California Gold

by John Jakes

  The chase thundered toward the trees. In the dappled shadows, a couple of dozen men and women shouted and waved, urging the riders on. Directly beneath a limb that overhung the road, the cameraman, his cloth cap reversed, crouched behind the big boxy Mutograph camera, cranking furiously. The Mutograph’s gears were noisy; it sounded like a defective meat grinder. The camera punched sprocket holes as it filmed, and the little squares of film spewed from a tube in the bottom.

  A man in riding breeches and puttees bellowed through a megaphone. “Pour it on, Dora. Your face lights with hope. Billy’s coming to your rescue—”

  Dora lashed her horse with the reins as Broncho Billy reached the bottom of the slope, raising dust and blazing away with his Peacemakers. Another outlaw dropped from the saddle, but landed hard, cursing.

  The director waved his megaphone. “Nobody look back—he’s all right—keep coming.” In the shade, Mack jumped up on the high stool on which he’d been seated and clutched the limb above his head, able to see better now.

  “Looking good,” the director cried as the horses galloped into the last eighth of a mile before the grove. Halfway up the slope on Mack’s right, a second cameraman had stopped cranking, the action having passed him. People on the crew shouted excitedly. It was a perfect take.

  Twenty yards from the camera, Dora’s stallion suddenly stumbled, letting out a shrill neigh and somersaulting forward. Dora sailed over the animal’s head and landed in high underbrush across the road. Broncho Billy was still firing, facing the other way.

  The director danced in the dusty road. “Oh Jesus Christ, cut it, cut the action. Billy, Dora’s down.”

  The remaining outlaws reined their mounts. Gilbert Anderson responded to the director’s call by trotting his horse toward the fallen actress. Makeup girls, scene shifters, the cameraman, and the director all ran after him.

  Mack took off his glasses and hurried that way too. He had a fierce, almost blinding headache, brought on by Flyshack’s latest report, again entirely negative. He didn’t notice when the leader of the outlaw gang abruptly stopped his horse in the middle of the road. Under the brim of the Montana peak hat, startled eyes took note of the visitor, the only man on the site wearing a suit.

  Mack and the others reached Dora in the high weeds. Holstering the silver-plated revolvers, whose supply of blanks he’d exhausted, the outlaw leader turned his black mare and trotted away up the road.

  Dora sat up, wincing and clutching her leg. Anderson pulled her boot off and gently probed her ankle. Then, with a great sigh of disgust, he stood up.

  “I’m sorry you got hurt. Should have put a double on that cayuse.”

  “I can keep going—”

  “Not a chance. You rest.”

  Anderson slapped his big Stetson against his sheepskin chaps. “Buster, get the buggy. Ride into Niles for Doc Clabaugh. Some of you rig a lean-to so Dora doesn’t have to lie in the sun. Hop to it.”

  The Essanay company was filming Broncho Billy’s Pursuit on a deserted road off Niles Canyon two miles from the studio, which was in turn four miles beyond the town. It was a morning in March 1910. Mack had returned to the apartment on Greenwich Street the previous week, and driven out to Niles, a trip of over an hour, starting at sunrise.

  Together, he and Anderson walked back toward the trees. “Devil of a way to greet an investor on his first visit,” Anderson said.

  “What are you going to do, Billy?” Everyone called him that, Anderson having submerged himself in his cowboy character. His first three Broncho Billy one-reelers had been hits, and exchanges around the country were yelling for more.

  “Close down until we find out whether Dora can work. I don’t think she can. I think her leg’s broken.”

  In the early afternoon, his head still aching, Mack waited for the verdict in Anderson’s office at Essanay. The studio layout was efficient but primitive, with a single large wooden stage, the roof glassed in, in the middle of an abandoned alfalfa field. A number of California-style bungalows surrounded the stage, the largest of which, cheaply and sparsely furnished, housed the office and Anderson’s living quarters. From the window, Mack could see three cows grazing in a pasture fenced with barbwire.

  Still in cowboy costume, Anderson walked in and sat down heavily. “It’s broken. She’s out. What the devil am I going to do? We have to keep finishing these pictures on schedule, one every three days. If I don’t bring this one in by Friday, George Spoor will be telegraphing for my scalp.”

