by Gwen Bristow
Garnet felt her hand, like his, closing on the grass. John had not looked up at her as he spoke. She wondered if he had been thinking of Oliver with that last sentence. She asked,
“Is that why you don’t like people? Because they torture you with their own weakness?”
“Yes,” said John. “You can’t count on people.” He glanced up, and the corner of his mouth flickered with a grim little smile as he added, “I proved that to you, didn’t I?”
“I don’t understand you.”
“I should have told you the truth about Carmelita Velasco,” said John.
It was the first time he had ever spoken to her about Carmelita. But now that he had been a week on the rancho, of course he knew that she knew the story. Oliver had probably told him how the earthquake had shown her the letter. Oliver had not said so to her. Oliver did not tell her much about anything any more. He was keeping his promise to take her home, and had bought mules for the journey. But he had grown more and more silent under these months of Charles’ cold resentful displeasure.
“I don’t blame you for not telling me,” Garnet answered. “It wasn’t any of your business.”
“No,” said John. “It was not. But I am sorry you had to discover it in what must have been a shocking fashion.”
Garnet picked up an orange blossom that had fallen on the ground, and crushed it in her hand. The petals were white and waxy. She felt guilty about Carmelita. She did not know why, but she did. Still looking down at the broken petals, she said in a low voice,
“I think I should have been angry if you had told me. I should have thought you were meddling in something that did not concern you.
“It did not concern me,” said John, “and it still does not. But something else has happened,” he went on steadily, “and I think you should know it, and I am going to tell you.”
She started, and turned toward him. John had linked his hands around his knees. She noticed that his hands were long and slender. The skin was burned dark brown, and the hands looked very strong.
“I am going to tell you this now, myself,” said John. He did not add “because Oliver won’t,” but she added it in her mind, and she was sure he was adding it in his. He went on. “If you resent my speaking, you have a right to say so. Carmelita is dead.”
Garnet dropped the blossom. She felt half sick with guilt. “But I thought—she was quite well,” she faltered.
“She was quite well,” said John. “She was living up north with her aunt. She went riding, with her baby on her arm. She rode over a cliff. They are both dead.”
Garnet put her fist to her lips. “Oh, John,” she said from behind it, “do you mean—she did it on purpose? Because—because Oliver—is married to me?”
John answered as quietly as if he had been discussing the weather. “It would seem so. Of course, it might have been an accident. But California girls do not often have riding accidents. They learn to ride as soon as they learn to walk.”
Garnet had shut her eyes and covered them with her hands. Tears slipped out between her fingers. “I’m sorry to be crying,” she murmured. “I—I seem to cry so easily these days.” She caught herself. She did cry more easily now, but she must not let John suspect there was any physical reason why she did. She wished she could put her head on a friendly shoulder and cry and cry. Everything was so tangled up. She did not know what emotions she ought to feel; all she did feel was confusion and a great loneliness.
John put a big red handkerchief into her hand. “I am not going to insult you by offering you pity, Garnet,” he said. “You’re too good for that. But I am sorry you have been caught in a situation you did not deserve.”
She dried her tears. His voice was so steady and his words so direct that he calmed her spirit. Crumpling the red handkerchief in her lap, she raised her eyes to meet his. To her surprise she found that she could speak steadily too.
“When did you hear about this?” she asked.
“On the way down from Kerridge’s. I stopped at Don Rafael’s to ask for water. It’s the most usual sort of request. Ordinarily any traveler can get food or water at any rancho he passes. Don Rafael’s men let me water my horses at a creek, but they told me to leave at once and ride fast. Don Rafael has given orders that no American ever come on his land again. The men said he was half out of his mind. She was his only child.”
Garnet folded the red handkerchief and creased it with her thumbnail. “Did you tell Oliver about this?” she asked after a while.
“Yes, I told him.”
She bit her lip hard and gave her head a shake, as though that would shake her thoughts into place. “Oh John,” she exclaimed, “what can I do?”
