Uncle Titus left the day-to-day running of the business to Aunt Mathilda. He was more interested in scouting for items to sell in the yard. Estate sales, garage sales, fire sales — he attended them all, and he liked nothing better than a chance to buy an old family’s possessions. As Jupe and Pete had predicted, he jumped at the Alvaros’ offer.
“What are we waiting for?” he said, his eyes gleaming.
Minutes later, the salvage-yard truck was heading north, away from the Pacific Ocean and towards the foothills of the coastal mountains and the Alvaro ranch. Hans, one of Uncle Titus’s two big Bavarian helpers, was at the wheel, with Titus and Diego beside him. Jupiter, Pete, Bob, and Pico rode in the back of the open pick-up truck. The November afternoon was still sunny, but dark clouds were building over the mountains.
“Do you think those clouds will finally bring some rain?” asked Bob. No rain had fallen since the previous May, but the winter rains could start anytime.
Pico shrugged. “Perhaps. These are not the first clouds we have seen this fall. We could use the rain soon. The Alvaro rancho is lucky to have a reservoir, but it must be filled every year. Now the water-level is very low.”
Pico looked out at the dry brown countryside dotted with dusty green live-oaks.
“Once,” he said, “all this was Alvaro land. Up and down the coast, and far over the mountains. Over twenty thousand acres.”
“The Alvaro Hacienda.” Bob nodded. “We learned about it in school. A land grant from the King of Spain.”
“Yes,” Pico said. “Our family has been in the New World a long time. Juan Cabrillo, the first European to find California, claimed it for Spain in 1542. But Carlos Alvaro was in the Americas even before that! He was a soldier with the conquistador Hernando Cortes when he defeated the Aztec Empire and conquered southern Mexico in 1521.”
“Gosh, that was a hundred years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock!” exclaimed Pete.
“When did the Alvaros come to California?” asked Jupiter.
“Much later,” answered Pico. “The Spanish did not settle California until more than two hundred years after Cabrillo’s discovery. California was very far from the capital of New Spain in Mexico City, and fierce Indians and harsh country lay in the way. At first the Spanish could reach California only by sea.”
“They even thought California was an island, didn’t they?” said Jupe.
Pico nodded. “For a while. Then, in 1769, Captain Gaspar de Portola led an expedition north and reached San Diego by land. My ancestor Lieutenant Rodrigo Alvaro was with him. Portola went on to discover San Francisco Bay, and finally built a settlement in Monterey in 1770. On the way north, my ancestor Rodrigo saw the area that is now Rocky Beach, and he later decided to settle here. He applied to the provincial governor of California for land and was given a grant in 1784.”
“I thought the King of Spain gave him the land,” said Pete.
Pico nodded. “In a sense, he did. All the land of New Spain officially belonged to the king. But the governors of Mexico and California could make land grants on his behalf. Rodrigo received five square leagues — more than twenty-two thousand acres. Now we have only one hundred acres left.”
“What happened?” asked Bob.
“Eh?” Pico said, looking out of the truck at the land. “In a way, Pete, perhaps justice. We Spanish took the land from the Indians, and others took it from us. Over the years there were many Alvaro children, and the land was divided many times. Some was sold, some given away, some stolen by the tricks of enemies and colonial officials. It seems a small matter, there was so much land.
“After California became part of the United States in 1848, there were ownership disputes and losses for taxes. Slowly our rancho became too small to be profitable. But our family has always been proud of its Spanish-Mexican heritage — I am named for the last Mexican governor of California, Pio Pico, and a statue of the great Cortes still stands on our land — and the Alvaros refused to give up being rancheros. When they couldn’t make the rancho pay, they sold off the land to live.”
“Now Mr. Norris wants the rest!” Pete exclaimed.
“He will not get it,” Pico declared firmly. “It is poor land, and there is not enough for cattle now, but we raise some horses, grow avocado trees, and work a small vegetable farm. My father and uncle worked often in town to support the rancho. Now that they are dead, Diego and I will do as they did if we must.”
The county road that the salvage-yard truck was on had been climbing north through hilly land. Now it reached a large, open area that was fairly flat. The road curved slowly left, to the west. In the middle of the curve, a dirt road meandered off to the right.
Pico pointed up the dirt road. “That leads through the Norris Ranch.”
The Investigators could see the Norris ranch buildings in the distance, but they couldn’t make out the vehicles parked beside them. They wondered if Skinny and Cody had returned.
As the county road completed its turn to the west, it crossed a small stone bridge over a dry creek bed.