  “Can’t you replace the girl?”

  “Sure, next week. I need her replaced tomorrow morning.”

  Mack tapped the brim of his homburg on his knee. “Is it necessary that a new girl be experienced?”

  “If she’s breathing and she can smile while hanging on to a California saddle, that’s all I need. We can double her when we reshoot the end of the chase, and double her in the saloon brawl too.”

  “I know a girl in San Francisco. She’s not an actress, but she’s a pretty thing. Smiles like an angel. A Biograph director in Los Angeles thought she was a stunner.”

  “Who was the director?”

  Mack struggled to remember. “Griffith.”

  “Hell, D.W. is a connoisseur of the ladies. If he approves, she must be a peach. Can you have her here tomorrow morning?”

  “I can try.”

  “The call is for seven thirty.”

  “Billy, it’s a long drive. She won’t get much sleep.”

  “Does she want to be in pictures or doesn’t she? Half past seven, sharp.”

  Hellburner Johnson sat against the side of the stage in the middle of the overgrown alfalfa field. In his lap lay the silver-plated S&W Americans, a type of revolver he loathed. His legs stuck out in the sunshine, a cabbage butterfly examining the toes of his boots.

  There was a lot of thumping and shouting on the other side of the wall. A comedian with whom Essanay had struck a deal was filming His Night Out, a one-reeler about a drunk doing the town, and the drunk was taking pratfalls.

  Johnson opened a cardboard box of blanks and thumbed cartridges into the cylinder of the first revolver. Silent pictures amused him. As the outlaw leader, he’d probably fired thirty-five or forty rounds from each piece during the chase.

  He was glad to sit a spell. Fifty-seven now, riding that hard damn near killed him. He felt almost as weak as he had when he recuperated in the hospital in Panama after a fever that turned his bowels to water for three weeks and gave him evil dreams to boot.

  Talk about evil dreams. Working for Gil Anderson out here in the country, he sure as hell never expected to bump into his partner.

  Hearing an auto on the road at the edge of the field, he became still, his hat brim slanted far down so that it touched his nose. When the sound of the Packard’s engine faded, he pushed the hat back up. Fortunately, Mack had lit out in a hurry, giving him some breathing space. Did he want to meet up with Mack again or not?

  The side door of the stage opened and the comedian popped out, a small, dark-eyed young man with curls.

  “Ben Turpin?”

  “Not out here,” Johnson said.

  “Miss Purviance?”

  “Haven’t seen her.”

  The comedian gave a funny rabbity wiggle to his nose. “Sunstroke, Mr. Johnson?”

  “Sore ass, Mr. Chaplin.”

  “Yes. Well. Carry on.” Another wiggle. He shut the door.

  Snotty little Brit. Music-hall fella. Thought he was a sketch. He’d never amount to beans. With that thought, Johnson returned to loading his revolvers.

  The Packard swayed and bumped on the road from Hayward to Niles. A jackrabbit sprang across in front of the auto, and Mack sawed the wheel wildly. Margaret uttered cry, then leaned back, shaken.

  “A few more thrills like that and I’ll faint before we get there.”

  Gritty-eyed and grim, Mack didn’t reply. There was a pale glow above the hills, and birds were waking in the woods. He’d been up most of the night, persua
ding Margaret to do it. As soon as she agreed, he bundled her into the car. They’d left San Francisco long before daylight.

  “Mack, I’m so nervous—”

  “Calm down. Anderson will coach you. This isn’t high art—it’s a one-reel action picture. You keep saying you don’t want to run a French restaurant all your life. I took you seriously.”

  “All right, I’ll do my best.” She patted her hair with nervous motions. “At least you seem interested in something again.”

  He steered the Packard around a curve. “Damned if I don’t.” He smiled. “It sneaked up on me.” Margaret screamed. Mack yanked the wheel hard to the left, just missing a red cow chewing its cud in the road.

  Margaret had composed herself by the time they reached Niles. She stepped from the Packard with the cool elegance of a princess and extended her hand to have it shaken by the excitable director, Van Zant Morgan. (“Not his real name,” Mack had told her earlier. “His real name’s Sid Morgenstern.”) She gave him one of her incredible smiles.

