Scent of Tears

In Old Monterey a famous outlaw begins his career. A skinny half-breed orphan falls irrevocably in love and a beautiful, willful girl becomes a woman.

All of these events are set against the back drop of a radically changing California, where the native Indians are wiped out by disease and the mission system rises, fails and is replaced by secular ownership of the huge ranchos. Then gold is discovered in the Alto Sierra and things are never the same.

In 1854, Tiburcio Vasquez is involved in the murder of a Monterey constable. He hides in the estancia of Don Topo, a wealthy ranch owner, and meets Charlie Horn, the orphan son of a sea captain.

During the years that Charlie grows into manhood, he is haunted by the presence of Don Topo’s daughter Lucinda, a vibrant, proud girl with a thirst for life and a dangerous lack of fear. This predilection to brush up against danger leads Lucinda to have an affair with the outlaw, Tiburcio Vasquez. This union results in a child. Don Topo insists Charlie marry Lucinda to prevent a scandal, thereby forcing Charlie to enter into a lifelong relationship with a woman he fears, idolizes and is tortured by.

After driving four hundred head of cattle to Oregon for Don Topo, Lucinda and Charlie finally come together on a ship voyage back to Monterey.

Ending their idyllic time is Tiburcio, who has escaped from San Quentin and is once more hiding in the Topo Adobe. Charlie helps Tiburcio evade a posse and leave Monterey, then leaves for Oregon. Don Topo sends for Charlie to become a cattle buyer in San Francisco, which Charlie does. All is well until Charlie comes home early and finds Procopio Bustamonte, another famous California Bandit in his living room.

He leaves Lucinda for a decade until he returns to Monterey to attend the funeral of Don Topo. At that time, he and Tiburcio work with Lucinda to save the Topo estate from a crooked land speculator.

The last time Charlie sees Tiburcio is when he visits him in the San Jose jail days before Tiburcio is hung. At the jail, Charlie runs into Lucinda and finds her son has been kicked to death by a mule. Lucinda talks Charlie into traveling to the Owens Valley, east of Los Angeles to start a new life.

The trilogy, Scent of Tears, Wolves in the Shadows and Five Seconds Too Long, chronicle the explosive, exciting life of the couple as they make their way in the ever changing world of the Alto Sierra in the 1800s.