Fool's Gold

by Steve Stroble

now. Did you slip and fall in the river then?”

  “No. Once or twice I slipped on the rocks along the riverside. They were always wet from the rain and fog.”

  “Did you even bother building a fire to dry out by?”

  “Uh, sometimes. I was finding so much gold that…”

  “Never mind. How much did you get for the claim and tent and equipment?”

  Thomas fished the money from his sweat filled shirt and handed it to McBride, who silently counted it. He cared little for how much Thomas had sold everything. His concern now was to keep him from dying. He regretted leaving the novice all alone in the wild.

  “Not as much as we hoped for but no matter. Truth be told I should’ve brought you down from there with us. No amount of money is worth enough to be ruining your health over. That reminds me. Now I need your help to keep Mr. Yee from ruining his health.”

  “Is he sick too?”

  “The worst kind of sickness. He’s got a broken heart because he got a letter from his girl’s father. He got tired of waiting for Mr. Yee to return to China to pay the dowry to marry her so he sold her off as a prostitute.”

  “What?” Thomas recalled all the times Yee had carefully removed his beloved’s picture from its hiding place and gazed at it.

  “Don’t go and get yourself all self righteous now. They’ve got famine going on there in China. Lots of ‘em are starving to death. From what I’ve been told it’s all too common for the daughters to be sold off so’s her family can survive.”

  “Where is he?”

  McBride shook his head. “Haven’t seen him since he took off yesterday. My guess is that he’s laying low in an opium den.”

  “Opium den? But he never smoked any of it at the claim. He said it would make him lazy.”

  “That was before he got the letter. Everything’s changed now.”

  It was another two days before Thomas had healed enough to help McBride find Yee. During his time spent with Yee McBride had obtained a smattering of Chinese words that he now used to search for his missing friend. He and Thomas only walked a block from their hotel before finding a business that had black Chinese characters printed across the storefront. Once they were inside of the store an elderly man dressed in traditional Chinese garb greeted them.

  “Hello” His English was marginal.

  “Hello.” McBride answered in Chinese. “Look for friend.” Unsure of the Chinese word for opium he resorted to gestures.

  First he stretched out his hands to the length of an opium pipe. Having rescued a couple of other patients from opium dens years earlier, McBride had a passing knowledge of the habit and its consequences. Then he formed his hand into the shape of a pipe’s bowl and used the other hand to pretend that he was placing something into the bowl. Next he kept the two hands on the imaginary pipe. Then he pretended to puff it.

  “Yes.” The storeowner interpreted the stranger’s reference to “friend” as meaning opium and gestures as the need for a pipe in which to smoke it. He left his wooden counter and went through beautiful silk curtains to the backroom that served as storage and office for his store and living quarters for him and his wife. In a moment he returned. He thrust a beautiful long-stemmed pipe over the counter toward McBride. “Only $5.”

  McBride took a step backward. While he was trying to regain his composure, Thomas intervened. Somewhat of a ham, Thomas had been in every school and church play since he was five years old. He pointed at McBride, squatted down to Yee’s height, and pointed at himself and said, “Friend.” Then he grabbed the pipe and pretended to smoke it. Cocking his head to one side, he half-opened his mouth and let his eyelids droop. He handed the pipe back and said, “Find friend.”

  “Thank you, Thomas.” McBride frowned. “But isn’t that what I already told him?”

  The proprietor grimaced as he placed the pipe under the counter that separated him from customers, especially strange ones such as these. “Want opium?”

  Exasperated, McBride gave up on trying to use his rudimentary Chinese. “No.” He spoke in English. “We want to find Mr. Yee. We think he’s in an opium den.”

  “Opium den? I take.” He turned toward the curtains and called to his wife. After explaining to her that he would be gone for five minutes, he shuffled out from behind the counter and motioned for his weird customers to follow him. This was not the first time that white men had asked him for opium. Usually they had enough courtesy to buy a pipe in exchange for his directing them to a source.

