“Try your luck at the Frog’s place, then. All we got is Old Tom and grog. We don’t put on the frills here.”
“The question was not meant as a criticism of your establishment, sir. I merely assumed . . . ah, a glass of your finest Old Tom then.”
Culky’s expression does not change as he pours. His face seems, indeed, to have long ago frozen into a wince.
Now, Eugene Augustus, how will this evening progress? Concen-trate, man. He surveys the room. Sees seated men and standing men and milling-about men, sees stumbling men and fiddle-playing men and billiard-playing men there in another small room. Sees men of all nations united by a thirst for gold. A masculine landscape inhabited by not even one example of the fairer sex. Ah, what Eugene would give for a whiff of rosewater, a sea swirl of skirt.
He drinks and the whiskey is a pale burn in his throat. Difficult to predict this evening, difficult indeed.
At the faro table the dealer sweeps up cards from the green felt. The case keeper, a Chinaman, records the cards on an abacus. A simple game, the odds against the house. One merely has to bet which card will now turn up and in which order. All it takes is a good head for numbers and an honest table for one to eventually win. Unfortunate that Eugene has never had a good head for numbers. It is why he avoids the cards and the dice and the wheel, bets only on those outcomes over which he has some control. Now Dora, she could have been a regular sharper, for though she can barely read and write she can add, subtract, divide, even juggle large sums. “I see them falling into place,” she said with an irresistible shrug that engaged her entire form. “I see them like it were raining numbers.”
≈ ≈ ≈
The faro dealer gestures to an empty space at the table. Eugene smiles and shakes his head, calls over to Mr. Culky for another shot. “And two for the gentlemen at the end of the bar.” He points to the Welsh brothers who are holding onto the bar railing as if assailed by a whirlwind. They stare dubiously as he approaches. When he met them on board the SS Champion he had not realized their English was so poor. Finds he must rely on broad gestures and loud, clearly spoken words. After they are finally made to understand they shake their heads. They are meeting their brethren in Camerontown, Eugene gathers. A mine is started there already. They have no need for partners. Eugene sighs. Looks about again. The Italian is not in sight, neither are the Missouri men. Les Canadiens are at the faro table now. They are cursing in their peculiar French. Their backs form a barricade. At the chuck-a-luck table an Indian man in a cocked hat tosses dice with a practiced hand. The light is fading and for a time the raucous crowd is half-figured and ghostly. Now an Indian boy lights tallow candles that are speared upright in wax-heaped bottles and give off trails of black smoke. They smell more foul than most tallow candles—of burning sheep fat, of carcass. Nothing like an odour to stir the pot of memory—a battlefield in the gloaming and all about corpses of horses and men are afire like a scene from some medieval poet’s hell. Eugene mouths a curse. He is excellent at forgetting many things, why not that scene? He gestures to Culky who fills his glass without a word. Eugene straightens. The evening is not yet over. There is still hope, still reason to stay.
The door cracks open. Oswald. Behind him is Herr Boots. He is grinning foolishly, is in need, obviously, of some kind of protection from this Oswald, who is waving his arms as if he has just walked into a line of drying petticoats, who won last night’s bet by a hair.
“They’re horse-shitting, them that says it’s sitting around. It ain’t like the Fraser, wheres any harebrained fucknit can get at it with a pan. It ain’t like California in ’49 neither. It’s more hidden than a nun’s twat. You gotta read the land, see. Gotta dig through rock to get the motherlode. Need more than sluices and such shit. Need shafts and a pump to keep the water out. Gotta have money for all that. Gotta have a company. Boys on their own are turning up dead and bear-chewed in the hills. Ain’t no place for a man alone, less you’re a god-blamed Indian. Don’t be listening to them fucknits that tell you otherwise. Listen to me. . . . Yeah, can we do something for you?”
“Ah, Mr. Hume,” Herr Boots says. “I happy to see you again. Sitzen. Here. Mr. Oswald he is speaking of mining. He knows much of it. He make big strike in Sierra Nevadas.”
Eugene smiles. “Truly? Then why the deuce are you here?”
Oswald stares grimly at his hands. Eugene sits.