“This is Santa Inez Creek — the boundary of our land,” said Pico. “It will not have water in it until the rains come. Our dam on the creek is about a mile north of here — at the head of these ridges.”
The ridges Pico referred to began just past the creek, rising to the right of the county road. They were a series of small, steep, narrow hills that reached down like long fingers from the mountains to the north.
As the truck passed the last ridge, Pico pointed to its top. There, black against the sky, was a large statue of a man on a rearing horse. The man had one arm raised, as if beckoning an unseen army to follow him.
“The conquistador Cortes,” said Pico proudly. “The symbol of the Alvaros. Indians made the statue almost two hundred years ago. Cortes is the Alvaro hero.”
Past the last ridge, the land flattened out again and the road crossed another bridge over a deep, dry gully.
“Another dry creek?” asked Pete.
“I wish it were,” said Pico. “But it is only an arroyo. Rain water collects in it after a big storm, but it has no source of water in the mountains, as Santa Inez Creek does.”
Now the salvage-yard truck turned right, on to a dirt road with avocado trees growing alongside. Soon it turned right again, into a broad, bare yard.
“Welcome to Hacienda Alvaro,” said Pico.
As the Investigators piled out into the dust, they saw a long, low adobe hacienda with whitewashed walls, deep-set windows, and a sloping red-tiled roof. Held up by dark brown posts and beams, the roof overhung a ground-level brick veranda that ran along the front of the house. To the left was a one-storey adobe horse barn. The ground in front of it had been fenced in to form a corral. Twisted oaks grew around the corral and barn and over the hacienda. Everything looked worn and bleak under the cloudy November sky.
A short distance behind the hacienda was the dry arroyo that the truck had crossed on the main road, and beyond that the ridges loomed up. Jupiter pointed out the statue of Cortes to his uncle.
“Is it for sale?” Uncle Titus asked Pico quickly.
“No,” Pico said, “but there are many other things in the barn.”
Hans backed the truck up to the corral while the others hurried across the dusty ground and into the barn. The light was dim inside, and Pico tossed his hat on to a wooden peg so he could see better to point out the family treasures. Uncle Titus and the Investigators gaped at what they saw.
Half the long building held horse stalls and ordinary farming equipment. But the other half was a storehouse. Piled from floor to ceiling were tables, chairs, trunks, bureaux, chests, oil lamps, tools, draperies, bowls, pitchers, tubs, and even an old two-wheeled carriage! Uncle Titus was speechless at the sight of such fabulous treasure.
“The Alvaros had many houses,” Pico explained. “Now there is only the hacienda, but the furnishings of all the other houses are here.”
“I’ll buy them all right now!” Uncle Titus exclaimed.
“Look!” Bob said. “Old armour! A helmet, and a breast-plate!”
“Swords, and a saddle with silver trim!” Pete added.
The visitors started eagerly rummaging through the storehouse. But Uncle Titus had barely begun to take stock of the objects when a voice shouted outside. He raised his head. Two voices shouted now.
Everyone stopped what he was doing and listened. The voices came again — more clearly this time.
“Fire! Fire!”
Fire! Pell-mell, everyone rushed towards the door.
“We called the firemen and the forest station!” one of the two men shouted. “Hurry, get shovels and axes!”
“We must ride out!” the other yelled. “Get your horses!”
“Use our truck!” Jupiter cried.
“Yes!” Pico agreed. “Shovels and axes are in the barn!”
Big Hans ran to start the truck while everyone else grabbed tools from the barn. Diego and Uncle Titus jumped into the cab with Hans. The others swarmed into the open back, where they stood holding tightly to the sides as the truck took off. Breathlessly, Pico introduced the two men who had given the alarm.
“Our friends Leo Guerra and Porfirio Huerta. For many generations their families worked for Hacienda Alvaro. Now Leo and Porfirio have small houses up the road and work in town. But they still help us on our rancho.”
The two short, black-haired men greeted the boys politely, then looked anxiously ahead over the truck cab as Hans turned towards the mountains along the narrow dirt road through the Alvaro ranch. Their wind-creased, leathery faces were worried, and they rubbed their hands nervously on their old, patched jeans.
