When the woman opened the door, Charley said, “Hello, Gail.”
“Well, hi,” she said. Her eyes were a pale agate in color, a little sharp, perhaps brittle. Her body was full-molded against the calico dress and she smiled a bittersweet smile, stepping aside to let him enter. He went inside, standing uncertainly with his carpetbag until she said to him, “So you’re leaving us?”
“I guess so.”
“Good. Good for you. If I had the guts and the money I’d go with you. I’m sick of this town—I’m weary of fools.”
She went on; she always dropped into these periods of feeling sorry for herself. He stopped listening after a while. On the round table was a mahogany music box with a cameo scene of a snow-blanketed farm implanted in its upraised lid. He saw a dark feather duster standing in the corner and, beside it, a woven carpet beater. It was a homey kind of room. He could relax in it, and that was a rare luxury for him.
From his chair he could see into the kitchen—the coffee mill with its drawer half open, the round-bellied stove. On the table beside him there was a mustache cup. Her voice came back into his awareness: “Sometimes I think I hate everybody.”
“I know how that feels,” Charley agreed.
“That’s a crying shame. You’re too young to be that way.”
“So are you. So’s everybody, I guess. How old are you?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe twenty-five. When do you figure to leave town?”
“Soon as I can.”
“Well,” she said abstractedly, “remember me, will you, Charley?”
“I guess I will. Maybe I’ll write you a letter.”
“I didn’t know you could write. I can’t write.”
“I’ll get somebody to write it for me.”
“You do that, Charley.”
“I will,” he said, knowing he never would. The whole hour was lame and very sad. He stood up and took his carpetbag to the door. “Well, don’t let anybody push you around, Gail. Listen—thanks for everything, hey?”
“Women like to play mothers,” she answered. “Maybe it’s the only chance I’ll ever have. You don’t have to thank me.”
“Thanks anyway,” he insisted.
“Charley.”
“What?”
“Do you need anything? Money or food or anything?”
It brought him up. “Why’d you say that?”
She turned half away and put her hands on the lid of the music box. “I don’t know, maybe I like you too,” she said.
“Why? What for?”
“You’re a good-looking fellow.”
“Yeah. Well, thanks.”
“Maybe I like to see something clean once in a while. You’re still clean, Charley. Stay that way, will you?”
“Sure,” he said.
“Good luck.”
He nodded. “So long.” He made a vague signal and went out. A cool wind had sprung up, it brushed his face in the alley. He heard the music box tinkling its tune and when he looked back he saw Gail in the open door with a sad smile on her face. Her shoulders stirred faintly; she pulled the sleeves of her dress up. The air had a bite in it. He went out of the alley’s mouth, back into the street, and stood undecidedly watching the town. A scatter of horses stood around at the rails, hipshot and half asleep, now and then blinking or kicking or swishing away flies with their tails. The light mudwagon mail coach from the Sacramento run rocked around a last bend of the coach road into the head of the street, came forward bucking and scratching up mud, and pitched to a stop at the depot. The drummer on the porch picked up his sample case and carpetbag and walked to the coach, and waited. Front-lifted buildings with a beaten look lined the thoroughfare, and an enormous man walked across the street into the Triple Ace. The sky was fairy blue. Clouds were a mass southward; it was still raining down there, but several miles away. Puddles in the street flickered. A group of horsemen, Mexican vaqueros, breasted the foot of the street and drummed forward, arriving in a swirl before the drygoods store, dismounting there. Charley went stiffly down the street, again tightening apprehensively when he went by the Triple Ace, and felt his mind going around in aimless circles.
The word SALOON was painted across the face of Jim Woods’s place in a crescent shape. When he stopped before the open-top doorway of the room, a stale weight of tobacco smoke and men’s bored droning voices rolled out past him. With several unconnected thoughts idling through his mind, he tarried briefly where he was, then turned with a half-brisk snap of his young-wide shoulders and pushed into the place.
He found Norval Douglas sitting behind a table, with a solitaire game laid out half-finished in front of him, and a mug half full of beer idle by his forearm. Douglas’s yellow eyes lifted and acknowledged Charley’s presence, and Douglas said, “You want the job?”
“I don’t know.”
