California Gold

by John Jakes

  “You’re good men, both of you.”

  “One problem,” Johnson said. “I don’t do so good when I defer eatin’.”

  “Mrs. Danvers will fix food twice a week. She’ll bring it out to Salt Marsh Canyon in the wagon.”

  “That’s a lonesome trip for a woman,” Mack said. “Not too safe, either.”

  “There’s no other way,” Danvers said. “I’m up against the wall.”

  Danvers’s troubles compounded. Keystone 19, which another crew punched in, began producing crude in the autumn, but Danvers couldn’t afford to ship it. He was deeply in debt to the rig builder, who threatened liens, and available money went to pay that obligation.

  Danvers owned no tank cars and no one would lease him cars on credit. Though Hardison & Stewart’s pipeline from Newhall to Ventura, a four-inch metal snake suspended on cables, had capacity available, again, it was only for cash up front. Danvers appealed to every bank in the county, and two in Los Angeles; they all rebuffed him—no more loans.

  On a hot gray afternoon in November, Danvers summoned all his roughnecks to a meeting in his office. Mack and Johnson had discussed in advance the certain outcome of the meeting and they weren’t wrong.

  “I’m folding,” Danvers announced. “Everything’s being attached. I’ll meet payroll this coming Friday, but not afterward.”

  “You talkin’ about back pay too?” said a bald man with a beard. “As of last Friday, you owed me for seven weeks.”

  “Eight here,” another said. Nineteen men jammed into the office were all in approximately the same fix. Mack noticed a rectangle on the wall, lighter than the surrounding area, where the telephone had been connected.

  Danvers had lost at least thirty pounds. His pompadour, once shiny-dark, was a crest of gray. From deep-sunk eyes, he surveyed the unhappy men. “I can’t pay anything but the current week.”

  “Jesus,” Hugh Johnson said. His slitted eyes looked dark as emeralds.

  Mack stepped out from the others. “We trusted you, Mr. Danvers. Carried you and trusted you to pay up.”

  “I’m aware of it, Mack. Believe me, it rips me apart to default. There’s just no money.”

  “There was,” Johnson bit out. “Sounds to me like you didn’t know how to handle it.”

  Most of them growled agreement. There was no more tolerance in that room, no more kindness—just hungry, angry, cheated men.

  Danvers rose and spread his hands, his voice shaky. “I’m an honest businessman. I gave this enterprise everything. The cards are stacked. You want to blame someone, blame the banks and their friends at the goddamned gouging SP.”

  “Ah, shove it, Danvers,” a man said with a weary wave, heading for the door.

  Another shook his fist. “You better have money for us Friday or we’re liable to find us a coil of rope and take your case to Judge Lynch.”

  Danvers sat down again, sweating.

  “Come on,” Johnson growled to Mack. “It ain’t decent to stick knives in a dying dog.”

  In the street, a big round four-hitch oil wagon rolled by. Hardison & Stewart. The driver wore a brand-new fawn vest, and Mack eyed it with bitter envy.

  Johnson leaned against the rack where they’d tied their horses. “Well, that’s it, amigo.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Drift a while. I was gettin’ tired of the job anyway.”

  “Where will you go?”

  “Maybe over to Kern County. Anything there?”

  After a shrug Mack said, “Bean fields, asphalt plants, some mighty pretty Indian girls, too much hot weather. What about my offer—partners in our own outfit?”

  “Going to swing that with the cash you get from Mr. Danvers, are you?”

  Johnson’s sarcasm left Mack groping for a reply. His boasts to Nellie and Marquez and others about making a fortune came back to taunt him. Hell, he couldn’t make enough money to repay even one of Wyatt’s victims. He hadn’t opened T. Fowler Haines in months—with good reason.

  When several seconds of glum silence had gone by, Johnson eyed Mack, shrugged, and muttered, “Sorry I ragged you that way. But I’m drifting.”

  “All right, but if you change your mind, get in touch. Leave a message with Potter, the lawyer, in the Baker Block, Los Angeles.”

  “You’ll be around, will you? Hanging on?”

  “Absolutely,” Mack said without conviction. He was lying to Hugh Johnson; he was probably finished in California.

