Roy Bean's Gold (18 page)

Riding on, I soon crested the last hill and sat breathing my mount, and looking over toward Rancho de la Fuentes. The long yellow wall fronting the buildings was still spangled with vines but the roses of summer were withered and gone, while the woods behind the place seemed lonelier than ever. The surrounding orchards were now brave with the fruit of peach, pear, and apple, yet somehow the entire establishment had an oddly deserted look.

I kicked up the mare and rode across the mesa to the
rancho
, and dismounted before the wall. Standing at the arched gate, I tugged the bell rope. The chiming of the bell inside mingled with the lacy whisperings of the fountains, yet it also seemed muffled and subdued. Tying up the roan at the hitch rail, I heard the groaning creak of the gate and turned to find the same ancient little serving man, José, standing in the archway.

“
Señor
Bean. . . .”

“Would you tell
Señorita
Almada that I've come out to talk with her.”

“She has gone,
señor
.” The old man bowed crabwise as he motioned me onto the flagstone path. “Please to come up to the ranch house. I have a message from the
Señorita
.”

I sat in the big armchair on the porch and read and reread the letter that José had fetched, while the splash of the fountains echoed through the empty courtyard.

Señor
,

Pardona
for this hasty note, but circumstance has so dictated. I am forced to close up the
rancho
again, and travel to San Francisco.

My brother suffers, from time to time, the effects of a wound taken in the war against the Yankees. This now demands an immediate visit to a proficient physician at Yerba Buena. I shall accompany him, along with some of his retainers.

Dulcima has been sent funds and instructed to proceed back to her school by the first of the month. Now, I beg of you, see that fellow Powers stays away from her. I've recently learned some unsettling facts—and shall deal with her when I am able.

Again,
pardona
for such a greeting, and believe me when I assure you that I planned to visit Casa de Oro that night but Francisco preceded me—and I was then forced, at the last moment, to bring him a most urgent message.

Another time, perhaps?

P.S. Have no fear of J.M. All have gone northward.

I lounged back, looking at the courtyard. Here and there a stray windblown leaf scuttled and scratched along the flagstones, a solitary butterfly hovered near a tattered rosebush, and a bird or two called from the neighboring trees. But it was all so different from that merry moonlit night of not so long ago. For another moment I watched Rosita's empty hammock swing gently in the shadows, then got up and bade good bye to old José.

There was a long, lonely ride ahead back to San Diego, and a noonday meeting
mañana
with a gent called Diamond Dick.

I had a hard time settling down that night, though I tried to read a new yellowback,
The Prisoners of the Aztecs
. Josh was out until way past midnight, meeting with the Castañedas, the Torreses, and other influential Spanish-Americans, plotting out his campaign for the upcoming elections.

When he did get home and opened my door to stand staring at me and pulling his chin whiskers, he growled like a sore-tailed bear. “So! You confounded lunkhead. you went and let that tinhorn Powers finagle you into a crazy duel after all. And I hear tell you've told my feather-brained deputy Agostín that I said it was all OK. Well, just one thing”—he gave his whiskers a violent tug—”you'd best shoot danged straight, because that jasper is known to be black death with a pistol.”

“I thought you'd kibosh things if you heard.”

“No, it's gone too far now. It can't be said that I've got myself a blamed coward for a relation!”

“Might hurt your election hopes, eh?”

“No such damned thing! Just you see that you don't do more than wing him good, though. If anybody's killed, I'd have to put the other in the
calabozo
sure as sin.” Josh glared at me, and then slammed the door behind him, only to reopen it again. “Now, you know full well, Roy, that I'm behind you all the way. Hell, you're my kid brother. But for the love of Lazarus, watch yourself tomorrow.” He shut the door easy that time.

I blew out the lamp and rolled over. For a while I kept seeing Dulcima's face in the dark, but it kept changing into that of the wistful little girl of the tintype who had been Dulcima. Presently, for some reason, Rosita swept into my drowsy half dreams, with her curves, brilliant eyes, and masses of flame-tinted hair blowing in a cloud about her sensuous features. Then hard-eyed Dick Powers crowded before both girls, swaggering through the darkness with a big deadly pistol in each hand. For a long moment a strange chill crept in waves over me, and then I seemed to loose my clutch on existence and dropped away into empty nothingness, and slept without another dream to my name.