  “Oh my God, perfect,” Morgan cried, clasping his hands in a prayerful way.

  At half past seven, a buckboard rushed Margaret to a glade near the alfalfa field. Carpenters and painters were finishing a wilderness cabin that consisted of a front and side wall and half of a roof, all of it canvas and lath. It stood on the bank of a rushing woodland creek sparkling with reflections.

  The camera crew set up the huge Mutograph as Morgan strutted around eyeing the sun and changing the position of gauze diffusers mounted on tripods. Margaret fidgeted in a canvas chair while a makeup woman patted powder on her face. She’d been put into a gingham dress with puff sleeves and a properly high neck. Standing off to one side, Mack and Anderson watched the makeup girl pin a huge schoolgirl bow in Margaret’s auburn hair. Anderson wore his Broncho Billy vest, sheepskin batwing chaps, and six-guns.

  “I’m in your debt, Mack. That’s one pretty girl. There’s a freshness about her that’s just remarkable. What does she do for a living?”

  Mack polished his spectacles with a white handkerchief. “Runs a small family business.”

  “I hope there’s someone to manage it. I may use her again.”

  “You haven’t seen her act, Billy.”

  “I’ve seen her smile. Hey, Morgan—there’s too much sun reflecting from the creek…” Off he went, boot heels digging the leafy compost on the ground, paunch jiggling under his cowboy vest. Amazingly, this ordinary man with the hook nose and rather bovine eyes had become a movie idol in a matter of months.

  Mack pulled out his meerschaum and tobacco pouch. His neck started to itch, and he looked around to see if someone was watching him. His gaze collided with that of an actor leaning against a tree in the cool morning shade.

  Several things registered at once. The lime-colored bandanna, the green of his unblinking eyes, the crinkly gray hair—

  “Good God. Hugh?”

  The men met in a patch of misty sunlight. Showing no emotion, Johnson extended his hand.

  “How are you, Mack?”

  They shook and Mack stepped back, still astonished. “What in the world are you doing here?”

  “Tryin’ to keep the wolf away.”

  “Come on. You don’t need money.”

  “Tryin’ to fill the hours, then. Playactin’ parts I used to play for real in Texas.”

  “How’d you get here?”

  “Answered an advertisement. You seen much of our outlaw gang? It’s mighty strange. Jesperson yonder, he’s a genuine hard case. Two terms in Arizona state prison for train robbery. Then we got that pair.” He meant two cowboy actors standing close and whispering like lovers. One fondled the other’s hand. “Beats all, don’t it? I grew up in the West and this is all that’s left of it. Playactors dressin’ up to get their pictures on little bitty strips of nitrate film. Funny how things work out.”

  “You look fit, H.B.”

  “Wasn’t for a while there. One of them tropic diseases nearly kilt me down in Panama.” In a few sentences he described his experience swinging a shovel on a canal work gang. “You’re healthier than you was the last time I saw you. Did the police or the Pinkertons find Jim?”

  “Not yet. But he’s alive. I saw him.” Mack told him about it.

  “I’m right sorry, Mack. Even sorrier that I blew up and walked out. Got a fearful bad disposition sometimes. Lived by myself too long. Guess I need a wife to learn me manners.”

  Mack heard the forgiveness in that, and he relaxed. Hunkering in the shade of a budding sycamore, he filled and tamped his pipe. “I think I’m the one who should apologize. I was acting rotten that day.”

  “Well, you was hurt bad.”

  “No excuse. I’m surprised you’d even speak to me again.”

  “Hell, we’re more’n partners. We’re friends. A friend’s like this here bum foot of mine. It pains the shit out of you more than it ought. But you’d never take an ax and lop it off.”

  “Couldn’t have said it better. What do you think of our actress?”

  “Plain gorgeous,” Johnson declared. “This work’s more respectable than what she’s been doin’. But not much.”

  Mack grinned. “Look here. I’m back at the apartment in San Francisco for a while. Come visit when Anderson wraps up on Friday.”

  Hellburner Johnson rolled his tongue in his weather-reddened cheek. “Why, I just might. Yes, sir. Thanks.” His laconic answer couldn’t quite hide his pleasure.

