A Race to Splendor
Page 8
“It took awhile to find you after we pulled up. I’m Dr. Angus McClure.”
Amelia clung tighter to the physician’s arm as he waved the bottle under her nose a second time, soothed somewhat by his Scottish accent that reminded her of her grandfather’s burr.
“The old woman next door shot a pistol at me when I offered to help her.”
“The veneer of civilization gets mighty thin when disasters strike,” he said.
“Why was that old crone shooting?” wheezed J.D. from the passenger seat.
Amelia was startled to hear his voice, for in the hours she dozed fitfully next to her father in the ruins of J.D.’s gambling club, she came to the conclusion that, like Kemp, he’d save his own skin.
“When I first found your lady friend, J.D., I saw that the old woman next door and her Chinese houseboy were burying a trunk,” McClure reported. “Must’ve had something in it she considered valuable.”
Amelia shook her head, her eyes still watering from the contents of McClure’s vial. “No. The woman was very upset because her dog was killed in the quake. Her houseboy was about to put the poor beast in the trunk for burial. When I urged them to escape the fire and come with me, she grew hysterical, pointed her pistol, and shot right at me.”
“And how are you feeling now?” the doctor asked.
“Better.” She sat up abruptly. “My father! Oh, thank God you’re here!”
“I’m here because this maniac forced me to come,” McClure said, meaning J.D. “I told him to stay put, but he wouldna lie on his cot.”
Amelia rose unsteadily to her feet, peered across the open-air motorcar, and judged her rescuer in worse shape than before. “Thank you for returning,” she said, “but anyone who stays here much longer will be burned alive.” She pointed down the street at flames marching up the hillside. “My father’s in the back annex with rubble everywhere. I have no idea how we’re going to move him.”
“J.D., you stay right where you are,” ordered Dr. McClure, “and don’t budge, or you’ll make matters worse.” He groped in the backseat for two poles rolled in a length of canvas—an army stretcher, guessed Amelia. “If you’re feeling up to it, come with me,” ordered McClure. “We’ll try to recruit some of these hotel guests to help us.” He leaned forward and peered closely at her forehead. “Those cuts have scabbed over but they look nasty, miss. I’ll attend to them once we see what we can do about your father.”
McClure collared two men wandering dazedly down the deserted street and ordered them “under martial law,” he barked, to assist in the removal of Amelia’s father from the debris.
Henry Bradshaw’s eyes were closed when they found him, his dress woolen trousers covered with a new layer of rubble from the recent aftershock.
The doctor pulled a smaller mirror out of his pocket and held it within an inch of the injured man’s lip.
“Barely breathing,” he muttered. He glanced at Amelia. “He won’t last the night, you know. He’ll be taking a place in that car out there that might better be—”
“Take him or leave me!” Amelia cried, her voice rising shrilly.
McClure hesitated for an instant, and then ordered the two men he’d commandeered on the street to put Henry Bradshaw on the stretcher and removed him to the backseat of the Winton.
Meanwhile, Thayer lifted his head from the passenger seat’s backrest and said in a weak voice, “Look… the fire.” Amelia spotted Barbary curled up on the Winton’s floor.
The others turned to gaze at flames that were now consuming the shanties and lean-tos and collapsed brick hovels along the waterfront and racing uphill toward them, burning large sections of Chinatown to the ground in the process.
“Oh my God!” Amelia cried, pointing south. “The Fairmont!”
The beautiful beaux-arts hotel that had survived the quake admirably and was three days away from opening its doors to the public was about to be enveloped by flames advancing in a wall of orange and black. Even where buildings still remained, the heat had grown more intense and Amelia and the others began coughing convulsively as the smoke began to fill the air near them.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” McClure said. “Climb onto the running board, lassie, and hold on tight.”
He vaulted into the driver’s seat as J.D. suddenly struggled to sit up. “My safe! I just thought of it, Angus! The property deeds… some gold… everything I have—”
The doctor glanced over his shoulder. Behind him, the growing conflagration had devoured upper Chinatown, just below where their motorcar stood on Taylor Street. Another explosion rattled the windows of the Bay View and showered the sidewalk with glass shards.
