by W R. Garwood
I was so disgusted with Joshua Quincy Bean that I had half a mind to head back toward San Francisco and forget the whole affair. But two things wouldn’t let me. I had to see that girl of the tintype, Dulcima, and I also had a strange hunch that her guardian, the hard-to-find Señorita Rosita Almada, could just be the Red Rosita of Jeff Kirker’s story, though the Lord knew the woods were full of Rositas. So I had to stick it out for the time being and see for myself.
When we halted in front of the adobe-and-log walls of Fort Stockton, who should be sitting their horses waiting for us but Corporal Bates and Flea!
“Bates and me have been down to the American Flag five nights runnin’, but divil a sight of you!” yelped Flea.
“So we figgered it was time to hold us a reunion,” Bates finished.
“Though we’re all set to cut and run for it if those hot-blooded Mexicans rise up and go for you with them machetes,” added Flea.
“The first on our list is Señor Xavier Hechavarría of the Ranch of the Little Wood, Rancho Montecito,” said Abraham in his perfect English, his brown finger marking the page in our long calfskin-bound book.
The Rancho Montecito sat, all by its lonesome, on a wooded hill about two miles west of town in the foothills and seemed pretty much abandoned. Several adobe sheds and barns looked empty and the only ranch hands to be seen were a couple of old men lying on their backs in the shade of a big cottonwood, smoking cornhusk cigarettes. These ignored our little party as if we were twenty miles away.
While Abraham and the troopers sat on their horses and waited by the corral, I dismounted and went around to the front of the old ranch building with my tax book. After I’d pounded on the door for a while and only managed to rouse up some cur dogs that set up a tremendous racket inside, I heard the tapping of a stick. There were two or three good whacks, some yelps, and then a little peace. The door creaked open and a bent old man who reminded me of a tired hawk asked me to enter. I saw that he was stone-blind and down on his luck, for his gilt-edged jacket and even his pantaloons were patched, particularly at the knees. The old fellow introduced himself in the finest of Castilian Spanish as Colonel Don Xavier Hechavarría, and politely asked how he could best serve me.
When I told him who I was and why I was there, he nodded sadly, and then answered in English: “Señor, it has become the jest of the whole world that we Spanish always say mañana, yet that is what I must answer. As you have seen, I have only two old ancients out there, no doubt sleeping, when they should be working in the gardens, if nothing more, for we have neither cow nor pig left on the place. But they are old soldiers like myself, who have fought long and hard for Mexico . . . and now. . . .” He paused and I saw a tear slip from his blind eyes to zigzag down a wrinkled face and into a white goatee.
“There is merely the little matter of just fifty pesos, for your half-year taxes, Don Xavier. That, and I’ll be on my way,” I said, looking around the empty room with its rickety table and several battered chairs. The only decoration upon the cracked walls was that of a painting of a handsome young officer in the uniform of the Mexican Army. I made him out to be a lieutenant of the Tululancingo Cuirassiers, one devil of a fighting outfit. I mentioned the portrait to make conversation.
“My only son, killed on the field of honor at Buena Vista. Our family is funesto. There is no one to help me run the rancho. We have nothing.” The old man sank into one of the flimsy chairs with his cane and leaned his head upon his clasped fists. “We have nothing for the tax. This I have told to that abominable blusterer of a renegado Sánchez when he was here last.”
I pulled up my shirt and fished out $100 in gold from the money belt and put it on the table, while the pack of lop-eared curs sat around laughing at me with lolling tongues. “The tax will be taken care of, Don Xavier. by a friend. And if you’re asked about it, say it was taken care of. and that is all.” I fixed the money belt back in place, tucked my shirt tail back in, and went out the door.
When we rode off, I handed the tax book back to Abraham. “Mark down fifty pesos, collected.”
Even Flea was quiet for a while as we traveled on toward our next stop. But he finally broke loose. “Even the Good Book doesn’t have many kind words for tax collectors, but I got to hand it to you, Bean. I didn’t hear not one cuss word. nor any racket but some dogs getting lambasted. You’re surely smooth, if not particularly human.” But he grinned when he said it—and it was a good thing he did, for I was ready to tangle with anyone.
