Roy Bean's Gold (8 page)

“Gold, Roy?” Josh drank off his glass and poured himself another.

“Just some money left from the store at Chihuahua.”

He changed the subject and called the Indian back with another bottle.

An hour later, after I'd had a good tub bath in my room down the hall from the
alcalde
's reception room, and the little Klamath Indian, Abraham, who doubled as butler, cook, and bookkeeper, had shaved me and dusted up my clothes, Josh came in. By then I was just about sober again.

“Come along, Roy. I'm late for dinner at the Castañedas'.”

On the three-block stroll across the plaza, past Josh's American Flag Saloon, and down the side streets and lanes, my brother talked about his problems as judge, jury, constable, mayor, and tax collector—all rolled into one official called
alcalde
.

Josh, who'd served as an officer in General Kearny's U.S. Infantry, while I was getting by as a teamster for Zack Taylor, had always been a great schemer and reader of books, the law included, though he'd never practiced at it. So when the new government needed a military man for
alcalde
of San Diego, he was already in town running his saloon. He up and asked for and got the appointment from the military governor of the territory, his old boss, General Stephen Watts Kearny.

But it hadn't been any sort of a picnic for Josh, and he made that clear. “Things have been going downhill with a swoop ever since this gold strike business,” he admitted as he took my arm to guide me up to a large, wrought-iron gate set in a high wall at the end of a lane.

“Here's Casa Castañeda. I surely thank my stars that I've got such old California families on my side, even though I do sell rum for a living. Some of the Spanish tribes still resent the Yankees, and between them, the miner riff-raff, and the growing horde of bandit gangs, it makes us a rough row to hoe.”

We walked through the gate, held open by a bowing Mexican serving man, went down a flower-lined walkway, and up the steps of the big timber-and-adobe mansion.

Señor
Castañeda, a well-set-up old California gentleman with white goatee, wearing a beautifully embroidered black suit, greeted us at the open doorway.
Señora
Castañeda, a plump little lady with a pretty face and dressed in a sweeping white gown,
mantilla
to match and large ruby earrings, stood smiling beside her husband.

After the introductions, the Castañedas led us down a long hallway, filled with suits of Spanish armor and decorated with one oil painting after another of proud-looking
señoritas
in their
mantillas
and lace, and downright mean-eyed
señors
in old-time outfits.

The hallway opened onto a tree-bowered patio, lit with dozens of Chinese paper lanterns of every color from green to scarlet—all hanging among the branches of the orange trees. Scores of lighted candles stood in silver candelabras along the linen-covered table, which was filled with dishes and set for a party of six.

I was about to mention the empty places to Josh when a couple of fine-looking girls came hurrying up through the small orchard toward the patio, chattering like a pair of schoolgirls. I recognized them as the same young ladies who'd been in the crowd when Salazar and I arrived with the troopers and the dead bandits.

After more introductions, Estrellita, the black-haired girl, sat by me, and Lucia, the blonde, sat by Josh, and we began the meal. After soup, one dish followed another, served by a staff of white-clad Indian servants—boiled mutton, beef, roast fowl, boiled pears, four kinds of beans, potatoes, and corn as well as a good dozen side dishes. When we'd worked our way through all of that, along came the fruit—mammees, cherimoyas, and all sorts of oranges, peaches, plums, and even sliced melon, served with one sort of wine after another. To top it all off we had dozens of little sugar cookies of every size and shape and washed down with some of the blackest and strongest coffee I ever tried to pour down my throat. I'd been to more than one
fiesta
at the homes of our so-called friends at Chihuahua, but I never had a feast like that. And along with the coffee and cakes came the fun-filled small talk with the young
señoritas
, while the older folks plodded along after.

The girls insisted on hearing of my crossing from Mexico, and, when I'd told parts of it, they declared it rivaled anything they'd borrowed out of the
alcalde
's private library.

“Your tales are far better than
Señor
Gulliver's voyages,” said dark-eyed Estrellita.