“Nothing but what you are doing, Garnet. Get Oliver away from here. He’s very fond of you, and he never meant any harm to anybody in his life. But he has always taken orders from Charles. Once away from Charles, he’ll make you a good husband.”
John stood up. She thought she had never seen a man who gave her such a feeling of quiet strength. He said,
“Now I shall never refer to this matter again unless you tell me you want to talk about it. That’s all.” He gave her a brief smile as he turned away. “I have a great deal of respect for you, Garnet,” he added.
He went toward the house. Garnet sat still. She bit the red handkerchief savagely, wondering how much more she could stand. Carmelita and her baby were dead, and poor old Don Rafael was half insane with grief. And she herself was going to have a baby, and she could not talk about it. Sometimes she felt so strange, and she could not ask if this was the way she ought to feel or if there was something wrong with her.
But she was going home. Oliver had deeded his share of the rancho to Charles, and had spent a good part of the winter riding here and there to buy mules and supplies and merchandise. A few weeks more, and they would be on the trail. She would be on her way back to her mother and father, and all the strong dependable things of home.
She wondered if Oliver would tell her about Carmelita’s death. No, he would not. He would think it would be easier on her not to know. What he would mean was that it would be easier on him if she did not know.
Garnet lifted her head and looked around at the blooming orange trees and the white peaks and the masses of flowers under the snowline. She understood why John loved the earth. The rocks and mountains did not fail you because they could not; even the desert was cruel by its own honest laws. The desert did not promise you roses and waterfalls and then give you rocks and sand. Only people did this. Only people like Oliver.
John was not like that. John reminded her of the desert: he offered nothing, but then suddenly he was like a rock guarding a spring. And the water was so much more precious than all the rivers of home, because when you found it you needed it so.
Oliver was tender and kind, as he always was, but as she had foreseen, he said nothing to her about Carmelita. As for Charles, he never spoke to her if he could help it. She was used to this by now. She kept to herself as much as she could. She went outdoors and walked among the flowers, or she spread her shawl on the grass and lay there, watching the changing lights on the mountains.
John came out sometimes and walked around the rancho with her. He never said anything about her personal affairs. But he showed her the plants: the little white creosote flowers, the wild nicotine with blooms like tiny trumpets of old gold, the deadly datura, from which the Diggers made a drug that drove them into frenzy and sometimes killed them. The datura was not blooming yet, but she would notice it later, he said, because it was so beautiful, great lavender flowers like morning-glories trailing over the ground. “Do you like new things to eat?” he asked her one morning, and when she said yes, he showed her how to cut the shoots of the young anise. The shoots were like little green ostrich plumes. John and Garnet brought the anise to one of the cooking-fires outdoors, and John asked the girl to give them a pot. They simmered the anise in hot water and ate it with sliced hard-boiled eggs. It had an odd taste, like
licorice.
Garnet had not had much appetite. It was hard to eat with Charles’ baleful eyes upon her, and Oliver’s forced gaiety, and the long periods of silence. But she sat on the ground with John and ate all the anise and hard-boiled eggs, and scraped the dish.
“It’s delicious,” she exclaimed to him. “Why don’t we use it at table?”
There was a glint of humor in John’s green eyes. “I don’t think,” he answered, “that Charles would care to eat weeds. But since you like them, tomorrow we’ll cut some of the wild mustard. It’s very good.”
He left her then. Garnet looked after him wistfully. She wished he were going back over the trail this year.
She gathered a handful of poppies and brought them to her room. When she had arranged them in a bowl she stood by the window, looking at the neat rancho buildings and the wild background of the mountains. The rancho was very busy. It was nearly time for dinner. After eating that big dish of anise, she didn’t think she would want any dinner. It would be a good excuse for staying in her room.
