the Californios (1974)

by L'amour, Louis

  "They will find us."

  Each filled a cup, then Montero poured the coffee on the coals and dipped the pot in the creek to cool it off. He had turned and started back when he suddenly dropped to the ground in a long running dive. A bullet clipped a rock above his head.

  Sean, catching up his Colt rifle, ran to the rocks. He caught a shadow of movement, lifted his rifle, and shot. Somebody swore, but it was not the curse of a man wounded.

  Under his covering fire Montero made it into the trees. Sean watched him go, and wondered. Wooston and Machado and the others could edge in, could make the place impossible to defend. He reloaded his rifle, waited a bit, then edged away to a new position.

  Montero eased up among the rocks. "The horses are ready, amigo. We will go nearer to where the Senora is."

  "All right." He fired at a rock where he thought a man was hiding, ran a few steps back, and fired again.

  Sliding down from the rocks, he mounted and they rode their horses up a narrow draw behind the trees. For several hundred yards it was so narrow a man might have almost touched both walls, and it was a scramble for the horses over slick rocks and around boulders. Then they went up a bank and into a small forest of juniper and manzanita. A few minutes later they were in the pines that covered most of the mountain.

  Montero led them at a rapid pace along a winding forest trail that took them ever higher upon the pine-clad slopes, often broken by arroyos or canyons.

  Topping out on a high ridge, Montero pointed. "The Sespe is there. If anything happens to me, just ride south."

  Eileen Mulkerin drew up and looked around her. She was on the south bank of a stream that ran roughly east and west. The creek then turned to flow almost due north. On her left and somewhat higher up there seemed to be a break in the mountain.

  Juan had paused only for a moment, and now he turned toward the south, seeming to head toward the break. Several times he doubled back on his trail to wipe it out. He would ride back, get down and ever so gently brush out the tracks with an evergreen bough. Then he would sift dust and pine needles over the brushed-out tracks.

  Suddenly he came to a place under a huge old oak that was marked by fallen stones which seemed to have once been a wall. "The horses must stay here. We will walk."

  She took her rifle and a water sack, and he led the way, moving with surprising speed among the rocks. He went up the mountain away from the creek. The yucca, which had been plentiful at lower levels, was scarce now. Once, with high, rocky walls rising on both sides, but at least a half mile apart, Juan paused in the shade. "I am afraid there is very little gold." His eyes searched her face. "Perhaps it will not be enough?"

  The thought was frightening. She had hoped so much for this.

  The idea that there might be no gold, now when they so desperately needed it, was shattering.

  "Where does it come from? The gold, I mean?"

  Juan paused, then stopped walking, and then answered. "Long ago my people came to this place. It was as far away for us as for you, but we came. And there was some gold here. We had little need for it, and used it for decoration. When our city was destroyed in the earthquakes, we no longer went for the gold."

  How had the Mulkerins come to think of it as a treasure? She could not recall that Jaime had ever said anything about quantity, yet somehow it had grown in size with each telling. It was probably the same with all stories of treasure.

  All she could do now was hope that there was enough gold remaining to pay what they owed on the ranch.

  When they stopped again she looked around. They were in a giant horseshoe almost a mile from the opening to the towering back wall. On three sides the walls went at least a thousand feet above the creek. A skilled mountain climber might climb out, she supposed, but otherwise there would be nothing to do but return the way they had come.

  At the head of the creek the rock wall was a massive rampart shutting out most of the light and leaving the great hollow in deep shadow.

  "It is here," Juan said. "I will show you."

  Near the head of the creek were the scattered rocks of an old structure of some sort. There was a gap in the rocks and a hard-packed path of sand led between them. Juan led the way.

  There was a cave there ... did she see the signs of tools upon the rock walls? And at the end of the cave, a shelf. Upon the shelf was a row of jars. Juan took down one of them, and her heart missed a beat.

  She took the jar. There was gold, all right. Gold dust and a few small nuggets, half the size of her little fingernail.

  She took the leather pouch she had brought and poured the gold into it.

  When she had emptied every grain she hefted it in her hand. Five pounds? It might be ... but less than half of what was needed.

  One after another she checked the other jars. Out of one she took perhaps an ounce. The others were empty.

  Juan watched her face anxiously. "It is not enough?"

  "It will help," she said, "but it is not enough. But thank you, old friend, you have done all you could. Thank you, thank you!"

  All of the years since she first came to California she seemed to have heard stories about this place, and now she was here. Slowly, Eileen Mulkerin looked around.

  "We should rest," Juan suggested. "It is a long way back."

  "They will be waiting," Eileen Mulkerin said, "and they may be in trouble."

  "Jesus Montero will know what to do," Juan said. "We must rest, Senora. We must rest here."

  Chapter 11

  Within the cave it was cool and silent. The old man sat down against the wall and leaned his head back, sighing deeply. Despite her fear, Eileen Mulkerin was shocked to see the terrible weariness in the old man's face.

  She had been so filled with her own troubles that she had not considered the great strain this journey must have been for him. She was tired, and she was one who rode or walked every day, who had been in the saddle since she was a child, and since coming to California had ridden over the roughest, wildest country imaginable.

