by John Babb
“Suelean Jastro.”
“Suelean, will you promise to come tell me if your pa tries to do this again?”
She looked away. “I cain’t say. I ain’t got no other place to go.”
“You come tell me, and we’ll figure something out.” She wouldn’t look at him again.
At the end of the next day, when the girl and her mother were gone, and the barbershop had finally emptied, Doc sought out B. F. “So you’ll understand what happened yesterday—that little boy was what they call a ‘blue baby.’ It’s what happens when the baby can’t get any air—usually when the cord is in a knot or wound around the neck like it was. If the baby goes without air long enough, it dies. But sometimes they live—and believe it or not, that can be worse than dying. If their brain doesn’t get enough air, they usually turn into a half-wit, or something even worse.”
“As purple as that baby was, it would’ve had terrible problems if it had lived. What I did was to make sure that didn’t happen. Those blue babies only come along every great once in a while—but just often enough for me to hate delivering babies. I’m sure sorry you had to see that.”
B. F. kept his head lowered so his eyes wouldn’t give him away. “I understand, Doc.”
But he continued to dream about the little blue baby boy for months. By the summer of 1859, his barbering business was much reduced due to miners gradually leaving the area around Columbia and heading to new strikes in British Columbia—places like Wild Horse Creek, Fort Colville, the Silkmeen, the Bridge River fields, and Cayoosh Canyon. B. F. realized he had to move on, and he began to think about where he might go. Although they had never had a final discussion on the matter, Doc had sensed that he didn’t want to talk about going away to medical school, so the subject was no longer mentioned.
It was just as well. B. F.’s heart wasn’t in it anymore. He didn’t blame Doc Butterfield for his disenchantment. In fact, he couldn’t have come up with a solid reason why he no longer had any desire to go—but it seemed like almost as many people didn’t get any better as those that did. Lots of men died under his care, yet Doc really had no idea why in many cases. It’s not that he thought Doc was incompetent—after all, he was highly educated—but rather that so much was unknown, even to doctors. If that was what doctoring was about, he didn’t want sole responsibility for so much pain and suffering.
B. F. put his wagon back together, retrieved the gold he had earned in Columbia from the flooring of the barbershop, and hid it under the back section of his old wagon bed. When he told Doc Butterfield what he was about to do, the Doc was first argumentative, then angry, then hurt. He tried to appeal to B. F. to “do the right thing,” but the town of Columbia was collapsing about them as miner after miner departed for greener pastures.
Thirty-One
Miss Grace Bodfish
San Francisco 1860
When he arrived in San Francisco, B. F. dismantled his wagon safe and deposited $11,000 in each of three banks. One of them stood right beside the new United States Mint and another was directly across the street. All three that he selected were constructed of substantial limestone or brick. He figured the more reliable the structure, surely the more reliable the bank would be.
B. F. couldn’t help but wonder if he would see Mary Fitzwater in the city. It had been almost six years since they went their separate ways in Placerville, but it was altogether possible that she was still in San Francisco. He asked the head teller about her at each of the three banks, but no one had any information at all.
He had no idea what he might say to her, even if he did see her, but their relationship was one of those unresolved issues that had frequently entered his thoughts these past years. So he decided to place an advertisement in the only newspaper in the city, the Daily Alta California, every day for a week, asking that Mary Fitzwater contact him at her earliest convenience at his residence at Hillman’s Temperance House on Davis Street.
He spent the week in torment, struggling with what he could say to her.
At the end of the week, he had to face the obvious conclusion that she was either no longer in the city or she had no desire to see him. All he had managed to do with his efforts was refresh painful memories and keep himself awake at night.
B. F. decided to continue barbering in the city while he thought about his future without much enthusiasm. The town was awash in potential customers, even though much of the mad dash to California’s gold fields was over. By 1860, the city had established itself as the center of commerce on the Pacific Coast of the United States.
Many gambling houses had disappeared from San Francisco, and the city fathers were actively engaged in an attempt to establish a new, improved reputation. The Jenny Lind Theater near Portsmouth Square was no more, having been sold and turned into San Francisco’s City Hall. Even the El Dorado Saloon on the Plaza had been recently converted to the Hall of Records, while retail stores and churches were also springing up in the immediate area.
Even the infamous sign at Clay and Kearney streets that read “This Road is Impassable. Not Even Jackassable” was no longer necessary. The mud and manure-filled streets had been replaced by fine plank roadways, and there was considerable discussion about even covering the downtown area streets with paved bricks.
There were sixty hotels in the city now, with most trying to give the impression that they embraced a less wild and woolly environment. At least some of this refinement was because of the presence of Miss Emma and Miss Grace Bodfish, the young and attractive leaders of the Ladies Protection and Relief Society.
It was a rare male indeed who was not impressed by the Misses Bodfish. They had come to San Francisco from Boston to be with their father, Cyrus Bodfish, a local land baron, after the death of their mother in 1859. When they became aware of the raucous and wild nature of their new home, Emma, at eighteen, and Grace, just two years older, had thrown themselves into the effort to bring some measure of culture to the city. Men who had an appetite for a wilder lifestyle found it almost impossible to argue their case when faced with the combined beauty, wit, and refinement of the Bodfish sisters. Almost every single man and no small number of happily married men in the city were smitten.