* * * * *
By the time we got around back to town at sunset, I’d called on a total of six places, three ranchos and three small farms, and hadn’t got my hands on one damned peso, though I’d credited them with $175 “paid”. And I’d left $120 in $10 eagles with the owners, on the sly, threatening them with bodily harm if they ever spilt to anyone where that money had come from. It was bandit gold I left behind me, but I knew where to get a whole lot more—or would when I got to talk to Rosita—if she were the right Red Rosita. Then there was the coin of Kirker’s, with its odd markings—a map of some sort, I was bound. That would take some ciphering, but I figured I could do that, also. This Rosita, if she happened to be the right one, and my marked eagle could be twin keys to that gold.
About the only thing Josh had to say when we sat down to supper, served up by a poker-faced Abraham, was he found it sort of odd such folks could pay up in U.S. gold pieces. He went on to say it might be bandit gold—though he’d no idea it came from me—and he’d get around to that item in due time. But what really mattered was the fact that I was getting his taxes in—and it proved I was a real Bean for getting a job done!
“It’s not the easiest job in the world,” I told him, not looking at Abraham.
“‘No man was glorious who was not pretty laborious,’” said Josh, swiping another saying from old Ben Franklin.
Myself, I didn’t say anything.
Chapter Eleven
The very next morning we started out again, but without our troopers, for both Bates and Flea had been assigned to scouting duty by the post commandant, and I didn’t feel the need of anyone else riding nursemaid.
So we traveled on a southwest tack toward Spring Valley, with its hundreds of red-limbed manzanitas. Though summer was getting along, Indian paintbrush, California poppies, and acres of whitethorn still flamed across the foothills, and along the meandering creekbeds the cottonwood, sycamore, and willow all turned and danced their leaves in the breezes wandering over the land.
California was truly a fine country, and I would have felt mighty fine myself except for my tinhorn job. I cursed to myself when we rode down to a small farm with its scraggly grove of walnut trees and parched cornfields, telling myself that I’d get those taxes come hell or high water—and damned if I was going to part with any more of Kirker’s ill-gained gold. I was already down to little more than $370 in $10 eagles.
When we rode away from the farm of one-legged Silvestre Sandoval, north of Spring Valley, I considered myself lucky to get off with only the loss of $60—$40 to help feed his four motherless brats and $20 to credit to his taxes.
With well over a dozen calls to yet make and the stolen gold dwindling like a chunk of ice on a red-hot stove, I decided to try to get to see the Señorita Almada at Rancho de la Fuentes on the other side of the El Cajon Valley, though it was a ride of nigh thirty miles.
The route took Abraham and me up out of the grasslands and onto a stretch of desert with its monotonous brown stretches broken every so often by greasewood, mesquite, yucca, and here and there a towering saguaro. But presently we were threading among the brush-covered Laguna Mountains that brought us out into a small valley. Abraham, never much of a talker, volunteered that this place was El Valle de las Viejas—the Valley of the Old Women—named by the old-time Spaniards when the tribesmen living there ran for the hills and left their women and children flat.
Another hour found us on a good wagon road that led straight as a die over rolling hills while the p
urple smears of the Lagunas swept up along our left. We began to pass small farms, with flocks of sheep grazing on grassy slopes as well as quite a few wild hogs. Abraham pointed out a small valley on our right as La Cañada de los Coches—Gulch of the Hogs. Another mile or so and we rode past the humpbacked bulk of Mount Selix and turned north at Allison’s Springs.
“There, señor.” Abraham pulled in his horse and pointed ahead at a broad mesa dotted with groves of oak and chinquapin. And beyond, flanked by a pair of great pine woods, stood Rancho de la Fuentes.
A long yellow wall, covered with roses, ran across the front of the rancho, as thick and sturdy as a fortification. To the south of the ranch buildings, reaching nearly to the woods, orange groves, almond orchards, and scattered figs were in early fruit. At the north another orchard of pear, peach, apricot, apple, and a stretch of vineyard ran to the thick pine forest.
