Roy Bean's Gold (5 page)

But I was all by my lonesome, save for my animals staked out beyond the firelight. Both cropped at the buffalo grass and watched me shift and reshift my shining gold pieces, while the frosty blaze of a heaven jam-packed with stars rivaled and even outshone my glittering hoard.

N
ight following night I camped along the lonely trail, nearly always serenaded by coyote choruses and roused out each dawn by the rusty braying of my pack mule, Comanche.

Once up, I cooked my sparse rations, washed them down with a pot of ink-black coffee, tended to my animals, and then struck on to the west, pushed forward by the unceasing wind, a wind that wandered in from out of nowhere with each sunrise and kept at its busy work until nightfall.

Following Kirker's rough but accurate map, I made my way to the rickety ferry at the Colorado crossing near the Riverside Mountains and was in California at last. Jeff had been a great help to me, though he lay in a hidden grave hundreds of miles to the east, for his location of definite water holes had kept me alive.

And now I traveled on the deeply lined tracks that remained after nearly three hundred years—the trail that Escalante's steel-suited troops and other old, hard-bitten
conquistadores
had also traveled.

Riding onward through the vast stretches of the empty land, with only the restless wind for company as it rustled the grass and tugged the gaudy yellow paper flowers of the mesas and whispered through the sword-blade leaves of the ocotillo, I found myself missing Jeff Kirker. So I fell into the habit of humming and singing along with the wind out of sheer lonesomeness and the need to hear any voice, if only my own.

I was singing along, pretty off-key, around noon in early July, putting my own words to an old-time hymn tune, when I got to thinking of food. It was a subject always close to my mind, what with spending nigh onto four weeks eating fatback, occasional jack rabbit, and hardtack, boiled, fried, and pounded into mush, and washed down with coffee so mean-strong it bit back.

What wouldn't I do for some buckwheat cakes, like those I used to get back in good old Mason County? I'd have done just about anything. And I sang:

The dark-brown cake is laid
Upon a plate of spotless white;
And the eye of him who tastes it
Now flashes with delight!
Oh, cake that's buttered for me,
Why can I not partake?
Oh, my heart, my heart is breaking
For the love of buckwheat cake!

I was tackling the second chorus with a lot of feeling and rubbing my middle with reminiscence when. . . .

“
¡Alto!
” A small, portly Mexican, with enormous black mustaches and a gray sombrero, so big he looked just about like a toadstool astride a horse, rode up from a dry wash leveling a big Colt Dragoon dead at me.

“I hear your music,
señor
. if one might call it that.” For a long moment the man kept his weapon trained straight at the middle of my belt buckle, and then, with a twisted smile lurking under his mustache, he lowered his weapon, and I did the same with my hands. “Pardon. By San Fernando's red nightshirt, I thought you might be from some bandit gang, for we are close to Murieta's country.” He flung a brown hand wide at the rolling acres of sagebrush and Apache plume stretching off into purple distance toward the San Bernardino and Chuckwalla Mountains to the southwest, then holstered his big pistol.

And when the little stranger tucked away his weapon in its long red holster, I caught sight of a badge of some sort pinned to his yellow suspenders.

I told him in a few words who I was, where I hailed from, more or less, and where I was headed.

“
Sí
.” He bobbed his mushroom of a sombrero, punched the badge on his galluses with a broad thumb, and introduced himself as Salvador Salazar, sheriff of Alameda County, which was about next door to San Francisco. He'd been, he said, out on a jaunt of two hundred miles and more scouting for some bandits who'd been raising hob along the coast highways and mining camps.

According to this fat little Mex sheriff, we were just a little less than one hundred miles northwest of the town of Los Angeles, The Angels. But, said the sheriff, there were not many angels around those parts. “No angels,
amigo
, but plenty of
diablos
, let me tell you. And I've been chasing some for weeks. All the others of my company got saddle-sore and went back to their home
ranchos
.” He grinned slyly at me. “But what can one expect from the Yankees. Now you have the look of one lucky
hombre
. For what you tell me, you've come many miles across plenty damn' dangerous lands yourself. If you'd have traveled those sandy hells a month later, you'd surely have dried up along with the water holes and blown away.”

