by W R. Garwood
A few of the bills were different from those I’d viewed at the Santa Anna Taverna. The one that caused me to pull up staring was a gaudy pink and yellow—with the full-length portrait of a flashy young lady who wore skimpy tights and little more than a wide smile. And it was no one else but Dulcima!
The artist seemed to have worked from a recent tintype, and I wondered just how and where it had been taken. Without her aunt’s permission or knowledge, I’d be bound. No doubt the doings of that underhanded rascal Diamond Dick Powers. Small wonder that he’d bragged of having known that young lady before she lit in San Diego.
I reached over to the tree trunk and pulled the sheet off, folding it and placing it in my pocket. I’d take a closer look at it as I rode along. I still didn’t want to spend much time in getting on up the Camino Real.
By early afternoon I was as hungry as a lobo wolf when I stopped at a roadside tavern, the General Lopez, twenty miles north of Los Angeles. I sat at a rough table, under a vine-covered bower outside the establishment along with a half dozen Mexican drovers, all of us filling up on the excellent tamales and local beer. The cattlemen were on the way back down to Los Angeles to pick up another herd of beef cattle for the San Francisco markets.
Between mouthfuls, one of the good-natured rancheros remarked that his trade was booming, with cattle bought on the hoof at $15 a head fetching upwards of $50 each at San Francisco.
“These gold diggers, they come down from these hills, and they want the best. eat and drink like a pack of loco coyotes.” The round-faced ranchero shook his head. “That is one town, señor, like no other. You been there?”
I informed him I was on my way and hoped to stay there for a while, once I got there.
“You go to hunt for thees gold?”
“I might, but I’ll wait and see.”
“Good thing you go now, and not last summer. You heard?”
I’d read about that June-time commotion in the Alta California but hadn’t given it much thought beyond comparing the San Francisco brand of justice with the ruthless night riders of San Diego.
“Some vigilantes?”
“Sí. Not some, but damned plenty. Before these vigilantes got done, they up and hung a corral full of fellows they called hounds, and run off a thousand more. And all of ’em Americano no-goods, or these Australian bad hombres.”
“Vigilantes can raise a thunder of a lot of commotion, all right.”
The talkative ranchero polished off his bottle of beer and sighed. “But that is not all, señor. As soon as these vigilantes got done wiping up the streets with these yanqui badmans, they chose themselfs a bunch of real bad hombres to get chasing some of the really bad gangs.” He rose up, wiping his mustaches, settled his scarlet sash more comfortably around his middle, and started to join his fellow drovers out at the hitching rack.
“Just who is chasing who?”
“Well, they got themselfs a yanqui bandido hunter named Harry Love. He’s riding around in circles after Joaquín, who’s said to be back in thees north. And there’s that Salvador Salazar, Sheriff of Alameda County. Salazar’s one bueno hombre cazador. He’s already run down Three-Fingered García, and Manuel Soto. Thees Captain Love and Salazar are now in and out of town with their posses, busy looking for Joaquín.” He pulled on his sombrero, then wagged his head. “But I bet you they never catch thees Joaquín. He’s one foxy hombre, all right.”
Mounting up, I thought that drover really had no idea at all of just how foxy Joaquín Murieta really was. If this Captain Love or my old amigo Salazar ran down Joaquín, I only hoped it would be the right one. In spite of the trick young Almada had played on me that night at the Casa de Oro, I still kept a sneaking liking for him. Besides that, he’d once chased some of his rascals off my neck—and he was Rosita’s brother.
The remainder of the day I made good time on the road and lay over for the night at a clean little taverna, the Bunch of Grapes, on the south slope of the Santa Ines Mountains about ten miles south of Santa Barbara.
The following morning as I was nearing the great bay that rimmed the town of Santa Barbara, I came upon a mighty odd carreta, driven by a hulking, one-eyed Negro dressed in a pair of old Army pants and a seedy-looking yellow coat. I rode up alongside the cart and passed the time of day with the black man, who told me he’d come out to California with the first batch of gold hunters. When he’d gone busted as a miner, he went back to his old trade as a barber, making himself $10 a shave, day after day.