The ranch house itself stood squarely behind those walls and up to its arched gate we rode, dismounted, and pulled at a bell rope. A silvery chime sounded from somewhere inside the shady courtyard. Almost at once a wizened little man in a striped serape and white duck suiting shuffled crab-like toward the gate, swung it aside, and bowed me in, while Abraham stayed out with the horses, watering them at a long stone trough behind the hitch rail.
I followed the old servant through a shrub-filled garden and around a large, carved fountain that shot up lacy fans of spray. Off to both sides of the painted flagstone walk smaller carved fountains filled the afternoon with soft musical sounds. Rancho de la Fuentes was mighty well named.
A sunny sort of peace seemed to hover around the gardens and house, yet as I tagged the old serving man up the rancho’s broad steps I got a look at a huge, gray mountain of cloud looming up past the pine woods, and a distant rumble of thunder threaded through the whisper of the fountains.
Coming up onto the shady half light of the broad verandah, I wasn’t sure of who or what might be waiting for me; then a low, pleasantly husky voice sent a sudden shock through me. “¿Señor?”
I squinted through the gloom, and then saw a young woman seated in a hammock in the midst of the golden shadows.
“Señorita. Almada?”
“Sí, Señor Bean.” That low, rich voice sent another tingle through me, and I knew as sure as I was standing there that here was Red Rosita. I’d have bet every dollar of that hoard of eagles.
“You know me, Señorita Almada?” Now I could see the whole curvesome outline of the lady. A low-cut green gown revealed about as much as it hid from view, while a pair of rounded ankles peeped out of her flaring dress to end in a pair of stiletto-heeled scarlet slippers.
It was a sight that kept me clamp-jawed.
“You may have been told, Señor Bean, that it is rather impolite to stare at a person on such short acquaintance.” She flared a sudden crimson fan, waving it in a sweep to indicate a pair of comfortable chairs near her hammock. “To answer your question, yes, I do know who you are, and why you appear here in the midst of a long afternoon and without a proper invitation.”
I plunked down into the leather chair and looked at her, without seeming to stare. For a minute I forgot plumb about taxes. I forgot that wistful-faced little girl of the tintype—forgot everything except that here reclined the most wickedly lovely female I’d ever laid my eyes on. She was what the writer of Belle Martin the Heiress, a book I’d been reading nights from Josh’s library, would have called “a woman fit to inspire a man to desperate deeds and yet lure him to the very brink of disaster by her charms!”
Rosita Almada was all of that and a lot more: fiery, flaming red hair, flashing emerald-green eyes, perfect nose, and when she smiled at me. . . .
“Señorita,” I rasped when I got back some of my power of speech, “I guess you do know why I’m here and. . . .”
“And . . . I’m ready for you!” She suddenly reached under a pillow beside her, and I stiffened, waiting for the crack of a pistol or the flash of light on a dirk.
“Close your mouth, Señor Bean. You look so much more handsome with it closed.” Her voice rippled with a sort of laughter, and I thought those fountains out there had the same musical sound.
Taking a second look, I saw she held out a small leather bag to me in her smoothly tapered hand.
“The taxes. One hundred pesos, I believe.” Her voice quivered with that same sort of hidden laughter. “I know you must have heard that I am quite unapproachable. I’m sure the worthy alcalde, your brother, has informed you that I stand firm against all of the Yank’s tax bullies. And I might have done so today but for one thing.” She paused, watching me fumble with the moneybag, then stuff it into my britches pocket.
I guessed she was waiting for me to say something. “One thing, señorita?”
“Sí, I have a most hard heart, señor. a flinty heart, I might say, but I have heard certain tales that may have softened it, somewhat.”
“Tales?” But I knew what she was driving at, all right.
“Yes. You have given away considerably more than you have collected. Old Colonel Hechavarría couldn’t rest until he’d got the news to me . . . news that there was at least one Yankee in sympathy with our poor disinherited people.”
I didn’t know how to answer beyond saying I hoped such word wouldn’t get around to any of the others on my tax list, as I still hoped to pry some actual cash out of them.
