Days of '49/Chapter 5

Night came, and the Magnolia was again ablaze with lights, astir with men. Tobacco smoke in filmy clouds floated overhead.

The negro orchestra thumped and strummed.

Behind the bar the great mirror, with its ill-fated blot like a star of ill omen permanently fixed near its center, reproduced in fleeting pantomime the gestures of the bartenders, the glass-tossing of the men that seemed to fling the liquor down their throats, the striding to and fro of fellows who were in haste, the absent loitering and drifting of lonely men.

"There, there, sir," said Judge David Deering with sonorous depth of voice to his companions, "in the ephemeral shadows of a broken mirror, sir, we may read the destiny of our race. These scenes, sir, these stirring scenes in which you and I are humble characters, mere spear-bearers, sir, have no more permanency than the images that appear and vanish in that ill-starred glass. Nations, sir, races, Egyptians, Persians, Latins, Saxons, sir, are but shadow shapes that come and go across"

"Drink, Judge, drink! This isn't the time for an oration!"

"In the midst of revelry, sir, we should pause with solemn thought," said the judge amiably, amusing himself. "The ancient Egyptians, sir, presented a mummy at their feasts that all might"

"Our mummy's out there on the Plaza tonight, calling upon the city to repent!"

The Rev. Ezekiel Preble, convinced through the bountiful generosity of the city and the kindness of newly found friends that God had forgiven him, rose as if by a miracle from the bed in the home of a fellow preacher and, taking his Bible, went on the Plaza that evening and began to preach.

Many listened admiringly, for he preached hell-fire and damnation. Tall, gaunt, black-bearded and unafraid, he stood on an empty whisky barrel in the glow of a gambling house's open doorway and hurled Scriptural passages at the heads of sinners, who listened until thirsty, then went to bars and, as they swallowed hot liquors, approvingly discussed the preacher. There was no bigotry among San Francisco sinners; they applauded the men of God who denounced them, providing that the denunciation was loud and forceful, befitting their robust sinfulness—worthy of applause.

In the Magnolia rumors and reports rippled through the low-voiced babble. They talked of the fall in lumber, wondering how severely it would affect Col. Nevinson, who had been speculating heavily.

A few of the Hounds, dandified of dress and impertinent of bearing, swaggered through the crowd, but kept well together, whispering importantly, eyeing groups, looking for somebody.

It was reported that Monsieur Max had already arranged to enter into partnership with the beautiful Madame Renault, a lady of experience in such matters, to maintain a luxurious establishment that would give the ancient calling of wayward women a social distinction in the city; an establishment that would provide dinners, dances, mask balls.

Another report that created more of a stir was about a strange occurrence at the mines. A party of Spanish horsemen, armed to the teeth, had galloped into camp on the Stanislaus, lined a barroom full of men against the wall, then the Spanish leader had walked slowly down the row of men, examining each face. Evidently he had not found the one for whom he was looking. No violence was done. Nothing was taken. Without a word, the horsemen remounted and, with furious clatter of hoofs, rode off into the night.

This mysterious and bold act had caused some alarm and great excitement at the mines; and news of it stirred wild threats in the conversation of men in the city.

It was incredible, hotheads said, that greasers should dare fool with Americans; and moreover, said other men, it was contrary to the Constitution of the United States to allow blasted foreigners, of whatever color, to dig gold that belonged to Americans. All greasers should be run out of the country, said many men. The Hounds, hearing this wide-spread sentiment, shouted applause.

Bruce Brace, the cadaverous associate of Col. Nevinson, with Jerry Fletcher at his heels, accompanied by other swaggering young Hounds, passed restlessly from one part of the Magnolia to another.

Mr. Cronin, the house-manager, was in complete charge. He was dark-eyed, rather short, a bit fat, with a sly agreeable smile, and a friendly word and handshake for anybody. In so democratic a city, the Grand Khan himself, had he owned a saloon and wanted it to prosper, would have had to shake hands and stand treat; for it was here during these days that the famous but nameless Irishman declared:

"In this country, each man is as good as another, and a damn sight better!"

That evening Don José de Sola and Dick Hales came into the Magnolia together, but José started directly for a monte table. Hales went to the bar.