CHAPTER 2
Henry Crabb’s eyes were deep and dark and brooding, set back in hollow sockets. His beard was dark brown and he had a habit of stroking it with his left hand when he was in thought. He sat in the deep-red overstuffing of the chair and looked across the plush parlor through the bay window, out across Market Street at the hazed-over waters of San Francisco Bay. Wind rustled the branches of a maple tree outside the window; it was mild for a winter’s day. Across the room, seated stiffly in a cane-bottom chair, was the Spaniard, Hilario Gabilondo. Gabilondo was awaiting Crabb’s reply, and held his neck rigid while he tried unsuccessfully to contain his impatience. Farther back in the poor light, Filomena sat quietly with her hands folded, and, looking once at his wife there on the divan, Crabb softened his expression just a little. She smiled wistfully. Beside her, her brother Sus watched from under heavy brows. Sus sat with one lanky leg thrown irreverently over the arm of his chair; when he noticed Crabb’s glance on him, his teeth flashed out of his dark face in a friendly, easy-going smile.
Crabb returned his glance to the window and considered the mists over the waterfront. He could barely make out the island. His eyes settled on that faint blue-gray outline; his hand tugged at his beard. He was thinking not so much of Pesquiera’s offer, to which Gabilondo, having delivered it, now expected a reply; Crabb was thinking more of little faraway things, like the croaking of bullfrogs in the dark bayous and the smell of honeysuckle on a porch in Nashville. But Nashville, and the Baton Rouge bayous were half a continent and many years away, and just now he should not be drifting toward those things, and so he dragged his mind away from these little pleasantries and hauled in the anchor of his attention, allowing it to drag back to the mustached, sun-brown face of Hilario Gabilondo.
“Señor,” Crabb began, and in the corner of his eye caught his wife’s slight quizzical smile—Crabb spoke very little Spanish, and she liked to chide him for it—“Señor, let me understand you properly, in simpler terms than I find in this flowery document.” The document was in Spanish, and he was not confident of his reading of it. Gabilondo smiled courteously and leaned forward a little in the cane-bottom chair. He seemed perched on the edge of it in a subservient yet mocking manner. Crabb dipped his head and looked inquiringly at the Spaniard from under his heavy, lowered eyebrows.
“Has Señor Ainsa read the agreement?”
“I’ll read it now,” Sus said, lazily uncoiling and getting out of the chair. He came forward with his indolent long-legged stride, all his joints loose, and took the paper scroll from Crabb. Then Sus stood by the back of Crabb’s chair, his hand on it near Crabb’s head, while he read. Meanwhile, Gabilondo was talking in his smoothly accented and half musical voice:
“The agreement provides that in return for the arms and supplies that you propose to supply us with, you will receive the right to establish a colony of six hundred families in Sonora. Of course this will not be until we have secured office. It further provides that you are free to choose your own site for colonization, and that if your site is privately owned, our government will pay the purchase price on behalf of your colony. You are offered a year’s
free subsistence for your colonizers in return for protecting our citizens against the Apaches from the north. We offer no scalp bounty—we have found too many weaknesses in that venture.”
“I can understand that,” Crabb said politely. At his shoulder, Sus finished his reading of the Mexican document and handed it to Crabb. With nothing more than a brief nod, Sus went back across the length of the room to his chair, where he resumed his original position, leg draped over the arm. Crabb tugged his beard. Irritatingly, images and memories clouded his thoughts. He had to push away a recollection of young people singing by dim lamplight on a manor’s wide veranda.
“Through me,” Gabilondo went on, “Ignacio Pesquiera asks your help. Another gain you will make will be the recovery of the properties in the Arizpe district that were lost by the family of these two kind people at the time of our revolution.” Gabilondo bent his head toward Sus and Filomena, who represented the dwindling power of the Ainsa family. He added, “That is the sum of our agreement. Do you accept it?”
“It merely restates my original proposal to Pesquiera,” Crabb said in a muffled tone. “It’s entirely acceptable. Of course I’ll agree to it.”
