California Gold (27 page)

“Yes, he—” A querulous gobble interrupted her; it was the husband, asking what was happening.

“May I have his name, please?”

“Why—Oswald. Oswald Hoover. I’m Rheba,” she added with midwestern candor.

Mack wrote in a small notebook and then beamed again. “I’ll meet you right in front of the hotel in one hour. The Southern Pacific local to Newhall leaves at nine-thirty sharp. Don’t be late.”

“No,” said Mrs. Hoover, as though she wouldn’t even entertain the thought. She waved her ticket. “No!”

Mack checked off the room number and tipped his hat.

Eleven Iowans clustered in the mellow sunshine. Wyatt was at his peak—friendly, glib, alternately laughing like a boy and pondering like an economic sage before he answered questions. The bright autumn day and this unexpectedly eager crowd restored his spirits.

Of all the Iowans, Mrs. Rheba Hoover was the most enthusiastic. Her husband, a wan, arthritic man, had nothing to say. When Mrs. Hoover marched, he fell in line. On the train from town, she had rushed to make sure she got the seat next to Mack. Her bulk crushed him to the wall, but he kept smiling. She hung on his words, her eyes growing more adoring every minute. By the time they arrived in Newhall, she was leaning into Mack’s arm with her whaleboned bosom. There was no doubt that her interest did not lie solely in real estate.

Now, in sunshine interrupted only occasionally by fat floating clouds, Rheba Hoover was still in a state of excitement—frenzied to buy.

“Oswald’s arthritis demands a change. Is there any medical opinion about the climate here?”

“For health purposes it’s the best, my dear woman,” Wyatt boomed. “The very best in the United States. I like to put it this way. San Solaro is God’s own remedy for the consumptive, the dyspeptic, and the broken-down. I must also mention my cousin. He is a professor of surgery at Harvard. He says all the leading eastern medical men agree.”

Mack stood back, hands in his pockets, suppressing a smile. Wyatt was amazing. What did he know about eastern medical men? Nothing.

“Oh, good. I’ve fallen in love with this corner lot.
Love—
that’s the only word for it.” Her eyes rolled feverishly and came to rest on Mack. He pretended to examine his shoes.

“We would have to build a cottage, Oswald,” she said as the group walked on. “Mr. Paul, when did you say the irrigation system will be finished?”

“He didn’t say,” a man answered. A sour, prune-mouthed man, he was the only skeptic in the lot.

Wyatt’s blue eyes changed, as though shadowed by a floating cloud.
God
,
don’t let his temper spoil this
, Mack thought. But Wyatt remained smooth and smiling.

“The flume system and the first reservoir will be finished before the rainy season ends. To a man, the board of directors of the San Solaro Development Company is pledged to that. It’s something we’ve promised to the many good people who have already declared their intention to make this town their permanent home. We’ll have water for you.”

The crowd was moving in a leisurely way. Dividing now, they flowed around both sides of a depression in the street that Mack hadn’t noticed before. Shiny black ooze filled the sinkhole.

The prune-mouthed man said: “Well, if you don’t, you already got liquid of some sort. ’Course, it’s black as a nigger.”

Several people laughed. Not Mrs. Hoover: “What is that vile stuff, Mr. Paul?”

“All the grease—our Mexican friends call it
brea.
Tar. There are pits and pools of it all over the region.”

“You even see them in the streets of Los Angeles,” Mack said. Mrs. Hoover bathed him with her adoring gaze.

Prune Mouth dipped his fingertip in the ooze and grimaced. “What a stink. Petroleum, is it?”

“A form of it. That’s all I know, except that it’s worthless, and a nuisance.”

“My wife almost stepped in it and ruined her shoes,” Prune Mouth said. His tone hinted that he might hold Wyatt liable.

“We’ll take care of it immediately. “Wyatt snapped his fingers. “Chance, find a shovel and fill that in.” Band music floated on the breeze. Wyatt seemed to surge up on his toes, spreading his arms to embrace them with his good feeling. “Ladies and gentlemen, that’s the signal that our buffet is ready. Mr. and Mrs. Hoover, please join me at my table in the pavilion. Now where are the other two couples who expressed interest in the terms of our sales contract?”

Hands went up.

“Fine, marvelous, I’d like to invite you to my table also.”

