Jubilee Trail (46 page)

She wondered if Oliver would tell her about Carmelita’s death. No, he would not. He would think it would be easier on her not to know. What he would mean was that it would be easier on him if she did not know.

Garnet lifted her head and looked around at the blooming orange trees and the white peaks and the masses of flowers under the snowline. She understood why John loved the earth. The rocks and mountains did not fail you because they could not; even the desert was cruel by its own honest laws. The desert did not promise you roses and waterfalls and then give you rocks and sand. Only people did this. Only people like Oliver.

John was not like that. John reminded her of the desert: he offered nothing, but then suddenly he was like a rock guarding a spring. And the water was so much more precious than all the rivers of home, because when you found it you needed it so.

Oliver was tender and kind, as he always was, but as she had foreseen, he said nothing to her about Carmelita. As for Charles, he never spoke to her if he could help it. She was used to this by now. She kept to herself as much as she could. She went outdoors and walked among the flowers, or she spread her shawl on the grass and lay there, watching the changing lights on the mountains.

John came out sometimes and walked around the rancho with her. He never said anything about her personal affairs. But he showed her the plants: the little white creosote flowers, the wild nicotine with blooms like tiny trumpets of old gold, the deadly datura, from which the Diggers made a drug that drove them into frenzy and sometimes killed them. The datura was not blooming yet, but she would notice it later, he said, because it was so beautiful, great lavender flowers like morning-glories trailing over the ground. “Do you like new things to eat?” he asked her one morning, and when she said yes, he showed her how to cut the shoots of the young anise. The shoots were like little green ostrich plumes. John and Garnet brought the anise to one of the cooking-fires outdoors, and John asked the girl to give them a pot. They simmered the anise in hot water and ate it with sliced hard-boiled eggs. It had an odd taste, like licorice.

Garnet had not had much appetite. It was hard to eat with Charles’ baleful eyes upon her, and Oliver’s forced gaiety, and the long periods of silence. But she sat on the ground with John and ate all the anise and hard-boiled eggs, and scraped the dish.

“It’s delicious,” she exclaimed to him. “Why don’t we use it at table?”

There was a glint of humor in John’s green eyes. “I don’t think,” he answered, “that Charles would care to eat weeds. But since you like them, tomorrow we’ll cut some of the wild mustard. It’s very good.”

He left her then. Garnet looked after him wistfully. She wished he were going back over the trail this year.

She gathered a handful of poppies and brought them to her room. When she had arranged them in a bowl she stood by the window, looking at the neat rancho buildings and the wild background of the mountains. The rancho was very busy. It was nearly time for dinner. After eating that big dish of anise, she didn’t think she would want any dinner. It would be a good excuse for staying in her room.

Suddenly she heard a great commotion from around the other side of the house. The pass that led to the rancho was in front, where she could not see it from her window. She heard a stamping of horses, and a loud confusion of men’s voices and the scream of a girl.

Garnet ran out, along the passage to the front door. Just in front of the door she stopped, pressing back against the house in fright.

Everybody had run outside. She saw Charles and Oliver and John, and a great crowd of the rancho people, and a lot of horses. Down from the pass several horsemen were rushing toward the house. They were riding furiously, and they all had guns, and there was something strange about them; for an instant she did not know what it was, and then she realized that instead of bright red and blue garments they all wore black. At their head was an old man. He wore no hat, and his white hair was streaming back from his swarthy forehead.

The old man had caught sight of Oliver. He turned his horse fiercely, holding the bridle with his left hand and his gun in his right. Garnet heard shouts, and another girl was screaming or maybe there were several of them. A serving-man began to pray aloud, and another man dropped on his knees and crossed himself. Children yelled as they ran out of the way of the rushing horses. Neither Charles nor Oliver was armed, nor John either, but John ran toward the white-haired man, calling to him. His words were Spanish, and Garnet was too terrified to try to understand them. Oliver had run forward too, though Charles had tried to hold him back.