“He here because he have bad partners. Bad men,” Herr Boots says.
“I trusted the wrong ones, see, sons-of-whores and mongrel bitches. I got too goddamned good a nature. Not this time.”
“Mr. Oswald is expert at mining. He look for investors.”
“But what of your boots? Herr . . . what of your venture?”
“Oh, I sell boots and then have money. Maybe I look to buy in a mine. I not sure.”
“Call the mine The Jessica Bell, after my fiancée. Won that whoreson bet, didn’t it? There’s a sign for you.”
“Herr . . . ah, Schulmiss.”
“Schultheiss,” the Prussian says, chuckling, always chuckling, as if life were some great joke.
“Quite so, Herr Schultheiss. May I speak with you in private?”
“Say your mind, Pume, don’t be sneaking around like a mongrel with its head up its arse,” Oswald says, grinning.
“Hume, the name is Hume, I say, and no. It is just . . .”
It is just that the Prussian is a fool to trust this swine-tongued Oswald. Oswald is a diminutive powder keg, a not-so-eloquent liar. Good natured? Eugene would have laughed if it had been appropriate. Mongrel? Eugene would have called him out for a duel if Oswald had not been jesting.
“Just that I, too, will be starting a mine and . . .”
“Yeah, and how you gonna choose the fuck what spot? I knew a gentleman-sir like you who thought if he horked snot on the ground it’d come up gold.”
“I shall study the lay of the land,” Eugene says with dignity. “I am not a green hand.”
“You ain’t? What’s a stringer then? What’s the fuck difference ’tween a sluice and a cradle?”
“I am not interested in proving myself to you.”
Oswald laughs, shows a mouth of chipped, tobacco stained teeth. “Can’t take some jibing, can you? Well, if you don’t know bum squat about mining, maybe you got some capital. Maybe you wanna invest in The Jessica Bell. I might consider it. Christ’s clinkers, but I might.”
“Your confidence is remarkable, Mr. Oswald. And now, if you will excuse me, gentlemen.”
“I ain’t no gentleman looking for a lickfinger. Bumtags are more use ’round here than gentlemen. Most of you got less money than a fucknit shoeshine. Here’s my advice to you, Pume, or Hume, or whatever it is. Don’t be putting on god-blamed airs. Don’t be thinking gold’ll be jumping out at you just cus you got some dandy-ass name for your mine. I’ll tell you this. It’s us that run the show here.”
Oswald sits back and grins. Schultheiss mops his brow and smiles apologetically. The moths rise at the back of Eugene’s neck. He is tempted, nay, determined, to return to his room for his revolver and take out this dwarfish fiend with one shot. Easy Eugene Augustus. Consider how that would set the evening on a course entirely different from the course which you had planned. And was the insult so great? Perhaps in the staid environment of the Old World it might have been. But here the old rules no longer apply. And look. The men about Oswald are not taking it so seriously; rather they are chuckling and snorting.
Let the Prussian be taken in with this piglet-brained Yank, then. In any case, what profits can he expect from such a quotidian item as boots? Some novelty might bring him fortune, but boots?
Eugene makes his way outside. The air smells of pine and wood smoke. The night is cloud-dark, edged with winter. Men jostle past him on their way from one saloon and grog shop to the next. There is the California House, the American flag lifting feebly in the breeze. There is the dirt street and then the sandy bank sloping sharply to the river. What happens at high w
ater? Perhaps the denizens huddle in that diminutive church higher up. Perhaps, indeed, another line of buildings once faced these. It almost appears so. Perhaps the opposing street was seized by the thick muscle of the river and smashed to pieces, leaving only the steep sandy bank. He straightens his shoulders, his hat. Another man, without his confidence, might well be discouraged by that troglodyte, Oswald.
“Over here! Find the lady! Find the lady!” The man calling this is setting up three cards on a crate. Now holds up a candle lantern. “Easy to do. Anyone can win. Come look. Just look. You there, and you.”
Men pause. Glance. One steps to the challenge. He loses the first attempt, then the second. On the third he wins three dollars. The tosser hands the money over grudgingly. “Good eye, sir, good eye. How about another round while your luck holds?”
