by Gwen Bristow
Silky, who was checking the credit ledgers, pulled at his mustache a moment, and shook his head. Silky could be serious enough when he chose. “I don’t think we need to be worried, Mrs. Hale. The Angelenos like us. Look how they come in here every evening to drink wine and play monte. They know men like me and Abbott and the rest of us, we don’t have any truck with floaters like that crew.”
Garnet felt better, and went back to her sewing. Silky resumed his checking of the profits. Business was good and Silky was in a cheerful mood. His satisfied expression as he added the figures reminded Garnet that she had not yet made any arrangement for paying her own expenses. She had told Florinda she wanted to, and Florinda had said, “You don’t have to do that. Beef is so cheap here that all you can eat wouldn’t come to a dollar a month.” But Garnet still wanted to pay her share. Both Silky and Florinda were more interested in getting rich than in anything else, and Garnet was pretty sure that neither of them would persist in refusing good money. Besides, she was about to have a baby, and with Silky at least she suspected that regular cash payments might make the difference between a squalling brat and a sweet little cherub.
She decided she had better see Mr. Abbott now, and get this matter straightened out before her baby was born. When she went upstairs that evening, she looked at her figure in the glass. In New York, she would never have dreamed of going out where people could see her. But she had observed that in California women about to have children went about as usual and nobody took any notice of them. So she would go to see Mr. Abbott tomorrow, if Florinda would go with her to show her the way.
The thought of being responsible for her own property gave her a shaky feeling, for she knew so little about such things. At home her father had given her an allowance, and Oliver had always been generous. In New Orleans, whenever she said she was going shopping he would offer her a bill or two from his pocket. In Santa Fe he had given her a handful of Mexican coins before she had thought of asking for them. Since reaching California she had not spent any money at all except what she had given Isabel for altering the black dresses. She had offered to pay for the cloth Florinda bought for the baby’s clothes, but Florinda had said, “Oh, that’s paid for. I told Mr. Abbott to check it off in Oliver’s credit book.”
Florinda understood money. She had told Garnet how much to pay Isabel for the sewing, and she could explain the odd mixture of coins and hides and credit books used in California. When Florinda came up to their room that night, Garnet told her she wanted to see Mr. Abbott. Florinda nodded.
“Why sure, dear, I understand. It’s confusing not to know how much you’ve got. I’ll go with you tomorrow—José can take care of the bar, and I need some shoes anyway.”
Garnet was sitting on the wall-bench before the window, looking out at the stars. She saw the Big Dipper, and remembered how her father had first shown it to her when she was a little girl. It gave her a wrench of homesickness. Looking at the stars, she said suddenly,
“I wish my child was not going to be a foreigner!”
Florinda was piling her laundry into a basket to be given to Isabel the next day. “It’s a shame, Garnet,” she said. “Having to stay here when you didn’t mean to.”
“I don’t think I ever really thought about my own country before,” said Garnet. “In New York, the Fourth of July was just a lot of fireworks and a fat man on a platform reading the Declaration of Independence. But out here, when the day went by and it was just another day—” She stopped. “I’m sorry! This won’t do either of us any good.”
“People do get back, you know,” said Florinda.
“Yes, of course. Maybe I could get the captain of a clipper ship to take me as a passenger. Do those ships ever carry women?”
“Sometimes. Once in a while a captain brings his wife with him. If there’s one woman along he might not mind having another. You’d be company for her.”
“I’d pay him everything I had,” said Garnet. After a pause she asked, “Would you go with me?”
“No, dearie,” said Florinda.
So Garnet did not pursue the subject. But as she looked out at the stars and thought of home, she felt her eyes smarting with tears.
The next day they went to Mr. Abbott’s. Garnet wore one of her black Mexican dresses, and Florinda showed her how to cover her head with the strip of black silk that the Californios called a rebozo. It was a glittering midsummer day. They went by paths trodden through the wild oats, winding this way and that among the houses. Dogs and children scampered around them, and here and there they stepped aside to let a horseman go by. The walk took them only ten minutes, but they turned so often that Garnet looked back more than once to make sure of the direction they were taking.
