Port O' Gold Part 2

"Five thousand dollars--that is fair enough," Benito answered. He was trembling with excitement. McTurpin watched him hawk-like, seeming to consider. "Bring us ink and paper, Jack," he called to Cooper, and when the latter had complied, he wrote some half a dozen lines upon a sheet.

"Sign that. Get two witnesses ... you, Jack, and this fellow here," he indicated Potts imperiously. He laid his cards face down upon the table and extracted deftly from some inner pocket a thick roll of greenbacks.

Slowly, almost meticulously, he counted them before the gaping tableful of players. Fifty hundred-dollar bills.

"American greenbacks," he spoke crisply. "A side bet with our friend, the Senor Windham." He shoved the money toward the center of the table, slightly apart from the rest.

Benito waveringly picked up the pen. It shook in his unsteady fingers.

"Wait," Potts pleaded. But the young man brooked no intervention. With a flourish he affixed his signature. McTurpin picked up the pen as Benito dropped it. "Put your name on as a witness," he demanded of the host.

"Jack the Sailor" shook his head. "I've no part in this," he said, and turned his back upon them. "Nor I," Potts answered to a similar invitation.

McTurpin took the paper. "Well, it doesn't matter. You've all seen him sign it: You ... and you ... and you." His finger pointed to a trio of the nearest players, and their nods sufficed him, evidently. He weighted the contract with a gold-piece from his own plethoric pile.

"Show down! Show down!" cried the others. Triumphantly Benito laid five cards upon the table. Four of them were kings. A little cry of satisfaction arose, for sympathy was with the younger player. McTurpin sat unmoved. Then he threw an ace upon the table. Followed it with a second. Then a third. And, amid wondering murmurs, a fourth.

He reached out his hand for the stakes. Benito sat quite still. The victorious light had gone out of his eyes, but not a muscle moved. One might have thought him paralyzed or turned to stone by his misfortune.

McTurpin's hand closed almost stealthily upon the paper. There was a smile of cool and calculating satisfaction on his thin lips as he drew the stake toward him.

Then with an electrifying suddenness, Benito sprang upon him. "Cheat!"

he screamed. "You fleeced me like a robber. I knew. I understood it when you looked at me like that."

Quick as McTurpin was in parrying attack--for he had frequent need of such defense--the onslaught of Benito found him unprepared. He went over backward, the young man's fingers on his throat. From the overturned table money rattled to the floor and rolled into distant corners.

Hastily the non-combatants sought a refuge from expected bullets. But no pistol barked. McTurpin's strength far overmatched that of the other.

Instantly he was on his feet. Benito's second rush was countered by a blow upon the jaw. The boy fell heavily.

McTurpin smoothed his ruffled plumage and picked up the scattered coins.

"Take the young idiot home," he said across his shoulder, as he strode out. "Pour a little whisky down his throat. He isn't hurt."

CHAPTER III

THE GRINGO s.h.i.+PS

Government was but a name in Yerba Buena. A gringo engineer named Fremont with a rabble of adventurers had overthrown the valiant Vallejo at Sonora and declared a California Republic. He had spiked the cannon at the Presidio. And now a gringo sloop-of-war was in the bay, some said with orders to reduce the port. Almost simultaneously an English frigate came and there were rumors of a war between the Anglo-Saxon nations.

The prefect, Don Rafael Pinto, had already joined the fleeing Governor Castro. Commandante Francisco Sanchez, having sent his soldiers to augment the Castro forces in the south, was without a garrison and had retired to his rancho.

Nevertheless, had the Senora Windham, with her son and daughter, called upon Sub-prefect Guerrero in hope of justice. Her rancho was being taken from her. Already McTurpin had pre-empted a portion of the grant and only the armed opposition of the Windham vaqueros prevented an entire dispossession.

Though Guerrero listened, courteous and punctilious, he had obviously no power to afford relief. He was a curiously nervous man of polished manners whose eyelids twitched at intervals with a sort of slow St.

Vitus' dance.

"What can I do, Senora?" with a blend of whimsicality and desperation.

"I am an official without a staff. And Sanchez a commander stripped of his soldados." He stepped to the door with them and looked down upon the dancing, rippling waters of the bay, where two s.h.i.+ps rode.

"Let these gringos fight it out together. This McTurpin is an Inglese, I am told, from their far colony across the sea. If the Americanos triumph take your claim to them. If not, G.o.d save you, my senora.

I cannot."

Don Guillermo Richardson, the former harbormaster, came up the hill as Dona Anita emerged from the Alcalde's office. He was a friend of her husband--a gringo--but trusted by the Spanish Californians, many of whom he had befriended. To him Mrs. Windham turned half desperately, confessing in a rush of words her family's plight. "What is to become of us?" she questioned pa.s.sionately. "Ah, that my Roberto were here! He would know how to deal with these desperadoes." She gestured angrily toward the sloop-of-war which rode at anchor in the Bay.