The winner shakes his head, stuffs money in his pockets.
A man steps up. He has an impressive dark beard that falls near to his belly. He sways slightly. “My father won a quid at Find the Lady once. At a fair it was.”
“Play a round for free. For your father’s sake, then.”
Eugene watches from just out of the circle of lamplight. The man at play is young, he notices, and the beard only a young man’s attempt at a fierce countenance. He also notices a man leaning against a nearby stable wall, and then another man by the river, squatting near a tree.
The tosser shifts the cards one over the other. He is hatless, his features there for all to see—the greying hair reduced to a monk-like fringe, the sloping chin that gives him the appearance of weakness, of indecision. As for his accent. Some hint of the emerald isle in his ancestry. The colony of Nova Scotia? New Found Land? No matter, such dealers are a race apart whatever colony or country they have scrabbled from.
The young man loses the first game, plays another for free and wins. Now is the time. Yes. The tosser suggests a small wager. A mere quarter dollar. Shillings acceptable as well. The young man is fumbling in his pocket. Is humming a cheerful tune when Eugene steps up. My God, he may know little of mining, but he has spent enough time slumming to know of sharpers and their tricks.
“I would not recommend it, young sir. You will not find the lady. You will never find the lady.”
“Mind your own affairs there,” the tosser says.
“You have already been duped. The player before was an accomplice, a shill as it were. Another two are on the lookout should an authority come about and question the dealings.”
The tosser stares at Eugene. “You calling me a cheat?”
“My father won a quid at Find the Lady once,” the young man says. “At the fair it was. He bought us taffy and caramels. It was right jolly.”
“Indeed? Well, I assure you, young sir, you are more likely to find the Lady of the Lake than the lady of the cards. They have many tricks, these men.”
The young man looks to him wide-eyed. He is stroking his ridiculous beard as if it were a cherished pet. Has Eugene met him before? Perhaps, though likely it is merely that particular gullibility of youth that is familiar.
“Here, it’s only a bloody quarter,” the tosser says.
“And then a half dollar and then a whole. And then the man’s entire purse, and if he is unwilling to part with it, strong encouragement to give it up, eh?”
The tosser stands. The squatter on the bank stands. The figure by the stable shifts so that he is no longer leaning. Squares of light fall into the street as doors open and shut. Spinet and fiddle. Shouts and catcalls.
The man from the bank approaches, bringing with him a smell of onions and ale. He has the bulk of a wrestler and is likely armed. Eugene is tempted to let the young fool learn his lesson, be pummelled to bloody bits. Courage, Eugene Augustus, do not cut and run, not from this engagement.
“I advise we walk on,” Eugene whispers. The young man stumbles to one side. Eugene rights him.
“Where’s my lady, eh? My father found her. A quid he won. It was right capital.”
The bank man stands behind the tosser, sucks his breath through his teeth. Why should Eugene risk his neck for a stranger? He takes one step back. Two. Half turns. His heart pounds. The man from the stable blocks his escape. He is the tallest man that Eugene has yet seen in the colonies. His shoulders are as wide as a door. His hat, a wide-awake, shadows one eye. Indeed, he is well-dressed for a muscle man, has a frock coat and high boots that gleam even in this derisory light.
“I should warn you,” Eugene says. “I am an Englishman, and a soldier of the Crimean, and . . .”
“And full of the Dutch courage, I’d say.” The voice is the sort that could command the trees to bloom, waters to part. It seems to have an echo of its own. The bank man backs off. The tosser stuffs his pockets with cards. Tips over the lantern in his rush.
“Arthur. This is unlike you entirely. As for you, sir.” The man comes closer, looms over Eugene. Few men can loom over Eugene. It is not something he likes. “My thanks for trying to save the pockets of my clerk. And now Mr. Kinnear and Mr. Jevowski, is it? Either cease your nocturnal swindling or be gone from this town.”
“ ’Course, your honour, ’course,” says the tosser, Mr. Kinnear. “Just a game. Not a swindle. Not this one. Didn’t know he was your clerk. Didn’t know. ’Course. Good evening to you. Good evening.”