The white-haired rider did not stop. Garnet saw his face, and it was a face terrible with grief and fury, and she knew he was Don Rafael. Nobody needed to tell her what he had come for. She felt sweat pouring out of her body. It all happened in a few seconds, but they were seconds stretched long and slow, so that although the horses were galloping she could see them pick up their hoofs and set them down again, very clearly, and it seemed to take a long time. Don Rafael lifted his gun. He shouted something to Oliver, and though she could not understand the words she knew they were terrible words. The gun cracked, and another gun cracked, and another, and the shots echoed against the hillsides. Oliver crumpled up in a slow horrible way, as she had seen Diggers crumple up at the Archillette.

Garnet heard a choking cry. She did not know she had given it until she found that she was running, stumbling over her skirts and over the tussocks of grass, and pushing the rancho people out of her way. The horsemen were galloping off as fast as they had come. Garnet ran to where Oliver lay in a dreadful huddle, and dropping on her knees she turned his body over. It had a horrid limpness in her hands. She saw a great red gash in his throat, and a red tear down his shirt, and streaks of blood. The blood was wet and warm as it covered her hands.

Her hands were wet and her fingers were dripping thickly. There was blood on her sleeves and blood down the front of her dress. She saw his face. She had seen dead men at the Archillette. Nobody needed to tell her this either.

This too had seemed to take a long time, though she had reached him only a second before the others. She felt a furious hand on her shoulder, grabbing her and flinging her back from Oliver, and as she looked up she saw Charles. He threw her away from him, to the ground.

As she struggled up to her knees she saw the huddle of scared screaming servants around her, and again she saw Charles. His strength had gone out of him. He had dropped across Oliver’s body, and he lay there sobbing like a child.

Garnet felt a fierce heaving in the middle of herself. The people and the houses and the mountains began to swing around her. She found that she was running again, stumbling dizzily over the grass as she tried to get to her room so she could be away from all of them. She reached a corner of the house. The corner struck her as though it had come to meet her. The blow knocked her down to her knees and brought a rush of nausea so violent that she felt as if she were being torn to pieces.

At last, exhausted, she lay limply on the grass and could not get up. The landscape was a shimmering blur. She felt a wave of heat as though she had stepped into a kitchen with a roaring fire, then the heat was swept away by another wave of cold nausea. She doubled up and began to retch again.

“I can’t stand any more,” she thought desperately when the nausea had spent itself. “I can’t stand any more.”

But even then she knew there was a great deal more that she would have to stand. She was going to have a child, and Oliver was dead, and there was nobody to take her home. She had nowhere to live except in this hateful house with Charles.

She heard a lot of commotion—stamping horses, barking dogs, shrill shocked voices of men and women—but she heard it only as a jingling of sounds without sense. At length she tried again to stand up. But she was so giddy that the world spun around her. She dropped to the ground again, limp as an empty bag, and lay with her cheek on the grass while the ground teetered under her like a seesaw.

She did not know how long she lay there, gagging helplessly as the nausea kept surging through her, but at last she felt a hand on her arm. A voice close to her said, “Garnet! Garnet, can you hear me?”

Garnet could not answer for the squeezing in her throat, but she moved her eyes and saw John. He put his arm under her and picked her up and carried her into the house.

She had left the door of her room ajar when she ran out. Kicking the door open, John carried her in and laid her on the bed. This was all she knew. Everything turned black and silent.

S
ILKY’S PLACE SHONE
THROUGH
the rainy night. The rain fell into Los Angeles like big swinging ropes of water; the ropes lashed at the little square houses and made lakes of mud on the ground.

Most of the houses were dark, but at Silky’s Place light streamed between the shutters. Two lanterns creaked from the roof of the porch, and two more shone over the front door. From inside, above the noise of the rain, sounded voices and the clink of money and the rattle of cups and bottles. On rainy nights Los Angeles was a gloomy town, and Silky’s Place made a bright dry refuge.

