The Ghost of the Gold Coin, Part IV

Editor’s note: This is the final in a series of four stories about the legend of the Gold Coin.

In the last installment of this story, our narrator and the outlaw biker who is hunting for the Gold Coin ghost have found what they were looking for. But how will that effect their lives?

“My ghost,” the biker shakes his head, “is Joaquin Murietta.” “The bandit?”

“Yes,” he exhales slowly, “the bandit.”

“Please do not speak of these painful things,” the girl repeats.

Murietta turns his face from her, composes himself, then turns back. “You worry that I will kill Fremont and bring down his army upon the gente of Hornitos? I won’t kill him. But I will take the gold that he hides in his cellar. And then he will have to answer to the San Francisco men. I will make these Gringos go for each other’s throats.”

“Leave now,” the girl urges. “Take Rosa and return to Mexico. They are already after you. And, although you have given gold to many of us, surely you have enough gold for yourself.”

“Yes,” Murietta agrees. “I have enough gold now for both of us. Like the others,” his hand sweeps the crowd, “I mine it.” He pauses. “But I do not mine it from the land. I mine it,” he grins, “from the Gringos. Now I will mine it from Fremont. This gold he so cleverly brings underground into his cellar. I need to do this.”

“Why?” she shakes her head, an anxious expression in her eyes. “Why do you need to?”

Murietta looks slowly around the room at his fellow Californios.

“To dis-honor him,” he says slowly but precisely. “And, in so doing, to restore some of our dignity which the English-speaking miners have taken. The Gringos may not, as you say, understand honor. But they will understand dishonor.”

“Your mind is made up. Then, just be careful, Joaquin. Soon, they will form a posse to hunt you down. The smart man disappears before that.”

“And which Joaquin will they hunt, eh, Martinez?” he challenges her, his fist on his waist. “They understand so little that they speak of five Joaquins.”

“Maybe that’s the only Spanish word they know,” the girl shrugs.

He laughs. “You’re right. They believe themselves superior because they don’t speak Spanish. But yet, already they speak more of it than they realize.”

The music is suddenly eclipsed by loud banging on the door. Five men burst in. The Fandango stops.

“Where’s Murietta?” one of them growls in English. “Where’s that Mess-kin dog?”

“Take care of Rosa for me,” I hear Joaquin whisper to the girl. Within the smoky dimness, he bows his head, slumps his shoulders and walks into the shadowy wall where they stand. His black serape and pants disappear.

Like a ghost.

“Tell us, or you’ll all end up in the calaboose,” the Gringo yells, sweeping the room with his drawn pistol. He utters his words thru an untrimmed tangle of black beard. His shirt is dark with sweat stains at the armpits, and his pants are filthy. His skin, however, is white.

As is the skin of the other four. Their boots are caked with dust and horse manure.

No one answers. The Californios who line the walls are as frozen as the music-less dancers, although their pistols are within reach, and their fingers are twitching. I glance at Murietta’s Fandango girl, but she is obscured by three Californios who are somehow where Murietta had been just seconds before.

The Gringos scour the Fandango hall, guns drawn. They peer into each Spanish, Peruvian, Chilean and Mexican face.

“You sons of … ” the black beard growls a partial sentence.

“Come on, hombre, ” another says, “you’re wasting your palaver on these animals.”

“Aw-w, yer right. Let’s vamoose.”

When the Gringos disappear into the night, the people of the Fandango hall glance at each other, smirk, then return to the music and dancing.

“Where’d he go?” I ask my guide.

“Let’s find out,” he walks over to the wall where Murietta had disappeared, and kneels down. “See, a tunnel,” he points to a nearly obscured opening at the bottom of the wall. “Goes under the street, to the Fandango girl’s house. Rosie Martinez’ place. Just for such occasions.”

“Clever as a fox,” I muse aloud.

“Yes. As you say, clever as a zorro.”

“We don’t have to follow him, do we?” I stare at the black hole.

“No. We can use the door.”

