Roy Bean's Gold (7 page)

Another of the miners lit a clay pipe, puffed out a cloud of smoke, fingered his chin whiskers, and chuckled. “A pard o' mine named Jake Leese made himself over seventy-five thousand dollars in three months on th' Yuba with jest a pick and shovel. Another bugger with th' moniker of Sleepy Bill Daylor dug out fifteen thousand in one week, and when I was at Parks Bar th' average yield per man was over a hundred dollars a day.”

“Yes, sir,” chimed in Yankee Carson, “the boys at Wood Creek cashed more than three hundred dollars each in chunks every evenin'. Guess I should have stayed put instead of leggin' it down to Frytown and them blamed Mex diggin's.”

“And that was away back in the middle of last year,” snorted the miner with the chin whiskers. “Lord above, just look what's happenin' this year of Eighteen and Forty-Nine!”

“
Sí
. Death and destruction across the land, and it has only just begun. It is the beginning of the whirlwind,” Salazar butted into the conversation.

The company turned to look at the sheriff and took in his saucer-sized badge and the conversation dwindled away for a moment, until I signaled the bartender and ordered a round of drinks for everyone. That cheered up the bunch and a corporal began to tell of how he'd been riding up the coast from Santa Barbara and had been pitched from his mount when the sorry brute shied at a wind-tossed bush, leaving him dismounted miles from anywhere at sundown.

“That was bad enough,” he said, “for I walked along most of the night until I found an empty adobe hut about dawn. I didn't look around in the dark. just up and rolled over in a corner of the front room and went sound asleep. But when I woke up, I surely wished I'd still been on my feet, and still walking. I'll say so.”

He'd roused up to find himself surrounded by dead bodies, all stiff and stark. They seemed to be what was left of an emigrant family that'd taken up squatter's rights to the adobe and must have had some money or property when they arrived. The dead man, about fifty, had his skull split completely open; a woman, probably his wife, had her head cut nearly in two; while their two children had evidently been struck down by blows from the same axe.

“Horrible!” said Salazar. And I felt his black eyes on my middle, where my money belt bulged. “That is the damnable scourge of gold. It calls up the demons in man.”

“Downright unpleasant to say the leastwise,” said Yankee Carson, who proceeded to liven up the gathering with a song.

I can't recall all the foolishness, and only some of the choruses, but they went something like:

Oh, what a miner, what a miner was I!
All swolled up with the scurvy,
So I thought I would die.
I went to town, got on a drunk,
And in the morning to my surprise
I found I'd got me a pair
Of roaring big black eyes.
And I was strapped. had not one cent . . .
Not even my pick and shovel,
My hair was snarled, my britches torn,
And I looked the very Devil.
Then I took myself a little farm
And got me a
señorita
;
Gray-eyed, humpbacked, and black as tar,
Her name was Marguerita.
My pigs all died, hens flew away,
Joaquín he stoled my mules;
My ranch burn ‘down', my blankets ‘up',
Likewise my farming tools!

There was more but I can't fetch it back. Another song one of the miners tackled, began:

Oh! Susanna,
Go to hell for all of me;
We're all a livin' dead
In Californ-ee!

They were still hard at it when Salazar elbowed me up and piloted me down the hallway to our room, as I was somewhat befuddled from the rounds of drinks.

“You hear!” Salazar spouted like a boiling teakettle, tugging off his boots. “Now that infernal villain of a Joaquín has got himself stuck right in the middle of a barroom
balada!
” He flung his boot against the wall. “Next, by San Gabriel's tin-pot trumpet, he'll be a hero in some Yankee penny dreadful!”

I
n spite of my heavy head, we were up and on the road by the first light while the stars were just fading out in the golden-red tint of a new day. It was a good hour or more before the Fort Stockton troopers caught up with us. For a spell there wasn't much said on either side as the soldiers were as much under the weather as I was and Salazar was glooming to himself—probably about the song of Joaquín Murieta. But after we'd halted at a small
cantina
called El Ruiseñor—The Nightingale—where everyone, Salazar included, had a couple of passable shots of peach brandy, the tales and songs broke out again—and lasted the rest of the way down the coast to within a mile or so of San Diego.

