by Gwen Bristow
“No. I know you never have.”
“Darling, what makes you look so sober about it?”
“I was wishing you weren’t such a cynic.”
“I don’t know what a cynic is,” Florinda returned cheerfully. “However—” she hesitated, and her own face grew sober too. After she had thought about it, Florinda went on. “Garnet, I wish you didn’t believe in so many rainbows. About love and marriage and all that.”
“You don’t think I ought to get married again?” Garnet asked. “Not ever?”
“Oh, it’s all right to get married if you like the idea. But I mean—you ought not to expect so much.” She spoke with conviction. “I don’t want to shock your dainty feelings, Garnet, but girls on my side of the park know quite a lot about girls on your side. We know about those vows of undying adoration you get, and we know what fools you are to believe them.”
Garnet pressed her hand on the window-sill, feeling the rough earthy texture of the adobe under her fingers. “We’re not always fools to believe them!” she retorted.
“Garnet, dear,” Florinda pled, “I don’t want you to get hurt again. And the only way not to get hurt is, don’t give anybody a chance to hurt you. Don’t ask for much, and then you won’t be hurt when you don’t get much. Can’t you understand that?”
“I understand it. I don’t believe it. I’ll never accept any such patchwork as long as I live.”
“Oh, hell and whiskers,” said Florinda. “Let’s go out and get a cup of cha.”
Garnet wondered if Florinda was trying to warn her about men in general, or about John in particular. It did not matter. She did not need to be warned about men in general, because she wanted only one. And as for John, he would never make a promise to her, or to any man or woman on earth, unless he was ready to risk his life to keep it.
THIRTY-SEVEN
IN THAT SAME MONTH of November, Frémont decided to lead his battalion to Los Angeles. He had been ordered there a month before, when Stockton first got news of the revolt and went south himself, but Frémont had waited while his men gathered up horses and cattle from the ranchos. Now he set out from Monterey with five hundred men, several cannon, and a drove of animals.
But he had forgotten about the California seasons. When he was four days’ march out of Monterey the rains began. The valleys turned into lakes of mud. The cannon bogged, the men got sick, the cattle died. Monterey and Los Angeles were three hundred miles apart, and the twisting mountain passes added more miles to the journey. It took Frémont two months to make the march to Los Angeles. By the time he got there the American flag was again flying over the plaza and American soldiers were guarding the streets.
The Army of the West, commanded by Brigadier-General Stephen W. Kearny, had reached California in December. They had marched overland from Fort Leavenworth on the Missouri River.
General Kearny was a graduate of West Point, a veteran of the War of 1812, and a seasoned officer of the frontier. After leading his men across two thousand miles of prairie and desert, Kearny was in no mood to wait for any dawdling heroes. He had come to fight, and fight he did, immediately. Learning that there were American troops in San Diego, Kearny sent them word that he was on his way. Captain Gillespie hurried to meet him with his small party of marines. Joining forces with Gillespie’s men, Kearny met the Californios in battle at a Digger village called San Pascual, east of San Diego. After two days’ fighting the Californios fled, though they had made the Americans pay dearly in both killed and wounded for their victory. In this battle Gillespie proved again that though he was a poor governor, he was no coward. He fought gallantly, and got a wound that nearly cost him his life.
Though General Kearny had also been wounded, he managed to get into his saddle the next day and lead his men to San Diego. Here they joined the forces under Commodore Stockton and set out for Los Angeles. After several skirmishes outside the town, the Americans entered Los Angeles on the tenth of January, 1847.
At Kerridge’s Rancho, they did not hear the news till a month later. The winter storms were hard; the mountains were full of snow, and travelers were few. This winter especially, there was so much disorder in the land that most people who had homes were glad to stay in them.
For the rancheros, it was a time full of irritations. Even in Mr. Kerridge’s well-guarded grazing lands there were thieves. Frémont’s high-handed tactics had inspired a lot of scamps to gallop about the country stealing horses and anything else they could find, hoping Frémont would get the blame. The rancheros, both Yankees and Californios, were in a state of exasperation. Loudly they asked if the United States wasn’t ever going to send an army to make California safe again for honest folk.