Suddenly she heard a great commotion from around the other side of the house. The pass that led to the rancho was in front, where she could not see it from her window. She heard a stamping of horses, and a loud confusion of men’s voices and the scream of a girl.
Garnet ran out, along the passage to the front door. Just in front of the door she stopped, pressing back against the house in fright.
Everybody had run outside. She saw Charles and Oliver and John, and a great crowd of the rancho people, and a lot of horses. Down from the pass several horsemen were rushing toward the house. They were riding furiously, and they all had guns, and there was something strange about them; for an instant she did not know what it was, and then she realized that instead of bright red and blue garments they all wore black. At their head was an old man. He wore no hat, and his white hair was streaming back from his swarthy forehead.
The old man had caught sight of Oliver. He turned his horse fiercely, holding the bridle with his left hand and his gun in his right. Garnet heard shouts, and another girl was screaming or maybe there were several of them. A serving-man began to pray aloud, and another man dropped on his knees and crossed himself. Children yelled as they ran out of the way of the rushing horses. Neither Charles nor Oliver was armed, nor John either, but John ran toward the white-haired man, calling to him. His words were Spanish, and Garnet was too terrified to try to understand them. Oliver had run forward too, though Charles had tried to hold him back.
The white-haired rider did not stop. Garnet saw his face, and it was a face terrible with grief and fury, and she knew he was Don Rafael. Nobody needed to tell her what he had come for. She felt sweat pouring out of her body. It all happened in a few seconds, but they were seconds stretched long and slow, so that although the horses were galloping she could see them pick up their hoofs and set them down again, very clearly, and it seemed to take a long time. Don Rafael lifted his gun. He shouted something to Oliver, and though she could not understand the words she knew they were terrible words. The gun cracked, and another gun cracked, and another, and the shots echoed against the hillsides. Oliver crumpled up in a slow horrible way, as she had seen Diggers crumple up at the Archillette.
Garnet heard a choking cry. She did not know she had given it until she found that she was running, stumbling over her skirts and over the tussocks of grass, and pushing the rancho people out of her way. The horsemen were galloping off as fast as they had come. Garnet ran to where Oliver lay in a dreadful huddle, and dropping on her knees she turned his body over. It had a horrid limpness in her hands. She saw a great red gash in his throat, and a red tear down his shirt, and streaks of blood. The blood was wet and warm as it covered her hands.
Her hands were wet and her fingers were dripping thickly. There was blood on her sleeves and blood down the front of her dress. She saw his face. She had seen dead men at the Archillette. Nobody needed to tell her this either.
This too had seemed to take a long time, though she had reached him only a second before the others. She felt a furious hand on her shoulder, grabbing her and flinging her back from Oliver, and as she looked up she saw Charles. He threw her away from him, to the ground.
As she struggled up to her knees she saw the huddle of scared screaming servants around her, and again she saw Charles. His strength had gone out of him. He had dropped across Oliver’s body, and he lay there sobbing like a child.
Garnet felt a fierce heaving in the middle of herself. The people and the houses and the mountains began to swing around her. She found that she was running again, stumbling dizzily over the grass as she tried to get to her room so she could be away from all of them. She reached a corner of the house. The corner struck her as though it had come to meet her. The blow knocked her down to her knees and brought a rush of nausea so violent that she felt as if she were being torn to pieces.
At last, exhausted, she lay limply on the grass and could not get up. The landscape was a shimmering blur. She felt a wave of heat as though she had stepped into a kitchen with a roaring fire, then the heat was swept away by another wave of cold nausea. She doubled up and began to retch again.
“I can’t stand any more,” she thought desperately when the nausea had spent itself. “I can’t stand any more.”
But even then she knew there was a great deal more that she would have to stand. She was going to have a child, and Oliver was dead, and there was nobody to take her home. She had nowhere to live except in this hateful house with Charles.