“Sorry, laddie. There’s no time. The tires on this automobile will be exploding in a moment. We’re going!”
Amelia turned to Thayer. “About an hour after you left, an aftershock dumped tons of debris on top of the safe behind the stairwell. You’d never get near it now.” She felt sorry for the man but was relieved there would be no more delays in getting her father to the field hospital McClure said had been set up at the Army Presidio.
As the Winton pulled away from the roadside, Amelia detected that Henry Bradshaw’s chest was moving, but his battered face looked like a death mask. She squinted at a sky turning peach and black as smoke surged skyward in huge funnels. Dante’s Inferno and the end of the world, all rolled into one, she thought, picturing fire engulfing the Bay View and the spanking new Fairmont Hotel in the next hours. She was grateful Grandfather Hunter wasn’t alive to witness such devastation.
What did it matter what was in the safe or who had won the blasted card game the previous night? After today, the only future that seemed clear for the entire populace of San Francisco—J.D. Thayer and herself included—was a choice between misery and destitution… or death.
***
Angus McClure piloted the Winton toward the U.S. Army’s base at the Presidio as the conflagration raged in their dusty wake. Along the road, Amelia saw humans transformed into draft animals, men as well as women pushing baby carriages, wagons, box carts, and even wheeled toys in a desperate effort to move possessions to safety. One wild-eyed man wheeled an upright piano through the chaos.
The Winton slowed to a snail’s pace when it approached a group of fifty or so Chinese women struggling along Van Ness Avenue in two columns. Amelia could hear high-pitched chatter among the throng clad in colorful silk and cotton dresses, carrying their worldly goods in fat bundles balanced on the ends of broom handles.
“Good God, J.D.!” Angus exclaimed. “There’s Donaldina Cameron! She’s even got the children marching.”
The Winton drew up beside a tall, imposing woman with rust-colored hair akin to Dr. McClure’s. This was the famous, perhaps notorious, Miss Cameron, noted for scaling walls and climbing down skylights in Chinatown in her ongoing effort to rescue victims of the “highbinders” who kidnapped women in China to serve as unpaid domestics—or worse—in San Francisco. The noted young woman wore somber attire and hair piled neatly on top of her head. A distinctive streak of premature white waved at the crown of her forehead—like angel’s wings, Amelia thought.
“Those are the residents of the Presbyterian Mission Home, on Sacramento Street,” McClure called to Amelia as she clutched the rear passenger door in order to steady herself on the motorcar’s running board.
“I know of Miss Cameron’s efforts,” Amelia shouted against the wind. “She tries to help girls like the one killed in the gambling club.”
Thayer suddenly returned to life. “No. Not like her. Ling Lee was no willing—”
“Ling Lee was an unusual woman,” Angus volunteered over his shoulder. “She was one of the lucky few who escaped from China Alley and was brought to the Mission Home. If it hadn’t been for Donaldina, Ling Lee would have died long before the earthquake got her.” He watched his patient struggle to sit up. “And you, J.D.,” he added ominously, “you’d better not move a muscle if you don’t want to puncture a lung.�
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As they slowly passed by, Miss Cameron raised a hand high to halt her group and strode toward the car. McClure pulled over and waited.
“My dear Angus! And Mr. Thayer! What a blessing it is to see you both alive.” Her beatific smile abruptly faded when she got a closer look at Thayer and heard the low cries of the older man sprawled on the backseat. “Can I do anything to help? We’ve carried some medical supplies with us and will gladly share.”
“That’s kind of you, Donaldina, but you should hoard every bandage you have. You’re going to need them.” McClure introduced Amelia and identified her father as the most gravely injured. Then he asked, “What happened to the Mission Home?”
“The brigades started dynamiting firebreaks. The soldiers ordered us to leave so I thought it best if we moved the women in broad daylight. The highbinders are vigilant about their ‘property,’” she added, referring to Chinatown’s brothel owners and procurers. “They’d snatch their girls back in a heartbeat if they could—never mind the quake and fire. We’ll spend the night at the Presbyterian Church on Van Ness Street.”