  He led them two blocks down the rickety wooden boardwalk that served as a sidewalk above the street’s mud and water. Turning left between a saloon and another store, he continued on to a small building that was tucked away between a fence and the buildings that faced the street. A woman opened the door and poked her head outside after hearing a knock. Thinking that her business was about to receive two new customers, she smiled at all who stood at the entrance. McBride dropped a dollar into the storekeeper’s hand as he turned to leave. The opium den’s owner lost her smile when she learned that McBride and Thomas were not there to smoke her product but only to rescue someone from it.

  “He smoke too much.” She held out her hand.

  McBride sighed and dropped a dollar into her hand. He knew that Yee had paid in advance and that the dollar was compensating her for lost business due to the unexpected early departure of one of her customers. Thomas and McBride entered the lost world of the den. A dozen men, half of them Chinese and the rest white miners, lay flat on their backs or propped up on one elbow. A few were puffing on their long stemmed pipes. The rest of them were dazed to the point that they could no longer inhale the drug that was burning to smoke and ash in the pipe’s bowls. Lost in the unearthly dream state that opium produces, Yee was only vaguely aware that two people were carrying him out of the den that he had lain in for days. He thought that he was floating through the air above the streets of Sacramento. His senses did not return until hours later. By then he was lying in the bed in McBride’s hotel room.

  “Why I here?” he asked his rescuers.

  “Because I need a cook when I return home,” McBride answered. He handed Yee a cup of strong coffee. “Drink this down. Then you’re going to eat. You’re nothing but skin and bones, you poor sot, you.” A tear ran down the doctor’s left cheek.

  “Be cook for you?” Yee was amazed that anyone appreciated his culinary skills so much. He drained the cup of coffee and asked for more. “You pay?”

  “That’s right. I’ve had a bellyful of this cold, wet, foggy climate here and busting my back for gold.” McBride refilled the cup from the pot of coffee that he had ordered from the hotel’s kitchen and handed it back to Yee. “And I’m sick to death of always trying to save the likes of you and Thomas. I’m ready to go home to the sun in Los Angeles for good. Only problem is that I don’t have the pile of gold I promised my wife I’d come home with. Oh well. You know what they say, ‘you can’t please everyone all of the time.’ I am no exception. Do you think she will scalp me because of it?”

  Yee spit out the coffee as he laughed. Picturing a woman holding the doctor’s freshly severed bloody head of hair was too much to bear. He slowly rose from the bed and searched for his belongings, which he had left behind when he ran away to the opium den.

  Thomas stared at McBride. “Wife? But you said she died.”

  “Well this one’s my second wife. I met her while I was down South in the Georgia gold rush.” His countenance softened and his eyes twinkled. “I promised her I’d only keep mining up here if I got a really good claim. It was a good one until it played out.”

  “But what about the rivers up north?” Thomas had no desire to head back next spring to the gold fields without an experienced miner as a partner to ensure his success. He had recovered from his physical ailments but the gold fever still lingered in his soul.

  McBride shook his head. “I’ve spent the last two weeks doctoring and listening to miners from up there. It’s the same story I’ve b
een hearing from those from the American River diggings or the other rivers south of Sacramento. A few miners have hit pay dirt. But as soon as word gets out hundreds more miners show up. Before you know it the place is overrun.”

  “Are you sure there’s no place left to get rich?”

  McBride let out the cynical laugh of one who has seen and done more than he should have. “Probably is. My guess is they’ll find gold in the Rockies eventually. They’re so big there has to be gold in them somewhere. They stretch all the way from Mexico up into Canada. In the meantime I best be giving up mining. My wife has been through too much already.”

  “What do you mean by that?” The doctor’s last statement made Thomas wonder what turmoil he was inflicting on Harriet. He thought of her constantly now that he did not have the distraction of searching for gold.

  “Her father hails from the Choctaw tribe originally. That’s one of the Five Civilized Tribes, you know.”

  “Oh. I heard something about that. The other tribes are the Seminoles, Cherokees…”

  “And the Creek and Chickasaw.” He hastened the conversation along as he packed his only suitcase. “Their biggest mistake was their fighting on the British side during the war. That came back to haunt them in a big way. Anyway my wife’s dad saw the handwriting on the wall when a medicine man had a vision of the Choctaws being led away by soldiers. So