I
got up late next morning cursing out Abraham for not waking me earlier. Scrambling from my rumpled bed, I washed and shaved carefully, then dressed in the very best duds I owned. The black velvet trousers and silk shirt I bought up at Los Angeles were topped off with a gold-embroidered vest set with a swarm of small shining pearl buttons in several different patterns, including that of an eagle, or perhaps a California vulture, in full flight across the back of the garment.

Looking myself over in my washstand mirror, I decided that maybe I wasn't the
caballero
to end all such dudes, but I still came pretty close after all.

Strange to remark, I wasn't one bit edgy, but, when I sat down to a late breakfast and heard the old hall clock boom out eleven times, my cup of coffee began to try to hop from my hands. I attempted another sip, then gave it up as poor business.

“Where's the
alcalde?
” I asked Abraham, waving off the little Indian and his coffee pot. “And by the way, why didn't you tell me
Señorita
Almada had closed the
rancho
and left the territory?”

“I'm right here.” Josh came into the room, dressed to the nines in his very best
alcalde
get-up: gold-encrusted jacket, green waist sash, and flaming orange pantaloons, with his largest golden ring in his ear.

“Where'd you come from? You look like you're just in from some fandango, or been selling snake oil.”

“Never you mind about that. And I think somebody's said to beware of the sort of enterprises that demand new clothes,” snapped Josh, “so it looks as though we're both mighty stylish for a funeral. I hope to high heaven that it won't be yours. But you remember what I told you about any actual killing.” He tugged at his goatee, a sure sign he was on the prod. “And what's this about that hellcat of an Almada gal? She's gone and cleared off?”

“Yes.” I was short with Josh. I didn't take kindly to his language. “I'm going out to saddle up. It's getting on for noon, and I'm not going to be late for that sidewinder of a diamondback.”

Josh followed me out back to the adobe barn, behind the
casa
, and pitched in with Abraham to help saddle up my mare.

“Here, take this.” My brother handed me his personal silver-mounted pocket Colt with pearl handles. I stuck it into my sash, along with Powers's Navy. The gambler's pistol was a .36 caliber, while Josh's was only a .31, but two hands were better than one—and maybe two six-shooters.

When I rode down Mason and turned into Calhoun toward the plaza, my eyes really opened up. The entire plaza and the streets around it were decorated fit for a
fiesta
. Red and blue banners looped across the streets between buildings, bunting drooped from the trees, and a big American flag flapped lazily in the fresh breeze, humming across from the sparkling waters of the bay. The streets were crowded with natives and visitors from out in the country. Peddlers wandered through the chattering crowds selling tortillas and meat pies, and both saloons seemed to be doing a brisk business, from the drunken shouts and catcalls echoing around the plaza. There even was a four-piece band in the plaza itself.

The bells in the old mission, down by the fort, were chiming the noon hour as I pulled up my mare and looked around for Powers, but the first person I recognized was Dulcima. Dressed in a flame-red gown, with a brightly colored
mantilla
, she stood under one of the pepper trees, both Castañeda sisters at her side. All three fluttered handkerchiefs and called to me, but the off-tune brass band had begun to blare out some Mexican polka. I lifted my sombrero, then turned to find Agostín Haraszthy at the side of my horse, looking more down-in-the-mouth than usual. “Just over there,
señor
, I've had thees next street roped off, from Twiggs to the next corner of thees plaza.
Señor
Powers awaits you there. Let us go over and get thees thing finished.”

When we got to the other side of the plaza, Diamond Dick, mighty somberly dressed in a coal-black broadcloth suit and dove-gray sombrero, was standing beside his beautiful white stallion, White Lightning.

A pack of his hangers-on were grouped about the roped-off street shouting boasts at all and sundry who'd placed bets with them—and there'd been one devil of a lot of wagers placed, according to Haraszthy.