“Very well, then.” Gabilondo displayed all the stiffness and exact-courteous airs of a hostile diplomat; Crabb disliked him heartily. But he was accustomed to dealing with political men, and showed none of his distaste. He said, “You’ll find the arms and ammunition in a warehouse at the foot of Front. Here’s a bill of lading—you can advise me if the shipment is satisfactory.”
He stood, withdrawing a yellow document from his waistcoat pocket, and crossed the room with choppy strides to hand it to Gabilondo. The Spaniard glanced up at him and read the bill of lading carefully. Presently his dark head moved up and down and he folded the paper, pocketing it. “Bien,” he murmured. “Our fight against Gandara goes well. This will make the victory more quick and more certain. You have our thanks, señor. How soon may we expect your colonists?”
Crabb glanced through the window and returned unhurriedly to his red chair, and sat before he spoke. “My men are recruiting people for an exploratory party now. We should be able to embark within the week. I intend to take a party of about a hundred men on this first trip. That will be large enough to protect your flanks from the Apaches, and at the same time secure a site for our colony. Afterward we’ll send for more colonists, with families. I don’t believe women and children should be subjected to the rigors of the first expedition.”
“Of course,” Gabilondo murmured. “I understand perfectly, señor.”
“Once your revolution is ended, and we have established accommodations for our people, that will be time enough for the families to join us.”
“Yes.” Gabilondo stood up, a stocky brown soldier, holding his beaver hat. He moved to the door, turned to bow low to Crabb’s wife, gave both Crabb and Sus his short, firm handshake, and left with a frigid white smile on his dark face.
When the door closed, Sus sank back into his chair and considered his fingernails with lazy-lidded eyes. “I do not trust him. He’s a ladron if I ever saw one.”
“You make use of whatever you have to work with,” Crabb told him. “Sus, you’d best make ready to start our journey.”
“My equipment is already packed,” Sus said without looking up. Indolent as he seemed, he had a way of accomplishing things. He said, “I believe I shall pay a call on a young lady. If you will excuse me?” He smiled roguishly toward his sister, touched Crabb’s arm in a friendly way and strolled out.
Crabb stood with his hands behind him, regarding his wife gently. “Filomena, your father will be pleased that we’re acting to return his lands to him.”
“He is weary of all that,” she said. “I don’t believe he cares much any more.”
“I’ll wager he’ll be pleased, just the same,” Crabb said stoutly. “Come here to me, my little bird.”
Her slight, willow figure came erect and advanced gracefully. She smiled for him and he thought that she was a very pretty woman. “Little bird,” he murmured, and kissed her lips with gallant tenderness, holding her chin with his forefinger.
Afterward he put a hand to his beard and let his gaze wander absently under a lowered frown, and said, “I shall have to see Cosby immediately. I’ll be back presently, my dear.”
Her eyes followed him as he took down his greatcoat and hat from the foyer pegs and went out into the brisk damp push of the wind.
He signaled a hack at the corner of Sacramento Street, and rode over the steep-tilting cobblestone avenues past many rows of misty wooden houses perched on the slopes like balanced rocks, until the hansom soon drew up before a brown wooden house and Crabb stepped down, paid the cabbie, and walked carefully around a puddle while the hack went clopping down the street.
General Cosby’s door was at the head of six broad weather-beaten steps. Crabb swung the knocker four times and stood tugging his beard until the door opened and the yellow-skinned houseboy took his coat and hat and led him into the parlor. The general’s desk commanded one wall, beside the deep-scalloped window. The view was a bleak row of wooden houses marching down the street’s grade like a mammoth stair.
General Cosby, loose-paunched and shirtsleeved, sat behind the desk sweating at the armpits. His short-cropped black beard made his face seem even rounder than it was; his eyes were small bright buttons set close together behind a pince-nez with octagonal lenses. His greeting took the form of a grunt. “Hello, Henry.”
“Enlist your army,” Crabb said with force. “We’re about to move, my friend.”
“How’s that?”
“Gabilondo just delivered Pesquiera’s agreement to me. The matter is settled.”
Cosby leaned back and pursed his lips into a little rosebud, as though whistling. “Think of that,” he said.
“Do,” Crabb said drily.
“Well, that’s good,” Cosby grunted. “Now we can be getting down to work. Sit down, Henry, and we’ll discuss the plans.”
