Roy Bean's Gold (9 page)

We'd reined in at Point Loma to watch the big gray whales drifting along the sparkling ocean like huge floating boulders, while the waves kept rolling slowly in toward the beach, all vastly green and bursting with a roar that surprised me every time as they flung clouds of white foam at us, only to hiss and grumble back into the next incoming line of waves.

“
Señor
Roy.” Lucia wrinkled her pretty nose. “That naughty
Señor
Joshua should not have you do such things. That ugly Sánchez has so upset folks with his high-handed ways that I'm sure you'll have some trouble.”

“
Sí
, it really isn't fair to ask you to do such things,” her sister chimed in. “Most of the people at the
ranchos
and the little farms just don't have that sort of money this time of year.”

“Well, I'll have to use my head,” I told them as we turned our mounts to ride back toward town. “And if they can't pay, then I just guess they'll have to owe for it.”

* * * * *

“They won't owe one damn' thing!” the
alcalde
shouted when Abraham and I swung up into our saddles in front of the Casa de Lopez next morning. “Not one gol-damned
peso
do any of them get out of paying! They've got plenty of money hidden away and you collect! The governor of California wants you to collect, and the whole blamed Congress of the United States wants the same thing!
¿Comprende?
”

“I understand, but I don't think I'm going to like this job after all,” I said.

And I was right in spades.

Away I rode toward the fort to meet my troopers, mad clean down to my boot soles. Here this stuffed peacock of a brother of mine expected me to hustle up his infernal tax money however I could get it—and yet he'd already told me that the big, burly Sánchez with his ugly face and two pistols had fallen flat on the same job.

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.

T
he 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 purple 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!”