California Gold

by John Jakes

  The paper was yellow foolscap, scribbled in pencil. Mack took it. “How much will she carry?”

  “I had some engineers figure it. Once she’s refitted, about seven thousand barrels.”

  “How much for refitting?”

  “About fifty thousand.”

  “How much for the steamer?”

  “Askin’ seventy-five. Lawyer says they’ll take sixty. We should do it, Mack. Honest to God, we should.”

  Mack was amused. “You really like this business.”

  “What I like is gettin’ rich without stickin’ my pistol in someone’s face.”

  Mack took about two minutes to survey the abandoned La Jolla de San Diego. Her decks were warped and, in places, rotted out. Hatches gaped without covers. He saw barnacles on her hull and cracked glass in every pane of the wheelhouse.

  “Buy her.”

  The breathless promoter gestured to the map.

  “The land’s currently in wheat. That doesn’t mean you’d be restricted to that crop. Without hesitation, Mr. Chance, this is the finest ranch in the San Joaquin.”

  “I read me prospectus. Go on.”

  “The foreman, a top man, agrees to stay on for two years…”

  He hovered expectantly.

  Mack waved. “Draw up the contract for my attorney in town.”

  Mack and Enrique Potter drove out to inspect a nine-hundred-acre tract in the Cahuenga Valley. They passed a few homes, neat and solid as midwestern burghers yet with an air of sunlit destitution for all that. But the citrus groves and the fields of watermelon and bell peppers were thriving.

  In the shade of a huge pepper tree, they stopped and peeled off their coats and Mack said, “I came by here when I first rode into Los Angeles. I remember the Holly Wood tract. It’s never taken off as it should. It seems logical to me that as Los Angeles grows, it’ll certainly grow this direction, toward the ocean. This tract has everything. Flatland down here for cottages and farms. Up there—” He indicated the mass of the Santa Monicas, where a few isolated small houses clung to the foothills. “Spectacular sites, and there’s access to Cahuenga Pass over to the San Fernando.” He picked up the reins and turned to Potter, who looked more affluent these days. “Buy it. Buy yourself another new suit while you’re at it. Buy Elena a silver bracelet. Buy those youngsters a sack of toys. Put it all on this bill.”

  Enrique Potter fussed with his perfectly tied cravat and indicated it would be a pleasure.

  “You’ve studied scientific geology?” Mack said.

  “Yes, sir. At Yale,” said the young man in the visitor’s chair, a fresh-faced, bespectacled fellow with red hair full of cowlicks. “With a name like mine, you have to go in for something unusual, wouldn’t you say, sir?”

  “I would.” Mack felt ancient compared to the applicant, Mr. Haven Ogg of Stamford, Connecticut. Haven Ogg was a mere twenty-one according to a reference letter in the file on the desk.

  Ogg was nervous, anxious to please, and kept clasping and unclasping his hands. Mack reached under some ledgers for a square of cardboard. “We need to put this company on a scientific footing. I sketched this…” He showed a crude layout for an advertisement:

  CHANCE-JOHNSON

  Gas—Oil—Asphaltum

  Finest Machine & Illuminating Oils

  “This isn’t the company I’m running, it’s the company I want to run. Any comments?”

  “Yes, sir. Illuminating oils. The days of water-white kerosene as a significant product are finished. It’s all electricity now.”

  Mack slashed a line through the offending words and tossed the cardboard in Ogg’s lap. “Think you could do the rest of it? Set up a refinery? Everything?”

  Ogg clutched the cardboard to his chest like a precious possession. “Yes, sir. What I don’t know—and I’m sure there’s a great deal—I’ll learn. Developing the company might take ten years, but with capital for the proper equipment I’m certain it can be accomplished.”

  A lot more hope than experience in this young man, Mack thought. He liked him. “Not ten years, Mr. Ogg. I’ll give you five.”

  “I’ll take it, Mr. Chance.”

  On horseback, Mack, Johnson, Clive Henley, and an agent climbed a gentle road to Arlington Heights. Mack was hatless and his forehead had developed a dark mahogany patina. He wore fine riding trousers, English boots, and the Shopkeeper’s Colt on his hip.