Thayer shifted in his seat and dug in his pockets, gasping in pain in the process. He extended her a gold piece. “Please take this. To help the children—and little Wing Lee.”
Miss Cameron smiled faintly, nodded, and retrieved the coin. “Bless you, Mr. Thayer.” Her regal bearing softened and she regarded him kindly. “And Ling Lee?”
Amelia watched as J.D. Thayer bowed his head and did not reply.
Angus cast a concerned glance in Thayer’s direction. “She died in the quake,” he explained cryptically. “Killed instantly, she was, when a ceiling caved in on her.”
Miss Cameron put a sympathetic hand on Thayer’s sleeve. “I am truly sorry to hear that. It’s a tragic time for so many in our town.” To Angus she said, “God bless.”
And with that, she glided to the head of her “troops” and motioned for them to continue their march. By this time, Thayer had closed his eyes and appeared to lapse into semi-consciousness.
As for Henry Bradshaw, Amelia couldn’t tell if her father was dead or alive.
Chapter 8
It was late afternoon before the Winton reached the Presidio’s Lombard Gate, inching past a quake-torn crevice paralleling the crowded escape route. Once on the grounds of the army base, Amelia saw a wide field on her right already filled with rows of round, white army tents. The canvas structures were topped with conical roofs that made the encampment look like a scene out of the Arabian Nights. Sloping to the water’s edge, the area offered a spectacular view of the bay, even as smoke from the scores of fires downtown cast a pall over the local surroundings.
The doctor drove the group directly to a large tent off to one side that had a placard reading MALE AMBULATORY. A group of uniformed orderlies greeted them as the car rolled to a stop in front of the open canvas flap.
“Easy, men… this fellow is definitely not ambulatory,” Angus said with a physician’s sense of black humor. “In fact, he’s unconscious and probably broke his back, and this one,” he added, referring to J.D., “is awake and nothing but trouble. He has a couple of broken ribs. Don’t make ’em any worse if you can help it.”
To Thayer he said, “Lie still on your cot in there, and don’t do anything but drink water till I come back to see you. I’ll look after your dog.” The second set of orderlies eased Henry Bradshaw out of the car and onto a stretcher. “Take him to Ward H and start giving him laudanum. A large dose.”
Before Amelia could protest, her father was swiftly borne away. J.D. lifted his head from his stretcher and rasped, “Don’t crash my car, damn you, McClure.”
“Aye, laddie,” the doctor replied. “And what can you do about it if I do?”
***
Henry Bradshaw had been assigned to a tent for those who survived the quake and fire, but for whom little could be done.
“Every ward in the hospital is already full, and we’re starting to put even critical cases in some of the tents,” announced Angus McClure to Amelia as they walked from sunlight into the dim interior. “Your father is housed here in Ward H on the far side of the parade ground.”
“Next to the military cemetery,” Amelia noted, squinting at the bright white tombstones visible through the open flaps of the tent.
“Aye, lassie,” McClure answered soberly. “Now anyone can be buried at the Presidio.”
It was only later, when Amelia was pressed into service as a “volunteer” nurse that she learned Ward H stood for “hopeless.” On the day of the quake and fire, however, her spirits had already sunk to a new low when she realized that her father had been given so much laudanum for the pain that he had consequently taken up residence in the land of the living dead.
“He has broken his back in at least two places,” McClure confided as she stood dejectedly next to her father’s bedside. “Nasty business, I’m afraid.”
“So he will be an invalid? In a wheeled chair?” Amelia asked.
“With the bad weather rolling in and the primitive conditions around here, pneumonia’s a real danger. I’m afraid you should prepare yourself for the worst.”
McClure gently took her arm and drew her away from her father’s bedside to have a private word. “You’re welcome to sit by his side for a bit, and then ask someone to find me so I can stitch up those cuts on your forehead. After that, report to the nurses’ tent and they’ll give you a cot. You’d best get some rest while you can.”