“I’se always got an eye out for oppotunity,” said the man, who’d introduced himself as Peter Biggs. He blinked that good eye at me with a knowing sort of wink, while the paler of the two stared straight up the road past his gray mule’s drooping ears. “Oncet I almos’ gobbled deh market in aigs up along ol Featheh Rivuh. Aigs wuz goin’ at moh dehn three dolluhs each, when you could get ’em. I give ovuh my barbuh woik, took evey blame’ cent I could lay hands on, and went up and down deh Sacrementuh Rivuh a-buyin’ aigs, aigs, aigs. Plumb clean out all of ol’ Sam Brannon’s penny-ante stohs, until I had ebbry aig in dat end of deh hull territory. I spen ovuh twelf hundred dolluhs, but I was King of Aigs.” He touched up his mule with a limber switch and the cart creaked ahead more briskly, while some kind of infernal growling eased out from under the wagon’s patched and wrinkled canvas.
Before I could inquire as to what in tunket that noise was all about, Biggs winked again. “Oppotunity!” He motioned for me to ride nearer and pulled aside one section of the faded canvas.
From their wicker cages under the wagon bow, dozens of cats glared out at the daylight and myself. Yellow cats yowled, black cats spat, brindle and spotted cats hissed, striped cats as well as fat cats, lean cats and in-between cats fumed, raved, and swore at the world and all its inhabitants in every sort of cat language and dialect—when they weren’t cussing out their nearest neighbors.
“What . . . ?”
“Like I tole you, Mistuh Bean, oppotunity. Rats sometime gits big as hosses up at Frisco. Some of dem rats even tote off stray dorgs when no one’s lookin’. Frisco folk plum honin’ foh cats, so I done rustle up ovuh a hundred cats from around Los Angeles and points south. Dis is my fustest load. I’se gonna peddle dese cats at one hundred dolluhs per cat. and gonna git it, see iffen I don’t!”
I could only stare at that bale of cats and nod. “But. what about those eggs?” I had to say something.
Biggs smiled sadly as some memory seemed to smite his broad black brow. “Went at it too hefty. Yassuh, dun ovuhstock. When I finally got dat flock of aigs toted to camp, all nice and easy, on a pair of slow-steppin’ mules, with ’em all wrapped like diamonts in bales of sawdust from Mistuh Suttuh’s mill, half de minuhs in all of Featheh Rivuh was a-waitin’, dere tongues jus’ hangin’ out for an aig.”
“And what?” I pulled off a bit from the wagon as a pair of fiery-eyed cats were doing their utmost to reach out and spur up White Lightning.
“I had me a hundred dozen aigs iffen I had one. Only one thing wrong, though. Blame aigs all done gone bad. I think ol Brannon bought hisself mighty ol’ aigs and den saw to it that I got deh oldest of deh hull lot.”
“And you lost your shirt in the deal?”
“Bettuh dat den my neck! Dem boys was mighty upset and plum chase me and my mules right outta sight. I took deh hint and went on down to Los Angeles befoh I quit travelin’.” He looked sideways at his fuming feline menagerie, then brightened. “Anyways, now’s I gonna make it back. For no mattuh how long I keep dese heah cats penned up, ain’t none of ’em gonna spoil. Deh may be a bit mad-like, but when we gits to Frisco, rats look out!”
Wishing that dark speculator the best of luck, I rode on down into the village of Santa Barbara. From the looks of the place, the oncoming Peter Biggs could make a pile in peddling his cats to the natives, for whole streets of adobes, roofs gone and walls tumbling, gave Santa Barbara a used-up, gone-to-seed appearance. The palm trees were mainly dead and the olive and fig trees dilapidated an
d shabby. Even the old mission by the seashore had seen much better days, and the same thought struck me when I looked over the few folks on the dusty streets.
The sun was still over two fingers high on the horizon, and so I wasted no time in getting on out into the open country again.
We’d gone another half dozen miles before the red disk of the sun at last sank into the purple edge of the Pacific. Darkness swept in on broad, velvety wings while great flocks of geese stretched their wavering vees overhead, flying southward to the green marshes of old Mexico.
For an hour or so I navigated along by starlight, for the moon was still under. The Camino Real ran on ahead, a pale ghost of a road that led straight through a peaceful, starlit world.
Though I’d begun to think I might be forced to spend the night alongside the roadway, I presently noticed a gleam of light in the distance. It vanished as the road dipped down into a hollow and then reappeared when the road climbed upward. Then I caught the sound of a guitar and a voice singing a familiar saloon ditty.