  A week later, at twilight, Mack and Johnson walked out of the Fairmont Hotel. Mack savored the Bay breeze, salty, fresh, and cool. He felt fine. Two schooners of beer in the gents’ bar, plus some raw oysters, helped, as did the presence of his friend.

  They dodged a long black DeLannay Belleville touring car with blazing headlights, which was turning into the hotel’s half-circle drive. The Fairmont’s granite exterior had withstood the fire, the interior had been rebuilt with red-plush opulence, and the hotel had opened officially in the spring of 1907.

  They strolled north, toward Sacramento Street. Johnson wore a proper city suit, but he wouldn’t sacrifice his bandanna. White silk, it looked incongruous. His crippled right foot dragged only slightly.

  “Any word from Nellie?”

  “She’s due home from Europe next month. Her third novel’s just been issued by her new publisher, Scribner’s.”

  “Didn’t know that. Got to read it.”

  “You’ll find it different from her others. Funny, but in a savage way—like Mark Twain. One of the critics called her an authentic American genius. I hear Walter Fairbanks and his crowd want to crucify her.”

  “My, my. She’s come a far piece, our Nell. But she’s still a little girl with a big case for you.”

  Turning down Sacramento they soon stood before the rubble of the mansion. Red light from the west lit it like the midden of a forgotten race. Johnson picked his way into what had been the front yard and turned over a chunk of stone. A brown rat leaped over his boots and ran.

  “You ever gonna rebuild this mess?”

  “The architects brought the plans right after the earthquake.” San Franciscans had a simple new calendar by which they kept track of the past. An event happened before the earthquake, or it happened after. Mack picked up the stone Johnson had moved and threw it on a larger pile, a puff of dust blowing away in the cold breeze. “I put them in the closet.”

  “Maybe you should get ’em out. Place looks like a damn trash dump.”

  “I’ve had any number of letters from neighbors expressing the same thought.”

  Johnson brushed off a fallen slab of marble and sat. He started to roll a cigarette. “I’m glad you got Margaret that part with Broncho Billy. It ain’t only good for her—it’s good for you: Margaret said it shows you’re comin’ back to the real world. You been away in those dark pits too long. Can’t say’s I blame you, but you got too much to offer—you can’t hide down there the rest of your life.”

  With a somber expression, Mack s
at down too. For once he didn’t rebel at Johnson’s gratuitous advice. Maybe it was a certain tiredness, a resignation, after all the shocks of recent times.

  Johnson scraped a match on his pants and lit his twisty hand-rolled cigarette. “I can understand why you was hit so hard. If I’d ever found the right woman, and had me a son, I’d love him as much as you loved your Jim.”

  “Jim isn’t—”

  The wind whispered over broken stones. Electric lights warmed the windows of rebuilt homes on Nob Hill. Faint scurryings told of rats running beneath the rubble.

  “Isn’t what? Isn’t coming back?”

  “I’ve accepted that as a possibility. No, more than that. You see, I’m absolutely convinced I saw Jim at the air meet, and that means…” Mack faltered, rubbing hard at a spot in the center of his forehead that pained him suddenly. “Hugh, it means he’s turned his back on me completely. He ran from me that day. He doesn’t want to be found, and probably wouldn’t come back if he were.”

  Johnson saw his friend’s pain, and he too faltered: “Well— don’t give up. Maybe there’ll be some good luck after so much bad …”

  Mack shook his head. “Look at the search that’s been conducted. Law officers, Pinkertons, thousands and thousands of flyers—and over forty false leads at last count. And nothing else. What’s more, come the twenty-eighth of September, Jim will be twelve years old. Grown up. Changed a lot since he ran off. Suppose he’s really going out of his way to hide? Suppose he works hard at leading a quiet, ordinary life? Suppose he’s taken a different name? That would blur the trail almost completely. Only his limp would be left as solid, conclusive identification, and maybe he’s even learned to walk a little straighter. You did.” He slapped his knees. “What difference does it make, all the theorizing? This is the sum of it. I’ll probably never see him again.”

  Johnson was silent a while. Then he sighed. “Guess you’re right. It’s a real possibility, and mighty hard to bear. You can’t dwell on it, though. You got work to do in this world.”