* * *
Don Estoban Padilla, rose, stretched, and took the last puff on his cigarillo. He stepped off the veranda and ground the butt under his boot, his big-roweled spurs jingling as he moved. This day he would return to the work that was his true love—his life—working the cattle astride a beautiful Andalusian stallion.
The Indian women would have the cook fires going in the cocina, the kitchen, a separate adobe located to the rear, forty feet beyond the hacienda. This morning the fire would warm his old bones. The sea air felt good, but it could chill even in May.
Inocente, the slender vaquero who was the segundo, the second in command or foreman of Rancho del Robles Viejos, approached as Estoban rounded the corner toward the kitchen. The patron noticed that his foreman wore calzonevas, leather pants for riding in the brush. A quirt hung strapped to his wrist. He planned a day’s work on horseback—like most days on the rancho.
“Buenos dias, Jefe.” Inocente called his patron by the polite title boss. It is a fine day.”
“A fine day,” Estoban repeated. “What do you have scheduled for this fine day?”
Inocente held the door for his patron. “As we take our tea, I will inform you.”
They filled mugs with black tea that had been steeping in the kitchen ever since the Indian woman had stoked the first fire of the morning and begun her work by the light of thin tapers. They laced the mugs with Barbados sugar cut from the cane that always rested in the center of the kitchen worktable and whitened it with fresh cream from a pitcher. Steaming mugs in hand, they headed outside to survey the rancho.
Luis Montalvo, a vaquero now too old to work the cattle, walked into the kitchen carrying a large haunch of beef from the matanza, the slaughterhouse, a windowless flat-roofed adobe also used as a smokehouse from time to time. It squatted a few paces beyond the kitchen. Luis nodded politely at the patron and the segundo as they let him pass, then began chopping the beef for the cook.
“I noticed many Anglos in the pueblo yesterday,” Inocente said, seemingly distressed.
“It is a sign of .the times, Segundo. Yesterday, as I sat enjoying my cigar. I wondered how we could continue to thrive as my father did before me.” Don Estoban took a sip of the tea and sighed. “Trade, Inocente, trade. Now that the hide, horn, and tallow have gone to ruin, we must find new ways, new products, and new markets. And unless we take to the sea ourselves, that means dealing with foreigners… men of the sea.” He smiled at his foreman, “Unless, of course, you wish me to set you to building a ship, amigo?”
“No, Jefe. I am of the land as you are. Even the short trip to Buenaventura on the coastal boat made my stomach spin like a steer bound tail to nose. If it is a choice between my taking to the sea or putting up with a few foreigners, I will take the Anglos and Kanaka s.”
The patron nodded his agreement, albeit wearily.
“But, we must keep them in their place,” Inocente added. “They are forward. Again I observed the rudeness of an Anglo only a few days ago. The Capitán of the wrecked brig had the affront to stare as Juana and Tia Angelina passed in the carriage. I should have quirted him, Capitán or not, but Juana—”
“She is young, Inocente, and does not understand the broader reason for keeping the Anglo in his place. I fear if we let them become too comfortable.... Even now there are too many who settle in Alta California. Over the years, I have often warned the governors. It will come to no good, and eventually we will have to eject them all. But it is the alcalde and the cholos’ job to keep the law—”
“They can keep the law,” Inocente interrupted, “if they sober up long enough, and I can teach the marineros manners. These Anglos have a great need for lessons in common courtesy. I will see this Anglo again when Juana is not nearby, and he will learn to cut his eyes away and keep his tongue when a high-born señorita is within sight.”
“These Anglos you speak of,” the Patrón said sagely, “have lost their ship and their livelihood. Idle hands have too much time with the mug, then do the devil’s handiwork. But manners … that is a matter between you and the Anglo.”
“I will remember that, Jefe. And when the Anglos taste the lash, they will remember.”
Eleven
Clint could see the twin bell towers of the mission in the distance and the crumbling wall that had once surrounded the mission village. From his first short visit, before the wreck of the Savannah, he knew that the townspeople, since the mission village was mostly deserted, were taking the adobe brick from the wall for building projects of their own.
But still the mission itself stood proudly, surrounded by lush orchards. A vineyard stretched over a distant hill, its springtime vines verdant with new growth in the late morning sun.
As he picked his way down the hillside, Clint realized he had no money and nothing but his knife to trade—and that he must keep. The first house he passed was little more than a thatched-roof hovel that seemed held together by clinging bougainvillea. A small herd of goats, multicolored and bleating, grazed nearby, and a broken-down bay mule stood in a tiny corral at the rear. Two boys played outside its hide-covered doorway but stopped to laugh as Clint passed.
Clint walked around two rooting pigs then paused under a spreading sycamore to look at himself in the reflection of a water trough. Though he had laundered them in the creek at the Chumash village, his striped shirt was torn and tattered and his duck pants were ripped to the knees. His leather boots were cracked and whitened with salt. He had not shaved since the wreck ten days before, His hair was tousled, and he carried the scratches and scrapes of the long journey.