At the trading post a stack of hides lay on the porch in front. As she smelt them Garnet made a face.
“What would you have said in New York,” she asked Florinda, “if somebody had told you where your slippers came from?”
“I guess I’d have said, ‘Thank heaven I don’t have to live there.’ Well, you never know what’s going to happen next. There’s a step under these weeds, be careful. There, fine. That’s Mr. Abbott, the fat man sitting behind the counter.”
Mr. Abbott, round and bald and jovial, smiled broadly upon them as they came in.
“Well now, this is a treat. How do you do, Miss Florinda?”
“Healthy as a weed, thank you, sir. Let me make you acquainted with my friend Mrs. Oliver Hale. She wants to see you on a little matter of business.”
Mr. Abbott did not look as if he ever moved any more than he had to. But out of respect for Garnet’s black dress and her obvious state of health, he now pushed himself up out of his chair with a great puffing and heaving, gave her a big soft hand and told her how deeply he felt for her in the grief displayed by her widow’s weeds. Drawing up a chair for her behind the counter, he invited her to sit down.
Garnet thanked him, went around the end of the counter, and took the chair. Solemnly clasping his hands over his paunch, Mr. Abbott told her Oliver had been a fine man, and he would be happy to do any service in his power for Oliver’s widow.
Garnet did not want to discuss Oliver. Sensing this, Florinda interrupted Mr. Abbott to say she’d like to try on some shoes, please, if he had any nice ones. Why of course he had, Mr. Abbott exclaimed, some real stylish shoes from the best factory in Connecticut. He shouted for somebody to come wait on Miss Florinda, and two Yankee clerks appeared from the back room behind the counter. Florinda flashed her charm upon them, and they hurried to bring not only shoes but ribbons and dress-goods as well. Sitting on the wall-bench to slip off the shoes she was wearing, Florinda wanted to know if they thought she owned a rancho, that she could buy a thousand hides’ worth of clothes all at once.
“There now, don’t you go teasing me,” Mr. Abbott boomed at her. “If everybody kept their credit on the books as good as you do I’d not have a care in the world. Collins! Bring some wine for Mrs. Hale, she looks a bit peaky. Well, yes, a cup for me too, don’t mind if I do. Join us, Miss Florinda? Better reconsider, ma’am, nothing like a little wine for the stomach’s sake, so says the Good Book itself.”
Florinda thanked him but shook her head, admiring her foot in a black kid slipper with a silk rosette, and flirting with both clerks at once. While they talked, Garnet looked around at the trading post. The front and both side walls of the room had adobe wall-benches, and the counter faced the door so Mr. Abbott could greet his customers as they came in. At one end of the counter was a pile of old newspapers that had been wadded and stuffed into the chinks of the goods-boxes. Some of the pages were whole, others had been torn, but all had been smoothed out so the American customers could read them. Few of the papers were less than a year old, for they had come on ships around Cape Horn, but they brought the latest news to be had from the United States.
On the back wall of the room, behind the counter, were shelves piled with ledgers. The rancheros brought in their hides, got credit for
them on the books, and took their credit papers to be exchanged for goods as they needed them. There was very little cash handled anywhere.
Behind this room was another, where the clerks had been working when Mr. Abbott bawled for their services. Evidently they had been unpacking a shipment of goods, for Garnet could see the open crates, and the pots and pans, mirrors and cloth and shoes that had come out of them. Young Mr. Collins, the clerk, set a bottle of red wine and two cups on the counter. Mr. Abbott poured a cupful of wine for Garnet and handed it to her with as much of a bow as a fat man could manage sitting down.
Mr. Abbott never hurried. Sipping his wine, he asked Garnet what she thought of that ruckus up north. Disgraceful, wasn’t it? Bad for business. And how’d she like this fine summer weather? Hot days and cool nights, never got anything like this back in the States, no sirree they didn’t. Another man dropped in, a stringy, lantern-jawed character in a red shirt and dusty black trousers. Mr. Abbott introduced him to Garnet as Mr. Bugs McLane. Garnet had heard of Mr. Bugs McLane, who was well known at Silky’s: he did a thriving business in bringing whiskey and other contraband goods from the ships. Mr. McLane said he had come by to talk over some little things with Mr. Abbott, but he was in no hurry and could wait till Mrs. Hale was finished. Meanwhile, he had noticed a woman selling hot tamales yonder by the church. If Florinda had picked out the shoes she wanted, he would be mighty pleased if she would drop over there with him, and they could refresh themselves with a few tamales.