However, the sisters were seen about town in the evenings with a number of young men who, some would say, were not exactly paragons of virtue. In fact, their escorts were generally those who had been commonly seen at gaming tables or in saloons and bawdy houses. When asked about their choice of gentlemen friends, the sisters explained that they considered it their duty to bring sinners into the fold. As Emma explained, “These boys are all a challenge to Sissy and me. It’s no fun at all to be around gentlemen who don’t possess great weaknesses for temptation. After all, if these rowdies were just goody-goody boys, we’d be bored to death. But as it is, each one of them is a project worthy of our skills to reform them into fine, upstanding citizens.”
In due time, Miss Grace Bodfish came to the attention of B. F., who was aware of the sisters’ daytime work to bring culture to the city. He reasoned that they might have interests in common—beyond the fact that she was a very attractive young woman—so he found himself escorting her to Tom Maguire’s Opera House on Washington Street one evening, followed by dinner at the View of the Bay restaurant on Market Street.
He told her that he admired the efforts of Grace and her sister to improve the city. He was surprised by her questions about his thirst for strong drink, gambling, and loose women, but felt he had surely passed some sort of test when he told her he approved of neither gambling nor debauchery, and only drank on rare occasions. However, he suspected that somehow he had erred in his conversation, as she almost immediately became cool and disinterested in what he had to say.
In fact, the evening would undoubtedly have ended very quickly had he not mentioned his previous life in Hangtown. Grace quickly reacted to this, asking if he had ever witnessed a killing “in the old days.” He replied that it was fairly common in the early days of the gold
rush, and impossible to avoid.
He noticed that her sky-blue eyes, for the first time that evening, had a burning light in them. “What about you, Mister Windes, have you ever. . . .” She paused to consider that she had never asked the question of an escort before, and shivered slightly. “Have you ever killed anyone?”
“I don’t talk about those days.”
She visibly licked her lips. “But you must, Mister Windes, you must. It’s good for the soul.”
“For the good of my soul, I’ve spent the last six years trying to forget those days, Miss Bodfish.”
She put her hand on his arm and gave him a reassuring smile. “You can confide in me, Mister Windes. You can trust me to keep your secrets.” He realized he’d been staring at the candles on their table a bit too long, and shifted in his chair. He became conscious of her hand lightly rubbing the back of his own. “Every man needs to get these things off his chest, Mister Windes.”
“Maybe someday I’ll do that, Miss Bodfish.”
She found a way to remove her hand without being too obvious. “I’ve had a lovely evening.”
Journal Entry—July 10, 1860
I must be one of several thousand residents of this city who live in a hotel. Lots of people are waiting on homes to be built in the neighborhoods like Happy Valley, Pleasant Valley, and Spring Valley that all seem to be located away from the center of the city. It’s like they want to get as far away from the city as they can, and still live in the city.
Mr. Cyrus Bodfish is a land speculator, and he, along with quite a few cronies, keep advertising in the newspaper about selling lots out away from town. Sometimes those building lots change hands four or five times in the course of a year. I thought about getting in on these deals, but I can’t see a good reason why a property of eighty feet in width, standing out on the sand hills towards Washwoman’s Lake, and a good buggy ride from town, could be worth a hundred dollars in January and two thousand dollars now in July. It’s tempting, but surely everybody is going to soon see the folly in this, and prices will drop just as rapidly as they’ve risen.
I guess I miss working in a gold rush town—the wild characters, the constant barrage of stories, the excitement of a new strike, and the friendships you see when men have to keep on surviving in rough circumstances—that just can’t be found in this newly respectable San Francisco. I have no call to complain. I make a passable living, but I’ve just got no real enthusiasm to be here.
As B. F. neared twenty years old, he had grown to five feet, ten inches in height. Some would say he was a bit stocky, in that he weighed almost 180 pounds, but he was well proportioned. He wore a short, black beard and was generally well turned out in his dress. Most of those who knew him would describe him as a merchant of limited means—friendly enough—but mostly quiet and reserved. He had acquaintances that were customers and fellow store owners but no real friends. In his own mind, he felt as though he was waiting on something to happen—to him, and to the country.
The newspapers were full of threats from the southern states regarding the impending inauguration of Abraham Lincoln. They would revolt, secede, start a revolution, walk out of the Congress, start an alliance with France or England—take your pick. Some laughed about these possibilities. However, B. F. believed there was substance behind the talk. He had heard men say these same things for several years now, and he had come to the conclusion that all it would take would be one state—one spark—to start a real fight.
For almost twelve years he had listened to men talk about states’ rights, slavery, secession, slave states, free states, revolution, and every conceivable point in between. He’d heard men who he liked and respected on both sides of each issue. And as time pressed on, he felt that one side was right some of the time, while the other was right some of the time, and then there were several complex problems that neither northerner or southerner could satisfactorily explain and resolve, as far as he was concerned.
