Chapter 7
For a few days everything was quiet, mostly. Mammy began selling whiskey in the Shining Light, and some fights broke out, and a man from Little Chile got a knife in the chest. On Sunday Gil went up to the Plaza to watch the Regulators march.
The post office was closed, but most of the other businesses were open. The Bella Union and the El Dorado overflowed with drunks and half-drunks and gamblers. In the dust below the flagpole, half a dozen Mexicans sat playing coon can. Dennison’s Exchange was selling eggs for five dollars apiece and laying hens for twenty. Gil went into the Bella Union out of professional curiosity, but could not even reach the bar. He went back out to the street, bought a warm tortilla from a little brown boy in a straw hat, and sat in the sun eating it and watching the crowd. In the corner by the post office, two men who were stripped to the waist squared off for a boxing match; the onlookers cheered them in German.
Around noon the Regulators arrived, banging on drums and blowing trumpets, carrying torn regimentals on a long pole overhead.
Their appearance stilled the whole teeming Plaza. Gil backed up toward the edge of the square and found himself part of a crowd that stared and scowled and murmured but recoiled hastily out of the way as the army of green jackets swaggered through their midst.
There were dozens of the Regulators, formed into two columns. Some carried rifles proudly slung across their shoulders; most of them had pistols in their belts. As they marched they bawled out a tuneless anthem. At their head was a bushy-bearded man whose name, Gil knew, was Roberts. He tossed his arms back and forth like a drum major, his head swiveling from side to side, his jaw thrust out. The steady booming of the drums set Gil’s teeth together, and the screech of the two trumpets hurt his ears. Twice the Regulators trooped all the way around the Plaza while the crowd glowered and muttered but did nothing, and then, turning crisply on his heel, Roberts marched straight toward Dennison’s.
Gil and the mass of men around him blocked the way. Roberts came at them as if they were paper, his bellowing, strutting soldiers at his back. Gil braced himself, sensing all the other men around him, ready to resist, but then the men around him scrambled out of the way and he found himself moving too, hopping like a corncrake out of the path of the green jackets. His ears burned. As Roberts pranced by him he thought he saw a sardonic gleam in the Regulator chief’s eye, aimed especially at Gil Marcus.
The troop pounded into Dennison’s, slowed by the necessity of getting through the door. Roberts, in first, was out again almost at once, eating a red apple, two more stuffed into his pockets, a round loaf of bread under one arm. The rest of the Regulators followed in his track, into the store and out again, carrying whatever they happened to have found on the way: fruit and bread and pickles and sausages. The last few carried handfuls of eggs, which they flung into the air and into the crowd. As they marched away a clerk rushed out of the store and shouted, “Good riddance! You took it all, you bastards — don’t bother cornin’ back, they ain’t no more!”
Gil rubbed his palms on the thighs of his trousers. He looked around at the still, angry men around him, wondering why nobody stopped this, and remembered how he himself had ducked out of the way when Roberts came straight at him, and was ashamed. He went over toward the saloon to get a drink.
This time he got to the Bella Union ahead of the crowd. The air was hot and smoky, and there were sloggy puddles on the tramped earthen floor. Off in the corner was a cage of poles; Gil peered at it curiously, wondering what it was for, and then a man got between him and it, a man in a well-cut coat, a spotless collar, an air of slightly embarrassed aristocracy. He was coming straight toward Gil, smiling, and with a twitch Gil realized he knew him.
“Well, well,” this man said, while Gil was still struggling to think of his name. “Marcus, isn’t it?”
“That’s right.” Gil shook his hand, and then remembered that this was Sam Brannan’s clerk, who had helped him buy the title to the land beneath the Shining Light. “Unh — Terry Rudd, right?”
“Tierney,” said the tall man. “How’s business?”
“Fair. Pretty fair. How’s Sam Brannan’s business?”
“Oh, Sam always does well,” said Tierney Rudd. “What brings you up this side of town?”
Gil leaned on the counter. There was only one bartender, busy at the other end, with more men arriving all the time at the bar; it would be a while before he got his drink. He said, “Actually, I came to see the Regulators.”
“Did you. Pretty disgusting, isn’t it.”
Gil shook his head. “It doesn’t say much for San Francisco that we put up with that.”
“Well,” said Tierney Rudd. “That’s what I’m here for. My boss wants to put a stop to it.”
“Brannan?” Gil’s head lifted. “If anybody can do it, he can.”
“Will you come to an indignation meeting up here tonight?”
“An indignation meeting,” Gil said, disappointed. “Hell, that’s more like a church social.” He had stopped going to indignation meetings the first week he spent in San Francisco. “Look, Rudd, what we need is some force to use against them.”
“Sam wants to call a meeting. Test the temper of the people, talk things out.”
“The temper of the people! Did you see what those bastards just did?”
“They’ve been doing that for months.” The tall man had lost his smile. “We have to start somewhere. Come to the meeting tonight.”
Gil looked him in the eyes. “What if I bring my crew?”
“Bring them. Bring everybody you can. The more the better.”
Gil said, each word precise, “My crew is colored.”
“Oh. I forgot that.” Tierney Rudd scratched his nose. “Well, come by yourself, then. Mormons don’t look too kindly on the Sons of Ham. We don’t want trouble in the ranks.”
“I thought so,” Gil said. He turned to the bar. Tierney Rudd went on, moving into the crowd; a moment later he was talking to somebody else. Gil hunched his shoulders, staring at the wall, his thoughts muddled. He caught himself remembering what Mitya had said the night before: that they should simply kill Friendly. Suddenly everything in him yearned for that, for the swift, fatal stroke. The bartender was still far off; he would never get a drink here. He turned, walked out of the Bella Union, and went back down to Pacific Street.