Wetting and smoothing his hair, he glanced up and noticed a man watching him from the shade of an oak on a nearby hill—a huge man with a wide chest, immense thighs and arms, and a bulging belly. Clint waved at the big man, and the man smiled warmly and returned the wave but made no effort to rise and greet him. For a moment Clint wondered if the man was Mexican, but by the size of him, decided he was probably a Sandwich Islander… another sailor. There would be more sailors in the pueblo, even though there were no ships in the harbor. Hide crews were almost always ashore, gathering hides, folding and storing them until they could be loaded on the brigs.
It would be good to be among his own kind again.
As he entered the town, people stopped and stared at him and his ragged clothes. He ignored them and strode on. He looked for any sign of the crew of the Savannah, but saw none. Finally, at the center of the town square, he saw the largest of the pueblo’s buildings. It had to be the town hall, with officials who would know the fate of the Savannah crew.
He started for it then noticed the cantina. If any of the crew of the Savannah had survived and made it to Santa Barbara they would be in the cantina. He went in, his eyes adjusted to the darkness, and he caught the friendly odor of tobacco. He squinted and searched the room for a familiar face.
A broad-hipped barmaid approached him. “You wish a drink, Señor? Aguardiente? Vino? Pulque?”
“No, gracias. I seek other Anglos, marineros from the brig Savannah.”
“Sí, they were here, eight of them. They lost their ship on the rocks.”
“I was with them. Where are they?”
“They sailed, Señor. The Charleston put in only yesterday, and they sailed with her. And it was a good thing. There was some mischief, and the alcalde was about to put them all in the juzgado.”
Clint smiled but felt heartsick. It might be weeks before the Charleston or some other ship called at Santa Barbara again. He could be stranded here without a peso to his name until she returned. He decided to call on the public officials to see what, if anything he could do while he waited. As he stepped through the doorway and started across the square, a fine caleche turned the corner, pulled by two beautiful matched grays and followed by three vaqueros on horseback.
The horses’ hoofbeats rang on the cobblestones as they pranced.
The coach stopped in front of the mercado next to the cantina, where household goo
ds and cloth were displayed behind barred unshuttered windows. From the caleche stepped the most beautiful girl Clint had ever seen. She was dressed in a crimson gown with a white lace reboza, a long scarf that signified she was unmarried, wrapped around her shoulders and head. She moved gracefully up to the tiled walk, followed by an older woman attired completely in black.
Clint could not help staring at her flawless cream complexion set off by chestnut hair as the girl approached. His eyes followed her, and she glanced his way. He reached for his hat, then, embarrassed, realized he did not have one.
“Good morning, ma’am,” he said, “Buenos días.”
She eyed him over the top of her fan with dark flashing eyes.
He had just turned to walk away when a woven rawhide loop dropped over his head and snapped taut around his chest, catching one arm at his side, though he managed to free the other.
“Vamos, Anglo!” came the cry of a black-clad vaquero.
The reata bit flesh. He was jerked off his feet and slammed to the cobblestones. Pain shot through his back as the vaquero quirted his stallion to a gallop.
“No, Inocente” the girl cried out.
Bouncing across the rough square, Clint fought to keep his head from crashing onto the paving stones as he rolled and struggled to free himself. The horse reached full gallop, and Clint careened out of the square and onto the dirt road. He spun and clawed at the loop with his free hand while the horse’s hooves flung clods and dirt into his face.
Desperately, he swung his feet in front of him, fighting to free himself, but the reata slammed him head over heels face first into the dirt. The powerful stallion pounded on, joined by two others who flanked Clint—a dizzying confusion of flashing hooves on three sides of him.
He slammed into a horse trough and rolled. Pain shot through him, He spun the other way, got his arm up in front of his face, and crunched into a hitching post. Bone splintered, and he saw flashes of color and tasted copper, but he did not cry out. Through fading vision, he saw a tree stump coming. Helpless, he met it with a resounding thump, and blackness enveloped him.
The riders dismounted and Inocente removed his reata from the man’s quiet form. Seeing that the job had been done well, he remounted. They jerked their horses around and spurred them away without a glance at the still mound of scraped, bruised, and bleeding flesh. Their hoofbeats disappeared, and the road was quiet except for three red hens who wandered nearby, pecking, investigating the quiet form. One cackled a caution as the form moaned quietly, but continued to scratch away.
A mockingbird resumed mimicking the staccato chirps of a warbler, and Matthew Mataca Konokapali stepped hesitantly out of the shadows beneath the sandpaper oak then shuffled his huge bulk slowly toward the prostrate figure. Uncertain for a moment, the Kanaka knelt and brushed the dirt from the broken man’s face.
He lifted the injured man in beefy arms and as easily as he would have a child, carried him away with a great lumbering gait.