Jubilee Trail (69 page)

Since the men at the bar discussed everything that went on, Garnet and Florinda were kept well abreast of events. Through the month of April there was more and more talk about Frémont and his dispute with General Kearny. Frémont was in Los Angeles and the general was in Monterey, but angry letters had been blistering the trail between them. Frémont was a brilliant leader. But he had to lead. He did not know how to obey.

General Kearny finally sent another officer, Colonel Richard B. Mason, to Los Angeles. Mason summoned Frémont to his headquarters to give an account of himself. Though Mason was a colonel and Frémont only a lieutenant-colonel, Frémont did not obey the summons till it had been issued three times. When at length he did go, the interview waxed so violent that Mason threatened to put him in irons. Frémont responded by challenging Mason to a duel.

By this time Mason was so angry that he was willing to fight. For a while it looked as if the town was going to be treated to the spectacle of a United States army officer fighting a duel with a subordinate because the subordinate would not obey orders. Fortunately, General Kearny himself came to Los Angeles and saw to it that no such duel took place.

Frémont seemed to understand at last that he would have to accept the general’s commands. He asked permission to join his own regiment, which was fighting in Mexico; or to lead his exploring party back to the United States. Kearny refused both requests. He told Frémont to come to Monterey and wait there for orders.

Opinions at the bar ran high. Frémont was an attractive fellow with a great gift for making friends, and many of the men could find good reasons for all he did. Some of them said General Kearny was so good that he was a mite too good, and did not realize that some people could not meet the strict standards he set for himself. Others, especially those who were used to regular army discipline, thought Kearny was right and Frémont deserved to face a court-martial. They prophesied that this was what he was going to get. But though the arguments were heated, there was very little trouble at the bar. Garnet and Florinda began to notice thankfully that nearly always, especially in the evenings, there were two or three officers present, drinking very little but keeping an eye on the men. Nothing was said about it. But they did prevent fights.

The late rains fell, the fogs blew in, the land broke into bloom. But this year Garnet hardly noticed it. She was working so hard that she could think of scarcely anything but what she was doing. She did remember John, but the image of him gave her such a sharp swift pain that she pushed it away with all her might. Sometimes she thought of Oliver, or Charles, or the desert journey, or the peace of home. But even these ideas were vague like something seen through a mist. Always she was saying aloud, “May I serve you, gentlemen?” and saying to herself, “Oh Lord, how my legs hurt!”

So she was astonished one afternoon when Charles walked up to the bar. It was a chilly white spring day, and the bar was full of men who had come to get something to warm them against the fog. Holding the door open, Charles stood in the doorway a moment, looking around. One of the men turned his head, shouting, “Hey you, shut the door!” One or two others joined him. Charles slid them a contemptuous glance. Before the men could say anything more, Florinda was turning an enticing glow upon them.

“Oh boys, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you. Is there any truth in these rumors that a regiment from New York is on its way here?”

As she had expected, all the men started to answer at once, and the resulting noise made it possible for Garnet to listen in some privacy to Charles. He had walked directly over to where Garnet stood. Placing his elbows on the bar, he fixed his eyes upon her in the fashion she knew so well. “How do you do, Garnet,” he said.

“How do you do, Charles,” said Garnet. Automatically, she started to add, “May I serve you?”—but checked herself. This was the first time Charles had spoken to her since that night last fall when he had got drunk. She did not know how much of that he remembered, but she did not want to remind him of it. If he wanted a drink he could ask for one.

He did not ask for one. He said, “I shall not detain you long. I only want to know if you have considered the offer I made you some time ago.”

“An offer?” she repeated.

“The offer of a home at my rancho.”

My rancho, she echoed angrily in her mind. She remembered how he had said it the first time he ever saw her. Keeping her voice low, she returned, “I prefer to live here, Charles.”

Charles nodded. She wondered how long he could hold his eyes that way, fixed like two points. He said,

“I feared this would be your answer. I am powerless to improve your taste.”