She heard a lot of commotion—stamping horses, barking dogs, shrill shocked voices of men and women—but she heard it only as a jingling of sounds without sense. At length she tried again to stand up. But she was so giddy that the world spun around her. She dropped to the ground again, limp as an empty bag, and lay with her cheek on the grass while the ground teetered under her like a seesaw.
She did not know how long she lay there, gagging helplessly as the nausea kept surging through her, but at last she felt a hand on her arm. A voice close to her said, “Garnet! Garnet, can you hear me?”
Garnet could not answer for the squeezing in her throat, but she moved her eyes and saw John. He put his arm under her and picked her up and carried her into the house.
She had left the door of her room ajar when she ran out. Kicking the door open, John carried her in and laid her on the bed. This was all she knew. Everything turned black and silent.
TWENTY-EIGHT
SILKY’S PLACE SHONE THROUGH the rainy night. The rain fell into Los Angeles like big swinging ropes of water; the ropes lashed at the little square houses and made lakes of mud on the ground.
Most of the houses were dark, but at Silky’s Place light streamed between the shutters. Two lanterns creaked from the roof of the porch, and two more shone over the front door. From inside, above the noise of the rain, sounded voices and the clink of money and the rattle of cups and bottles. On rainy nights Los Angeles was a gloomy town, and Silky’s Place made a bright dry refuge.
It was a large building for Los Angeles, two stories high. The walls were made of adobe, but around all four sides there was a wooden porch with a roof one story high. Downstairs there were two rooms in front and two in back. In one of the front rooms was the bar, in the other the gambling tables. The two back rooms were a kitchen and a storeroom. In a little hall to the side of the kitchen was a steep staircase of unplaned boards. This led up to the loft, where there were bedrooms and more storerooms for the liquor supplies. The upstairs rooms were dark now, but the rooms downstairs were as bright as the hanging lamps could make them.
In the gambling room, Silky was in charge. He had two dealers, sleek young men from the Mexican port of Mazatlán. Silky walked about grandly, dressed and waxed with an elegance that did not lessen the warning look of the gun he wore at his belt. Silky’s Place was orderly. Silky kept it that way.
In the saloon, Florinda was tending bar, assisted by a Mexican youth named José and a Chi
nese boy who washed the cups. The Chinese boy had a name, but as Florinda did not like it she called him Mickey. Mickey had a long queue dangling from the crown of his head. He wore a red Mexican jacket, gray trousers discarded by some Yankee, and a pair of soft felt house-slippers that he had bought at Mr. Abbott’s store. Mickey worked deftly and usually in silence, but he understood Spanish very well and he was also picking up a good deal of English. He and Florinda were very good friends.
The bar was solidly built. Facing the door, it reached all the way across the room from wall to wall. To get from the back of the bar to the front of it, you had to go through two side doors, one behind and one in front of the bar; and the door in front of the bar was usually locked. Silky took no chance of anybody’s getting to the liquor-shelves.
Florinda was wearing a dress of brown wool with yellow ribbons, and fingerless mitts of brown silk. She looked very charming, and she was very gay as she served her customers, but she also had a gun ready for use. Her gun was a Colt revolver that a Yankee trader had lost in the gambling room. Colts were so rare in California as to be almost priceless. Every now and then, when some of the boys bragged about their guns, Florinda smiled sweetly and asked them if they had noticed her Colt. “Wonderful invention,” she said, stroking the Colt affectionately. “Fires five times without reloading. Practically impossible to get out here.”
The boys knew that very well. The saloon was orderly too.
There were sixteen customers at the bar, ten of them Californios sipping the native wine, the rest Yankees drinking whiskey. Whiskey was hard to get in California, and expensive. Silky brought it from Yankee clippers, and from the occasional British ships that stopped at San Diego on their way to China.
The door opened, and two Yankees came in, shaking raindrops from their clothes. They were traders who had come with the train from Santa Fe last summer and were planning to start back with the spring caravan. Florinda met them as they came up to the bar. “What’ll it be, gents?”