One sawed-off trooper, nicknamed Flea, kept after the corporal of the unit, named Bates, singing the same off-key ditty so many times we all threatened to yank him from his horse and let him foot it the rest of the way to town. But that didn't bother Flea one bit as he warbled over and over:

Oh, what was your name in the States?
Was it Thompson, or Johnson or Bates?
Did you murder your wife
Then run for your life?
Say, what was your name in the States?

Corporal Bates, trying to squelch Flea and change the subject, admitted many of the gold hunters, or what he called the Argonauts, had actually switched handles for one reason or another, but went on to say most were just cutting ties with an old life, and no known event, outside of the late war, had ever brought so many different men to one place. There were fishermen from Nova Scotia, loggers from the forests of Maine, farmers from New York's Genesee Valley, doctors from the prairies of Iowa, Maryland lawyers, and college men from Yale and Harvard.

“Yes,” said Flea. “They's pigtail chinks, South Sea cannibals, Florida crackers, and all them high-tone Southern gents with their herds of slaves.”

“And whole bloomin' companies of New Orleans gamblers along with droves of calico queens and their low-life macks,” added a red-faced trooper.

“And whole squadrons of bandits,” said Bates. “And just about every dashed one a blamed Mexican.” He shot a quick look over at Salazar where he rode beside me, hand on pistol butt, searching each roadside thicket and grove with his keen black eyes.

“
Sí
, but you are right, Corporal. It is the great shame of our land that so many of my countrymen feel they have to take to the highways to obtain honor for their losses.” Salazar nodded his mushroom sombrero so hard it flopped like a flag in the breeze.

“They takes to th' road for a whole lot more than any of their plaguey honor, I'd say,” stated the grinning Flea.

“With such a crew loose as Three-Fingered Garcia and old Juan Pico, it's a wonder anyone gets to his proper destination with a whole windpipe,” said Bates.

“Don't you forget that slippery Joaquín Murieta. They say he's th' boy with horses and can be in one end of California one night and in th' other th' next,” put in the red-faced private. “That's one feller to match our old pal from th' New York Volunteers and th' Crossed Muskets Saloon, Diamond Dick Powers.”

We were just then skirting a sizable woods, and, as we passed the southern end of the timber, Flea let out a yelp. “Look at that!”

We hauled up on our horses to stare at a grisly sight. Two dead men dangled from a limb of a huge old oak. They slowly turned in the sea breezes, doing a silent sort of fandango all by themselves. Both were Mexicans. One was togged out in a mighty fancy outfit, silver-trimmed pantaloons and a fine yellow shirt. The other was just a ragged sort of a
peon
in dingy white trousers and a faded red shirt. They were a pretty ill-matched pair but surely equal in one respect: both were good and dead.

We all turned to stare at Salazar where he sat motionless for a moment. Then he swung down from his mare and stumped over to the hanging tree, and spat out: “Vigilantes!” He yanked a piece of paper from the shirt of the more prosperous-looking corpse and, after studying it, came back and handed it to me.

HIGHWAYMEN TAKE NOTICE!

This will serve notice to such vagabond outlaws as “The Avenger,” “The Blade,” and “José California” that the citizenry of this land will no longer tolerate further criminal acts! All perpetrators of robbery, rape, and brutal violence will be dealt with in the most summary fashion—as these two villains graphically depict!

Signed:

Men of the Night!!

“Knew things was gettin' bad, but I didn't think they was ready to call in old Judge Lynch down here.” A gangling trooper spat on the offside of his horse with a wry face.

“Men of th' Night? And who might they be?” Flea wondered.

“Men of the devil!” Salazar gritted. “Corporal, cut down those poor devils. We'll take them along to the
alcalde
. Villains, or not, they deserve a plot of their own ground.”

Bates snapped out the order and the two corpses were soon stowed, facedown, over the cruppers of the troopers' horses.

We rode the rest of the way down to the San Diego River without much to say.

Arriving at the muddy river a little past noon, we were ferried across the water by the old Mexican flatboat man, four at a time. He looked long at the troopers' stiff cargo but said nothing.

Riding on into San Diego, we crossed Taylor and went on down Washington through a sleepy little hamlet of red-and-green-tiled adobes, parting from Bates and his men after they'd deposited the two corpses on the wide verandah of the Casa de Lopez on Twiggs Street, headquarters of the
alcalde
.