At Kerridge’s, they heard a thousand rumors about the American army. But they got no real news until one bright morning in February, when the Handsome Brute, grand in a purple coat and gold satin breeches, came riding through the pass and told them the Yankees had entered Los Angeles. No, he said, he had not been down there. He had spent the past few months quite comfortably, seeing to his own rancho and John’s. He had heard of the army from a couple of Yankee traders who had stopped at his place one night. The traders had left the next morning, and as he watched them go over the hills he had felt lonesome. The sun had been shining for two weeks, riding would be easy, and he thought he’d go over to Kerridge’s Rancho and see his friends. So here he was.
He brought Doña Manuela a bead necklace, which she at once put on. In high good-humor she went jangling off toward the outdoor ovens, leaving the Brute in the courtyard with Garnet and Florinda and Mr. Kerridge. While the Brute emptied a bottle of wine he told them what he knew about events in the south.
The traders who had brought him the news, he said, were two of the fellows who went every year from Los Angeles to Santa Fe. The girls would remember them, Devilbug and Ticktock. Why yes, the mule-train had made the trip as usual. It had left last spring, while Garnet was ill at Charles’ rancho, before anybody in California had heard of the war. The traders had not heard of it themselves until they got to the settlements around Santa Fe.
The war had not hindered their trade. General Kearny had taken Santa Fe with very little trouble. The governor of New Mexico, fat Armijo, had blustered with a great noise about how many Yankees he was going to kill, but as soon as the first Yankee in uniform had appeared on the horizon Armijo had run like a scared pig. He had taken everything that belonged to him and a good deal that did not, and as far as Devilbug and Ticktock could learn, nobody had shed any tears at losing him.
General Kearny had organized the province quickly and competently. The great sensation of the conquest came when the people found that goods brought from Missouri by the Santa Fe traders would be vastly cheaper than ever before. For now that New Mexico belonged to the United States, Armijo’s customs duties were done with.
And now the army had reached Los Angeles. The Yankee residents were coming back, the town was open for trade again, and here as in Santa Fe there would be no more of those pestilential customs duties on American goods.
“Then we won’t have to pay the boys to smuggle in whiskey for us!” Florinda exclaimed joyfully. “Did they tell you anything about Silky, Brute? Is the saloon open again?”
Yes, the saloon was open, said the Brute. Devilbug and Ticktock had been there, and Silky had said he hoped the girls would be back soon. Now that Los Angeles was full of Yankees, Garnet and Florinda would be more valuable than ever as barmaids. “And Mickey?” Florinda asked.
The boys had seen Mickey too. But other details the Brute had asked about, they didn’t remember. They had stayed in Los Angeles only long enough to put their goods on sale at the trading posts, then they had left to ride out to the rancho country. Spring was nearly here and they had to get mules for their next journey. Usually they contracted for mules early in the winter, but this year the war had prevented them, so now they had to make haste.
Sitting on the bench by the olive tree, Garnet looked down
at the red surface of her wine. The Brute was telling Mr. Kerridge that mules would bring fine prices this year. What with fighting and thieves, the supply would be scarce. Mr. Kerridge and Florinda were both asking questions. Garnet was not asking any. The only question she wanted to ask was sticking in her throat.
Where is John? Silky and Mickey and mules—oh, who cares? Where is John?
She could not ask. Such timidity made her feel like an idiot, but all the same she could not. The little gray leaves of the olive tree rustled in a breath of wind.
“Say, Brute, what’s John doing these days? Last time we heard was when you brought that letter to Garnet, saying he was going to be a guide through the gullies.”
“John is in Los Angeles,” said the Brute. “Devilbug and Ticktock saw him at Mr. Abbott’s.” The dining-gong clanged, and the Brute scrambled to his feet. “There! I am hungry.”
“That’s not news,” said Florinda, “you always are. Say, listen a minute, you big glutton. Why doesn’t John quit guiding the army and come guide us back to Los Angeles? If my bar is open I want to be there.”
They had started toward the dining-hall. The Brute looked down from his great height and smiled upon all three of them.
