He looked at me again. “You’re a couple of shades darker from the sun. How old would you be now?”
“I am ten.”
“I’ll be damned! You look four or five years older. You been takin’ care of yourself here?”
“Yes. The Cahuillas are friendly, and I spend a lot of time with them. Sometimes I eat with them, sometimes I cook, but usually I eat what they do. There’s pinon nuts, tuna, and sometimes berries.”
“Surely ain’t doin’ you no harm. Seen the horses out yonder, too. You been ridin’?”
So I told him about the wild country, the desert, the ancient sea bottom, and the old shoreline that could be seen along the sides of the mountains. “I’ve found lots of shells out there, old seashells from ages ago. The Cahuillas say the sea has been in there several times. Or maybe it was water from the Colorado.”
“All right if I stay the night? I’m packin’ my own blanket roll.”
“Sure. I’ll put up your horse.”
“Leave it to me. Always take care of my own horse, no offense meant.” He got to his feet, turning his hat in his hands. “I come out here a-purpose to see you. Didn’t know if you was alive or not, but Miss Nesselrode-you remember her? She’s been mindful of you. Sent me to see if you were alive. Said she told your pa she’d care for you.” He grinned. “Not that you seem to need much care.” He went outside and I started some coffee. It was good to see him. When he came in and dropped his gear in a corner, I asked, “How is Miss Nesselrode?” He chuckled, giving me a sly, amused look. “Now, that there’s quite a woman, Hannes, she really is. Purty, too. She found herself a little adobe, bought a few odds and ends, and went to church, and the first thing you know, she’s been proposed to a couple of times and is cuttin’ quite a figger there around town. She walks around with that lacy parasol of hers, and the first thing you know, she’s bought herself a horse an’ sidesaddle.
“Seems she heard of some hard-up trapper who has ketched some sea otter. Saying nothin’ to anybody else, she had me buy those skins from him, at rock-bottom prices. Then she shipped them off to China. Meanwhile she heard of another man up the coast who had skins for sale, and she bought them, got them off on the same ship.
“She’s right canny, that woman is. She hired Kelso an’ me to do the shippin’ for her, an’ she’s just a mighty pretty young woman, visitin’ around. “You know how womenfolks are, always talking of clothes, babies, marriage, an’ what’s happenin’ around. Well, she listens, she gets acquainted with the families of Abel Stearns, Isaac Williams, Wolfskill, an’ them. “She has me buy about sixty acres of land, and on Wolfskill’s advice she plants it to lemons an’ oranges. Then she has Keko buy another piece, which she plants to grapes.
“Los Angeles is a sleepy little town. A lot of ructions down in Sonora Town, time to time, but the Califomios don’t much care what happens as long as they have a fandango now and again, good horses to ride, and money to spend on fancy clothes.
“They’re good folks, but there’s never been any pressure on them until now. Times have changed, and most of them can’t see what’s happenin’. You’ve heard talk of beaver. When folks over in France and such places switched from beaver hats to silk hats, the bottom fell out of the market. There just wasn’t any money in trappin’ or tradin’ for beaver anymore. “Now, some folks think the mountain men were just a bunch of big ignorant trappers. You an’ I know otherwise. They were mighty shrewd men who went to tradin’ an’ trappin’ because if a man kept his hair, that was the fastest way to get rich.
“Now that beaver don’t bring no good prices, what do they do? Keep ridin’ a dyin’ horse? Not them. Some of them had already been out here with Jed Smith, Ewing Young, and the like, so they come out. They’ve got a little money, a lot of savvy, and they commence buyin’. Some of them married Spanish girls, but whatever they do, they are in business.
“They open stores, banks, start plantin’ grapes to make wine, oranges, lemons, and such. Land is dirt cheap, so they buy land, most of them become Mexican citizens.
“Now Miss Nesselrode arrives in town. She’s a mighty pretty woman and she meets folks, and men like to talk to pretty women and they like to show off how smart they are. She sits in their patios, has that beautiful smile working, and she’s a good listener.
“Kelso, he takes off for the Mother Lode country, but I stay around. You know something? One reason I stayed is because I just want to see what happens. “Now, I’m around her a good bit. I notice things. She’s losin’ weight, gettin’ right thin. When I stop by, she always has coffee for me, but she doesn’t invite me for dinner anymore. It takes a while to sink in, and then I get it. She’s broke. She’s livin’ on guts and the few dollars she has left. She’s invested what all she had in a gamble, a damn big gamble! “What I’m talkin’ about is the first six months she was here. One time I am tyin’ my horse to her gate and she doesn’t know I’m there. I see her countin’ her money. It’s mighty little. She counts it an’ recounts it, an’ there can’t be more than ten, twelve dollars there. She stands there, figurin’ like, chewing on her lip.
“I knock on the door, she lets me in, we have coffee, and she is all smiles and she tells me she’s made up her mind. She’s goin’ to open a bookstore.” “But you said she had no money.”
He chuckled. “Like I said, that woman’s got nerve. Real, down-to-bedrock nerve!
She’s holdin’ a busted flush and she bets everything on her last card. “The next morning she goes to see Abel Stearns. Now, Abel, he’s a shrewd man an’ he’s got more money than he knows what to do with, an’ he’s made it all himself. “She goes to him and tells him she intends to open a bookstore and until her ‘funds’ arrive from Boston, she is short of cash, but she wants to open the store now. When she walks out of there, she has the credit, and she already has a few books of her own. She gets more.
“That store becomes a gatherin’ place for all of that old mountain-man crowd and some others. She meets the stage, buys books and magazines, even newspapers from people. Her place is the best source of what goes on back in the States. “Within a few weeks it is the place where Wolfskin, Workman, Rowland, Wilson, Stearns, and all that crowd come for news and to see each other. And she’s busy, workin’ around, but listening. I tell you, Hannes, within the next three months that woman knows more about what’s happenin’ in California than anybody! “Stearns isn’t hurting for money, she’s an attractive woman, so he doesn’t dun her. When she’s in business for about six months, she’s been in Los Angeles about a year, you understand, then her ship comes in. “I mean that ship comes back from China and she has sold those otter skins to the Chinese for ten times what she paid for them. She pays off Stearns and she’s free an’ clear with money to work with.
“So she stocks her bookstore, orders more books, papers, and such, and then goes up and down the coast, me helping, buying otter skins, cowhides, anything she can sell.
“She goes out to remote ranches which have a time gettin’ hides down to the shore where they can be sold to the ships. She buys cheap. “She lives like she always did, goes about her business with a friendly smile and a land of wide-eyed innocence. She owns her bookstore building, she owns another building close by, she owns a small ranch, some horses and cattle, and she operates her bookstore like it was a bank. That woman’s a caution!” “I’m glad,” I said. “I liked her.”
“That’s what brings me here,” Jacob said. “She wants you to come to Los Angeles.
She sent me to get you.”
Seventeen
Los Angeles?
“I don’t know. What of my grandfather?”
Finney tugged at a boot, then stopped. “I asked her that, but she says he believes you’re dead. He has a place in town, but he spends most of his time out on his hacienda. When he does come in, he rides in like a king, with six or eight vaqueros riding along.”
Jacob pulled off the boot and placed it on the floor. “She’d give it out that you were kinfolk from back East. She has dealings with shipowners, ship captains, and the like. She could say you’d just come around the Horn with one of them.”