Bruce Brace and the young swashbucklers with him appeared more or less deliberately to press across the floor so as to meet José, and one of the Hounds made a lurch to bump against him; but José was not watching the moon.

Easily and quickly he shifted his feet, and Jerry Fletcher, not coming against the man as he had expected, stumbled and nearly fell.

"What you mean, greaser, pushin' a white man!" cried Tim White, one of the Hounds, but taking care to keep well back by the side of Brace.

"He pushed me!" yelled Fletcher.

The filmy eyes of Bruce Brace cleared and his drooping body was rigid. His right arm was behind him.

Don José quickly stepped backward, making sure to be beyond the reach of hands that might grab him, and his hand settled at his right hip as he tossed aside a cigaret.

"He pushed me!" squawked Fletcher.

"You, sir, are drunk!" said a powerful voice as the shadow of a big man fell across Fletcher. "Nobody pushed you. If you can't carry your liquor like a gentleman, keep sober, sir!"

Fletcher looked up into the large and now severe face of Judge Deering, and said impertinently:

"You'd better keep out o' this, you had, old Pot-Belly!"

"And you," said Judge Deering's companion, a large man with the beard and dress of a miner, "had better mend your manners, or we'll have Dick Hales give you another hiding!"

"Come on, Jerry. Come on," Tim White whispered, pulling at Fletcher's coat. "This is spoiled. It's the other fellow we're after anyhow."

"We'll get this greaser some other time," another voice buzzed into Fletcher's ear.

They went off, clustering about Bruce Brace.

"Thoroughly ripened gallows fruit!" said Judge Deering, angrily tapping the floor with his cane.

At that moment Don José was staring toward Bruce Brace's back as though he had seen the devil there; and, turning slowly, keeping at some distance, he followed.

Hales had gone near an end of the bar and, more in idleness than thirst, waited until one of the busy bartenders should notice him.

He had, that afternoon, gone from one low hut and tent and shack to another, wherever he heard a woman might be; and he had gone, ashamed of what he was looking for, half hopeful that he would not find her.

Hales had learned nothing, except that men and women could live in shabby filth, be slyly wheedling with a glint of wild animal hunger showing through, and drink such poisonous stuff as fairly smoked with acid fumes, and which, when slopped on the rough tables gnawed scars in the wood. They were mostly Chileans, Peruvians, with already a thick sprinkling of Australian convicts, men and women. Camp-followers that hung about the army of gold-hunters. He had been told in a way that was nearly convincing that he would find among these the woman whom he had called his sister.

Among the thoughts that bubbled confusedly in his mind as he waited for the bartender was a curse on the gold that had brought this scourge of people into pastoral California. He knew the fantastic idleness of the proud, generous, happy families, whose unfenced herds of cattle and horses covered the hills; and though the Spaniards had done little work, except from horseback, yet there was laughter and music throughout the land, and nobody went hungry. The father of the wealthiest family might not handle ten pieces of gold in a year, yet had everything that money would buy—hides were the coinage of the country—and much else that was not to be had for gold, such as a care-free happiness, troubled at times by prayers to the good God for more rain.

"What will you have, Mr. Hales?" asked the bartender. Hales was now a well-known figure.

"Whisky."

The bartender put down glass and bottle, gave Hales a sidelong glance as if about to speak quickly and quietly, then answered the call of a man who swore that he was half dead of thirst, though from the look of the fellow he was nearly overweighted with quencher.

Hales poured out a drink and turned the glass slowly in his fingers, watching the oily liquor, colored as if by its own heat.

The bartender grasped the neck of the bottle and, with the other hand wiping the marble slab, said earnestly without looking up:

"Turn 'round! Turn 'round, Mr. Hales!"

"Thanks," said Hales, and glass in hand he faced about, putting his back to the bar.

Not four feet away stood Jerry Fletcher, flushed and eager, by the side of Bruce Brace. Another man was well behind the cadaverous Brace, as if hiding at his back; and two more of the young swaggerers, with a sort of guilty effort at nonchalance, at that moment reached the bar—one on each side of Hales.

Hales knew this meant a fight. If he had been halfway watching, instead of moodily cursing the ill-luck of himself and all California, too, he would not have let two men, such as these, get on each side of him.

