“I tell her I don’t have any such skins and she gives me that smile and says, ‘But I do, Captain. I have three hundred and forty-two otter skins, some beaver, marten, and two hundred cowhides.’
“Lad, I was flabbergasted. Here was this handsome young woman who should be settin’ at tea with some other young ladies, tellin’ me she had all those skins for. Next thing I know is, I’m makin’ a deal to sail to China. I warned her there was risk. She said she understood that. ‘Nothing is gained without some risk, Captain.’
“We talked a bit and she asked questions, very sharp questions about markets, products, and shipping matters. I tell you, lad, there’s a shrewd woman!” Jacob came in, chose a bunk, and then came over to the table. “Weather changing,” he commented. “We’re in for some rain, and we can use it.” He paused. “Cap, have you heard any talk about war with Mexico? Nobody out here knows anything, but some men came through from Texas who say there’s a lot of hard feeling.”
“I’ve heard rumors. What’s the feeling here?”
Jacob chuckled. “These are good people, Cap. Good-natured. They want no trouble with anybody, but right now they have closer ties with us than with Mexico. They want to be known as Californios and only that. Push ‘em, and they’ll fight … there’s always cuttings and shootings among the rougher crowd in Sonora Town … but mostly the people here just want to go their own way. If it comes to trouble with Mexico, I believe California would stay out of it unless some hothead starts trouble. If it becomes a matter of honor, the Californios will fight.” “Their trade is mostly with the States,” the captain commented, “and I hear complaints about governors appointed from Mexico who don’t understand conditions here.”
“They want a California man for governor,” Jacob said, “and you can’t blame them. It takes too long to get word back and forth from Mexico City, and some of their rulings don’t make sense here. These are good people. Let them alone and they’ll be all right.”
“They won’t be let alone, Jacob. You know that. It is too rich a country. Jedediah Smith showed the way across the desert and mountains. Ewing Young and his party got through also, and there have been others. They were just a beginning.”
Far into the night they talked, often of things my father and mother had discussed. Everything about California, that mysterious place of menace, had fascinated me, yet finally I fell asleep, curled in my bunk. When I awakened, Jacob had already saddled the horses. “Sleep well? There’s a place up on the trail where we’ll breakfast.” He stopped, one hand on the saddle. “They have hot chocolate. Figured you’d like that for breakfast.
“The captain, he went back to his ship last night.” Jacob pointed toward it. “He’s anchored about three-quarters of a mile out. When the weather’s right, he can come right in over the bar, as he doesn’t draw more’n about nine feet. Someday folks will get busy and deepen that channel, and you’ll see ships in here, dozens of ‘em. Miss Nesselrode, she thinks this is going to be a big city.”
“San Pedro?”
“Well, that or Los Angeles. Get aboard and well get going. It’ll be nearly a day’s ride as it is, us stoppin’ to eat.”
We rode our horses up the slanting trail from the shore. When we reached the top of the rise, we could see another ship beating in toward the bay. “Now, don’t you be talkin’ about Miss Nesselrode an’ all she does. First place, folks would think you were storyin’, because she kind of keeps it quiet. Womenfolks aren’t supposed to be into what she is.”
“Don’t people know?”
“Here an’ there. Don Abel Stearns knows. He’s maybe the richest man around. Owns a lot of land. There’s a few others … men. She’s canny. Nobody ever really sees her talkin’ business. Womenfolks wouldn’t approve; neither would most of the men. I do some of it, but mostly it is just a word or two on social occasions.
“The captain, he’s been out to China and Japan twice how. He carries other goods, of course, but he does better with the furs he carries for Miss Nesselrode. Otter hides are much in demand there, for they are beautiful furs. “It was a canny thing, to begin with them, but a frightful risk, too. She could have lost it all, had the ship gone down.”
There was a small patch of trees ahead, and off to the left a much larger bunch, a sort of a wild forest of scrub oak and sycamore mingled with what they called chaparral, which was a kind of mixed growth of brush and small trees, all entangled. The trail skirted wide around it.