  It was a glorious morning, the air smelling of oranges and eucalyptus. The agent’s name was Moses Marwick. He never stopped talking.

  “Riverside is a fine, prosperous community devoted almost exclusively to citrus. Colonel North, the man who founded the colony in 1870, bought up large sections of the old Rubidoux and Jurupa ranchos. He envisioned a thriving silk industry. It didn’t work out but now we have something much better.”

  Henley threw an amused glance at Mack, as if to apologize for the agent’s enthusiasm. A flat, sunny mesa stretched behind them, running past the Santa Ana River to the mountain barrier in the north. From the shade of groves on either side of the road, sweating Mexicans and mestizos in dark smocks and flat sun hats watched the quartet of well-dressed riders pass in a cloud of dust.

  “There was a certain rage for citrus even before me Tibbetses planted the original navel cuttings from Bahia, Brazil. The cuttings were sent out here by someone from the Agriculture Department. That’s why we call them Washington navels. Old-timers will tell you that Mrs. Tibbets watered the young trees with her dishwater.”

  They rounded a bend and came upon a for sale sign bearing Marwick’s name. Rows of trees with lustrous dark-green leaves rolled away up the hillsides of the property.

  The agent swept off his white sombrero. “There you are, gentlemen. Two hundred acres of the finest citrus in the new subdivision. All from the original Washington cuttings, and guaranteed to be completely above the frost belt. The soil is largely decomposed granite, with excellent drainage. A progressive mutual water company sees to your irrigation needs. What’s more, this grove is established and producing. No waiting five, six, seven years for the first crop.”

  Mack leaned over to an exceedingly sour-faced Johnson, who was mopping sweat with an orange bandanna.

  “What do you think?”

  “I think you can do anything you want. But I ain’t tendin’ no fruit.”

  Mack reared back, laughing. “Don’t worry, I’ll hire someone else.” He turned his frisky saddle horse off the road onto a dirt track. “Show us around, Marwick. I’m interested. An hour later, he signed the offer to purchase.

  The agent left them and rushed back to other appointments while the three men rode to the far southern limit of the property. Here the land rose to a magnificent round hill bleached folden brown by the summer sun. Up on the windy summit Mack dismounted.

  “What a beautiful place. The air’s as sweet as a perfume shop.”

  “Old chap, we’ll be delighted to welcome you as a new resident.” Clive Henley dropped gracefully from his saddle and popped his monocle out of his eye. “We have two clubs you’ll enjoy, and you must be my guest at both. There are a number of British chaps in the membership, but many of your countrymen also. Gentleman orchardists, every one.”

  Henley had grown chummy very quickly. Mack didn’t mind. He liked the polished yet puppylike remittance man. It was hard to envision him committing a crime serious enough to get him banished—or handling Carla, whom he referred to as “a friend.”

  “If you enjoy horseback riding, at the Riverside Golf and Polo Club I can introduce you to a fast, rough game some of our lads brought from India.”

  “What game’s that?” Johnson asked.

  “Why, exactly what the club name suggests, H.B.” Henley’s monocle flashed as he waved it. “Polo.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “Perhaps not, but your seat’s excellent, I’ve noticed. We might enlist you as a player.”

  “So long as I don’t have to tend no damn fruit.”

  Mack laughe
d again. “Before I start doing that, I’ll have to design and build a house. A big house.” He strode across the golden summit with the orchards below, the California sky above, other hills and orchards sweeping into the hazy distance. At the hill’s highest point he raised his arms.

  “Right about here, I’d say.”

  They stayed overnight in Riverside, completed the papers, and returned by train to Los Angeles and then Newhall the next day. They were nearly at San Solaro by dusk. Mack felt well rested and excited about his purchase, and looked forward to settling in Riverside County at least part of the year, building a new, California-style residence, learning about citrus. Maybe he’d even investigate that game Henley mentioned. A grand, opulent house in Riverside, and a life-style to go with it, might lure Nellie away from her busy life with Hearst and especially from the temptation of New York. He wanted that; he hadn’t heard from her in some months, and he missed her constantly.