It was a large building for Los Angeles, two stories high. The walls were made of adobe, but around all four sides there was a wooden porch with a roof one story high. Downstairs there were two rooms in front and two in back. In one of the front rooms was the bar, in the other the gambling tables. The two back rooms were a kitchen and a storeroom. In a little hall to the side of the kitchen was a steep staircase of unplaned boards. This led up to the loft, where there were bedrooms and more storerooms for the liquor supplies. The upstairs rooms were dark now, but the rooms downstairs were as bright as the hanging lamps could make them.

In the gambling room, Silky was in charge. He had two dealers, sleek young men from the Mexican port of Mazatlán. Silky walked about grandly, dressed and waxed with an elegance that did not lessen the warning look of the gun he wore at his belt. Silky’s Place was orderly. Silky kept it that way.

In the saloon, Florinda was tending bar, assisted by a Mexican youth named José and a Chinese boy who washed the cups. The Chinese boy had a name, but as Florinda did not like it she called him Mickey. Mickey had a long queue dangling from the crown of his head. He wore a red Mexican jacket, gray trousers discarded by some Yankee, and a pair of soft felt house-slippers that he had bought at Mr. Abbott’s store. Mickey worked deftly and usually in silence, but he understood Spanish very well and he was also picking up a good deal of English. He and Florinda were very good friends.

The bar was solidly built. Facing the door, it reached all the way across the room from wall to wall. To get from the back of the bar to the front of it, you had to go through two side doors, one behind and one in front of the bar; and the door in front of the bar was usually locked. Silky took no chance of anybody’s getting to the liquor-shelves.

Florinda was wearing a dress of brown wool with yellow ribbons, and fingerless mitts of brown silk. She looked very charming, and she was very gay as she served her customers, but she also had a gun ready for use. Her gun was a Colt revolver that a Yankee trader had lost in the gambling room. Colts were so rare in California as to be almost priceless. Every now and then, when some of the boys bragged about their guns, Florinda smiled sweetly and asked them if they had noticed her Colt. “Wonderful invention,” she said, stroking the Colt affectionately. “Fires five times without reloading. Practically impossible to get out here.”

The boys knew that very well. The saloon was orderly too.

There were sixteen customers at the bar, ten of them Californios sipping the native wine, the rest Yankees drinking whiskey. Whiskey was hard to get in California, and expensive. Silky brought it from Yankee clippers, and from the occasional British ships that stopped at San Diego on their way to China.

The door opened, and two Yankees came in, shaking raindrops from their clothes. They were traders who had come with the train from Santa Fe last summer and were planning to start back with the spring caravan. Florinda met them as they came up to the bar. “What’ll it be, gents?”

She had a bottle of American whiskey in her hand. They nodded and Mickey set two cups on the bar. “Nice weather we’re having,” Florinda remarked as she poured the drinks.

One of the traders, the one who was called Devilbug, said in a few well-chosen words what he thought of the weather. Florinda laughed at his language reproachfully.

“Why don’t you save that for the trail, Devilbug? You might need it.”

“If this keeps up we’ll never get on the trail. Can’t bring the mules down in this flood.”

“It won’t last long. Gent in here this afternoon said it had stopped raining above the Santa Susana Mountains. Anyway, it’ll give you lots of grass.”

“Grass no good if we can’t get started,” said Devilbug’s companion. He was a tall blond fellow who was called Ticktock because of a large and noisy watch in which he took great pride. He fondled the watch as he added, “Still, though, it’ll be a help if it’s raining on the Mojave. Heard anybody say?”

“Fellow in here a couple of days ago said the cactus was blooming. That means rain, doesn’t it? Imagine cactus blooming.” Florinda gave a shrug that showed what she thought of the cactus.

Devilbug laughed. “You’re not going to make the spring trip to see it?”

“Not me. I’m doing fine.”

“Don’t see your best customer,” remarked Ticktock. “Texas. Where’s he?”

“He’s been here every day for a week. Silky and one of the boys sort of assisted him out this afternoon.”

“Sozzled?”

“Utterly.”

“He’ll never start,” said Ticktock, “if he doesn’t sober up soon.”

“Tie him on a mule,” said Florinda. “He’ll be all right.” She turned to greet two sailors who had just leaned their elbows on the bar. “What’ll it be, gents?”