Florinda said she was positively suffering for want of hot tamales, and she’d be delighted to accept the invitation if Mr. Collins would put aside this pair of slippers for her. She and Mr. Bugs McLane went out arm in arm.
Mr. Abbott chatted a few minutes longer, but finally he got around to asking Garnet what was the business she wanted to see him about. Garnet said that since Mr. Abbott had acted as Oliver’s banker, she had come to learn what Oliver had left on deposit.
Yes, yes, of course, said Mr. Abbott, and he told Mr. Collins to hand him down a ledger. As his pudgy fingers rustled the pages Mr. Abbott was pleasant and fatherly, and at the same time respectful, as became a merchant dealing with a rich woman.
Twenty minutes later Garnet thanked him and stood up. Mr. Abbott nodded to Mr. Collins, who sprang forward to take her arm and walk with her to the porch. A little distance away, Garnet saw Florinda and Mr. Bugs McLane and a group of natives, blissfully consuming hot tamales. “Will you tell Miss Grove I am ready to go now, Mr. Collins?” Garnet asked.
Being hatless, Mr. Collins touched his forehead and went off. Standing on the porch, Garnet held tight with one hand to a post that supported the roof. She could feel her baby moving. It gave her a sense of panic. Mr. Abbott had bowed her out with deference, and Mr. Collins was obeying her because he thought she was rich. They did not know what she had just found out, that she had almost nothing to live on.
The facts were clear. Mr. Abbott had told them to her affably, not knowing what he was telling her. Oliver had brought a lot of merchandise from Santa Fe last summer; John had placed it to Oliver’s credit at the store; Mr. Abbott had sold it, and after deducting his own fee he had recorded the proceeds in Oliver’s credit book. Everything was in order. But then, when she herself had insisted that Oliver leave California for good, he had withdrawn his credit. He had left only a few dollars for last-minute trifles.
What he had done with his credit, of course Mr. Abbott did not know. Probably he had contracted with rancheros for mules, with sea-captains for silk and coffee and spices to sell in Santa Fe. “No doubt,” said Mr. Abbott, “you’ve already found these records at the rancho. I guess Mr. Charles Hale took charge of them, to keep them for you.”
Garnet remembered Oliver’s trips here and there in the weeks before he died. She had told him to leave nothing in California, because they were never coming back. Typically, Oliver had obeyed.
To be sure, Mr. Abbott continued, all the goods Oliver had bought could be put back on credit here. Mr. Charles Hale would know where they were. Any time she or Charles brought in the receipts, Mr. Abbott would be glad to put them to her account. And of course, the rancho itself had been granted to the Hale brothers jointly. Mr. Charles Hale would have her share of this year’s hide sales, if he had not given it to her already. Any time she brought in the hide receipts, Mr. Abbott would put this sum too on the books.
The rancho, the rancho, Charles. As she stood on the porch, the words clanged in Garnet’s mind. Mr. Abbott did not know that Oliver had deeded his share of the rancho to Charles. She had said, “Yes, yes, give it to him!”—not dreaming that land in California would ever have any value for her.
The credit Oliver had left at Mr. Abbott’s, less what Florinda had spent for the baby’s clothes, amounted to thirty-eight dollars. Mr. Abbott said he had transferred this to Mrs. Hale’s name when Florinda told him she had come to live in town. It had hardly seemed necessary to ask her to come in and sign for so trifling a sum. Now that she was here, she would be good enough to sign the page. He was glad to have the account and it would be an honor to serve Mrs. Hale at any time. And if all this business about hides and credits confused her, well, she could leave everything to him. Ask any Yankee or any Angeleno, and they’d tell her that his reputation for square dealing was lily-white.
