Fool's Gold

by Steve Stroble

afternoon dark clouds unloaded chunks of ice that sent both man and beast running for cover. The new growth of the farmers’ first plantings was obliterated.

  “What is it?” Rudolph yelled over the din of the storm.

  “They calls it hail. Be glad we ain’t out in the open.” Dan hollered. “The big chunks can take yer skin right off.”

  The two spent their days buying the wagons and five head of oxen for each one. “One’s a spare that you ties to the back of the wagon,” Dan said. “Most trains take two spares per wagon but you usually don’t need both unless you push them so hard one of them dies or the injuns rustles off the stock at night. Ox is slow going but that’s a good thing for a company of tenderfoots. I’m going to let your partners buy their own grub. Ain’t going to have them howling at me for months and months cause I picked out what they don’t like to eat.”

  By the last week of April the company arrived at Kanesville. Their numbers had now dwindled to 60. One had suffered a case of cold feet at the last minute in Elmira and another had fallen or been pushed, no one was sure of which, off of a steamboat on the Mississippi and drowned after a night of gambling, carousing, and fighting. No one had noticed that he was missing until the following evening. His fellow members held a memorial for him on the steamboat’s deck.

  “He just would’ve bin a heap of trouble on the trail, anyway.” Dan shrugged and shook his head when he heard the news.

  12

  Then blow, ye breezes blow

  We’re off to Californio

  There’s plenty of gold

  So I’ve been told

  On the banks of the Sacramento

  Dominic led the singing of the ditty that many of the Argonauts traveling by sea sang as their vessels pulled away from the docks of New York City. He had arranged a farewell party for Thomas, something that he came to regret as James used the occasion to announce his intention of going with Thomas to California.

  “But haven’t I been good to you?” Dominic shed a tear. “Stay and I will pay you more.”

  “Yes, sir. You been good to me all right. But it ain’t the money. It only be a matter of time before the North be fighting the South ‘cause the abolition peoples and slave owner peoples never ever going to see eye to eye. I figger the best place to be is as far away as I can go. You can’t git much further away than California.”

  After coming to New York Dominic had gone into business as a middleman helping immigrants to get work. He learned about the businesses that needed cheap labor and became adept at finding who the employers needed – whether men, women, or children. In a couple of years he owned a mansion similar to the one that he had predicted he would. At first James had enjoyed bossing the other servants from the comforts of the mansion but he gradually tired of it. In secret he had begun saving to one day go where the grass was greener, wherever that might take him. An opportunity came unexpectedly. He had sought out Thomas four days before the party and convinced him that “two are better than one” when it came to finding one’s fortune. Thomas agreed mostly because James had treated him kindly during his years as an indentured servant. Besides, he needed James’ vast knowledge of Americans’ behavior if he was going off to such a mystical place as California. Who knew how they might act there? Having James along would surely result in an even greater fortune.

  During the party Thomas sat next to one of Dominic’s cousins, who was one of the extended family of 23 that Dominic had helped to bring to New York. He enjoyed Thomas’ company.

  “America good, yes?” The cousin toasted Thomas with the choice wine Dominic had brought up from his wine cellar. “Back in old country we Jews like donkey dung to Gentiles. Here we live better. Here we like donkeys, not dung.”

  The merriment continued as the party accompanied James and Thomas to their steamship. As it pulled away from the waving and cheering throng on the pier James scanned the city’s buildings. His waves seemed to be more adamant than Thomas’.

  “Better look real hard, boss. Might be the last time we ever sees that big ole city.”

  “I’ll come back a rich man, James. So will you.”

  The March weather stayed calm until they reached Havana to take on wood and other supplies for the rest of the journey. Tropical storms buffeted the steamship the rest of the way to Nicaragua. Remembering the often-rancid tasteless food that he had endured while crossing the Atlantic ten years earlier, Thomas had brought along 20 pounds of beef jerky and a suitcase filled with Harriet’s biscuits, which he shared with James when he could no longer stomach the ship’s cuisine.