“Here are the rules,
Señor
Bean,” Haraszthy began as the uproar grew and the infernal band, squealing and thumping, came marching over to our side of the square, leading more onlookers, including the girls, who must have outtalked
Señora
Castañeda.

“The rules say,” the deputy doggedly went on, “that when I fire my
pistola
, you both shall ride to opposite ends of the roped-off street, and, on my second shot, you shall ride toward each other, firing as you please. But only at each other. If anyone else should be struck, and some of these folks seem bound to get in the way, then I must halt the affair and take the one responsible for the shot to our
calabozo
.”

I nodded and rode back to my end of the street after Haraszthy had lifted the ropes aside. Powers was mounted now and galloping back to his end of Twiggs, for all the world like some funeral director on horseback who was in a big rush to get on with the services.

I made up my mind right there that he wouldn't be around to attend my services, if I had anything to do with it.

Bang!
went the deputy's six-gun while the crowd whooped, flags fluttered in the freshening sea winds, and the band snarled into some sort of a Mexican bullring serenade, then the second shot cracked out.

I put the spurs to Brown Bess and charged toward Powers on his big white horse, while half a dozen mongrels cavorted along at our heels. Just about when I was halfway to Powers, who still sat with hands on his pommel, I caught the flash of something metallic on the roof of one of the nearby buildings. But I kept on the lope, Navy in my right fist and my reins in my left.

Whack! Whack!
Where Powers had gotten those guns so fast I never knew, but he was coming at me like a white-lightning bolt, firing as fast as he could with both pistols, reins in his teeth.

We thundered past each other, cracking away, and were halfway down the street before either could rein up in a cloud of dust and gravel. The ringing air was suddenly jammed with silence, then the crowd whooped, all shrilly meaner than ever, like a bullfight mob on the look-out for blood.

Again we were headed for each other, as fast as we could spur the horses. With just one shot left in the Navy, I rammed it back into my sash and grabbed for Josh's .31 pea-shooter. It was about all I had left, and I knew I had to get close enough to do any damage.
Whack! Bang!
And there came Diamond Dick, eyes glaring out of his pokerface. The last of his shots snatched off my sombrero with a blow on the scalp, carrying all the punch of a sledge-hammer. Blood poured down my face as my head whirled, but I still snapped two shots as we flashed past again, and I got him—for he swayed in the saddle, grabbing at his shoulder and dropping a pistol, then made a wild attempt to haul in his mount as both crowd and band shrilled like infernal maniacs.

Wheeling my horse and scattering those blamed curs, who seemed as hot for excitement as anyone in the clamoring crowd, I was headed back to my end of the street when I glimpsed that flash again—a gun barrel on the roof.

That rifle boomed from atop the building and a bullet slammed the pearl-handled Colt from my hand, plowed through the saddle and my mount's spine. I hit the dirt as Brown Bess rolled over stone dead, and yanked the Navy from my sash. Another rifle ball bored the ground at my feet, throwing grit and stones into my face, but I got off my last shot and saw a man stagger to the roof's edge and plunge headlong into the roadway.

Before I could wipe the blood and dust from my face, Powers had recovered and was coming full tilt at me, gun in his left hand and aimed straight at my head. But he pulled up short as Josh broke out of the silent crowd with the musketoon Francisco Almada had left me at the Casa de Oro.

“Back off, Powers!” Josh poked the mean little weapon right into the gambler's face. “This is loaded with fire and brimstone, all set for you.” He jerked his head at the body of Hidalgo Montano where the no-good lay facedown, with that pack of frisky mutts sniffling him over. “You've had your duel and you've lost the pot . . . including your back-shooter.”

“Yeah, you've had your infernal
duelo
right enough, Mister Diamondback,” I said, rubbing the blood and dirt out of my eyes. “And I guess it's your own hide nailed to the barn door, ain't it . . . along with your pet skunk's?”

I'd have said more, but Agostín Haraszthy took my arm and tugged me through the cheering, hat-tossing crowd. “Come along,
Señor
Roy. like I tell you, if you shoot each other that's your business. But anyone else, even such a one as these Montano, then it's my business.”