“John said he would come back as soon as it was safe for you and Garnet to travel,” he said to Florinda. “So that is what he will do.”
So that is what he will do, Garnet echoed in her mind. How few men there were whose friends could speak of them with such unquestioning certainty. Involuntarily, she smiled as she took her place at the long table, and the Brute smiled back at her.
Ten days later John arrived at the rancho. It was a sunny afternoon, and when Garnet had dressed after her siesta she left Florinda trying a new coiffure while she took her workbasket and started outdoors. The shawl was nearly finished now. Doña Manuela, who loved things to wear only a little less than she loved things to eat, had been watching its progress with pleasure.
Their bedroom door opened on a corridor leading to the girls’ courtyard, but Garnet and Florinda did not often go there. Florinda would as soon have thought to pass a pleasant hour in the desert as in a place where men were forbidden. While Garnet did not feel quite so strongly about the matter, she did not like to be isolated either; so as she came out of her room she went to a side door leading to an open courtyard.
Outdoors the air was crisp. The sky was so blue and the earth was so green that the few bare trees looked out of place. On the near slopes the chaparral grew thickly, and here and there the white buckthorn bushes were in bloom. Against the dark green of the chaparral the bushes looked like piles of soapsuds. Far away, the high peaks were white on the bright blue sky. Pausing a moment to look, Garnet heard men and horses at the front of the house, and among the sounds she heard John’s voice. He was not shouting—she could not remember that she had ever heard him shout—but she had been waiting for his voice too long to mistake it now. Her basket on her arm, she caught up her skirts to free her footsteps as she hurried through the long winter grass. Nobody in California ever cut the grass, and after a rainstorm she really believed it grew an inch in a night. For some reason this seemed funny, and she was laughing at the idea of it when she saw John.
He had just dismounted, and his boys had not begun to unload the horses. Nobody knew yet that he was here, nobody but herself and one of Mr. Kerridge’s men, a long weedy fellow who had been asleep by the front door and was now getting lazily to his feet, saying he would tell the family that the Señor Ives had come. Yawning, he ambled indoors. As John turned to speak to his boys he caught sight of Garnet. Breaking his sentence in the middle, he came with quick long strides to meet her.
John had on an old plaid woolen shirt and colorless trousers and heavy boots, and as usual after a journey his jaws were black with stubble. From head to foot he was spattered with mud. In his dark face his teeth were gleaming white and his eyes were like Florinda’s aquamarine. He caught Garnet’s hands in his.
“How good to see you, Garnet,” John said. He spoke in a low voice.
“Oh, I’m so glad you’re back!” Garnet exclaimed. As she said it she laughed a little, and wondered if John knew what she was laughing at. She was laughing at herself, at her utter inability to be shy and coy and make a man wonder if she cared for him. She did not know how, she never had known how, she was as clear as the sun on the mountains; but John looked surprised at her words.
“But didn’t you know I was coming back? I sent you a letter by Nikolai. I told you I’d be here as soon as it was safe for you to travel.”
“Oh yes, yes, I got your letter,” she returned, and she was thinking, You exasperating fool, do you think I was afraid that you, of all men on earth, wouldn’t keep a promise? Can’t you see it’s just that I’m tingling with joy and gladness at the sight of you? Oh, don’t you love me, John?
But at least he was still holding her hands, with the hard firm pressure she knew so well, and he had not moved his eyes from her since he saw her first. He asked,
“How has it been for you here?”
She did her best to answer calmly. “Safe and comfortable, just as you said it would be.”
She wished those boys were not so dutiful about tethering the horses. If they would only go away somewhere maybe John would kiss her. But the boys did not understand English; their presence need not keep him from saying he loved her. But he did not say it. Instead he asked, “No trouble here at all?”
“No trouble for me,” Garnet answered. “Mr. Kerridge lost some horses, and some grain too, and hides. He can tell you how much. But what about you, John? What have you been doing?”
“Oh, carrying messages, and giving advice about weather and trails and where to get meat for the army. I suppose you’ve heard we’re finally in Los Angeles?”