When we reached the door, the beer keg was gone. The rusted hinges screeched and bright sun pained my eyes. The Springtime bore down on the dusty ghost town as we walked back toward the Harley, waiting faithfully for us at the hitching post.

“So now you know who your ghost is. What do you do?”

“I don’t know. I will ask my grandmother, who led me here,” he said mounting the saddle.

“But she’s dead. How can you do that?”

The machine blasted to life. It went into gear with a “chunk.” I straddled the rear seat.

He turned to look back. “I don’t know yet. But my abuela’s trying to tell me something. And when she tells me something, I always listen. Without her, I am nothing.” He released the clutch, and the road began to flow beneath us.

When he pulled up in front of the Gold Coin, he left the motor idling.

“You coming in?” I asked.

“Nope. Gotta be on my way.”

“But … I’ve got more questions.”

“So have I,” he said, pulling away.

* * * * *

A few Saturdays later, the Fresno Freaks were in town again. But without Carrillo. Darlene looked down from the wall, bored with our conversation.

“The J-man?” the snaggle-toothed biker responded to my inquiry. “He’s not riding with us no more. He’s gone Lone Wolf. I’m thirsty again.”

His teeth, the same color as the beer I’d bought him, showed through his lips more than I wanted to watch. But I needed to know.

“Did he ever talk about his grandmother?” I asked as José delivered the fourth beer.

He held up a finger, signaling for my patience while he swallowed.

“Yep,” he answered, licking his lips. “She’s dead.”

“What else about her?”

“She’s the one what raised him. His parents disappeared somehow — he never said nothin’ about how come — and she got him out of some street gang and into fighting.”

“Fighting ?”

“Yeah. Instead of fighting on the streets, she tol’ him to take up boxing. ‘Fight with honor’ is how he says she put it to him. I seen him once go at it with some guy who was beating up his girlfriend. The J-man, don’t mess with him, I tell ya.”

“So he was a boxer.”

“For a while. Then grandma, she gets some scholarship for him, and he goes to school. He done good there. He’s a doctor. You know that? So the J-man, he’s been livin’ the good life, you know? Golf. Money. Driving a Mercedes.”

“How’d he end up riding with you guys?”

“Looks to me like the boxer in him come out again, and he needed the rush. All them fancy doctors and lawyers down there, they may have money, but they don’t know how to have fun. I’m thirsty.”

I signaled for another beer, and plopped the last of my money on the bar. “So now he doesn’t ride anymore?”

“He rides. Just not with us. Told me he was gonna ‘spread the wealth around.’ So now, on weekends, he’s busy at some podunk clinic.”

“Where?”

“Some place called Cantua Creek. Near Coalinga. He said something weird about the place. That way back in time, some fella lost his head at Cantua to cover for some dude named Walkin’ or some such.”

“Joaquin.”

“That’s it. Seems they thought this other guy was the Joaquin dude, so they killed him. That let Joaquin escape. Long time ago.”

“1853. July twenty fifth.”

His eyes opened and his index finger soared in agreement. “That sounds right! Exactly. Good for you. But you know what?”

“What?” I urged him.

“J-man, he said he owed that decapitated guy a lot, ‘cause that let Joaquin get away. J-man said this Joaquin had the same last name. So he felt he owed the people who lived there, too. Which explains the free clinic bit.”

“What do you mean, same last name?”

“You know, Korea. Like the J-man.”

“You mean, Carrillo?”

“Whatever. I’m thirsty.”

“Out of money. You ever hear from him?”

He slid from the stool to leave. “Hey!” I asserted myself without thinking. “Ever hear from him?”

He turned slowly toward me. I stepped back. A reflex.

“Last time I seen him, was in the tattoo parlor on First. Getting a tat.”

“Where was it?”

“On his knuckles. Like a fighter.”

“What’d it say?”

“‘Honor.’ That’s all. Just ‘honor .’”

Dr. Charles Mosher, M.D., M.P.H., was Mariposa’s county health officer from 1988-2014. Prior to his work at Mariposa County, Mosher served in the Peace Corps, worked for the state of Georgia and served for 11 years with the Merced County Health Department. He can be reached at author@greaterstory.com.