  The friends parted Friday night, after the pay was disbursed at the office. Mrs. Danvers handed around the little envelopes, explaining that her husband was indisposed. “Indisposed with shame, I don’t doubt,” Johnson muttered to Mack outside. It wasn’t a condemnation, merely a statement.

  Mack and the Texan shook hands by their horses. “You taught me a lot, Hugh. One day I’ll repay you.”

  “Sure, when we all get rich.” Johnson stepped into his stirrup and mounted. “You ever gonna quit using that name I hate?”

  “Not till you get another. Remember, now—Potter, in the Baker Block. I’ll get the message.”

  Hugh Johnson touched his hat brim and turned his horse’s head. Mack watched the Texan ride out and dwindle to a speck against the fiery rampart of the sunset hills. He couldn’t remember feeling this low since the night he left San Francisco.

  In San Solaro he found no significant change, except the weeds were higher. He took a job washing dishes in Newhall. A week before Christmas, a time in which his feelings of loneliness and defeat seemed particularly keen, he picked up a copy of the Times, and a story on the front page caught him.

  SHORE SUICIDE?

  Mysterious Drowning

  Claims Oilman!

  A day earlier, a body had washed up on the beach at Santa Monica. It was Jace Danvers. The story described him as an “oil-company proprietor recently caught in severe financial straits.” The preceding Sunday, he’d taken his wife and seven children to the ocean. While they spread their picnic, Danvers stepped behind a rock and donned his bathing costume. He left his clothes with his wife, neatly folded. He walked into the Pacific, waved at the children, and began to swim. No one saw him again until a fisherman watched the surf float his body ashore.

  “Poor bastard,” Mack said, putting the paper on the shelf above the tub of rancid dishwater. He knew Jason Preston Danvers hadn’t been the best of managers, but he was well intentioned, industrious, honest.

  Not good enough. Circumstances had undone him—and the railroad too. For Danvers, the California dream had failed.

  Mack immersed a plate sticky with pork-chop grease. Two waiters burst into the kitchen, quarreling and threatening each other in Spanish. Cheap tinsel letters hung over the doors to the restaurant, FELIZ NAVIDAD! Mack stared at them and thought, Am I another Danvers?

  26

  HE DRIFTED FROM JOB to job in the first of 1892, managing to save $28. He no longer opened the guidebook; sometimes he loathed the very sight of it. A suspicion took hold and grew into conviction that he was repeating the pattern of his pa’s failed life.

  Once a month he wrote Potter’s office with a current address, asking for mail. In July the lawyer forwarded a letter from Nellie. She planned to be in Los Angeles early in August to prepare a story about the harbor fight, which had been simmering for a couple of years. The city of Los Angeles wanted a permanent deep-water port at San Pedro. The SP, with its customary heavy-handed attention to self-interest, was campaigning locally and in Sacramento to locate the port at Santa Monica—where, of course, SP owned most of the available harborside land.

  “It’s the first time I’ve found myself on the same side as that damned Otis,” Mack said to Nellie on the buggy ride out to the Pacific. He had hardly stopped talking since he picked her up; he was excited about seeing her after so long, but a little sad and envious too. She was doing well. He’d borrowed $15 from Potter to hire the rig and buy a picnic basket from a caterer. The last dollar went to a tailor to repair a tear in
the sleeve of his brown broadcloth. He still felt dirt poor in her presence.

  He’d called for her at the Pico House, where she was installed in a suite at Hearst’s expense. Brown and slim and vibrant as ever, she was the picture of a successful city girl, in a smart yachting costume of white linen with a navy belt and foulard with white polka dots. Her cap was white with a navy bill, her shoes small white oxfords. She said the outfit was French.

  Full of news, she was as talkative as Mack; they laughed about it. She told him that Muir had organized his conservation society, the Sierra Club, in San Francisco. Leland Stanford Junior University was open in Palo Alto, with a smart young president from Indiana, David Starr Jordan, in charge. Of Diego Marquez she knew only one thing; “He quarreled with the hierarchy, issued some inflammatory statements, then left the Church and disappeared out in the Valley. Some of his superiors called him a dangerous anarchist. It was in the headlines for nearly a week.”