“I won’t trouble my mind about them, señor, you’ll take things as they come. I can see you are that sort of a man.” She swung herself up from the hammock and stood looking at me, a sweetly languid woman who could have been anywhere from twenty to thirty or more; I didn’t care a tinker’s damn which.
I hurriedly got up and stood turning my silver-mounted sombrero around in my hands, and wondering if now could be the right time to fetch out Kirker’s marked eagle, or if it was the proper time to mention that tintype of her young ward. Then I got the feeling that Rosita knew about Kirker’s gold eagles. But why hadn’t she said anything about my scattering them around the countryside to her stove-in fellow Mexicans?
Just about then a muffled bell rang out somewhere within the depths of the great ranch house. Rosita gave a slight start and her knuckles whitened on the hand holding the red fan. I saw, then, that she must have been waiting for that sound—for who made that sound. And right on top of that came the rumble of thunder—closer than when I’d arrived at Rancho de la Fuentes.
A storm was on the way, and we had ourselves a long ride back to San Diego. I only hoped that Abraham knew of some quicker route.
“You must come again under happier circumstances, señor.” Rosita held out her hand and I saluted those perfumed little fingertips in the best manner of a real don. “My ward, the little Dulcima, will be home from San Francisco within a week, and you must return for our celebration. I understand you are friends of the Castañeda girls, and that will make for a jolly time. Say you will come.”
I answered that I’d be most happy to attend, then bowed myself out and hustled down the verandah steps, while the señorita vanished into the house. The thunder seemed closer and the trees in garden and orchard were swaying and dipping their boughs to the sudden wind gusts.
The same old majordomo appeared from around the breeze-tossed spray of the center fountain and let me out of the great metal gate.
“Señor, it will storm in a minute!” Abraham shouted, ready with the horses, and we swung aboard. “Should we wait or ride for home?”
I took a hurried look at the low, wolfish clouds, and then back at the rancho. I didn’t trust myself to be cooped up inside that place with such a woman. The good Lord only knew what I might do.
“Let’s ride.”
“Bueno. I know of a different road that can take us back to town by a short cut.”
We put the steel to the horses and flew down the dusty road away from the rancho, turning off into a thick pine woods to the southeast.
On we galloped while the rumbling crack of thunder behind us swell
ed up like a battle. A battlefield in the sky. Mexico City all over again, I thought as we swung out of the woods and onto a mesa, heading for the crossroads Abraham was after.
At that moment, three horsemen came spurring hell-for-leather from behind a clump of oak to the south. A musket boomed out, then another! Bullets chirped overhead, like the song of some deadly little birds.
“¡Bandidos!” Abraham poked a finger at the trio of riders heading their horses toward us.
“Get going!” I yelled, lashing my own horse for all I was worth, Abraham following suit, and we dashed on toward the crossroads. Another gun banged, and then Abraham shouted: “Señor, behold!”
A rider mounted on a great gray stallion had loped out of the pine woods behind and was pounding across the mesa to cut between the pursuers and ourselves, flinging up his arm in some sort of a signal.
Glancing over my shoulder, and losing my sombrero, I was flabbergasted to see the robbers pull up and wait for the man on the big gray. Then the first raindrops struck the road with the force of bullets, and the storm broke.
“Keep going!” I shouted above the crashing storm roar, while Abraham mouthed something at me that I couldn’t catch.
We finally halted in another woods, ten miles away from the attempted robbery, and huddled under some trees, but the full force of the storm had already gone brawling on out to the coast and the wide Pacific.
“Now, what were you shouting about?” I asked my companion as I sat in a wet saddle, mourning for my lost silver-mounted sombrero and still wondering about Rosita, and that damned handy stranger.
“I said, señor, that was Murieta. Joaquín Murieta upon his steel-dust stallion who halted those villains at the crossroads.”
“Murieta?” I stared at him and over my shoulder. “Keep riding!”
Chapter Twelve
M“urieta? You certain?” Josh waved a copy of the Alta California, just down from San Francisco on the stage. “Look here. It says Joaquín Murieta and his blackguards have been raiding mining camps up along the Sacramento not three days before this paper came out, and it’s just two days old.”