Off they went, chattering, happy as youngsters let out of school in fine weather. Mack gazed after them with unconcealed resentment. He didn’t like the way Wyatt had turned on him, ordering him like some serf.

Then he saw Mrs. Hoover, clutching her husband’s arm but looking back at him. She waved her kerchief. Mack was immediately grateful to Wyatt for setting him a task.

He looked at the black mirror surface of the sinkhole. Squatting he sampled the ooze on his fingertips and sniffed. Tarry, all right. He rubbed his fingers together thoughtfully.

Wyatt dismissed things he didn’t understand or care about. Mack considered that foolish; a man should be open to every possibility. If Pennsylvania wildcatters were hunting oil in these valleys and canyons, then might not this ooze be a sign? The sign of California gold of another kind?

At the Newhall station, Mack persuaded the prospects to publish a card of thanks in a Los Angeles paper of their choice. It was a standard technique of developers, good publicity. Mack was prepared with copy.

We, the San Solaro excursionists of the above date, take this opportunity to express our sincere thanks to the management for its kind care of us throughout the trip. Especially are thanks due to Mr. Paul for fatherly and considerate attention. We feel that with such a man at the head, San Solaro is on a firm basis, and is certain to have a bright future.

Mrs. Hoover insisted on embracing Mack before she left. As the train pulled out, she stayed on the platform of her car, waving her kerchief and giving him intense looks he didn’t fully understand until a few minutes later. Then he found a metal key in his pocket, and a scrawled message.

Adored one—

Oswald retires early. A cyclone will not wake him. I await you.

R.

Mack drove the wagon along the road toward the sunburst arch. Last week he’d fitted the wagon with a canvas top, of the kind he’d seen in Yosemite, and painted the bed a pleasing sunshine gold. It looked new and fine. He felt old and exhausted.

Towering cumulus above the western hills created a spectacular sunset, bright gold changing to scarlet and shot through with deepening blue-purple, but he couldn’t enjoy it.

As he guided the plodding team up the road, he thought San Solaro had a lost, lonely look. The flagged sticks marking the lots threw long shadows. But the kerosene lights glimmering in the depot seemed to welcome him. If he didn’t precisely love this place, he was growing used to it. And he never lost his love of the California countryside.

As the wagon approached, Wyatt burst out the door, waving papers and cutting a little dance figure in the dust of Grande Boulevard.

“Signed contracts. Three of them. Best day I’ve had since April. I practically bought out the crossroads store. Wash up, we’re going to celebrate.”

“Wyatt, I’m pretty tired—”

“Wash up,” Wyatt insisted. “I’ve invited company.”

Twenty minutes later, with water dripping from his new-combed hair, Mack walked into the depot’s back room. He couldn’t believe what he saw spread out on the old white tablecloth.

Six bottles of cabernet wine. A tin pail of oysters. A jug of cream. Half a wheel of Gouda cheese. Loaves of sourdough and salt-rising bread. Six roasted quail nestled in a box of precious melting ice. A gooseberry pie, an apple pie, a grape pie. Every cracked saucer and tin lid in the place had been set out to hold the various foods. The extravagance stunned him.

“How did you get all this? Did one of the buyers put down some cash?”

“Not a penny—not yet. I talked the storekeeper into credit.” Wyatt held his palm over the stove. “Stove’s almost hot. That’s cream in the jug. How about stewing the oysters?”

“How about telling me why we’re eating up our profits? Hell, with this feast maybe our overhead for the rest of the year.”

“Mack, you’ll never be a good Californian unless you quit being a goddamn puritan.” There was an edge in his voice.

“I’m a puritan about seeing profit go into our bellies.”

“Well, I closed the sales; it’s my celebration.” It was an open challenge. Mack’s temper boiled but he held it in. He put his palm near the stove top and counted silently. At eight, when his hand hurt, he yanked it back. A count of eight to twelve was the standard test of adequate stove heat.

Noisily, he flung a pot on the stove, dumped in the oysters, and uncorked one cream jug. “Where’s the damn salt and pepper?”

“Will you stop, for Christ’s sake? Up on the shelf.” Wyatt crouched before a triangle of mirror set inside the ticket window, combing his hair and fussing with his cravat.

Mack heard a carriage coming. With a boyish nervousness, Wyatt exclaimed, “That’s our company. Wait till you meet her.”

“Her?” The cream jug nearly slipped from his hands.