  Rancho Topanga Malibu Sequit was a twenty-two-mile tract of choice ocean property stretching south from Ventura. The present owner and prospective developer, a man called Rindge, kept it heavily fenced and peppered with signs that warned, NO TRESPASSING—VIOLATORS PROSECUTED!, though the public ignored them. Mack knew an isolated ranch road that took them to a wild beach not far from Santa Monica. Here he spread blankets, then the contents of the hamper. It was a blowing, sparkling day, with huge white combers roaring in. The invigorating air smelled of salt. But everything seemed to remind him of Danvers and his sad end. He poured glasses of cheap white wine. The restaurant had packed thick, starchy sandwiches in waxed paper: bologna and peppered sausage, layered with slices of strong cheese. Nellie took off her hat and shook out her dark hair, chattering on.

  “The harbor fight looks fierce. Huntington is pulling every string in Washington that he can. He has the Post in his pocket, so he can float a favorable story whenever he wants. Your friend Fairbanks is handling the campaign in California. He’s a vice president of the corporation now and runs the political bureau—otherwise known as the legal department. Not to be confused with the SP Literary Bureau.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A sardonic name for their propaganda machine. They bribe editors and writers to treat them favorably. Pay them off with cash, passes, weekends at the Del Monte in Monterey—in San Francisco, I know for certain that the Bulletin and the Call take their money. If you consider that, and all the state legislators they control, plus their own railroad managers—sometimes a ward boss, sometimes a freight agent—in every county in California—you’d have to say that Walter Fairbanks wields more power than the governor.”

  Mack’s face showed a cynical disgust. “At least that keeps his mind off me.”

  She laughed. “I don’t want to insult you, but I think they forgot you and the nickel ferry long ago. Running you out of the City satisfied Huntington. Fairbanks too, presumably. I expect you could go back anytime you want.”

  Mack’s hazel eyes raked the ocean horizon. He saw phantom images of Danvers, swimming to his death. “I’ll go back. But not till I have enough money to be a serious player in their game.”

  “So you haven’t lost a whit of your ambition—”

  “Have you?”

  “No.” She unwrapped a sandwich. “When I have a spare hour, I write stories. No one’s published any so far. But they will.”

  “You’re still happy in San Francisco?”

  “Yes, but Mr. Hearst has plans to send me somewhere else.”

  Mack sat up abruptly.

  “He’s doing wonderfully with the Examiner,” she went on, “but he wants to expand to New York. If he can start or buy a paper there, he wants me to work for him. It’s the most important city in America, Mack. I doubt I could turn him down.”

  “And that’s what you want? To spend the rest of your life in an office?”

  “Lord, you’re such a mossback. I thought you might have changed.”

  “I’m a man. What can I change?”

  “Your attitude, sir. Your primitive attitude. What would you have me do?”

  His dark hair blew in the sea wind. “What about marrying someone?”

  “Who?”

  “Me, for instance.”

  “You want a wife who stays home and contents herself with raising fat babies.…Well, don’t you?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Then let’s change the subject.” Her voice was sharp, even a touch angry. “How are you getting on down here? Making any money?”

  “Plenty.” Now he was curt.

  “Mr. Chance, why do I get the distinct impression that you’re not being truthful?” She touched his work-scarred knuckles. “Please. You know I care about you—”

  “Let’s eat.”

  “You’re impossible.”

  “Nellie, I love you—”

  Instantly she lost color, and her self-assurance. “What? What did you say?”

  He took her hands in his. “I said I love you. I always have. But I can’t be anything except what I am.”

  Now the color rushed back into her face, and she pulled her hands away with an angry “Oh!” She wiped her palms against her eyes. “You are what you are—is that a fact, or an excuse?”

  “I don’t want to quarrel, Nellie. I’ve waited months to be with you again—”

  “If you don’t want to quarrel,” she said in an unsteady voice, “you’d better give me another sandwich, because I’m about to throw this one right in your face.”

  The rest of the outing was polite but strained, with no physical contact save her quick peck on his cheek when he delivered her to the arcade of the Pico House.

  “Good-bye, Nellie, take care of yourself.”