“You can’t make me change my mind,” said Garnet, “if that’s what you mean. Is that all you wanted to say?”

“No, it is not,” said Charles. He went on, “You have perhaps heard of my marriage?”

“Yes,” said Garnet. She was thinking, I wish you were dead. Then you’d have to let me alone.

Charles continued, “If you do not want to make a home for my brother’s child, my wife will be happy to care for him.”

Your brother’s child, Garnet’s mind repeated furiously. Anybody hearing you would think I had stolen him. She clenched her fists, below the bar where he could not see them and thus guess what an effort her self-command was costing her. “Charles,” she exclaimed, “why don’t you stop this? Don’t you know I’m not going to give my child to you?”

His eyes narrowed threateningly. They were like two bright pin-heads. “I might remind you,” said Charles, “that California is no longer a Mexican outpost. If I should speak to my friends among the army officers, they might agree with me that a saloon is not a good place for a child. They might tell you to give that boy to me. Do you understand?”

Garnet understood, better than he thought she did. She was surprised that she had ever been so stupid as to think Charles’ marriage would make her free of him. He also had realized that the establishment of American laws here would give her the chance to get Oliver’s property for Stephen. But if Stephen was living on the rancho under Charles’ guardianship, he would be legally getting the benefit of anything his father had left. And by the time Stephen was twenty-one, Charles would probably have drained all the character out of him so thoroughly that he would meekly take whatever he was given. Garnet was so angry she felt as if she had thorns in her throat.

“If you say one word to anybody in authority about taking Stephen away from me because I work at this bar,” she said, in a voice that sounded like a rusty scrape, “I’ll tell them why I work here. Any time they’ll make you give me my husband’s property I’ll leave this saloon. In the meantime get out of here. And don’t speak to me again, damn your slimy little soul.”

Charles gave a short, disagreeable laugh.

“You had better listen to me, Garnet,” he said, “before you make a fool of yourself. Right now, I am willing to give you a home as well as the child. Much more of your disgraceful conduct, and that offer will be withdrawn.”

“Get out of here,” she said between her teeth.

“You’ll see me again, Garnet,” he said. For a moment he stood where he was, his eyes drilling into her head as though to be sure he was leaving his closing words in her mind. Then he put on his hat and went out. From the other end of the bar Garnet heard Florinda’s bright voice.

“Won’t that be fun! Hundreds of men from New York—I wonder if I’ll know many of them. Do go on. When will they get to Los Angeles?”

Frémont left Los Angeles on the twelfth of May, 1847. That same day, Los Angeles was occupied by the New York Regiment, under Colonel Jonathan Stevenson. The New Yorkers were seven or eight hundred young fellows, nearly all of them under twenty-five and many of them boys in their teens. They had been recruited last summer with the purpose of getting American settlers for California. The terms of their enlistment provided that they would serve as soldiers till the end of the war. At the end of the war they were to be mustered out in California, or in the nearest piece of United States territory.

After two months training at Governor’s Island the volunteers left New York in September, 1846, on three transports convoyed by a sloop-of-war. They reached San Francisco in March, 1847. Most of them were sent to Los Angeles when Colonel Stevenson took command there in May. They were a fair sample of nearly all sorts—workers and lazybones, college men and men who could not read, mechanics, clerks, farmers, and boys who had never had a trade.

Garnet had hoped she would find somebody she knew among them. But she had had to choose her friends from a small and sheltered circle. As the New Yorkers dropped into Silky’s Place during their first days in Los Angeles, she saw nobody she had ever seen before. But their talk was like a letter from home. Nearly all these lads had grown up in New York state or the states near by, and about half of them had spent their lives in New York City. They talked about Broadway and the Bowery Theater and Barnum’s Museum, about ices at Niblo’s Gardens on hot afternoons, and Sunday excursions to Weehawken for picnics on the dueling ground where Aaron Burr had shot Alexander Hamilton. As she listened to them, Garnet had a strange double reaction. Sometimes it seemed to her that she had left New York only yesterday. But sometimes everything they talked about seemed remote, far more remote than the calendar could make it. So much had happened to her in the past two years that she felt as if she had lived most of her life since that windy March day when she and Oliver had sailed out of New York harbor. Listening to these boys, she had an odd, dazed feeling of enormous time.