Jerry Fletcher's face showed that he meant to have revenge, and one of Fletcher's hands was in his coat pocket where the very bulge of the cloth disclosed a short-nosed gun.

But the danger, as Hales saw it in an instant's glance, was not from this pretty-boy of a Hound; it was from Bruce Brace, whose head hung forward on his sagging neck, and eyes that were usually dull now had a fixed and meaning stare. His hands were behind him.

Hales could not step backward for he was against the bar. He knew they meant to kill; and they had come so quietly, arranged themselves so cleverly, that men drinking along the bar were unaware of what was about to happen so near their elbows.

"Well, Fletcher, go ahead!" said Bruce Brace impatiently, but with his eyes fixed on Hales.

"You horsewhipped me yesterday," cried Fletcher in a thin voice that cracked with excitement. "Now"

Hales tossed the glass of whisky into the eyes of the man that stood at his right side, and as he drew his gun he pushed with his left arm at the man on his other side. A spurt of flame darted with a gun's roar from under the left shoulder of Bruce Brace, though no gun was in sight and his hands were behind him. Guns broke loose, as if at the beginning of a battle; simultaneously, from all directions, men appeared to be shooting.

Men, drinking at the bar, leaped and scrambled clear over the bar and crouched behind; others, with frantic shout, plunged for the doorways. They ducked, they fell as if themselves shot; they shoved each other to get to shelter behind columns. They went under tables, into corners, cursing. There was cause for panic. It seemed the shooting would never stop. Bullets flew wildly. Glass from shattered candelabras rattled on the floor and tables. The black smoke of the now silenced guns drifted with slow whorling, weaving itself into a transparent, film-like shadow as it rose upward against the low ceiling; and the Magnolia was for a moment quiet as if all were dead.

Hales glanced at the caps on the chamber nipples of his revolver to see how many shots were left for what need he might have, and held the gun at his hip, muzzle up, thumb on the hammer, and peered watchfully through the smoke. The menace of his watchfulness kept men quiet and motionless as they waited, expectantly.

Don José slowly thrust his revolver into its holster. A glint of white showed between his lips, almost as if they parted in a smile. He did not move from where he stood, but drew from his pocket corn husk and tobacco. In an absent-minded way he deftly twirled the cigaret as he looked about the floor as if counting. Something of defiance, contempt, satisfaction were mingled in his aloof glance. He put the cigaret between his lips, drew a match along his arm, inhaled deeply and tossed the match aside and, with a bearing of insolent indifference, waited for what might be said by the men who were coming up from behind the bar, out of corners, from under tables, streaming in through the doors.

Voices mingled excitedly. Shootings were common; but this had been like massacre.

"You might've killed all us!" a distant voice shouted reproachfully at José.

"A greaser—an' them white men!" some one bawled angrily.

"Where's Nevinson?" The question was like a threat. Don José slowly blew smoke out of his nose by way of answer.

Judge Deering was among the first to approach Hales. The miner, his companion, looked keenly at Hales who, with a foot, pushed Bruce Brace's left arm aside and fully disclosed a small revolver.

"His hands were behind him," said Hales. "But I saw the shot. And there's a gun."

"Si," said Don José, with an air of insolence as he came nearer. "His was a clevar treek. So"—Don José drew his own revolver, and some men edged back quickly. This greaser did not appear to care whom he hit. "His arm eet was behind him, so!" Reaching behind him, José thrust the muzzle of his revolver under the pit of his left arm. "I see his gun when he held eet this way an' come toward Señor Hales. I come too, an' wait, señors."

"Ah, justly killed with his own treachery," said Judge Deering, touching Brace's gun with the tip of his cane.

Mr. Cronin, with eyes wide as an owl's, had emerged cautiously from around the end of the bar. His puffy little face was bloodless, and he muttered "Terrible—terrible!" His words were broken with nervous gasps. He stared in timid reproach at Hales and José.

The bodies were hastily lifted, for Cronin was anxious to have them out of the way. They were carried off and placed side by side on the floor under the balcony. There were no police to be called to take charge. There was a sheriff, his name was Pullis; but history has remembered his name only because he was the Steward of the Hounds. No one knew where to find him. There was no morgue. There was a graveyard out in the sandhills; and sooner or later they would be put there, clothed as they had fallen, with nothing at head or feet to say who they were or why they had died.