“And I thought, right away, of
Don
Quixote and his fat, little Sancho Panza when you all rode into the plaza today,” said the blue-eyed Lucia. “Though you were a much handsomer
Don
Quixote than the fellow in
Señor
Joshua's book,” she added in a hurry.

I hadn't mentioned the Comanches beyond the bare facts of our fight, but now, with Josh and the elder Castañedas deep in a discussion of civil affairs, and filled to the brim as I was with fine food and wine, I decided to make the tale of my wanderings even better by heaving in the story of my hair-raising trading session with Big Wolf.

The hour was getting late. A lop-sided moon wandered in and out of the drifting mountains of clouds. The candles had gone out of most of the Chinese lanterns and a gusting wind, coming up from the nearby bay, swayed them along the branches of the orange trees like a strange crop of restless little paper moons. The tall candles on the table winked and fluttered their flames, casting shadows that stretched and shrank back into themselves again. It seemed the proper time for the telling of tales.

While the local gossip went on down at the end of the table right along with a lot of fan-waving by the
señora
, the lively Castañeda sisters huddled across the table from me, excitedly poking at each other as I spun out my tale of wild Indians and Big Wolf's terrible medicine hand.

“And did you hold that thing in your very own hand?” Lucia asked, dark eyes glowing in the shifting candlelight.

“It's just like a story by that wicked
Señor
Poe,” said her sister. “You know the one where the poor hero finds a lady all sliced into little pieces.”

“Silly, you are thinking of Bluebird's wives.” Lucia poked at Estrellita with her little red fan. “And then what happened,
Señor
Bean?”

“This!” And I took the tintype from my pocket and held it out in the flickering candle flames. You'd have thought I suddenly shot off my old Walker Colt.

“Dulcima!” Both girls were on their feet. Estrellita, the nearest, darted to me around the table and had me by the arm. “Come,
señor!
Come and look at something in our parlor.” Before her parents or Josh could scarcely look up, with ­Estrellita tugging me along by the arm and Lucia poking me forward with her fan, I found myself in a big chamber off the patio.

It was a stylish room, furnished in some sort of crimson damask, with fine inlaid tables, mirrors, and handsome furniture, with a dozen or more small paintings along the walls.

“Look!” and both girls pointed to an oil painting on the wall directly over an expensive pianoforte.

It was the girl in the tintype! She was older, perhaps nearly the same age as the Castañeda sisters, who I'd guessed at between eighteen and twenty. The portrait was that of a young woman, dressed in a white low-necked gown, with a set of pearls around her graceful throat and with her golden-tinted hair done up prim and proper in the Spanish style. She needed nothing more than a comb and
mantilla
to look just like one of the
señoritas
of old Spain. Yet she was certainly American.

I was plain thunderstruck. Here was the girl of the tintype. This was the daughter of the poor lady of the medicine hand. How near was she to me at that very minute?

“She is now away at a finishing school near San Francisco,” said Estrellita, positively reading my mind. “And she is our dear friend, and when home, lives with her aunt,
Señorita
Rosita Almada of the Rancho de las Fuentes, not ten miles to the west of us here!”

“And she will be home for the summer within the month,” her sister chimed in.

“And you shall get to meet her and tell how you found her picture,” said Lucia.

And all I could say was “Yes.”

F
or the next few days, after I arrived, I looked over the little pueblo of San Diego and the country around. There were scarcely a dozen shops in the whole town, plus a pair of saloons, or
cantinas
, the American Flag, owned by Josh, and the other, the absent Dick Powers's Crossed Muskets.

There were plenty of towns in California that must have offered better pickings for the new Yankee
alcaldes
, but there was no doubt in my mind that Joshua Quincy Bean would make out at San Diego—one way or another.

Looking over my brother's adobe palace at the Casa de Lopez, his string of fine horses, his servants, his fancy clothes and fancier vittles, not to mention his tip-top wine cellar, I had to admit that San Diego might be a small puddle but Josh was surely the big frog.