As for Florinda, though she found nobody among them that she remembered, she found a good many who remembered her. It had been four years since she had appeared on the stage in New York, so most of the younger fellows had never seen her. But many of the others had not only seen her but had adored her from a distance, and they were thrilled to see her again, especially close up across a bar. They knew why she had disappeared from New York, for the Selkirk scandal had been talked about everywhere. “You didn’t really shoot that fellow, did you?” they asked.

“Certainly not,” said Florinda. “Did you think I had?”

“Of course I didn’t! Some people said you had, but I always stood up for you. Right from the very first.”

“Did you really? Now that was mighty good of you,” she exclaimed. She always said it as if she believed them, which she did not. But as she said privately to Garnet, it made no difference now.

“By dropping a few tactful questions,” she went on, “I have found out what became of that precious Mr. Reese. He never was put on trial. But there was such a lot of unpleasant talk about him that he found it convenient to go live in Europe.” She laughed to herself. She was enjoying this influx of New Yorkers.

At the end of May, when Garnet had been back in Los Angeles two months, John’s errand-boy Pablo came into the saloon with a bow and a bright good morning, and handed her a note from John.

When she saw her name on the outside in John’s handwriting, Garnet’s heart began to pound so that she had to make an effort to speak even a few words of thanks to Pablo and offer him the customary courtesy of a bottle of wine. He said he would wait for an answer. Garnet went into the kitchen and sank down on the wall-bench.

Her heart was beating so hard that she felt as if an ox were kicking her in the chest. Angry with herself for being like this, and even more angry with John for being able to do it to her, she wondered if there was any humiliation worse than knowing you loved a man more than he loved you and knowing also that you did not have enough will-power to get over it. She wished she had the courage to tear his letter in half without reading it. But she had not.

John’ note was short.

Dear Garnet,

I can live without you, but I don’t enjoy it. I miss you. I want you very much. Have you relented at all? Will you have me? Say yes, and I’ll come to Los Angeles to get you. Say no, and I’ll probably come anyway.

John.

Garnet’s first thought was that she had better wait awhile before writing an answer, but her second thought was that she had better write it now, while she was still so angry with him for making her heart cut up these absurd capers. If she let herself think about how much she wanted him she might lose what little sense she had left. She got the pen and ink from the shelf and wrote hastily.

Dear John,

No. Either you love me or you don’t. I won’t have any lukewarm milktoast kind of marriage and I won’t have that kind of man. I am going home as soon as I can find a ship that will take me. Meanwhile I wish you would let me alone.

Garnet.

She went back to the bar and gave her reply to Pablo. He smiled and bowed and went off. Garnet set her jaw and began to dust the bottles, while Florinda chattered with a group of New Yorkers. Florinda did not ask what Pablo had wanted. Garnet thought she must have seen the exchange of notes, but as often before, she silently blessed Florinda for minding her own business.

Several days later, the Brute came in from San Diego. The Brute was enthusiastic, for he had heard there was a Russian fur-ship on the California coast. The ship was said to have put in at San Francisco to buy supplies before going up to the Russian settlements in Alaska. The Brute was on his way north to look for the ship and find out when she was going back to Russia.

The evening after he left, while Garnet and Florinda took a few minutes to have a cup of chocolate in the kitchen, they talked about him, wondering if he would like Russia well enough to want to stay there. They told each other they would miss him. “And we won’t be the only ones,” Florinda said. Garnet flinched, remembering that John was the Brute’s best friend and would miss him even more than they would, but Florinda caught herself and went on hurriedly, “Everybody will miss him.” She stood up. “Well, we’d better be getting back to work.”

“Do you mind if I go upstairs first,” Garnet asked, “and have a look at Stephen?”