Квентин Тарантино - Once Upon a Time in Hollywood - The First Novel By Quentin Tarantino

Taking the child’s hand, the vaquero Ernesto led the young girl down the main street of the town toward the Butterfield stagecoach. Since her father was the richest man in the territory, Mirabella had known every business owner in Royo del Oro since she was old enough to say anything more meaningful than “goo-goo,” resulting in a series of smiles and waves as she made her way down the business district of the town. A horse-drawn wagon piled high with wooden barrels of beer passed in front of her and the little vaquero. They stopped on the wooden walkway till the beer wagon cleared their path. Crossing the dirt street, approaching the stagecoach from behind, Mirabella prepared herself for her first glimpse of either of the two brothers she’d never known. Her father’s long-lost sons had both sent word they would soon be traveling to Lancer Ranch. However, exactly which brother was going to step off the Butterfield stagecoach was a mystery to both her and Murdock Lancer’s ranch hand Ernesto. The ranch had received a wire indicating that the son of Murdock Lancer had climbed aboard a Butterfield stagecoach leaving Tucson, Arizona, two days ago and, minus any hardships, should be arriving in Royo del Oro around twelve this afternoon. Not included in the wire was which son exactly was arriving.

Unlike a train, a stagecoach arriving three hours later than scheduled was practically on time. So it was three o’clock in the afternoon when the Butterfield stagecoach stopped in front of the Hotel Lancaster. Mirabella and Ernesto stood in the street, waiting for the stagecoach door to open and see which of her brothers would emerge.

Both brothers were born on the Lancer Ranch, but neither had met the other. And neither had seen their cattle-ranching father since they were small children. Like Mirabella, both of Murdock Lancer’s sons were the product of different deceased mothers.

Scott Foster Lancer, who was raised by his mother’s (Diane Foster Lancer Axelrod) wealthy family in Boston, was a Harvard graduate and an ex-military man, having ridden with the British Cavalry in India (the Bengal Lancers).

Murdock’s other son, Johnny Lancer, was raised in Mexico by his mother, Marta Conchita Louisa Galvadon Lancer. Marta had no family in Mexico, wealthy or otherwise. The only money Marta made was made dancing and fucking and playing castanets in a series of cantinas throughout half the cutthroat hamlets south of the border. Johnny’s whole childhood, he thought sex was something men paid women to do, like dance and sing, cook food, or wash their clothes.

Scott’s mother, Diane, retreated to her Beacon Hill family back east when it became apparent that life on a cattle ranch surrounded by horseshit, cowshit, cowboys, and Mexicans was not for her or her baby boy. Scott was three years old when he boarded the Royo del Oro stage out of town.

Johnny was younger than Scott, but older when he left the Lancer Ranch. He lived with his father and his mother at the ranch until he was ten. Then one dark rainy night, with her ten-year-old son in tow, Marta climbed aboard a fancy buggy that Murdock had purchased her for her birthday and rode it sixty miles across the border into Mexico. And that was the last time little John ever saw Murdock Lancer, the sprawling Lancer Ranch, the opulent Lancer Ranch house, and the town of Royo del Oro. Johnny went from being the son of the wealthiest man in the valley, being taught his school learning by a private tutor, eating the best Black Angus on china plates prepared by a French chef, and sleeping on a feather bed, to being the son of a Mexican whore, who existed on beans and hardtack served on clay plates, who drank cactus juice the way he used to drink milk, who ate jerky the way he used to eat peppermint sticks, who was taught dirty jokes by motherfuckers, slept on sacks of coffee beans in the back of cantinas, and learned how to defend himself against both rat attacks and molestation-minded prairie scum in the middle of the night. Until, in one of those cutthroat hamlets, a wealthy dissatisfied customer from Mexico City cut Marta’s throat. Johnny was twelve years old when he dug the hole in the hard-packed dirt that he buried his mother in. The rich man stood trial for the murder of his mother and was acquitted by a biased jury. Two years later, Johnny killed the man who murdered his mother. And even though it took him a decade, he eventually killed every member of that crooked jury as well.

Johnny never knew why his mother spirited him off in the middle of that wet night, but he could guess. He guessed Murdock Lancer got tired of playing house with a Mexican chili pepper and her half-greaser son. So one night he told her to vamos!

Johnny knew if he ever went back to the Lancer Ranch, he’d blow his father’s fucking head off for throwing him and his mother out in the rain. But he also knew Murdock Lancer was a very important white American. And if he shot his father, Johnny Lancer would eventually hang by the neck for it. Luckily, Murdock wasn’t going anywhere. It’s one of the few drawbacks to being a wealthy landowner. Anyone who wants you can find you. Johnny put his mother in the ground, and one day he’d do the same for his father. And if the cost of avenging his mother was to be the forfeiture of his life, so be it. Still, Johnny was in no hurry to forfeit his life. That rich bastard would wait. In the meantime, there was gold to be stolen, pussy to be laid, and tequila to be guzzled. So imagine Johnny’s surprise when a telegram showed up at the Hotel Felix, a contact place where he received job offers, usually of the nefarious type.

IN CARE OF JOHN LANCER—STOP—JOB OFFER—STOP—TRAVEL TO LANCER RANCH OUTSIDE OF ROYO DEL ORO CALIFORNIA—STOP—PAY ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS UPON ARRIVAL—STOP—PAYMENT FOR CONSIDERATION OF JOB OFFER—STOP—NO OBLIGATION—STOP—MURDOCK LANCER

Along with the telegram was a wire for fifty dollars to pay for the passage to Royo del Oro. Fuck me swinging , thought Johnny. But the real lure wasn’t the offer of a thousand dollars. It was the opportunity, after all these years, to look in the face of Murdock Lancer—the man who made a money-grubbing whore out of his mother—and blow his brains out of the back of his skull.

Mirabella Lancer caught her breath as the Butterfield stagecoach door finally opened and out stepped a fancy black-and-white spat shoe onto the footwell. Her eyes widened as a very handsome blond-haired man emerged from the passenger coach, dressed in the fanciest bluest clothes she’d ever seen on a man. Having been raised on a cattle ranch, she was used to the attire of men who worked for a living. Even when the businessmen in town got dressed up to go to church or the ranch hands slicked their hair back and put on their Sunday-go-to-meeting duds to attend a dance in town, their fancy clothes were charcoal black, dull gray, or drab brown. This blond-haired Eastern dandy’s three-piece suit was bright baby blue with gold thread woven into his vest. As he disembarked from the Butterfield stagecoach, he placed a large same-colored top hat on his head. The base of the hat was circled by a cream-colored silk sash. The striking stranger walked with a limp in his left leg, leaning on a silver dog-headed cane. But despite this impediment, or maybe because of it, he moved with impeccable posture and grace. The blue Bostonian removed a brush from his inside jacket pocket and began slowly and meticulously brushing the dust from his baby-blue lapels and cuffs and shoulders.

Color Mirabella impressed. With a quick glance up to Ernesto, her pleased expression said, That’s my brother Scott .

Just as the little girl swallowed her spit and opened her mouth to greet her long-lost relative, another passenger emerged from the stagecoach.