  “Sure nuff we not be traveling no first class. The food is too nasty. Make you sick.” James commented as they peered at the approaching coastline of Central America.

  “Be thankful we aren’t going around the Cape. That way takes as long as five to eight months.”

  “How long you think going this way take?”

  “Only a little more longer than a month. We’ll be finding gold in no time. What is that you’ve been reading?” Thomas pointed at the open pages of a publication that James held.

  James folded the magazine. “The Gold Bug by a feller called Edgar Allen Poe. It be about finding treasure and such, like us.”

  Once ashore in Nicaragua they located a man who promised to get them to the Pacific Ocean side of the country faster than anyone else. This part of the journey alternated between mule and canoe. Along the way nine of their party of 24, including Thomas, caught malaria. The nearest available quinine was only to be found in the coastal cities. James recalled a folk remedy for the disease that he had seen used by the Seminole during his time in Florida. After much coaxing and the handing over of his buckskin knife, James convinced their Indian guide to have the next medicine man that they encountered treat the feverish Thomas. Four of the party died during the trip after they caught dysentery in addition to their malaria.

  A seemingly worse situation awaited the survivors once the pure blue water of the Pacific came into view. The gold rush had swelled the population of the ports along the western side of Central America as thousands waited for ships to take them north to the gold fields. Three weeks passed before the now mostly recovered Thomas and James boarded a whaling ship whose owner knew that there was more money to be had by ferrying gold seekers than hunting down the huge mammals. With stories of desperate fortune hunters paying as much as $1,000 to sail on to San Francisco commonplace, James and Thomas felt fortunate to pay only $450 each, the lowest fare to be found that offered shelter from the elements.

  For the remainder of the trip the menu was a hash of salt pork, onions, and potatoes, or fried pork or mushy ham. All of it was fried in whale oil. The drinking water tasted bitter. The sleeping accommodations for Thomas and James were on the floor below deck. Only the highest paying passengers slept on a bunk with a thin mattress. The lowest paying passengers slept up on deck and were exposed to sun, wind, cold nights, rain, and occasional waves that drenched them.

  When they stopped in Los Angeles, Thomas felt a strange tugging at his soul. It reminded him of similar feelings as a lad while studying maps of America. He dismissed the sensation as being the result of his and every other passenger’s desire to be off of the vessel that was never intended to transport people but instead whale blubber, which would become oil to light lamps. The odor of the fat and blood of hundreds of slaughtered whales had penetrated much of the ship. It was that smell that had caused Thomas to disembark.

  Thomas studied the small community as he walked on shore during the ship’s three-hour stay there to take on water, food, and passengers. This place has nothing at all for me. Look how small it is. Only if it had gold would I consider it.

  As they pulled into San Francisco Bay during the last week of May an eerie sight of what appeared to be a ghost fleet greeted the anxious passengers. Dozens of ships of every kind and size stood at anchor, all of them abandoned. A few seemed to be in good condition, others had begun to list or been stripped of usable lumber, whi
ch was almost as valuable as gold due to San Francisco’s frequent fires. The sails were in tatters on those that had been abandoned the year before.

  “But where are their crews?” Thomas asked a nearby deckhand.

  “Off digging gold. They all jump ship once they get here.”

  “They desert their ships? Why don’t the captains send the police after them? I thought desertion is a crime.”

  “Fat chance, sir. Even the army and police have deserters that ran off looking for gold here in California. You best be sure to get yourself out of here as quick as you can.”

  “Why?”

  “If you stay anywhere’s near the water you’re likely to be shanghaied and forced to be on a ship’s crew against yer will. That’s what happened to me last month. This is my first and last journey from San Francisco to Nicaragua and back again. Soon as the captain turns his back I’m going over the side. Maybe I’ll see you up in the diggings, mate. Good hunting. I only hope there’s gold left by the time we get up there.”

  After going ashore Thomas bought a few newspapers to determine where the best destination in the gold fields might be. One paper that he read contained an obituary for the publication itself due to the now almost nonexistent readership in the mostly abandoned city. The frustrated editor wrote:

  The whole country from San Francisco to