“Aagh,” Crabb said in friendly disgust. “You haven’t a bone of joy in you, old friend.”
“There’s time for that kind of thing. Afterward,”
“Can you comprehend celebration? The occasion calls for a drink, I’d say.”
“Very well. Chan?”
The houseboy appeared in the doorway, his face round and flat and wholly expressionless to the eye. “Two brandies,” Cosby said gutturally, and the yellow face disappeared from the door. “Now,” Cosby said.
“Relax a moment, can’t you?”
“Why?”
It took Crabb aback. “Must you always push, my friend?”
“Until the objective is accomplished, an officer should not rest,” Cosby said. “All that comes to an idle man is whiskers.”
Crabb shook his head with a bemused smile. “We’ve gained something important today—can’t you see that?”
“Henry, you strike me at this moment as an eager young dog—you have all the bounding enthusiasm of one. But there’s much yet to be done. We can’t sit back and count our rewards yet—we haven’t won them.”
“You always prick at a man’s pleasures,” Crabb complained. The houseboy entered on padding feet, stolidly carrying a silver tray on which were balanced two goblets of brandy, deep and richly brown. Crabb accepted one and held it in the air. “To our success in Sonora.”
Cosby took a quick swallow and set his glass aside on the polished surface of the desk. He adjusted the pince-nez on the bridge of his nose and used the flat of his hand to rub his belly with large, circular motions. He was, Crabb thought, disreputable in appearance and manners; but he had been a good soldier and his strategic wisdom was valuable. Cosby said, “I’ve just received the latest communications from the correspondents in Nicaragua. William Walker’s filibusters have taken over the government there and President Pierce gave formal recognition to Walker’s regime. But the Costa Ricans are up in arms and the most reliable estimates are that Walker’s position is prec
arious, at best.”
“He failed before,” Crabb said, “in Baja California. He’s an unstable man. We can’t count on him.”
“Well,” Cosby observed, “it was his idea, anyway—not ours. I’ll be satisfied with a good deal less than Walker dreams of.”
“It was largely a pipe dream anyway. To take over all of Mexico while Walker moves north—to have our two victorious armies meet at Mexico City and proclaim the whole of Mexico and Central America a new republic—the idea was absurd, old friend, but I enjoyed the pleasures of speculating upon it for a while. No, I’m afraid we must confine ourselves to more modest gains. We haven’t the resources to recruit a force large enough to defeat Mexico, and the Mexican War is too recent in American memories. I doubt we could interest Washington in another war.”
“I’ve reached the same conclusion,” Cosby said. His grunting manner of talk was almost animal in nature, Crabb thought; but he put away his dislike of the man because more was at stake than personal feelings. “Walker,” he said, “will have to look out for himself.”
“Then that’s settled.” Cosby removed the pince-nez and blew on the lenses and set the device once more on his nose, and lifted his button eyes to Crabb. Crabb crossed his legs and went loose in the chair, gently swirling the brandy in his goblet and watching the brown liquid lick toward the edges of the glass. He said, “As we planned, I gave Gabilondo the excuse that we didn’t wish to subject women and children to the rigors of the overland journey. That should adequately explain why we’ll be traveling as a party of well-armed men only.”
“All right,” Cosby said. He lodged his thick elbows on the desk and used a pencil to draw aimless sketches on a notepad while he talked: “You’ll sail by the end of the week, then. I anticipate it will take you at least two months’ time to travel from El Monte overland past Jeager’s Ferry to the Concepcion. Meanwhile I’ll be gathering my force—say a thousand men—and I’ll sail around into the Gulf. We’ll land at Port Lobos and make our way upriver. I’ll expect to meet your column at El Altar or Caborca. By that time Pesquiera should have done a fair job of destroying Gandara’s power, and with any luck at all we should find Sonora in a state of abject confusion. I don’t expect much difficulty when it comes to unseating Pesquiera, if we have to, but I hope he’ll see our side of the matter and recognize that he’ll be better off with us than against us. It’s unfortunate we had to arm his men, but I suppose it’s the only way to cut down Gandara’s army. I must admit, though, that there are a few minor weaknesses in the plan.”
The Vanquished Page 2