A full moon is rising over the hills and flushing its light down the street. Arthur is singing “Beautiful Dreamer.” The tall man is inviting Eugene for a coffee at Captain Powers’s Hotel and introducing himself as Matthew Baillie Begbie, High Court Judge. Kinnear and Jevowski are nowhere in sight.
≈ ≈ ≈
They sit in upholstered chairs in Captain Powers’s front room, their legs sprawled out toward the fire. The chandelier lamps are lit. The Judge’s hat sits on a wrought iron table. His hair is black, thick and richly oiled. His eyes are a remarkable blue. He wears a Van Dyke beard, moustaches waxed to tasteful points.
The noise from the saloons is muffled by distance. Arthur has gone off to bed. Eugene knows where he saw him now—at Governor Douglas’s table nearly two years ago, on the occasion when Eugene was ushered so ignobly out the door. Arthur’s face was less enveloped with hair then, which is why Eugene failed to recognize him. Wasn’t young Arthur married to one of the Governor’s daughters? Yes. To one of the les belles sauvages, as Eugene has heard them called. Ah, at least this evening is turning out splendidly, just as Eugene felt it would. They are smoking cigars, the Judge’s own, and sipping coffee from China cups. They have exchanged pleasantries on the weather (promising) on Captain Powers’s coffee (excellent) and on the war raging in America (tiresome).
The Judge blows a white ring that blooms against the window pane. Eugene attempts the same, coughs. He has never acquired a taste for tobacco. Still, he could hardly turn down the offering of a cigar from such a man; it would be alike to turning down the offering of his hand; it would be disrespectful of their common bond. For they are both Englishmen, they both prefer their coffee black. Most importantly they both attended Cambridge, though when the Judge, delighted, presses Eugene for dates and reminisces about this doctor or that, Eugene regrets that he had brought the subject forward. No point in explaining to the Judge that he would have completed his three years, certainly, but there had been the problem of the money, the problem of being unfairly sent down. The bulldogs, those greasy wardens, took a special delight in tracking him when he and his companions were out enjoying an evening. They hardly cared that one could not merely snap one’s fingers and so be transported across the environs.
Eugene decides it is as good a time to piss as any. “If you will excuse me. I must step outside. The coffee. I am not accustomed to such excess of liquid this time at night.”
He pisses against a wall and as he does a dog slinks past, staring at Eugene over its shoulder, as if there were a price on its mangy head. Eugene belts his trousers and now notices that the clouds are in retreat and the moon is looking low enough to roll down the street. It is fu
ll round and the patterns upon it are as delicate as lace work, astonishingly clear. To Eugene’s delight a line of poetry ambles into his recollections. He had read it in some English periodical, and then again on the wall of a necessary here in the colonies.
Eugene returns and takes up his cigar. “Ah, Bright wandering coquette of the sky, whom alone can change but always be adored.”
“My pardon?”
“It is a fragment from that incomparable poet, Percy Shelley. It has only just been discovered and published.”
“Ah, but was it not: Bright wanderer, fair coquette of Heaven?” the Judge asks.
“Possibly.”
“And then: To whom alone it has been given to change and be adored forever. I could be in error.”
“No, those are the correct lines, now that I think on it. Quite so.”
“I am glad to meet a man who prefers poetry to gambling.”
“Indeed, sir, I swore an oath to my dying mother that I would touch not the cards, nor the dice, nor approach a gaming table. I will honour that oath.”
“Ad praesens ova cras pullis sent meliora.”
Something about chickens and eggs, which comes first. No, that it is better to have an egg than a chicken. “Quite so,” Eugene says.
“But what of searching for gold? Is not that a gamble?”
“In a manner, yes, but the differences bear analysis. For it is due to one’s own exertions that gold is found, it does not merely rely on the turn of a card or a dealer’s honesty.”
“That is true,” the Judge admits with a small smile. He adds more coffee to Eugene’s cup and then his own. “And you served in the Crimean?”
“Yes.”
“A noble cause.”
“Yes.”
“Who can forget that brave charge by the light brigade?”
“Not I.”
“Although it was said to be not wholly necessary. But then, errare humanum.”
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