in Joaquín Murieta's overall appearance. He was shy a piece of his right earlobe, and, as he spoke from time to time, his hand would travel up to fiddle at his damaged ear. But that hand never strayed far from his pistol sash.

“If you are able to get in a word or so with your brother, as you say, tell him, if he values his life in the very least, to beware of what he might do to the men of Murieta.” And young Almada's hand again dropped to the butt of a six-shooter while his eyes locked with mine.

“I'd guess that Josh knows how to handle his jailhouse without much jawing from me.”

“His
calabozo
is one thing . . . night riders are another.”

“Night riders?”

“
Sí
. Perhaps you were unaware that your fine relation has been hand-in-glove with those foul night birds. those devils who carry off poor, helpless prisoners into the darkness. even those guilty of as little as the theft of a sheep or a cow. and. . . .”

“And?”

“
Ah
, you are aware of what happens to them, and I have information the stranglers plan to murder the trio now held in the
alcalde
's
calabozo
.” He tapped me on the knee with a long finger. “If that should happen, as sure as my name is. never mind which name. your brother stands to be a dead man.”

“You would kill my brother?”

There came a silence that seemed so deep and long that the guttering of my candle crackled like a little bonfire, and the night wind, ever prowling outside, moaned like some lost, whimpering animal.

“No. I'll not kill your foolish brother, but Joaquín Murieta will. if the
alcalde
and his brutes lynch those prisoners.”

“But you just said . . . ?” I rubbed my eyes and stared hard at this debonair young
caballero
, who sat so calmly in the wavering, lemon-tinted candle glow, face a handsome mask, without the least expression.

“
Señor
Bean, do you think I am the butcher who slew a dozen men to seize myself a fortune in bloody gold. the gold that villainous renegade Kirker ran away with?”

“But you . . . you're Murieta.”

“I am, but there is another Murieta . . . at least the one who rides and slays under that name.” He suddenly bent forward, his shadow doubling out to stretch black and menacing across the wall behind him. “Keep your hand away from that weapon under your pillow, and I shall tell you of the two Joaquín Murietas.”

So while the flickering candle slowly died away into a pool of pale wax, I sat and listened to the calm, even voice of the man called Joaquín Murieta, as he spun his tale in that small hour of the night.

“You've met the parent of my alter ego, Carlos Hechavarría, the poor old
Don
Xavier. Most certainly the cruelest part of this whole tragic farce remains the fact that Carlos is determined never to make himself known to his ancient father, nor return to his home until the
Americanos
are driven from the country. impossible as that event seems to be.

“My sister and I have both pleaded with him many times, but he remains steadfast to his vow to stay ‘dead to all but honor,' as he expresses it.

“You should know that both Carlos and I, being from the same valley, were officers in the Cuirassiers, in fact the same company. And both of us were wounded at Buena Vista. I took several bullets. The only one showing damaged a small portion of my manly beauty. thus you behold my abbreviated ear. But Carlos himself was left for dead upon that terrible field. I went forth to hunt him out on the night following the battle, but he had taken a head wound and wandered away into the wilderness, where, amazingly enough, he dwelt amongst a small Indian tribe for nearly a year. This was all unknown to our army or to his family, which was told of his apparent end.