I could choke you for talking about the war, thought Garnet. She said, “Yes, but we don’t know many details.”
“I’ll fill in the outlines. I’ve just come up from Los Angeles.”
“Was it a hard ride?” she asked.
“Not too bad. A lot of mud, and cold pinole sometimes when we couldn’t find any dry wood for a fire.” His lean cheeks creased humorously. “Remember cold pinole?”
She laughed and nodded, and John laughed too, intimately, as if their having shared cold mush on the desert made a sort of hometown link between them. The comradeship of his laughter brushed away the last shred of her reserve. She exclaimed,
“Oh John, I’ve missed you so!”
John’s hands tightened on hers. His eyes were eager as he searched her face. She wondered how she could ever have thought John’s eyes were cold. He said earnestly,
“Garnet, I’ve thought of you every day and night since I left you.”
All winter Garnet had tried to tell herself that she did not need to hear this, because she was already sure he loved her. But the minute she heard it she knew all her self-assurance had been a singing in the dark, for her spirit leaped so joyously at his words. John went on,
“I’ve never had the thought of anybody so constantly with me. It was always as if you were just out of sight, in the next room or beyond the next turn of the trail. And when I got that far and you weren’t there, I had such a strange sense of being alone—strange, I mean, because I’ve always preferred to be alone. But then of course, you’re the only woman I ever gave a damn about.”
As he spoke, she felt a wild glow of pleasure. And because she had not a shadow of subtlety in her, when he ceased speaking she said the first thing she wanted to say. “John, why did you wait so long to tell me this?”
He laughed silently. “Maybe it’s because I’m a fool, Garnet. Tell me, I could have said it before, couldn’t I? You did want me, didn’t you?”
“Want you? Oh John! If you knew how—”
Behind her Garnet heard the voices of Mr. Kerridge and the Handsome Brute, calling a welcome to John as they hurried out of the house to meet him. John said under his breath, “Oh, damn all these nice p
eople,” as he let go of her hands and turned to greet his host. Mr. Kerridge was telling him that his room was waiting, and Doña Manuela was already calling the servants to bring him wine to drink and hot water to wash in. The men went in together, leaving Garnet resentful that Mr. Kerridge and the Brute could go with John to his room while she could not. But waves and waves of delight were breaking through her. John did want her. He was here with her at last, and she loved him.
John reappeared at supper, shaved and scrubbed, and dressed in a white shirt and black velveteen breeches laced up the sides with scarlet cords. After supper the adults of the household gathered in the parlor, where Mr. Kerridge had ordered the rare luxury of a fire. John was fresh from the scene of action and they had a lot of questions to ask.
The servants went about pouring wine and passing wafers. While the others discussed the war, Doña Manuela sipped and nibbled and dozed. Every now and then she roused herself with a start and shouted to one servant to bring more wood for the fire, to another servant to bring more wine, and to a third to brew some more cha for Doña Florinda—couldn’t the fools ever get it through their thick heads that the white-headed Yankee lady did not take wine? And she would be grateful if her son Arturo would bring her that bottle of angelica, and she would be even more grateful if his wife Carlota would stop rustling her skirts so people could hear what Don Juan Ives was saying. Everybody scurried to obey her. Doña Manuela sipped the sweet angelica and dozed off again, and Mr. Kerridge, with a quiet chuckle, asked John to go on with his story.
John told them about the battle at San Pascual, the march to San Diego, and the fighting along the San Gabriel River before the American army entered Los Angeles. He told them about General Kearny, who never flaunted his authority but who always got things done. With a cynical humor, John told them about Frémont.
Shortly after the American army entered Los Angeles, Frémont’s weary march had brought him to town with his battalion. Stockton had appointed Frémont civil governor. Both Stockton and Kearny had to leave Los Angeles, John explained, and go up to Monterey. Somebody had to be in Los Angeles to carry out their orders. But Frémont was showing no inclination to take orders from anybody, not even the general himself. Frémont had taken the biggest house in town for his residence, and was setting himself up as governor in fine style. John rather suspected that the boisterous gentleman was heading for trouble.