Garnet braced herself against the post because she felt as if she might fall down. Now she knew what Charles had meant when he told her, with sneering assurance, that she would come back to him. She had no way to make him give up Oliver’s property. There were no lawyers in California, and she had been here long enough to know how few laws there were that anybody respected.
Around the store, the dogs barked and the children ran up and down. Men swapped stories and women cooked at the outdoor ovens. A two-wheeled cart full of hides creaked up to the store, the driver walking by the head of the ox, and his Digger servants began to stack the hides on Mr. Abbott’s porch. Garnet could smell the hides. She could smell the Diggers too, and the dogs and the garbage in the street, and the hot tamales from the stand over there, and the beef and chili cooking at the outdoor fires. The smells made her sick, and her flesh crawled, or maybe that sensation meant fleas. For a moment the whole scene trembled as though she saw it from under water. Biting her lip savagely, she closed her eyes tight and opened them, several times, until her head cleared. She saw Florinda coming toward her with Mr. Collins and Mr. Bugs McLane.
Florinda was wiping her fingers on her handkerchief and slipping on her gloves over her half-mitts. As they reached the porch step, Mr. McLane and Mr. Collins bowed to Garnet, and Florinda thanked Mr. McLane for the hot tamales. “Now just wait a minute till I pick up my new shoes,” she said to Garnet as the men went into the store. “Why Garnet, what’s the trouble?” she exclaimed, as she noticed Garnet’s face. “You look kind of green. Sick?”
“A little bit. I’ll be all right in a minute.”
“Maybe you should sit down for a while indoors.”
“No, I’d rather go home,” said Garnet. The word “home” sounded mocking as she said it. She had no home. She could live in the loft over the saloon, dependent on Florinda’s kindness, or she could live with Charles, which meant Charles would take charge of her child so completely that the baby would grow up with no more sense of responsible self-reliance than Oliver had had.
“All right, dear,” said Florinda, “we’ll go right home and you can lie down.” She stepped to the doorway of the store. “Oh, Mr. Collins! Mrs. Hale is feeling a bit faint. Could you leave the store long enough to help her get home?”
Mr. Collins came out at once and said certainly. He was an ambitious young Yankee with dreams of saving enough to go into the Santa Fe trade. Glad to be of service to one of his employer’s rich customers, he took Garnet’s arm respectfully while Florinda hurried inside. Garnet could hear her talking.
“Mr. Abbott, have you got some smelling salts or lavender water? Why yes, this will do. Put it on Mrs. Hale’s account.
” She came out, carrying her shoes in one hand and a little blue jar in the other. “Here, Garnet, this is some nice fragrant stuff the ladies use here. It’ll make you feel better. Sometimes this town makes me wish I didn’t have any nose.”
Garnet thanked her, trying not to sound ironic. Nice fragrant stuff, put it on Mrs. Hale’s account. Florinda too thought she was rich.
Walking between Florinda and Mr. Collins, she got back to Silky’s Place. Mr. Collins bowed and told her it had been a pleasure to assist her. Garnet wondered how deferential he would have been if he had known she owned less than a hundred dollars. She and Florinda went into the saloon by the side door. Silky saw them and called to Florinda, “Couple of customers been asking for you.
“Be right there,” she called back, slipping her hand under Garnet’s elbow to help her up the stairs. At the bedroom door Garnet said,
“You can go down now. I feel better. I’m sorry I got dizzy just then.”
“Oh rats, don’t apologize. You can’t help it. These last few weeks, the baby feels like it weighs ninety pounds.”
She helped Garnet take off her dress and put on a robe, and told her to lie down. Garnet obeyed, and Florinda ran downstairs. A moment later Garnet heard the men at the bar asking where she had been. Garnet shrugged. When your business was to entertain people, as Florinda’s was, you were never supposed to be tired or to have anything else to do. But Florinda had never had much consideration from other people, so she did not expect it.
That’s my trouble, Garnet said to herself. All my life other people have taken care of me. Now that’s over. I’ve got to take care of myself. And I’ve got to take care of my baby.
But what in the world, she wondered, was she going to do? It was all right to say you were willing to take care of yourself, but how did you go about it? When you found yourself in a mess like this, what did you do?