  Johnson was dour as they rode along, scarcely saying a word. Perhaps things were moving too fast for him. Or maybe he wanted to go roaming again. Mack didn’t ask. He was enjoying the balmy evening, the panorama of the busy derricks with their winking lights and rhythmic machinery, sights and sounds he’d grown to love.

  They turned from Grande Boulevard into a side street leading to the cottage beside the canal. From two blocks away, Mack spied a man sitting on the rear stoop, smoking. A block from the cottage, he stood in the stirrups, hoping the twilight had tricked him. But no. The man rose laconically. He was thin as a stick, clearly undernourished, and shabbily dressed. There was a familiar cockiness to his wave.

  Johnson scowled. “Who in hell’s that?”

  “My former partner. Wyatt Paul.”

  A bleak wintry feeling settled over Mack. They rode up to the back stoop and reined their horses.

  Wyatt’s raven hair had a dirty, dull cast, his clothes little better than a tramp’s. But his blue eyes blazed with that familiar merry innocence that charmed so many, and masked so much.

  “Hello, Mack. I heard you were making a pile of money from San Solaro. I came back for my share.”

  30

  MACK INTRODUCED WYATT AND Johnson. Then he asked Johnson to vacate the cottage for the night. “Wyatt and I are going to be talking business.”

  Johnson, visibly unhappy, protested that it was his cottage too. He had heard a few stories about Wyatt, most uncomplimentary, and he didn’t like being dismissed.

  “Wyatt’s part-owner of the land leased to Chance-Johnson. We have a lot to discuss. It’s personal.” Mack fairly barked it; he could tell Wyatt was enjoying his visible discomfort. “Do me a favor. Don’t argue. Bunk somewhere else.”

  Johnson stared at his partner. “Shit,” he said, and squirted some spit between his teeth. He turned his horse back up the road.

  “Inside, Wyatt,” Mack said. “You aren’t staying long.” Wyatt put a match to a cigarette, a form of tobacco Mack never touched. He flipped the match into the yard, amused.

  “We’ll see.” He held the back door. “After you. Partner.”

  Mack could barely contain his anger. Just when you held four high cards, and your luck was running, and the pot was the biggest ever, the dealer handed you a losing trey. He wanted to take hold of Wyatt’s grimy collar and toss him out. Only conscience restrained him—conscience and a certain animal wariness. Wyatt Paul wasn’t like other men. He couldn’t be counted on to act rationally most of the time. Usually Mack took off his holster when he came home; tonight he didn’t.

  Wyatt said he was thirsty and Mack uncorked a large jug of red table wine. It was a mistake. An hour later, with darkness settling, Wyatt was guzzling from the jug and they were still going round and round, the same arguments.

  “I’m telling you again, Wyatt. I stuck by the bargain. My lawyer in Los Angeles is holding the paper. And the dollar I owe you.”

  “I disappeared, but it was only temporary. Partner.”

  “Stop chattering that word like a damn monkey.” Mack stormed to the end of the porch and pointed to the derrick lights. “You didn’t contribute anything to all that. Not one dime, and not one ounce of sweat.”

  “Did that ignorant cowboy contribute?”

  “A lot.”

  “What’s he get out of it?”

  “His fair share.”

  Wyatt tilted the jug over the back of his arm, dribbling wine into his mouth, then wiping his chin on his sleeve. “I contributed. Whose land are those wells built on, Mack?”

  “How many times do you have to hear it? You disappeared. You abandoned San Solaro. You took cash belonging to buyers who trusted you, and you damn near landed me in jail because of it. Now you walk in again as if it never happened. And you won’t even say where you’ve been, for God’s sake.”

  “Mexicali. Catalina. Hawaii. Nowhere important.”

  Light in the neatly furnished parlor struck Wyatt’s eyes, giving them that opaque sheen. “I have a bad impression from this conversation, Mack. An impression that you want to push me out. I guess I had the wrong idea about you.” A pause. “I once thought you had a conscience.”

  Mack bolted at him, then checked himself.

  Wyatt stood his ground, laughing. “Thought that’d get you.” He slapped his thigh.

  Mack stalked off the porch and walked over to the edge of the canal. Rubbing his palms over his face, he could feel the grit of the long day’s travel, the frustration, the anger. He quelled it and thought hard. Would the original agreement with Wyatt hold up? Yes. Potter had assured him it would. Then there was an answer, an old and trusted one: percentages.