"You have nothing to fear, my friend," returned Richardson with a trace of asperity. "Commodore Sloat is a gentleman. He is, I understand, to seize Monterey and raise the the American flag there tomorrow. Yet his instructions are that Californians are to be shown every courtesy."

"And our rancho?" cried the boy. "Will the Americano Capitan restore it to us, think you, Don Guillermo?"

"I know not," said the other sadly. "You should have thought of that before you gambled it away, my son."

Benito hung his head. Richardson pa.s.sed on and the trio made their way toward the beach. There they found Nathan Spear in excited converse with John Cooper and William Leidesdorff.

They were discussing the probability of an occupation by the American marines. "If they come ash.o.r.e," said Leidesdorff, "I'll invite them to my new house. There's plenty of rum for all, and we'll drink a toast to Fremont and the California Republic as well."

"Hurrah! Hurrah!" came a cheer from several bystanders.

"I invite you all," cried Leidesdorff, waving his hands and almost dancing in his eagerness. "Every man-jack of you in all Yerba Buena."

"How about the ladies, Leidesdorff?" called out a sailor.

"Ah, forgive me, Senora, Senorita!" cried the Dane remorsefully. He swept off his wide-brimmed hat with an effort, for he had a fas.h.i.+on of jamming it very tightly upon his head. He laid a hand enthusiastically upon the shoulders of both Spear and Cooper. "It grows better and better. Tomorrow, if the Captain is willing," he jerked his head toward the Portsmouth, "tomorrow evening we shall have a grand ball. It shall celebrate the day of independence."

"But tomorrow is the eighth of July," said Cooper.

"What matter?" Leidesdorff exclaimed, now thoroughly enthusiastic. "It's the spirit of the thing that counts, my friends."

A crowd was a.s.sembling. Mrs. Windham and her daughter drew instinctively aside. Benito stood between them and the growing throng as if to s.h.i.+eld them from a battery of curious glances.

"Will the ladies accept?" asked Leidesdorff with another exaggerated salute.

Senora Windham, haughty and aloof, had framed a stiff refusal, but her daughter caught her hand. "Do not antagonize them, mother," she said in an undertone. "Let us meet this Gringo Commandante of the s.h.i.+p.

Perhaps," she smiled archly, "it is not beyond the possibilities I may persuade him into giving aid."

The elder woman hesitated, glanced inquiringly at Nathan Spear who stood beside them. He nodded. "The ladies will be pleased," he answered in their stead. Another cheer met this announcement.

CHAPTER IV

AMERICAN OCCUPATION

Yerba Buena awoke to the sunrise of July 8, 1846, with a spirit of festive antic.i.p.ation and a certain relief.

Today the American sloop-of-war would land its sailors and marines to take possession of the port. Today the last remaining vestige of the Latin's dominance would end. A strange flag, curiously gay with stripes and stars, would fly above the customs house; strange men in uniforms of blue, and golden braid, would occupy the seats of power. Even the name of Yerba Buena would be altered, it was said. New Boston probably would be its t.i.tle.

Early morning brought ox-carts laden with gay, curious Spanish ladies from surrounding ranches, piquant eager senoritas with vivacious gestures of small hands and fluttering fans; senoras plump and placid, slower in their movements and with brooding eyes. They wore their laciest mantillas, silkiest gowns and daintiest footwear to impress the alien invader. And, beside their equipages, like outriders in the cortege of a queen, caballeros and vaqueros sat their caracoling steeds.

Sailors from the trade and whaling s.h.i.+ps, trappers, hunters and the motley populace of Yerba Buena made a colorful and strangely varied picture, as they gathered with the rancheros about the Plaza.

At 8 o'clock four boats descended simultaneously from the Portsmouth's sides. They were greeted by loud cheers from the Americans on sh.o.r.e and watched with excited interest by the others. The boats landed their crews near the spring where a sort of wharf had been constructed. They returned for more and finally a.s.sembled seventy marines, a smaller number of sailors and the s.h.i.+p's band. Captain Montgomery, in the full dress uniform of a naval commander, reviewed his forces. Beside him stood Lieutenant John S. Misroon, large, correct and rather awkward, with long, restless arms; a youthful, rosy complexion and serious blue eyes. Further back, a.s.sembling his marines in marching order, was Lieutenant Henry Watson, a smaller man of extraordinary nervous energy.

Montgomery gave the marching order. Fife and drum struck up a lively air and to its strains the feet of Yerba Buena's first invading army kept uncertain step as sailors and marines toiled through the sand. Half a thousand feet above them stood the quaint adobe customs house, its red-tiled roof and drab adobe walls contrasting pleasantly with the surrounding greenery of terraced hills. Below it lay the Plaza with its flagpole, its. .h.i.tching racks for horses and oxen.