Those old-time California folks were mighty free-handed with money ... one man used to keep a big kettle full of it in his patio, and anybody who needed any just dipped in and helped themselves. They were pleasant, easy-going folks and living was no problem. Those around them were much as they were, so it worked out all right ... until the gold rush and the boom that followed brought another type of man into the country.
The miners and the settlers came first, and most of them were as free-handed, when they had it, as the Californios. After them came the gamblers, the confidence men, the business swindlers.
"How much land is at stake?" I asked Roderigo.
"Over one hundred thousand acres."
It taken my breath away. In the mountains we farmed a hundred and sixty acres, and had as much around that was brush and timber, too steep to farm.
Out of that quarter section that we farmed we made a bare living, for there was thin soil and poor crops.
But this was rich land, if irrigated.
It was no wonder they were prepared to do murder to win their game, and they could not afford to have me about stirring up trouble.
"That girl, now. What was her part in all this?"
"Old Ben is no different from the rest of us.
He likes young, pretty women, and when Turner -comhe was the banker--came to see him he brought his "niece" along with him."
The man at the bar turned suddenly and walked from the room, so I got up. "You save the rest of that," I said. "I've got business to attend to."
He had gone off down the street, and when I stepped out and got to the corner I saw him standing in front of what used to be the Bella Union Hotel. They'd changed the name of it to the St.
Charles, but it was a place I knew. Ten, fifteen years before there'd been a big gun battle there where Bob Carlisle shot it out with the King brothers.
Anyway, that man was standing there and I started for him, figuring to get just as close as I'd need to be before he saw me. He was a little distance off, but I have long legs and I stepped fast but easy, not to scare him off.
Then he saw me and, turning, he ducked into an alley, and I went in after him ... too fast.
As I wheeled around the corner, he was standing maybe forty feet off, and he ups with his six-shooter and let drive at me. It was point-blank range, and he should have nailed me, but he'd been running, then just skidded to a stand and fired, so he must have been a mite unsteady.
Something hit me a wallop on the head and I went down to my knees, then fell over, face down on the ground.
From somewhere I heard running feet coming up behind me, and then in the other direction, plain as a body could wish, I heard a door slam.
Chapter Five.
When I hit ground it seemed to me I was only there about a second when folks were all around me filling the breathing air with foolish questions.
Lurching to my feet, I fell against the side of the building and leaned there with blood running into my eyes, trying to bring my brain into focus. All I could remember was the sound of a door slamming somewhere down the alley ahead of me.
Folks kept nagging at my attention with questions as to what happened and who shot me, but their words reached me without registering any effect. What little awareness I had was concentrated on just one idea: finding the man who shot me.
Roderigo was there trying to help, but I brushed him away. I got my two feet under me and pointed myself down that alley.
There was only one door in sight. When I got to it I leaned against the wall for an instant, sort of gathering myself for whatever was to come, and then I grasped the latch and opened the door.
The hallway down which I looked was maybe forty feet long, with two doors on the right and one on the left. The first door on the right opened into an empty store building with lumber piled on the floor, as if for building work. There was nobody in the room.
Closing the door as softly as I could, I went on to the next door on my right, which led into a clothing store. The place was empty but for the clerk and one customer.
"Did anybody come through here?" I asked.
They both looked at me, then shook their heads. "Nobody ... ain't been a soul around," said the clerk.
The door on the left remained, and I turned to it. Opening it suddenly, I stepped inside.
Behind a desk sat the man I had seen with Dorinda Robiseau, the big young man who had guided her away from me.
"You wished to see me?"
"I wish to see the man who came in here from the alley," I said.
"I am very sorry. Nobody has come here.
Is that all?"
With my left hand I wiped blood from my face. My skull was throbbing with an enormous and awful ache, hurting so that I squinted when I looked around.
There was just this big rolltop desk, two chairs, and a table. But there was another door.
"Who's in there?" I asked.
"Nobody."
He didn't like me, not even a mite. He started to say more, but I pointed at the door.
"You open it up," I said.
He leaned back in his chair. "Don't be a damned fool. I shall do nothing of the kind. Now you get out of here or I'll have you jailed ... and I can do it."
Stepping over to his desk, I leaned across it, and I am a tall man. "Mister," I spoke mighty gentle, "you do what you're told."
He got mad then, and he started to get up.
Oh, he was a man used to having his own way; it was written all over him. He was a big man and strong, and he was mad. So he started to get up, and when he was off the chair with both his hands on the arms, I caught him by the front of his shirt and vest and jerked him toward me to get him off balance, and then I shoved him back, hard.
He hit that chair and both of them went over on the floor, and I stepped quick to that door and jerked it open. Two bullets came through, their reports one right behind the other, but I was well over to one side and both missed.
That man inside the room, he had just shot into the opening door, taking no aim at all, nor seeing anything to shoot at.
"Next time," I said, "I'm going to shoot back. You going to drop that gun, or are you going to die?"
He didn't seem to like the choice much. I heard him shift his feet, and I said, "You got you two bullets. You might nail me, but I've got five and I'm not about to miss."
"I've nothing of yours," he said, and with my gun up I took a long chance and stepped into the door with my gun in my hand.
He had a notion to shoot, but when he saw that big six in my hand he had another notion that beat that first one all hollow. He taken a long look at that gun and he stepped back and dropped his pistol.
"I ain't about to pick it up," I said, "and you go ahead, if you're of a mind to."
Behind me I heard a stirring on the floor, and I moved so I could keep half an eye on that big man on the floor, too.
"Mister," I said, "my outfit has been taken. My horses and gold are gone. Now, I aim to have them all back. You boys can start talking or start shooting, and I ain't of a mind to care which."
The big man got up off the floor, but carefully, holding himself with knowledge that I might have a touchy finger on a hair-trigger. With my gun muzzle for a pointer I moved the second man over alongside the first.
"We know nothing about it," the big man said.
"I have no idea what you are talking about."
"I think you're a liar," I said, "and if it proves out I'm wrong, I'll apologize and welcome. But this gent who taken some shots at me, he was there. He was in the desert."
"You've got me all wrong!"
"I sure have. And being in the desert, you know I ain't a-fooling when I hold this gun. I want my outfit, and I'm going to have it."
"You're a fool," the big man said contemptuously. "You have that gun on us, but when you leave the law will be on you, and if you shoot us, you'll hang."