Fool's Gold

by Steve Stroble

after you got here? You found much gold, right?”

  Thomas’ impatience humored Rudolph. He seemed as a child compared to himself. “Ha! It was a disaster! Once we got to Hangtown, our guide was paid and he disappeared. He said he would never guide another wagon train again. It seemed like no matter where our company went, other miners had already staked their claims. Half of our company wanted to buy enough claims for us to work. The other half wanted to find our own claims. So we split into two companies.”

  “Which did you go with?”

  “I was too tired to keep walking who knows how far to find our own claims. So I stayed there and we bought 11 claims near each other.”

  “How much gold did you find?”

  “Very little. It was already October by the time we started working. The miners who have been there longer than us said our claims wouldn’t have much gold until after the winter rains have washed more of it down to them. They said we should hope and pray for heavy rains.” Rudolph smiled and pointed out the window at the downpour that was pelting the city and turning the streets into seas of mud. “If this rain keeps falling like this, there will be plenty of gold on our claims by spring. I think I can have them let you join us. Two of them have already said they are going to strike out on their own. Three others have said they are going back to Elmira as soon as enough of the snow in the Sierras melts so they can get through. If one of them doesn’t change his mind there will be room for you. Our cabins are crowded but they are warm and dry.”

  Thomas smiled as his hopes of returning home as a rich man were born anew. The friends talked on until their waiter informed them that although he hated to break up their Christmas meal and cheer other customers needed their table. Rudolph left only a penny as a tip in reply.

  “Americans are too hasty and rude.” He growled as they left. “I miss Europe. Their people are more civilized than these barbarians ever will be.”

  They spent the rest of Christmas day in the lobby of Thomas’ hotel. While four other of the hotel’s occupants played cards on a small table the reunited friends reminisced about past Christmases and wondered how their families were faring without them.

  “You have two children now, so I guess you have more to miss than I do,” Thomas said.

  Rudolph’s tense face softened. “Yes. I never thought I would miss them and Jane so much.”

  “Sometimes I think we expect too much from life. I remember how my father would say that if we can’t learn to be happy with what we have, we will only be miserable always trying to get what we want.”

  It was not until suppertime that Thomas convinced Rudolph to stay as his guest. He had rented an extra mattress for the cramped room so that one of them would not have to endure sleeping directly on the hard pine wooden floor. His hopes of Rudolph staying until spring because he needed a roommate to help pay for the expensive room were soon ended.

  Rudolph explained that if he were gone from the claim longer than two weeks he would be considered a deserter and lose his membership in the company. So he only stayed for two days and nights. That was ample time for them to plan on how to make their fortunes in a hurry. When Rudolph heard of McBride’s assessment that it would be slim pickings for miners in California from now on, he agreed that one more season of mining would either make or break them. Both were thankful that at least they had established claims to return to come springtime and that the continual heavy rains ensured that a good quantity of gold would be deposited on them. Rudolph guaranteed Thomas that he would be able to join his company.

  “They have no choice. When some of them leave next spring we need replacements or we won’t be able to keep our claims active. We are lucky that we got here now,” Rudolph said. They wished each other one last “Merry Christmas” and said good night. “Those who arrive next year will be too late. There already are too many miners now.”

  When Rudolph returned to his company Thomas continued working around Sacramento. Sometimes he ignored McBride’s advice and worked outdoors when such work was all that he could find. He loaded and unloaded steamships, helped to re-erect tents that had blown down, and dug small ditches around structures to keep them from flooding. Such diversion of the continual rainfall was adequate until January 1850. Then the Sacramento River, swollen by the Mill, Rock, Butte, Feather, Bear, Cache, Grindstone, McCloud, Deer, Cottonwood, Yuba, and unnamed seasonal creeks to the north, overflowed its banks, as the rainfall for Northern California in the winter of 1849/50 was higher than that of average years.