Men drank and talked of what had happened. Gamblers began anew their games. A few men began to play. The negro orchestra, still badly shaken, tried to follow Mr. Cronin's urgent command to play, play something lively, but strings were out of tune, fingers unsteady. There was as yet only a whanging and whining of instruments as the darkies tried to tune up.

In the air there was a kind of impalpable uneasiness, and there were more calls for whisky than for mixed fragrant drinks, because of the chill.

"The hour of reckoning draws near, sir," said Judge Deering to whoever cared to listen. "The evil that men do lives after them, but the evil themselves are not long-lived. It is preposterous, sir, that a parcel of cutpurses and rapscallions should virtually terrorize this city, though it is true, very true, that they exercise a well-defined caution in regard to just whom they try to terrorize."

"Careful, Judge!" warned a friend anxiously.

"Careful be damned, sir," said the judge warmly. "Too many of our tongues have been sealed up by that word 'careful!'"

At that moment a tall figure emerged from the outer shadows of the doorway, and with solemn march came to the threshold and stood there. The man's body was gaunt, his face darkly bearded, the sunken eyes blazed. Silence came over the crowd as it turned toward him.

Ezekiel Preble, with a manner of deliberate wrath, paused as if reluctant to cross the threshold of a house dedicated to the worship of Satan.

He raised his left hand aloft, and in his left hand he held an open Bible, its pages spread.

"Repent ye! Repent ye! Repent, ye murderers, idolaters, whoremongers, drunkards, or the curse of Lord Goda'mighty cometh upon ye!"

His long right arm made a level sweep in a gesture of accusation.

"Ye spill the blood o' man as a drunkard spills his wine, an' your souls will fry in everlastin' hell like bacon rinds in a skillet. I come out o' the wilderness cryin' a warning. Cursed shalt thou be, cursed and damned to hell everlastin'. The Lord thy God will make plagues and sores eat ye! The Lord'll make the rain of thy land powder an' dust, from heaven it will come down upon ye! The Lord'll smite thee in the knees, and in the legs, with a sore blotch that can't be healed, from the soles of thy feet to the top of thy head! Murderers, drunkards, worshippers of harlot gold. Repent ye, repent ye, repent ye, for the wrath cometh!"

He stopped. For a time he remained motionless, holding his Bible aloft like an oriflamme of warning. He glared, with the light of wrath in his deep fanatical eyes.

Then he lowered the book, closed it with a slap, and, an arm enfolding it against his breast like a buckler that would ward evil from his heart, he turned and with solemn stride marched through the light-haze of the doorway and vanished into the darkness of the Plaza.

Some one laughed. Another man slapped his thigh and cried, "By God, that was great!" Others laughed a little uneasily, trying to hide the flush of fear. Others cursed—praising the preacher. "Magnificent!" said Judge Deering with deep-voiced enthusiasm, as he tapped the bar with the head of his cane to attract attention from the bartender.

There was a propulsive rush for the bar, a clamoring for drinks.

Voices broke into fragments of sentences:

"—an' they said he was dyin'!"

"That bacon rind soul o' yourn, Jake, is shore goin' into the devil's skillet. I wonder do they serve beans with bacon rind in hell?"

"You'll shore find out!"

"—an' I give twenty dollars to that old"

"It's worth it, pard. He was talkin' right straight to you, givin' you pertickular!"

"—yeah, I'm thinkin' as maybe how I'll repent a little. I already got one boil"

"That's from eatin' too much hog fat. You git some sassyfras tea an'"

"Talkin' about a rain o' dust, I reckon as how he was shore describin' the wind we got here in this town"

A man with the flabby jowls and wide mouth of the garrulous, not quite sober at that, fastened a grubby hand on first one and then another, all the while saying earnestly:

"We gotta git that feller a meetin' house. Yeah. An' put him in it. Yeah. Make him stay there. Yeah. Stay there, damn it. If we want to git cussed out we can go to the meetin' house. Yeah. On Sundays. It's proper to feel bad when you go to church. Yeah. But it ain't proper to have gospel in a saloon. Them two ain't conformitous. Preachers is all right y'understand. Yeah. But they shouldn't bother a feller. We gotta git that feller a meetin' house an' put him in it. Yeah. Make him stay"