There seemed no need for another store in town, and, as I didn't feel like starting out to be another merchant prince, I presently sounded out Josh about joining his staff or working in his saloon.

“I've been studying that,” he answered, pushing up his specs and putting down a big account book he'd been thumbing through at the dinner table. “I know you've got plenty of sand, Roy, and you've been through the mill, seen the elephant and all that, since you were a young 'un the same as the rest of us Beans. I know you've got the nerve to stand up to bad men and Indians, and while we're a bit light on Comanches, we've got a mighty good supply of the former. With the gold strikes, after the war this whole country just exploded. It was nice and easy, all around, but now hell is plumb out for noon.”

“Well, I'm ready to pull my weight,” I said. “I'd just as soon earn my keep by helping out your law force, for it seems you could need help.”

“Right as rain, but as county treasurer, along with everything else, I need more help in our tax collections. Sánchez, my constable, has been trying to get around to all the
ranchos
and farms, but he's the best man I've got at the
cantina
, and he can't be in two places at once, so there's a couple dozen places he hasn't been able to collect as yet.”

“That the only reason?”

“I'll admit there are a couple of reasons. Sánchez had some run-ins with some of the
rancho
owners, and also the little farmers. They just don't cotton to a fellow Californian prying
pesos
out of their hides. So they resent him, and his methods. Peons and ranchers both have come to grouse at his actions.
Tacañeria
.
infamia
, they call it. and they may be right, but taxes are taxes.”

“What's the other reason, beside Sánchez's meanness?”

“That damnable will-o'-the-wisp rascal of a Murieta.” Josh clapped the ledger down with a crash, tipping over a glass or two. “He's been seen around here several times in the past few months, and, though he's yet to pull off any big robbery, I'm sure that some of his gang. and he's got dozens of the blackguards on call. have been mixed up in hold-ups on the highway and at some of the
ranchos
owned by Americans. Sánchez has a damned healthy fear of falling into Murieta's hands, and says he's been trailed, and even shot at. So if you're game, you can take over the tax job until it's cleaned up.”

“Seems those night riders could handle him the way they stretched the necks of that pair we brought in.”

“They've got to catch him first,” said Josh with an odd look, then he turned to his strongbox and hauled out the tax book.

I noticed right off those taxes seemed steep and mentioned it.

“I don't set the figures. They come down from the territorial governor's office at San Francisco,” Josh answered sort of snappishly. “But I'm not looking for your advice. All you've got to do is collect the rest of those accounts before the first of the month. That'll give you nigh onto two weeks.”

“I see
Señorita
Almada at Rancho de las Fuentes is down for a hundred
pesos
.”

“That's the largest amount, all right. She'll pay, but you'll have to catch her home. Sánchez never could find her. And there's more just like her.”

“When do you want me to start, and how do I get the lay of the land?”

“I'll send Abraham along with you tomorrow. He knows every square mile of this country. His tribe was here before the Spanish arrived.” Josh scowled at the ceiling. “And you'd better have an escort from Fort Stockton. I'll take care of that.”

I thanked him for his time and went out to keep a riding date with the Castañeda girls. We'd been ranging the countryside around San Diego nearly every day since we'd met at their place. And contrary to the way most Spanish ran their families, with
dueñas
, or chaperones, the two Castañeda sisters did just about as they blamed well pleased. They were as independent a pair of
señoritas
as I'd ever run up against. In fact, both had sewn the first American flag that flew in the plaza all of three years past, when it wasn't too popular to take any sort of interest in an American flag.

Several young officers from the fort came regularly to call at the Casa Castañeda but the frisky
señoritas
weren't about to give up their freedom, and so they made jolly companions for me on rides that took us down around the bay and as far off as the old mission of San Diego de Alcalá in Mission Valley.

But now I had to tell Lucia and Estrellita that I was going to be busy for a few weeks, collecting taxes for the
alcalde
.