I admitted I figured I was a bit more than lucky to be where I was.

“See any hostiles? Apache, perhaps? I hear those accursed Comanches have been seen up north again.”

“Had a run-in with one bunch back below Vermilion Cliffs in Arizona a couple of weeks back,” I told him, but I didn't mention Jeff. One gander at that pie-plate badge and hearing Murieta mentioned was enough to put me on my guard.

From what this Salazar said, I'd got myself another trail pardner, for he was riding over to Los Angeles and thereabouts to check in with the local law before heading back up to his own bailiwick.

So now I found myself riding side-by-side and taking meals with Juan Ley—John Law—which was an odd turn of things, seeing I'd darned near become right-hand man to an outlaw by the name of Kirker!

A
fter the blazing, empty deserts, huge stretches of lonely mesas, and strings of brackish water holes, California was surely easy on the eyes with its rolling hills and bright green meadows, all ringed with groves of big, handsome trees—black oak, maple, and sycamore. The long grasses began to be spangled with flowers of every sort, yellow daisies, wild red roses, and dozens of other posies such as the big California poppies and golden coneflowers, all trying to outbloom the others.

Here was no wilderness of cactus, Joshua, and mesquite, with its sly bobcats and howling coyotes. This was a country teeming with wildlife of every sort from blacktail deer, antelope, and even some elk to feisty chipmunk and loping rabbit. Birds filled the timber and whirled up into skies, from loud-mouthed jays to pretty little wrens and dozens upon dozens of quail.

Yes, I was glad to be out of that wilderness and back into a land the good Lord Himself wouldn't have been ashamed to admit He had a hand in making.

It was also mighty pleasant to have Salazar along, after all the long, lonesome days on the trail, for the pudgy, little lawman was a lively saddle pardner, always ready with a story or a joke—unlike Jeff Kirker, who had to down half a bottle of liquor to get himself in any sort of a cheerful frame of mind. But then I guess six dead troopers weighed pretty heavy on him most of the time.

Salazar seemed to be of tougher stuff than Kirker. He didn't seem to let dead men bother him much—Mexicans or those shot in the war. And he didn't need any sort of bottled help to uncork his tongue. So we yarned through the days and evenings as we camped in lush meadows or rode along silvery-clear creeks and little streams, whittling down the miles to Los Angeles, our nearest port of call. And while we gossiped and talked, Salazar got most of my life and times out of me, though I kept Jeff Kirker from my story, only mentioning him as the fellow who'd got himself killed by Indians back in Arizona.

As I said, Salazar wasn't a bit shy in talking about himself. He'd come from a big
hacienda
near San Francisco, growing up there as a plain peasant kid. Tired of all the work and mighty little money—a
peso
a day—he ran off at sixteen, joining the Mexican army and was at the Alamo fight. Later he fought Yanks all the way from Sonoma to Monterey, but he took it all in a day's work—like chasing down fellow Mexicans who'd gone on their own warpath after losing to the
Americanos
.

“Some
hombres
can't seem to play the cards old
Señor
Luck deals,” said Salazar. “I think I'm a reasonable fellow myself. I just take what the good saints provide each day, along with my dinner, and go on about my affairs. I could bellyache and holler that we poor
Californios
got kicked good and hard in the tail bone. Me, I take vengeance from life itself. it's the best way!” He squeezed the air with both hands, rolled his eyes at the sky, and then grinned.

“Speaking of cards,” Salazar went on, “I think, maybe, you play some cards pretty close to the vest, young
señor
.” He twiddled at his mustaches. “
Sí
, you're a young
compañero
but you can keep some things to yourself, heh?”

I started to open my mouth, but he reached over to poke me in the ribs, and I knew he'd spotted that hefty money belt under my ragged hickory shirt. “Don't mistake me. Each of us has his secret or two,” he said. “It's
solo bueno
to have your own, but be on your guard.”

I wasn't sure what he was aiming at, but took it to be a friendly hint to watch my mouth and my money.

* * * * *

The night before we fetched up at Los Angeles, Salazar finally got around to mentioning his peculiar topknot, a thing I'd noticed the first time he'd doffed his big flopping sombrero.

I'd never spoken of his vanished scalp, feeling it wasn't up to me to remark on any of his beauty flaws.