  “All right,” he said in a hoarse voice, approaching the porch again. “I’ll cut you a new deal. I’ll give you ten percent of the net profit of Chance-Johnson.”

  “Don’t insult me, partner.” Wyatt swigged.

  “Twelve and a half, goddamn it.”

  “Am I upsetting you, partner? You’re cursing a lot. No deal.”

  “Fifteen,” Mack said with pained reluctance.

  Wyatt thought it over, then smiled. “Seventeen and a half.”

  “All right. On one condition. You collect your checks at a bank in Los Angeles. You stay away from here.”

  The silence was enormous. Wyatt set the jug on the porch with a loud thud, then stumbled down the steps into the starlight. His voice, much lower, carried real enmity.

  “Why?”

  “Because this is a business. A profitable and well-run business. If I keep it that way, we’ll both make money.”

  “Are you saying I wouldn’t keep it that way?”

  “Drop it, Wyatt.”

  “No, get it all out.”

  Silence.

  “Get it all out, Mack.”

  They stared each other down.

  “San Solaro is producing income now, big income. It’s going to produce something else if I can bring water in here—the water you lied about to our real estate customers. It’s going to produce a town. A real town, not the one you dreamed up on paper. No steamboats on a bogus canal. Stores, homes, schools, churches, real streets, real people. It’s called progress, Wyatt. It’s entirely unrelated to a free ride, a free lunch, or a fast dollar. But it won’t happen if you’re around here to beat up any banker who says no to a loan, or any contractor who happens to question an order.”

  “I didn’t know you had such a low opinion of me.”

  “For God’s sake stop it. You have a lot of talent and charm. But you let it run wild, you don’t harness it.”

  Wyatt ran to the porch, seized the jug, and smashed it to pieces against a porch pillar. “When are you going to understand? I didn’t come to California to climb into a fucking harness.”

  “Shut up—dammit, you’re ranting.”

  “No, sir, no—I’m going to say this. You’ve been pretty fucking candid tonight. Well, you listen to this, Mack. Candor can be dangerous. Sometimes it poisons a friendship. Poisons it forever. You understand me?”

  “If that’s s
ome kind of threat, the hell with you. Do you want the seventeen and a half percent or not?”

  “I want it. I’m entitled to it.”

  “Then collect it in Los Angeles. My attorney’s name is Potter. He’ll settle the arrangements.”

  “We’ll settle it together. I’m staying right here.”

  Mack was shaking. He wanted to pull his Peacemaker, but pulled something from memory instead.

  “What does the name Sterns mean to you? Don Ysidor Sterns, Rancho de la Bahía?”

  Wyatt stood absolutely still. His voice became reasonable again, and very faint.

  “I don’t know the name Sterns.”

  “That’s peculiar. After you left, I found a long news cutting about Don Ysidor Sterns in your desk. About his murder down near San Diego. Someone killed and robbed him of a lot of money.” Mack swallowed, dry-mouthed. He toed an invisible cliff that would either hold, or crumble and carry him into an abyss. “About as much money,” he continued, “as it took to buy this land, I figure. They never found the murderer. Damn funny that you’d keep a clipping about a man you didn’t know.”

  “Are you saying—”

  “I’m saying it’s funny, Wyatt. And I’m saying you didn’t get the money from Otto Hellman. That was a lie—never mind how I know. That’s all I’m saying—right now.”

  Ten seconds passed. The night breeze carried the rhythmic pumping of the wells and an owl hooted back in the hills.

  Without warning, Wyatt started for Mack and Mack instantly snatched the Colt off his hip and cocked it. “Don’t make this any worse.”

  “I want the clipping.”

  “No. It’s locked up in a bank vault.”

  “What do you want, then?”

  “I want you to get out. Potter will take care of you. Just don’t come back here.”

  Wyatt stood so that the lamplight from inside fell on half his face. Mack watched the charming grin slide back, the charming, smarmy, insincere grin. There was no humor in his eyes, only china-blue malevolence.

  “Whatever you say, partner. I’ll sleep on your couch and in the morning—”