“Looks as though we’ll have ourselves a meal and a bed mighty soon,” I told the great horse. White Lightning could tell the whereabouts of any nearby stable and tavern as well as the two-legged vagabundo upon his back and let me know it by laying back his ears and picking up his gait.
The road slanted off into another hollow but I could still recognize that song drifting toward us from the taverna.
Once I loved a yaller gal, her name was Suzy Brown,
She hailed from Alabama and the fairest of her town.
Her eyes so bright . . . they shine at night,
When the moon’s done gone away. . . .
Warbling the same song I’d sung many a time back in the Army, I spurred up from the hollow and came near riding headlong into a body of horsemen blocking the road in front of me. A dark knot of shadowy shapes.
“Halt! Throw up your hands!” someone sang out. There was no mistaking that tune, and I hauled in White Lightning and reached for the stars.
Chapter Twenty-Two
H“ere now, let’s see what we fetched in our loop.” The big, heavy figure of a man bulked in front of me as he scratched a lucifer on his saddle horn and, bending toward me, stuck the fluttering blue flame at my face.
I caught the glint of hard eyes in a beefy red face before the light sputtered out.
“Who’re you, and where are you off to on such a night?” someone asked from the shadowy cluster of horsemen.
As it was a mild, starlit evening, it struck me as one damned fool question, but I was in no shape to debate its merits. “Bean’s the name and I’m on my way to San Francisco for the San Diego alcalde,” I answered, adding: “Who are you-all to be stopping folks on the highway?” Somehow I had this bunch figured for some sort of posse. One thing certain, they weren’t Californios, for they’d have shot me from the saddle and then hailed me.
“Humph!” The big man motioned me to lower my hands and growled out some sort of orders to his henchmen. “All right, Mister Bean, we’ve heard of your relative, though we don’t know you from old Adam. We’re a legitimate law force out after bandits, and that black devil of a Murieta in p’ticular. I’m nobody else but Captain Harry Love of th’ State Rangers, and, seein’ as you ain’t up to no devilment, I’d admire you to come along and join us for supper. We’re just about to put on th’ old morral and feed some.”
He drawled another command at one of the shadowy riders, who remained on picket duty at the hilltop, while I, along with the rest of the rangers, loped up the road to the tavern.
Once we’d arrived, the musical ranger was parted from his guitar and sent back down the highway to join his lonely friend on guard.
Now, if I was a hand at cracking jokes, I’d have to say that the supper at the Del Monte Tavern was just a humdinger of a “love feast,” for, by the time the drinks came around, there was no one more satisfied with the California Rangers than the rangers themselves.
First and foremost, Captain Harry Love was the most satisfied of all, and he told the entire barroom just exactly why, with each speech punctuated by approving yelps and applause from the six assembled rangers, all of them mere greenhorns. Later in the evening I found them to be a collection of store clerks, bank tellers, and the like, all out for a lark away from their jobs, and following Captain Harry Love. Love himself turned out to be an ex-policeman, ward heeler, and small-time rancher from Texas, who’d talked the San Francisco City Council into forming a body of ninety-day rangers.
“Nobody nohow was ever able to catch aholt of sech confounded rascals as that José Carrillo and Tiger Juan Flores until we hit th’ trail after ’em. Carrillo, he’s a-pushin’ up cactus while Flores is locked away at that there new juzgado at Point San Quentin,” drawled Love, tugging at his black ox-horn mustaches. “And yours truly, with my bloodhound rangers, done it.”
“Pequeño pescado,” one of the gray-bearded rancheros in the corner muttered to a friend, where they sat puffing their pipes.
“Oh, I heered that.” Love shrugged and called for another round for the whole house, including the skeptical rancheros. “Small fish, mebbie, but it ain’t only small fish we’re after, but some mighty big ones. sharks even. Well, you can tell the hull wide world that Harry Love’s in th’ field and he ain’t comin’ back, except for supplies, till he runs down that gol-durned Murieta.”
“And we’ll gobble him long afore that slowpoke of a Sheriff Salazar gets halfway from Frisco,” said a skinny young hide salesman and ninety-day ranger. There were approving shouts and the rattle of six empty glasses.