“Bears,” Jacob said. “California’s grizzly country, an’ a grizzly ain’t afraid of nothing. Tackle a man soon’s he would a rabbit, but they eat mostly roots, berries, leaves, and suchlike. They’ll feed off dead animals, sometimes make their own kills-it depends on the bear. Grizzlies is notional.” We rode over a slightly rolling plain covered with sparse brown grass and patches of brush or trees. Ahead of us there was a low adobe building, some corrals, and a lean-to shed. The roof of the adobe was of red tile. “See that tile? Injuns made it. Taught by the folks at the missions. The missions are closed now, and the Injuns who made the tile have gone back to the hills, most of them. There’s no tile to be had nowadays.” “How big is Los Angeles?”
“Oh, maybe fifteen hundred to two thousand. Varies some. A few years back, 1836, I believe it was, they taken a census. Came to two thousand two hundred and twenty-eight in the whole county, and more’n five hundred of them were tame Injuns. They figured there were forty-six foreigners, twenty-one of them considered to be Americans.”
He turned his horse in through the gate and drew up at the hitching rail. “I don’t pay much mind to such things, but Miss Nesselrode, she wants to know everything.”
Jacob dismounted. “Come along, Hannes. Out here folks eat breakfast at ten o’clock, usually, and what they call dinner at about three. Sometimes they eat supper, mostly they don’t.
“I know these folks. Pablo won’t be here, most likely. He works on the zanja. You know, the irrigation ditch that runs through town. Isabel … that’s his wife … she’s a Mexican girl. Pablo’s Californio. “Let’s go in. Isabel feeds folks who come along and probly makes as much as Pablo does. Maybe more.”
It was cool and still in the stone-flagged room. There were three tables with benches beside them, and as we entered, a young woman came in. She was plump and quite pretty, with very large dark eyes.
“Senor! It is not often you come this way! Would you be seated? I have not much, but…”
She left the room, returning in a moment with hot chocolate and some tortillas. “Wait! You like the quesadilla, senor, and you shall have it.” She paused, looking at me. “And you? What would you like?”
“The same,” I said, embarrassed. It was not often that I talked to a woman. The hot chocolate was really hot and it tasted good. I had drunk chocolate but once before this and liked it very much.
When she returned with the quesadillas, she said, “You come from the sea?” “He does”-Jacob gestured to me. “I have just met him at the ship. He will live in Los Angeles and go to school there.”
“Ah? You have family?”
I shook my head.
“Miss Nesselrode was a friend of his family. She asked me to meet him and bring him to her.”
“She is very pretty, Miss Nesselrode,” Isabel said. “I wonder that she is unmarried.”
Among the Califomios, who often married at fourteen, an unmarried woman of thirty was a puzzle. Yet I had not read romances for nothing. Between bites of quesadilla I said, “He died … or was killed. I do not know.” Immediately she was all sympathy. Who understands a broken heart better than those of Spanish blood? “Ah! I see! When she was very young?” “She was in love,” I said solemnly. “He was very handsome. She thinks only of him.”
When Isabel had gone to the kitchen, Jacob glanced at me from the corners of his eyes and said very softly, “Now, I never knew that before.” “Neither did I, but she will tell the story and they will have an answer that pleases them. Now they will understand and ask no more questions.”
He grunted. “For a youngster no older than you are-“
“It is in many of the stories, and the Spanish are a romantic people. My father knew many of their songs, and so did my mother. They all seem to be of broken hearts and lost loves. I just said what is in the songs.” He chuckled. “Boy, you’re a caution! You surely are!” It was sundown when we came within sight of the town. It lay on a wide, undulating plain, and to the north there was a line of low hills; on the east there were mountains. There was a river flowing near the town, and there were vineyards and many trees. Within the town itself the streets seemed to have no plan or system. The houses were mostly of adobe, flat-roofed and low, yet here and there was a larger frame house or an adobe of two stories. There was a government house and a church.