Wyatt ran through the office to the front door, Mack following. Against an evening sky the color of fire and smoke, a snappy little phaeton with yellow-painted wheels careened through the arch and banged along the road at reckless speed. A portmanteau bounced on the seat beside the woman holding the reins. So this was the one who stayed the night…

Mack’s face whitened suddenly.

The woman driving the phaeton was Carla Hellman.

C
ARLA SKIDDED THE PHAETON
into a curve in front of the depot, reined the horse, and braked with her riding boot. Dust clouded up and she fanned it away with a gray glove. As she turned to the two men waiting for her and saw Mack, her face froze.

“Chance, what are you doing here?”

It was Wyatt’s turn to be surprised. He glanced from one to the other. “You know each other?”

“Yes, we’re well acquainted,” Carla said. She was deliciously pleased. And beautiful as ever.

“I met Miss Hellman and her father up north,” Mack said to Wyatt.

She extended her hand for help in alighting. Mack hurried forward and she jumped down into his arms. She laughed and straightened her rakish black felt hat. It had a rolled brim and curling gold-dyed ostrich plume that matched her hair, as did the tailored waistcoat of gold silk worn beneath her smart French gray suit. A golden girl, he thought. The effect was surely deliberate, but it fit her marvelously.

Carla slipped her arm through his, letting him feel the swell of her bosom. “June told me he’d taken on a partner. I never imagined it was you. Why did you leave San Francisco?”

“I couldn’t get a drink there either.”

She laughed.

“I’ll explain it all later,” Mack said. “We have a regular feast inside. Who’s June?”

“Why, our host.”

“Junius is my middle name,” Wyatt said.

“That’s right, I forgot. But June is usually a woman’s name.”

“So? Sometimes it suits me.” He was standing in profile, his delicate face limned by the last bonfire light of the day. For a moment, the tilt of his head, the set of his lips, did create the illusion of a woman. Mack realized again that he simply didn’t understand his employer-partner, or all the sides to his nature.

Wyatt tied up Carla’s horse while Mack fetched down her portmanteau. To Wyatt she said, “That trombone player you sent over with the invitation didn’t arrive until half past four. He got lost.”

“He better not have,” Wyatt said. “I paid him fifty cents and loaned him Mack’s mule.” Mack had the feeling Wyatt was angry because Carla was not only acquainted with him, but warmly cordial.

She kicked at her accordion-pleated skirt and went inside the depot. When she saw the table, she clapped her hands. “It
is
a feast.”

“I wondered if you’d bother to notice,” Wyatt said, glaring at Mack.

She responded with a chilly smile. “Jealousy bores me, June. I don’t linger around boring men. Open some wine, please.” She tugged her left glove off one finger at a time.

Wyatt used a waiter’s corkscrew. As Mack stepped in front of Carla to reach the stove, those well-remembered dark-blue eyes locked with his.

Carla’s eyes said that nothing had changed; she found him far from boring.

Mack seasoned and stewed the oysters. He was glad to keep his back turned. Carla and Wyatt, whom she insisted on calling June, fell to drinking and chatting, and at times their conversation had an unfriendly bite. It made him tense.

Seeing Carla again generated strong and even disturbing reactions in Mack. Though he could recognize some of her less desirable traits, he was still strongly attracted—and jealous of Wyatt’s success with her. Carla aroused him. He stood close to the stove to conceal that when it became pronounced.

Two and a half hours later, with the roast quail gone, and all the stew, and half the bread, and four of the bottles of heavy red wine, Mack’s head was buzzing. His overstuffed stomach ached and gurgled. He felt more relaxed, though. Thank God for wine.

Carla had undone the white silk tie of her blouse; the ends hung outside her open gold waistcoat. The blouse itself was unbuttoned far enough to show the first golden-brown curves of her cleavage. A light sheen of sweat polished her upper lip.

As Wyatt snaffled up the last of the grape pie, Carla held the wine bottle over Mack’s glass. He shook his head. Smiling in a vaguely taunting way, she poured more for herself.

Conversation had rambled during the course of the gluttonous meal. Carla heard how Mack and Wyatt first met. Mack learned that she’d left San Francisco a week after the cotillion, and had been relaxing in Southern California ever since.

“Then you’ll stay around here for a while?” Mack had asked.

“I might. In many ways I prefer it to the City. The climate’s glorious. I can’t say that about the men. Pack of boring farmers. With a few exceptions.”