“This here Salazar jest ain’t got th’ knack of trailin’,” Love told the barroom. “Back in th’ old Lone Star, even before th’ war, I used to hunt me an Injun or a Mex before breakfast just to keep in practice. I been at this business since Nero was a pup.” He looked at me narrowly, red face flushed with liquor, but his words were steady. “I’m not prejudiced but y’gotta recollect that I’m a God-fearin’ Yankee, leastwise a Texan, while this here Salazar’s a greaser same as this sidewinder Murieta.” He shrugged. “So it don’t take no blind man to see that there sheriff’s not gonna move too briskly after his own sort, now does it?”
I got up. “Mister Love, I happen to know Sheriff Salazar pretty well, and his one hope in life, aside from growing back a new scalp, is to get his hands or rope affixed onto Joaquín Murieta.”
Then I bade the entire bunch buenas noches and got to my room before I found myself mixed up in a barroom fight with that whole lot of California Rangers—shoe clerks and all.
Next morning, when I took breakfast in the bar, I was glad to learn that Captain Almighty Love and his men had lit out at daybreak. I felt somehow sorry for those young fellows, and even for that red-faced blowhard Love, for he had stood me to my supper and drinks. But if those California Rangers ever got near either Joaquín, I truly feared for the whole posse’s continued existence.
* * * * *
The rest of my travels up the El Camino Real took White Lightning and myself a total of six and a half more days. From time to time I’d meet or pass such run-of-the-mill travelers as peddlers’ carts, occasional stages, mine supply wagons, and, once in a while, small herds of beef cattle, as well as restless groups of miners, going from camp to camp as they headed toward that “better strike.” But there were no more such curious folks as Peter Biggs and his cartload of fighting-mad cats, or odd characters like the swell-headed Captain Love and his squad of amateur bandido exterminators.
At about 11:00, the 20th of October, after riding fifteen miles from the comfortable Mansion House, where I’d spent the night, I reined in my white stallion on the crown of one of the hills that ringed San Francisco from the south, east, and north. There I sat breathing the mount and peering downward toward the great landlocked harbor, but there was little to see at the moment. The entire city below lay hidden under a shining sheet of vapor, shimmering whitely as it swayed and rippled in the freshening sea breeze, for all the
world like the curtain of an immense theater that was about to rise to reveal the latest melodrama—or, more likely, comedy.
The thick grass among the scattered chaparral, flanking the roadside, now turning a paler green, flared and tossed about in the Pacific winds. Somewhere in the distance a pair of mourning doves called to each other from a knot of pine saplings, while a suddenly swooping marsh hawk, diving after some rabbit or gopher, scared up a flock of valley quail. The unexpected thunder of wings spooked my horse and in the time it took to head him back into the road and somewhat gentle him, that fog-like vapor, spread across the city, had parted, leaving silvery shreds and billows to drift off over the northern hills.
There the entire panorama lay, all shining before me, as the arching sun gilded roof top and steeple of the first truly Yankee city I’d viewed for many a year. New York, I supposed, could be no finer.
Slowly the vista widened and I saw the steep little city climbing up its sandy slopes, surrounded by rings of barren hills, now all golden green, clustered in a crescent, and stretching downward to a waterfront where what seemed like half of the world’s shipping rode at anchor. Bright flags fluttered or stood out stiffly in the winds. On an inclining sandy cliff to the north, called Telegraph Hill, the gaunt arm of the signal semaphore was etched blackly against the bright blue of the sky as it waited to point out the arrival of the graceful, snow-white-winged clippers. Here and there one of the little river steamers, down from the Sacramento, trailed a thread-like banner of smoke as it criss-crossed the wide sparkling bay. The Long Wharf, at the water’s edge, looked like nothing less than a narrow watery village strung along the forest of masts that speared up from the busy waterfront.
Far up from the hodge-podge of the dock area, I could see dozens of little crooked streets, winding along like a series of footpaths among the block upon block of little white-and-gray frame houses, and just about make out the scallops of wooden trimming along their eaves. Beyond them, iron houses perched upon the upper slopes, while dozens of canvas tents, of all sizes and colors, flapped farther up the windy heights. And in the very heart of the crescent-shaped city, rising tier upon tier, there lofted the massive buildings of Portsmouth Square. These, I could see, were built to stay of stone or painted plaster, and all trimmed out with wide balconies and finely wrought railings. Those, I found, were mainly the gaming houses and theaters, along with four-storied hotels, for ever since the gold rush the sporting life had become a part of San Francisco’s existence.