  "Rest, Old One," she said gently. "I have been thoughtless."

  "I shall rest," he replied, "but you rest, also. And ..." he opened his eyes and looked at her, "do not go from this place. There is great danger here ... the greatest."

  He leaned his head back again and closed his eyes, but there was to be no sleep for her, not yet.

  What could he mean by great danger here? She stood in the mouth of the cave looking about her.

  The horseshoe curve of mountains was bare rock in places, covered with pines in others, but all around her the cliffs rose high.

  The stillness was oppressive. She listened for sound. Somewhere, not too many miles away, Sean might now be fighting for his life. He was shrewd, tough, a good fighter. Montero was, too, old though he might be. The girl Mariana, there was good stuff there. She had taken the long ride without complaint, had done whatever she could to make things easier. That she came from a good home as well as a wealthy one was obvious. She had the knowledge and the deportment that went with such things.

  Was Sean in love with her? It would not be surprising, she thought, for Mariana was certainly beautiful, and a man's woman. No question of that.

  The silence seemed to press in on her. Why had Juan said the place was dangerous? She saw nothing of danger.

  High up on the rim, she saw something move. No doubt the wind, she supposed.

  More than anything she needed time to think. The shock of that almost empty jar had been just about more than she could bear.

  They had been so sure the gold was there and that it would be enough, so much so that when doubts were raised they had never accepted them as possible. In their minds this had been a source where there would always be a little, just enough, to tide them over.

  Now they would lose, everything, all the land Jaime had hoped to leave to his sons, the land Mexico had given for his service as an officer in their army. All that she had wanted for her boys, now gone.

  She felt sick and
empty. It could not be, it simply could not be. Yet the facts were remorseless, relentless. She refused to accept defeat. There had to be a way. She was alive, she was strong, she had intelligence. She had simply trusted too much to this place, in this gold gathered by unknown hands so long, long ago.

  They had come far for it, Juan had said. As far as she herself had come. Yet where had the gold itself come from? Had it been mined close by? The cave did not appear mineralized, the rocks seemed barren.

  There were tool marks on the stone at the entrance, which seemed to have been enlarged, and even the cave itself had been shaped to some degree.

  Why?

  The gold itself did not look like placer gold, but of course, it would not, if it had been gathered here. The source of the gold itself must be near, for the small nuggets were jagged, rough, showing none of the signs of abrasion from being rolled among the rocks and gravel of a rushing stream.

  The source? It might be some corner, some hollow nearby, and it might be anywhere up in those towering cliffs around her. If they only had the time3/4But they had no time.

  Even the stone and gravel ledge upon which she stood, which opened out at the cave's mouth to make a flat, even surface to the creek's bank, seemed to have been leveled and smoothed for some purpose.

  Evidently they had come here, as Juan said, from some distance, and had remained in this place until they had sufficient gold for their purpose.

  Yet where had it come from? She had seen no evidence of mining, nor of any work whatsoever, merely this cave, not very impressive of itself, and this terrace on the creek bank.

  From the terrace before the cave she could see nothing of the country around except the high walls of the horseshoe cliffs, trees, brush, and boulders intervening. It was an eerie, haunted place. Uneasily she walked across the terrace and looked down the stream bed.

  She could see only a little way, but the water dropped swiftly. It was not a cheerful stream, but one that ran swift and dark under the shadows of cliff and tree. She poked at the sand under the clear water. Could there be gold there?

  Suddenly, from far off, there was a call. It was a lonely call, seemingly undirected, as lonely as a wolf calling to the moon. She shivered.

  Should she awaken Juan? The old man had seemed frighteningly tired, and after all, it had been only a few minutes ago that he fell asleep.

  She was being a fool. What was there to be afraid of? Not one chance in a thousand that anyone could find her here in this cul-de-sac. It was an unlikely place to come, for there was so obviously no place to go but back.

  "Jaime," she spoke softly. "I need you, Jaime."

  The leaves rustled, and there was stillness. She lifted her eyes toward the cliffs. They seemed to shimmer in the heat, but she felt suddenly cold as though a chill wind had blown down the canyon. But there was no wind.

  Again she heard that strange, lonely cry. She could not place the direction. It seemed to come from far off, from no place in particular.

  She remembered the stories about Juan, the way the other Indians avoided talking about him. Even Jesus Montero, who knew her so well, would not talk about him. They spoke of him as having strange powers, of disappearing into broad daylight. Indians were superstitious and believed in all manner of things.

  Suppose they were right? She remembered one night by the fireside back at the ranch when Jaime had suddenly begun talking to her of an old medicine man he had known in Mexico. They had come upon him injured by the roadside, looking as though he had fallen, yet there was no place to fall from. They had taken him with them, fed him, cared for him, treated his wounds. He recovered miraculously but to Jaime, when they were alone, he told a strange story. He had, he said, been traveling on the "other side."

  When asked about the other side he had been evasive and would say only that it looked like this but was different, that he had often been to the other side but this time there was "trouble" and he could not find his way back, and when he saw a "sipapu" it was not where he had expected. It was one unknown to him, and he had fallen.