In scant moments the pepper-tree-shaded plaza began filling with quiet groups of citizens. I noticed one pair of pretty young
señoritas
in
mantillas
and flowing gowns of watered silk at the side of the gathering crowd, fans fluttering.

“And just what in the name of the old ring-tailed 'coon is this all about?”

I didn't need to ask who that was. The voice booming out of the
casa
in that Kentucky twang could only be my brother Josh's.

That mob of folks parted like the Red Sea before Moses as Joshua Quincy Bean strode forth in all his glory.

If I thought I'd cut a fair swath with my silver-studded sombrero and velveteen pantaloons, I was left far in the dust by that outfit of the
alcalde
of San Diego.

In gold-encrusted jacket, brilliant green sash around a pair of flame-red trousers, all gussied up with the embroidered outline of birds and flowers and wearing a gold ring in his right ear, Josh stood, one hand on his hip and the other twiddling with a narrow goatee, glaring first at the dead
bandidos
and then back at the crowd.

Then he saw me.

“Suffering hoop snakes, Roy!” He brushed the gawkers aside and grabbed me by the hand. “Welcome to California, you young coyote!” Then he marched me into the
casa
, leaving one of his flunkies, a big, scar-faced Mexican to get rid of the bodies and take Salazar up to the
calabozo
to look over the current catch of hardcases.

Once inside, Josh sat me down at a long, beautifully carved table and bawled out for wine. It wasn't long until a skinny little Indian with long hair and dressed in a snow-white coat and pantaloons trotted in with a dusty bottle and a pair of sparkling glasses, with all the style of a regular butler.

“Well, Roy. . . .” Josh leaned back in his big arm chair and grinned. “I never thought to see another Bean out here. Though I've got to say I had some word of your escapades at Chihuahua.” He lit up a long, twisted
cigarro
from one of the candles on the table and shook a finger at me. “I've got to caution you, you young devil, that I keep a tight hand on affairs at San Diego, and if you upset the traces, well . . . !” He stopped grinning and blew out a cloud of blue smoke around my head.

I began to explain how we'd been forced to vamoose from Mexico, but he cut me off, shoving the gilded cigar box over to me.

“No matter, there won't be much of that sort of thing here. For one thing, our ladies are pretty well chaperoned.” He reached out and poured us each a healthy belt of the golden wine, then laughed. “Oh, don't you look so sober-sided, Roy. You'll get to meet a pair of lively fillies at dinner tonight. Yes, I travel in the best society here. there's no hog meat and grits for us Beans. San Diego may not be too much in the way of towns, but, by Jasper, I run it. right along with my American Flag Saloon, and make 'em both pay.” And Josh grinned with tight jaws.

He went on to ask about brother Sam and my trip over to California, keeping the wine coming while the afternoon gradually became all golden and mellow like that wine.

I yarned away until the sunlight outside the half-closed shutters of the big, low-beamed room had moved its golden bars across the painted floor, then faded with the hours. The candles in their tall silver sticks grew brighter, burned down, and were replaced by the little Indian. Off in the distance the bells of some mission were chiming and somewhere within the big
casa
an old clock creaked out the time of 6:00. But for the rest, and where the afternoon had wandered off to, I wasn't one bit certain.

The only thing I was sure of was that Salazar had come back sometime during the afternoon to say good bye. He'd decided the batch of small fry in the jailhouse weren't worth toting back to his bailiwick. He didn't happen to have warrants for either one of them—a pair of brothers who'd run off with a string of mules from the American River mines. “If I took them back, those ruffian miners might try to take the law into their own hands,” he said as he shook hands with Josh and I. “By Santa Clara's night rail, there's already enough of this vigilante business. here and elsewhere.” As he clapped on his oversized sombrero, he dropped his voice a peg. “Watch your gold, young
Señor
Roy. Gold will be the death of many a man along these coasts, and for years to come.”

When he was gone, Josh poured us each another glass and cocked his head, peering through the yellow wine at me. It gave me an odd feeling as I recollected poor Jeff Kirker pulling the same stunt with a whiskey bottle.