As the truck drove north the smoke thickened, almost blotting out the cloudy sunlight. The Investigators were dimly aware of passing a large vegetable garden with irrigation ditches, then a group of horses racing southwards in a field. At first the dirt road ran parallel to the dry arroyo and the ridges. Then, as it reached the mountains ahead, it forked. The fire was clearly up the right fork. Hans hurled the truck along the rutted road towards the spreading smoke. The road angled in towards the dry arroyo, which soon came to an abrupt end in the base of a high, rocky ridge. Just beyond this point the ridge itself ended, and then the truck was passing an old stone dam on the right. Below the dam, the dry bed of Santa Inez Creek curved away to the south-east along the far side of the ridge. Behind the dam was the reservoir — no more than a narrow pond at the foot of a low mountain. As the truck raced around the pond, flames became visible leaping up through the smoke ahead.
“Stop here!” Pico yelled from the back of the truck.
The truck screeched to a halt less than a hundred yards from the advancing fire, and everyone piled out.
“Spread out as wide as you can!” Pico ordered. “Try to dig a break in the brush. Throw dirt towards the flames. Maybe we can force the fire towards the pond! Hurry!”
The fire burned in a wide semi-circle on both sides of the creek above the dam pond. It was an eerie line of advancing black, with smoke towering and spreading above and flames leaping like half-hidden devils below. One instant there would be live grey-green brush, and the next there was only blackened ash.
“At least there’s not much wind!” Pete yelled. “Dig, guys!”
They spread out in front of the slowly advancing fire on the left side of the creek, and began to cut down small trees, clear brush, dig a shallow trench, and throw the dirt towards the fire.
“Look!” Bob pointed across the creek. “It’s Skinny and that manager, Cody!”
Across the creek Skinny, the ranch manager Cody, and a lot of other men poured out of the Norris ranch wagon and two other trucks. With axes and shovels they began to fight the fire on that side. Jupiter saw that even Mr. Norris was there, waving his arms and bawling orders.
The two groups, barely visible to each other through the smoke and flames, battled the fire alone for what seemed like hours. But judging by the height of the sun, which showed occasionally through the smoke and darkening clouds, the Investigators knew it was less than half an hour before the whole fire-fighting power of the county was there.
The men of the forest service moved in with chemical tanks and bulldozers. Sheriff’s deputies joined the Alvaro and Norris forces. Fire trucks from all the departments of Rocky Beach and the county roared through the dry brush on every side. Pumper trucks backed up to the pond and creek, and soon powerful streams of water hit the advancing fire.
The civilian trucks on both sides of the creek were commandeered to bring up waiting volunteers. The Investigators watched Hans drive off in the salvage-yard truck. Across the creek, the Norris trucks and ranch wagon raced south towards the county road.
Helicopters and old World War II bombers swooped in low over the flames and smoke, dropping tanks of water and red fire-retardant chemicals. Some of the planes made their runs over parts of the fire out of sight over the mountain. Others swept in directly over the fire fighters, drenching them.
For another hour the battle seemed hopeless. The fire burned steadily on and on. The fire fighters had to keep retreating to avoid being overcome by smoke. But the absence of wind, and the prompt action of everyone on the Alvaro and Norris ranches, slowly began to tell. The fire finally seemed to hesitate. Still burning furiously, covering the entire sky and land with heavy smoke, the fire seemed to mark time, to march in place like a stalled army.
Stalled, but not stopped! And the trucks continued to drive back and forth between the fire and the distant county road to bring up more volunteers.
“Keep working!” the fire captains shouted grimly. “It can still break loose any second!”
Ten minutes later Jupiter straightened up wearily to wipe his sweating face. He felt something hit his cheek and suddenly shouted:
“Rain! Pico! Uncle Titus! It’s raining!”
Big drops of rain fell slowly all around. The long line of fire fighters paused and stared upwards. Then the sky seemed to open, and a deluge engulfed their smoke-blackened faces. A ragged cheer went up and down the line as the fire hissed and steamed.
“Rain!” Bob exulted, his soot-streaked face turned up, as the torrential downpour went on. Thunder boomed every once in a while.
Smoke drifted everywhere, and pockets of flame continued to lick at the charred slopes, but the danger was over. The volunteers began to pack up and move out, leaving the firemen and forest service to mop up.
Blackened, wet and weary, the Alvaro forces gathered on the dirt road by the dam pond. Hans had not yet returned from his latest mission in the salvage-yard truck. The downpour began to slacken into a steady drizzle, and the late afternoon sky brightened a little.
“Come,” Pico said. “We will walk back. It is less than a mile, and we will be warmer if we keep moving.”
Tired, wet, but happy, the Investigators trooped down the road with the others. The narrow dirt road, muddy from the rain, was packed with trucks and volunteers all moving slowly south. Ahead loomed the high ridge that separated Santa Inez Creek from the dry arroyo.