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Updated: June 24, 2025
The man was Alec McTurpin; the girl, no doubt, some light o' love from a neighboring pueblo. Yet there was a disturbing familiarity about her. Spear watched them go across the square toward the City Hotel, a long, one-story adobe structure built by Leidesdorff as a store and home.
Didn't they take the San Antonio ranch in Oakland, defend it with cannon, and put old Peralta in jail for bothering them with his claims of ownership?" He laughed. "It's a rare joke, this land business. If we squat on the Rincon, who'll dispossess us? Answer me that." "But it's government ground. It's leased to Ted Shillaber," one objected. "To the devil with Shillaber," McTurpin answered.
Robert and Benito Windham, on the hill above Clark's Point, looked down toward the beach, where a crowd was gathering for the auction of tidewater lots. The Windhams, since their dispossession by McTurpin, had been guests of hospitable Juana Briones. Through the Alcalde's order they had secured their personal effects. But the former gambler still held right and title to the Windham acres.
"McTurpin!" he spoke incredulously. "What's left of me," the tone was hollow, grim. "Please sit down here, close to me.... I've something to tell you.... Something that will " He sank back weakly, but his eyes implored. Benito took a seat beside the bunk. For a moment he thought the man was dead. He lay so limp, so silent! Then McTurpin whispered. "Bend closer.
"Let these gringos fight it out together. This McTurpin is an Inglese, I am told, from their far colony across the sea. If the Americanos triumph take your claim to them. If not, God save you, my senora. I cannot." Don Guillermo Richardson, the former harbormaster, came up the hill as Dona Anita emerged from the Alcalde's office.
But his horse had succumbed to the rigors of that frantic ride in pursuit of Alice and McTurpin several months ago. Mounts were a luxury now.
"She lies," said McTurpin, venomously, but the words were scarcely out of his mouth before the stranger's fist drove them back. McTurpin staggered. "Damn you!" he shouted, "I teach you to meddle between a man and his woman." Inez saw something gleam in his hand as the two men sprang upon each other. She heard another blow, a groan. Screaming, she fled uphill toward the custom house.
"He protected me," she said. "It was while defending me that he was wounded." Her eyes searched the physician's face. "Where," she questioned fearfully, "is " "McTurpin?" returned the doctor. "Lord knows. He vamoosed, absquatulated. You'll hear no more of him, I think, Miss Windham."
Aleck McTurpin, tired but exhilarated, rode toward the Windham rancho on the morning after Leidesdorff's ball. He had made a night of it and he was in high fettle. The Senorita Windham had granted him a dance despite her brother's scowling disapproval. Out of the charm of that brief association there had come into the gambler's mind a daring plan.
"A side bet with our friend, the Senor Windham." He shoved the money toward the center of the table, slightly apart from the rest. Benito waveringly picked up the pen. It shook in his unsteady fingers. "Wait," Potts pleaded. But the young man brooked no intervention. With a flourish he affixed his signature. McTurpin picked up the pen as Benito dropped it.
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