Roy Bean's Gold by W R. Garwood

myself. But Salazar, who seemed to have the knack of reading my thoughts, shook his head.
    â€œGold can be a blessing, joven hombre , but I think gold will prove a curse. Sí , a curse for many a man in California.”
    I didn’t try to argue the matter, for I knew for a fact that my eagles—the entire lot of them—had brought death to seven men. And that was curse enough, I thought.

Chapter Eight
    W hen I rode down Los Angeles’ Main Street and out San Fernando the next morning, following a comfortable night’s rest at the first-class Bella Union, Salazar rode at my side, astride his pudgy buckskin.
    In talking to the local sheriff, he’d learned that some of the very rascals he was trailing were thought to be in my brother’s calabozo at San Diego, or were a week back.
    â€œ ¿Quién sabe? ” Salazar shrugged when we mounted up and headed out of the old town. “Those infernal jails are all made to be broken out of. A blind peon with a spoon could cut his way out of our accursed adobe. But they don’t get away with that sort of thing at our Alameda jailhouse. That place is all stone and iron, let me tell you!”
    About five miles out of Los Angeles, we met a small crowd of folks coming toward us, mainly Mexicans along with some Yanks, and all heading north to the Sacramento mines. Some rode bony mules and some forked worn-out nags that didn’t seem able to make it to town let alone any farther. They certainly were one rag-tag bunch, and I wondered if any of those hard-faced rapscallions, who stared at my fine horse and fancy duds with mighty calculating looks, had been guests of Josh’s hoosegow.
    All we learned in passing was they’d come across the southern Gila route and damned it for a red-hot griddle. All said they’d be blasted if they went back that way, not if they rotted in their tracks. They went on their way up the road yelling and cussing their heads off like a pack of wild men.
    Salazar wheeled in his saddle to stare gloomily at the dusty mob. “They’re getting worse each month. just scum rising out of every hell hole on earth and swarming like two-legged locusts toward the gold. That bunch will mean more trouble for the Los Angeles officers, and for me. if they get up as far as Alameda before they’re tossed into jail.”
    I rode along, watching the sky above me, all filled with slowly drifting clouds pushed along by an easy wind like huge clots of cream swimming in an enormous bowl of blue. Several high pairs of dark wings cut across the sky in front of us, some sort of huge birds that swam through the same sunny air. Salazar pointed them out as California condors, the largest bird of flight, with an average wingspan of ten feet or better. “And now the infernal miners are shooting those birds right and left just for their wing-feather quills in which to tote their cursed gold dust!”
    â€œThere must be hundreds of those birds in such a big county,” I said, thinking that I’d need more than some wing feathers to pack that fifty thousand in gold eagles—when I got them.
    â€œAh, señor , there’ll come a time when greedy man will have taken and destroyed every creature. and, someday, perhaps even himself.”
    The stunning big birds soon sailed away on the cool winds that blew first from the east, and then meandered back from the direction of the nearby coast. And for the first time I felt the spicy tang of an ocean on my face and could taste it in my mouth.
    â€œDo you hear that?” Salazar cocked his great mushroom sombrero and shrugged a shoulder at me as he pulled up his horse.
    â€œI thought I heard the wind in those trees there,” I said, tugging on my reins and looking out across the rolling countryside, but saw nothing out of the ordinary.
    â€œTurn down here.” Salazar guided his buckskin onto a small lane that forked westerly over a low hill.
    Then there it was! As