“You've admired my tonsure,” he said as he made a face but downed my boiler-plate coffee. “That's quite all right, for by the arrows of San Sebastian I tell you right here and now there's not too many
hombres
around minus part of their head. And that little decoration came from those red hell fiends when they pounced on a wagon train I was leading into Aguangua.”

Right there I recollected what brother Josh, a better than average book reader, used to say: “Life's sometimes a damn' sight odder than any storybook.” And I was grabbed good and strong with a hunch that this fat, little Mexican was talking about the same raid where Big Wolf captured his medicine hand—and where that little girl had been scooped up at the last minute by the Mexican Lancers. Now this might sound a bit far-fetched, but a person has got to remember that the old Southwest was pretty scant on population at the time I'm telling about, and some folks were just bound to cross trails.

Late the next afternoon we reined in at a fine little water hole a scant five miles from Los Angeles. When we were lounging in the shade of a great gnarled old black oak and letting the kinks unwind, I got out the tintype and tossed it over to the sheriff without a word.

“
Ah, demonio
.” Salazar yanked away his headgear and beat a tattoo with a stubby knuckle on his scalped noggin. “
Sí
, that little one and I were the only ones. the only ones left alive after those
diablos
got through with their hellish work!” His black eyes bulged out of his dark face. “Those Comanches would have done us up
proplamente
but for the intervention of blessed San Miguel, who hurled the Lancers upon those
diablos rojos!
”

It puzzled me a mite just how he knew what particular saint was on duty, but only asked where that little girl had gone.

“Colonel Francisco Almada of the Lancers took her to the Convent of Santa María, north of San Diego. Myself. I was tended there by the sisters and saw her with those gentle hand-women of the Lord.”

He handed back the tintype and we remounted and rode down a long plain, covered with clover. Within the hour we caught sight of the City of the Angels, where it sparkled in the afternoon sunlight beside a small river. A good dozen
haciendas
surrounded it, with their willow-fringed gardens, each filled with grape, quince, orange, and pear along with some ancient fig trees. Old Fort Gillespie, with its American flag, loomed along the green hills beyond the town, while the cathedral sent up its twin towers into the mellow sunshine out of the cluster of white adobes and scattered two-story buildings.

As we rode down a dirt track that doubled as a road, Salazar, who'd been mighty quiet, squinted a curious eye at me. “But how did you . . . ?”

I was ready for that and told him I'd come across the tintype of the girl at one-eared Zuñi Jack's trading post, halfway across Arizona.

“
Sí
, that would be the old he-bear himself who rode to our rescue with the Lancers. he and holy San Miguel.”

I had to smile behind my hand to hear Zuñi Jack labeled saddle pardner to a saint, but then it could be so, for hadn't Jack brought along the Lancers in time to save a wistful-looking little girl—and Salazar himself?

Riding on toward that dreamy old Spanish town with its low, grassy hills, nearly little mountains surrounding it on three sides, we were in high spirits, and I cracked a joke or two while Salazar came back with a ring-tailed roarer about some Mexican ladies and a bullfighter that would never do for mixed company.

Arriving at Cahuenga Street, with its huge cottonwoods, we crossed what looked to be a wide alley filled with run-down saloons and billiard halls. Salazar pointed out the place as the Calle de los Negros, jerking a thumb at a bunch of roughs, both Mexican and white, who stood in front of the gaudy gambling dens, along with some fancy, but hard-looking ladies in bright dresses with shiny combs and feathery plumes on their sleek, dark heads.

“The cursed Three-Fingered Jack and that shifty villain of a Juan Soto came out of such a hole,” Salazar growled, his usually cheerful phiz screwed up. “I haven't a doubt but this town's law officers have a time keeping such
diablos
as those back there in their places!”

“This Murieta. where'd he spring from?”

“Everywhere!” Salazar waved his hand in a wide circle. “Sometimes I think there must be a dozen Murietas, the way he pops up here and there.” He was about to go on, but we'd arrived in front of Wagner's Saloon, and here the sheriff signaled me to dismount. This was, he told me, the newest place in town, with straight games run by a Yankee by the name of Dick Powers, who was one devil of a horseman as well as a sure-fire gambler.