The news from the east seemed to get more threatening as the inauguration approached, and he became convinced that there would be war. He had seen enough men killed over the last twelve years to recognize that he had no desire to kill—or be killed—for either side, particularly when the “enemy” was just another American boy who happened to have been born on the other side of the Mason–Dixon Line.
His solution came in discussion with one of his regular customers. Nicholas Helms had been a ship’s captain during the early years of the gold rush, ferrying passengers from New Orleans, around the tip of South America, and north to San Francisco. He had made six round trips from 1849 through 1854, then sold his ship in order to purchase a hotel in the city. Although the man was difficult to read, B. F. put his age at around sixty; but he had such a full, grey beard that the most telltale signs of age were hidden from view.
Captain Helms, as he liked to be called, believed the coming war would be won by the side that controlled the sea. The northern states obviously had more ships, as well as the shipyards in which to build more. The southern states could only succeed if they were able to convince a European seapower like England or France to come to their aide. Failing that, their only hope would be to pay privately owned ships to supply them. And if they were truly lucky, the South would be successful at pursuing both strategies.
“If it was ten years ago, I’d make another fortune on this war. The southern states got mighty little manufacturing capacity, and they’re gonna need everything shipped to them. I’d bring in everything under the sun, and they’d pay dear for it. A ship would have to be fast. I’d set up a base somewhere in the Caribbean so I could get what they needed from Europe, then sneak it into a southern port. Ah, it sounds exciting just talking about it.”
Although he didn’t say so, B. F. had to agree. It was as though his sole purpose in life had become to simply go to and from work every day. His existence in San Francisco held no appeal for him, and he certainly had no ties to keep him there. A strategy to get involved in shipping could mean he would not be part of either side’s army. And compared to his current situation of fifty cents a haircut, there might be some real money to be made.
He used the occasion to write two letters—one to Abbie Finnerty and one to his Cousin Sue. He told them where he’d been, a little bit of what he had done, that he had never been able to find his pa, and that he was leaving San Francisco, headed for South America. He took the two letters to the Pony Express office on Market Street, which had begun transcontinental mail service in April of 1860, and paid five dollars apiece to post them to Jeffersonville, Indiana.
Over the entire history of the California Gold Rush, few men left the gold fields with $35,000 in hand, let alone anyone earning that money between the ages of eight and twenty, but B. F. Windes was an altogether unusual man.
Thirty-Two
The Chagres River
Panama 1861
Even counting his two days of seasickness, the steamship voyage from San Francisco to Panama was a fine way to travel. B. F. reflected on the fifteen miles a day pace of a team of oxen, and the average of 150 miles per day on the ship. No breathing dust all day. No carrying buffalo turds. No clouds of mosquitoes. No endless diet of bacon. No rivers to cross. Instead, he was able to eat in the dining room and sleep on a mattress—of sorts.
The twelfth day out of San Francisco, they made landfall at Panama City, Panama. The place was a hubbub of activity due to the Panama Railroad. After completion of the line in 1855, at least 60 percent of American commerce back and forth from east to west traveled through Panama City. That the urgency of heading west was far greater than that to head east was reflected in the price of a railroad ticket. The price from Colón to Panama City on the west coast was twenty-five dollars for first class and ten dollars for second class, but heading east from Panama City to Colón was fifteen dollars and seven dollars respectively.
Journal Entry—January 10, 1861
I remember well Doc Butterfield’s warnings about the strange tropical di
seases here in Panama, and frankly I have no desire to spend any more time than absolutely necessary in this country. After leaving the ship, I went straightaway to the train station and purchased a ticket for an early afternoon departure.
I write this as the train pulls out of the station, and I can’t keep from staring at the sights. Commerce is everywhere, and every conceivable mode of transport, in addition to the train, is being used in the city—steamships, barges, canoes, sailboats of all types, carts, wagons, pack mules, drey wagons, hand carts, even balancing fantastic loads on one’s head—all are here in endless sizes and descriptions.
Out of the city the train began a long, slow climb to the highest point in the journey—the 300 foot high cordillera separating the Pacific and Atlantic drainage systems. As we reached the peak of the elevation, it wasn’t hard to compare the difference between this paltry nubbin of a hill, and the Continental Divide I traveled across via wagon train. I caught myself laughing out loud at the comparison.
A light-skinned Negro man with mild features—undoubtedly a mulatto, he realized—sat down beside B. F. “You are thinking it is not much of a railroad, yes?”
“Well, not exactly, but not too far off.”
“My name is Galileo Baldonero. My brother worked on this railroad for a while.”
“I’m B. F. Windes. So tell me about this railroad. What was your brother’s job here?”
“He buried the dead.”
“Was that a full time job?”
“Señor, it was a full time job for four men.”
“How many people died?”
“Some say there is a dead man for every railroad tie between Colón and Panama City. But that is nonsense. There are seventy-four thousand ties over the forty-seven miles of the Panama Railroad. Probably a better figure is between twelve thousand and fifteen thousand dead. But the true number, Señor, will never be known.”