  "I think," Jaime had said, "that wherever the other side is, Juan has been there, too."

  "But what does it mean?"

  He had shrugged. "How can I say? The people of America were not all savages, you know. At Monte Alban in Mexico I saw observatories for studying the stars far better than anything we have. How do we know what they knew?"

  She remembered a padre at San Gabriel Mission had told her of the belief the Hopis had, of coming to this earth from a "hole in the ground" and that place had been called a "sipapu," or something of that sort.

  She had asked Jaime what the old medicine man had meant when he found his sipapu where it was not expected to be.

  "All I could get from him were that there were certain places, some of them constant, some shifting in position, where one might pass through the curtain to the other side. In seeking the one he knew, he found one of which he had known nothing."

  It would grow dark quickly in this place, for the cliffs would allow only sunlight from overhead. She looked around, then walked back to the cave. Glancing through the door she saw the old man stretched upon the floor.

  She would wait a little longer. Seated by the door, she thought of possible solutions, one by one. Even those she discarded, she examined once again.

  Alvarado was their friend and had been her husband's friend, but he was far away to the north. Pio, although he was a kindly man, had troubles of his own.

  Their debts were not large, scarcely twenty-five hundred dollars in all, but that was a large sum in California in these times. Not long ago a ranch as large as their own had sold for even less, and they had no friend who could come up with so much.

  Only there was a difference. They now had almost half the sum. Could they somehow come up with the rest? They might sell the Lady Luck, but it would bring very little now, and the governor was growing harsher about inspecting cargoes.

  They still had several hundred hides, but unless an unexpected trading vessel showed up, there was no market for them. They had not traded furs since Sean's voyage. They had cattle and horses but so did everybody else and there was simply no market for them.

  Again and again she went over the ground, taking each item in turn.

  It was very hot, and the late afternoon sun struck directly upon her. Heat waves shimmered, even more than on the desert. She got up, feeling a little nausea, and for a moment thought she saw an Indian standing at the edge of the terrace. She started to speak, moved forward, and then the illusion faded and there was only the heat waves above a bare place on the rocky ledge beyond the terrace.

  It was time to go. Juan might be tired, but she must awaken him. Turning, she went to the cave. Her head ached, and she was worried and frightened, yet her sense of fear seemed to have no focal point, only an all-pervading feeling of strangeness and uncertainty.

  The old man lay upon the floor. Apparently he had not moved.

  "Juan? We must go. There will be trouble."

  The old man did not move, nor did he speak. Suddenly shocked, she stepped into the cave and bent over him.

  "Juan? Juan?"

  There was no answer. She touched him, shook him slightly. He did not move. His eyes were open, staring upward at the cave roof.

  He was dead.

  She touched his eyes gently, closing them. His skin was cool to the touch. He must have died shortly after lying down.

  She took up the jacket she had worn when they first came up the creek and placed it over him.

  "Sleep, Juan," she said gently. "You have earned it."

  She took her rifle and canteen and left the cave, turning toward the faint path along the creek. She walked swiftly to where their horses were resting.

  Nothing was to be gained here. She had what gold there was, and she felt sure Juan's body would be safe in the cave. She had seen no animal tracks about, nor had she seen even a lizard or a bird. Later, they could come back and bury the old man, but for now
there was nothing she could do.

  Untying the horses, she mounted quickly, and, leading Juan's horse, started down the trail, riding swiftly.

  Now she had but one driving thought. Get back to the others, stand with them, and when they could, slip away and return to the Malibu. The answer, she felt sure, was there and not here.

  She had ridden for almost an hour before she heard a sound other than those of her own movements. When she heard it, the sound came from far off. It was a rifle shot.

  Pointing her rifle at the sky, she fired.

  Maybe they would hear that and know she was coming, or maybe the others would hear it and wonder who it might be. Murder is not lightly done and even Machado, with his reckless disregard for law, would hesitate. So would Wooston, essentially a cautious man. Probably they had no idea that she was not with Sean, or that the party had been divided.

  She rode at a rapid trot, the best pace for the ground she covered, and she kept her rifle ready.

  Suddenly, long before she expected to come up with them, she heard another shot.

  Hounding a bend in the trail, she pulled up short. They were just before her, almost opposite the head of the Piedra Blanca, with Mariana leading the pack-horses and Montero and Sean coming along slower.

  Montero saw her and rode up swiftly. "We have a little time, Senora, but we must go back."

  "Do you remember the old trail? Back of Reyes Peak?"

  "Si, Senora. It has been years, but--"

  "Lead us then. Somewhere we should be able to cut over to the Cherry Creek trail to Old Man Canyon. We will go home now. Lose them if you can."

  Sean rode swiftly up, glancing suddenly at the empty saddle of the lead horse.

  "Juan?"

  "He is dead. He died back there after he showed me the gold."

  "I am sorry. He was a fine old man, a fine man. I could have learned much from him."

  "He told me he had taught you what was most important. He said it would not seem like much, but it was, and you would see."

  "Let's go. We've killed nobody yet and I'd prefer not to."