  Once the flooding started in Sacramento tens of thousands were left to decide whether to sink, swim, or move to higher ground. The able-bodied pitched tents or built shacks on any high ground that they could find. The less able-bodied fared more poorly. Many of the sick patients unable to walk ended up floating on their cots atop the raging waters. Some of them were saved; others drowned. Even those who were not ill drowned as they misjudged the depth or speed of the floodwaters. The flood was no respecter of the dead, either. As the rains kept saturating the ground coffins floated to the surface of cemetery lawns. A few of them lodged against trees and buildings, others were swept into the swollen river and not found again until springtime far downstream.

  Overnight the most available job became levee building. Thomas joined in as rock and dirt were used to bury debris that the river had delivered. Much of the debris had been washed downstream from miles away; other was freight from Sacramento’s docks. The levees were thrown together haphazardly but no one cared as long as they held back the immediate flood. Little thought was given to the durability of the levees; such foresight would have to be implemented at a later time. Weeks went by before the structures closest to the river were no longer flooded. Even then the low spots, such as streets, looked more like creeks or quagmires. This made the squatters who had taken refuge on higher ground unwilling to abandon their crime of trespassing, no matter how far the waters receded or how high the new levees rose. They reasoned that the hastily erected levees could easily be breeched by another series of storms, especially if heavy rains fell during the snowmelt from the mountains to the north. Starting in the Klamath Mountains, the Sacramento River stretched for hundreds of miles between the Coastal Range on the west and the Sierra Nevada Range on the east. This ensured a massive runoff from three mountain ranges, all of which were buried under tons of snow every winter.

  Adhering more to the philosophy and spirit of the French rather than the American Revolution, the squatters tried to legitimize their disregard for the rights of the property owners by calling themselves Free Soilers. “If it’s got the word free in it, then it makes us sound more like patriots than a bunch of lazy no good moochers!” one claimed. The name stuck.

  They found allies in the pages of the local newspapers. Publishers Richard Moran and James McClatchy became the Free Soilers’ heroes as they defended and glorified squatters’ rights in their newspapers. The Free Soilers proved to be even more selfish and lawless than those who had ransacked Sutter’s Fort and the land around it a few years earlier. For while the decimators of John Sutter’s property at least had the common courtesy to move on, the Free Soilers showed no such inclination. They reasoned that if gold in abundance was not to be their lot then the next best thing was free land, no matter who owned it.

  The chaos grew and McClatchy and Moran were jailed. This enraged the Free Soilers and they marched as a seething mob to where their heroes were behind bars. A fight erupted that left the Sacramento City Assessor and a Free Soiler dead. Others were injured. One of the squatters’ leaders, a doctor by trade, was charged with murder and jailed. But before the trial could take place, he was elected to the State Legislature.

  All of this anarchy made Thomas ponder if California would now descend into the revolution that was wracking his native Germany. He longed for the relative safety of the gold fields. At least there anyone squatting on a claim not belonging to him would likely end up at the end of a rope.

  By the first week of March
he was ready to depart Sacramento for Hangtown to join Rudolph and make their fortunes so that they could return home in triumph. Although Rudolph and those who had trekked overland were more physically and mentally prepared to hunt gold, Thomas was certain that he could be of service to the company from New York. After spending the winter in a warm hotel room and eating a more varied diet, his strength had returned and he felt ready to return to the sluices and long toms of the claims. He was making his final preparations to leave Sacramento when Rudolph showed up at his hotel.

  “You didn’t have to come for me.” Thomas said. He was unwilling to believe that something was awry. “I could have met you there.”

  “You don’t understand. I need a beer. Follow me. Now.”

  “But…”

  Thomas mutely followed his friend down the stairs and out of the hotel. Rudolph’s angry expression worried him. He knew that such an expression always presaged news of a bad development, of plans gone haywire. His mind spun with possibilities. It settled on the one that he thought to be most likely – the company had refused to let Thomas join it. This caused his mind to scramble for alternatives: strike out on his own for the gold fields, look for a band