At the mention of bed, Amelia experienced such a wave of fatigue she thought she might simply keel over then and there. The idea of a clean, horizontal surface to sleep on sounded like a gift from heaven.
“Thank you, Dr. McClure. I appreciate that.”
Once again, his lilting Scottish accent made her think of her late grandfather. It seemed impossible now that Charlie Hunter had still been alive only six weeks ago, before her world turned upside down.
“Do call me Angus,” the doctor said. “No point in maintaining such formality when we can’t rely on the earth beneath our feet, eh, Amelia?”
She nodded and tried to smile. “Angus, then.” She turned to study her father’s immobile features. It only then occurred to her that the doctor had been trying to tell her that her father would be dead by dawn’s light.
“I’ll just sit here a while,” she murmured.
***
That night, Amelia refused to leave her father’s side, making her bed on a nearby cot and listening to his labored breathing until she fell into an exhausted sleep. Long past midnight, she heard him call her name. Scrambling to her feet, her blanket gathered around her shoulders like an Indian squaw, she stood shivering by his bedside.
“What is it, Father?” she murmured, not wanting to wake the other patients. No one had come to administer laudanum and he sounded more like himself in sober days.
“I was dreaming about you, Melly,” he whispered between gasps for breath, “and when I woke up, there you were… sleeping on the cot.”
“Yes?” She was touched by the wistfulness of his tone. She knelt at his side and felt his forehead. He was feverish, which Angus warned might bring on vivid dreams. “I’m right here. Feeling any better?”
“Sand castles…” he said with a sigh. “You were building sand castles down by the bay.”
She felt a stab of nostalgia at the memory of constructing fanciful turrets with a tin bucket as a child, but all she said was, “Was it Blarney Castle I was building? Remember how you’d always say that was the one we should make?”
“Well, we Bradshaws are Scots-Irish. We’re canny people, but we’ll still spend our last penny on a whiskey. And sometimes our next-to-last too.” His stab at humor resulted in a fit of coughing. When the attack subsided, he seized her hand. “In the dream, you were building the castle all by yourself. You can do that now, can’t you?”
“Well, maybe not castles, Father, but I can build buildings.”
“I know,” he whispered. “Y
ou’re a clever girl.” It was a rare compliment, she thought, and all the more precious since the alcohol he’d consumed the previous evening had evidentially worn off. “That’s why I had to try to win back the hotel. I did it for you and your mother, Melly,” he added, peering up at her. “To make up for… for all the harm I’ve caused.”
In all her years as his daughter, she’d witnessed a sober Henry Bradshaw act charming, witty, even sometimes wise, but she’d never ever seen him truly repentant.
“It doesn’t matter now, Father,” she hushed, brushing a stray shock of hair off his forehead.
“It does, Melly! It does.”
She gently patted his bandaged hand. “Of course, it matters, but what I mean is that I always knew, somehow, you were sorry when you hurt us.”
Her father motioned for her to lean closer. “I think earlier tonight, I dreamt I was back in Donner Pass,” he whispered, “trapped in the ice cave.”
Her father had never once mentioned this unspeakable subject. Amelia had assumed he’d mercifully been spared any memory of the many days the Donner Party a half century earlier endured the snows near Lake Tahoe without proper food and supplies. He had only been three years old at the time and Aunt Margaret barely seven when their parents died en route. Little Henry wouldn’t have even understood the word cannibalism.
“Maggie gave it to me,” he murmured. “She chewed on a piece of cowhide and gave me the only real food she had. We were just young ’uns, but I remember that cave and people dyin’, one by one, and the bitter cold. And then, there was just me, along with a cow wrangler, a farmer, and Maggie alive in that hellhole. When the cowhand died… well, the survivors reckoned we had to, Melly.”
Amelia shuddered at the allusion to the topic that had been forbidden all her life.
“That was a long, long time ago, Father,” she said softly. “You need to sleep now.”
“They said it was wrong. The newspaper fellows hounded us for years afterwards. Still do. Came sniffing around just before Christmas last year. Coming up on the anniversary, y’know. They said Maggie was bad to feed me and I was wicked to take it.”