  “Mack, wait—”

  “No, I’ve got to get this rig back to the stable. I’m already late.”

  “Will I see you again before I leave Los Angeles?”

  “Yes, I’ll try,” he said, knowing he wouldn’t. Nellie was going up in the world. He was standing still, if not sinking. And sometimes she didn’t seem to like what he was—not at all.

  She let the curtain fall but stayed at the suite’s window, the fading sunlight through the old lace patterning her cheeks. The street below was almost deserted, but she’d stood there for many minutes, expecting—no, hoping—to see him come racing back in the buggy. He didn’t, of course, and she was left with a grab-bag of emotions.

  Sadness, first, because he was tense, and gaunt, no longer the energetic, brash young man who’d jumped into the Bay to save her. Despite his pretensions, his confidence was gone.

  She felt a lovely warmth when she remembered the stunning moment when he said “I love you,” but she hated her own foolish, prickly responses. She loved him too—loved him even though he was far from perfect.

  Nor are you, Miss Ross. Shall I cite some specifics? You’ve struggled so hard competing with all those tough cynical male reporters, you talk and act like them. Brusque. Blunt. Worse than that, your so-called standards are too damned high. You treat a lover the way you treat old Huntington…as a candidate for your reforming zeal.

  It was true. But what could she do? Could she change now, even if she wanted? The real trouble was, she didn’t want to, at least not all of the time, and whenever she faced that fact instead of fleeing from it, as now, the pain and confusion tore her apart.

  Nellie kept standing there while the twilight settled, a sun-browned hand touching the old lace as if it were some memento of love. The angled beams of the setting sun made her tear-washed cheeks glow.

  Late in September, Enrique Potter invited Mack to Sunday dinner at his home. The large, pleasant stucco house stood among willow trees out on the west side of town. It was part of another unsuccessful subdivision, the Wilshire Tract, planned by one H. Gaylord Wilshire, a Harvard dropout, walnut and grapefruit grower, and socialist entrepreneur.

  The Potter home was cool and spacious, with a lemon tree flourishing in the front yard. Dinner was at two, after
the Potters returned from mass, and Elena Potter served an enormous meal, the best Mack had eaten in a year. The lawyer with the ferocious Mongol mustache was a kind but firm father, keeping his five children in their seats until he was ready to dismiss them for play. “Pick up that crumb under your chair, Felipe,” he said as they dashed out. Felipe returned without a murmur. Potter gave the boy a smile and pat, sending him out happy.

  Potter lit one of his stupendously long cigars. “Mack, I must say, you look terrible.”

  Mack folded his napkin. “I’ve had one rotten job after another. I’ve spent five years playing what amounts to penny poker. If I can’t play for big stakes, I’m going back east.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. I know how much you’ve always wanted to make California your home.”

  “Maybe it was never meant to be.” Visions of the Pennsylvania blizzard flashed before his inner eye; the nightmare came frequently of late. “Either I change my own luck—and soon—or I’m through.”

  Potter rolled his cigar back and forth between thumb and fingers. “I admit the situation isn’t good. I wanted to discuss it with you. Do you recall Loren and Estelle Hutto?”

  “Hutto,” Mack said, rubbing the center of his forehead; a sharp ache had started there. “It’s familiar, but I can’t…wait. The buyer list.”

  “Yes. Mr. and Mrs. Hutto, Elyria, Ohio. On Friday they filed suit against the corporation to recover their down payment. I’m fairly confident that I can slow things down with a demurrer—a technical objection to the sufficiency of their pleading. If the court agrees the pleading’s insufficient, the Huttos will have to start all over again, and we’ll gain time. Even so Mack, I’d be less than honest if I didn’t tell you there’s going to be a reckoning eventually. If the worst happened, you might even face a jail term. Unless, of course, you find some cash—soon.”

  “And where am I going to do that, Enrique? I look and I look, but there’s no damn gold in the rivers anymore. Maybe there never was.”

  “I could attempt to settle with the Huttos out of court, then put San Solaro up for sale.”

  Mack was tempted, mightily so. But something made him say, “No, I’m not quite ready for that. The property is all I’ve got.”