by Gwen Bristow
Hester and Sue left after a few minutes, saying they had to get back to their children. Pocket asked Kendra if she wanted to walk around. Leaving Ted explaining to Will Gibson how they had made their rocker, Pocket and Kendra roamed about the tent.
Drab though it was on the outside, Marny had done a good deal to make the inside bright. On the bar and card tables she had set abundant candles, around the door she had hung loops of red calico, and on the canvas wall at each side of the bar she had pasted pictures from fashion magazines. The fashions were long out of date, for she had cut them from old magazines that packers in the States had stuffed into crates to fill up odd spaces. But they were pictures of pretty women, and Marny’s customers were men.
The tent was full of men. Tobacco smoke drifted about in curly blue patterns, and everybody seemed in good humor. They smiled broadly as they stepped out of Kendra’s way, bowing and saying “Howdy, ma’am.”
When she had seen the Calico Palace itself, Kendra guided Pocket’s willing elbow toward Marny’s table. This stood near the entrance, so every man who passed would see Marny and be tempted to come in. Kendra and Pocket stopped at one side. Marny did not glance around. When she dealt cards she did it as if there was nothing else in the world.
Standing there in the smoky light Marny had a look of tantalizing elegance. Her dress was a plain dark cotton, the sort that could be scrubbed again and again in a creek, but its very plainness set off her figure and her sparkling hair, her white skin and her freckles. As her eyes flicked from the cards to the players and back again, they were like the eyes of a prankish cat. It occurred to Kendra that Marny was rather like a cat. She had the calm self-reliance of a cat; like a cat she was fond of luxury but could manage very well without it; she moved with the silken silence of a cat; and like a cat, she loved herself best.
Several more men came up to the table, and Kendra whispered to Pocket that she thought they ought to make room. They walked back to the wooden pork-tub beside the bar. Ted stood a little way off with Will Gibson, still discussing the rocker. They waved at Kendra as she sat down, and Pocket said to her,
“Well ma’am, the bar owes me another cup of tea. Do you want it?”
Laughing, Kendra shook her head. “Thanks, Pocket, but I thought you said the tea was too weak to be worth drinking.”
Pocket, however, set a high value upon money. He answered, “It’s not worth drinking, ma’am, but I’ve paid for it. So excuse me please, while I get it.”
Pocket went to the bar for his tea. Half a dozen men stood there, among them Delbert, relaxing while the Blackbeard guard relieved him at the faro table. But Delbert, though his hand rested on the holster at his belt, was not watching the scene in general. His attention was fixed on one man at the bar, who was talking with all his might.
The speaker was a man named Ellet, who had recently come to Shiny Gulch from another camp farther up the river. Ellet was a big hairy fellow with sharp small eyes and enormous dirty hands. His hair grew down to his shoulders, his vast shaggy beard covered his chest and reached nearly down to his waist. He wore buckskin breeches, red flannel shirt, and a short sleeveless leather jacket, and he talked in a booming voice, emphasizing his important words by clapping his right fist on the palm of his left hand.
All the men at the bar were listening. Even Pocket paused to hear what was being said. Kendra eased the pork-tub nearer.
Ellet was talking about the Big Lump.
“Here’s how it is, boys. We find the gold in the rivers, or in the rocks and dirt close to the banks. We know the gold was brought down by the water. But—” he paused impressively—“brought down from where?”
There was a murmur in the group. Ellet went on.
“Boys, there’s some place it came from. Now don’t that make sense?”
The men looked at one another and back at him. Yes, that made sense.
“Now look,” said Ellet. “We know the little rocks and pebbles in the water, they’ve been broke off from the big rocks farther up. In flood times the rivers bring them down, in quiet times they sink to the river beds. Now don’t it seem reasonable that these here little pieces of gold in the water were broke off the same way, from a big gold lump in the mountains?”
Somebody gave a whistle.
“I tell you, boys,” said Ellet, “most of them mountains is still the way God made them. They ain’t never been walked on by human feet. But one of these days, somebody’ll go up there and explore. Somebody’s gonta find it. The Big Lump.”
Four or five men began to talk all at once. Delbert said nothing. The other men were so busy giving their own opinions that none of them seemed to notice him. But Kendra was not talking, and she noticed.
Over Delbert’s face had come a look like the look of a hungry animal. He wet his lips. His eyes grew narrow. He listened. It was the first time Kendra had ever seen him shaken out of his massive calm. The change did not make him pleasant. It made him frightening. The other men went on talking.
They asked, Was it possible? Was it really there, the beginning and the parent of all this glory, the Big Lump? Some said it wasn’t so, couldn’t be so. Others said it could be so, and probably was.
After a while, Pocket had something to say. Pocket had one of those quiet well-pitched voices that can penetrate a hubbub.
“Suppose it’s there,” said Pocket, “and somebody finds it. It won’t be worth anything.”
“Huh?” said the men.
They said it all together. They were shocked. Pocket sipped his tea. He continued,
“The only reason gold and diamonds and suchlike are valuable is that they’re scarce. If some man finds that Big Lump, and starts bringing down gold by the ton, pretty soon a gold bar won’t be worth any more than a copper cent.”
Here there was more talk. Again they all had something to say, and said it in many words. All but Delbert. For a time he continued to listen. After a while he did speak, but he spoke slowly, in a low voice, as if talking to himself.
“But suppose a man found it,” said Delbert, “and did not tell?”
The other men, all gabbling, seemed not to hear him. But Kendra heard, and his words gave her a shiver. She thought—a man who found a golden mountain and kept it to himself, a man who could chip off gold whenever he wanted, as much as he wanted, and was the only man on earth who knew where it was—
Delbert said nothing more. He stood where he was, thinking. But Kendra said to herself the words she was sure were in his mind.
“The man who had the Big Lump—he could be king of the world.”
19
TED HAD NOT HEARD the talk about the Big Lump. “Absurd,” he said when Kendra told him. “Anyway, aren’t we doing well enough where we are?”
Kendra thought they certainly were. Their rocker had begun by washing out thirty-three ounces of gold the first day. The next day they took forty ounces, the third day nearly fifty. By the first of June the four partners had gathered five hundred ounces, and the whole summer lay ahead.
“We can go to those strange far places,” Ted exclaimed to Kendra, “and soon! Kendra, would you like to see China? Or maybe a real South Sea island, where the girls wear grass skirts and dance on the beach?”
Kendra thought of her carriage with the matched black horses, her fur cloak, her muff with the spray of opals. “We can go back to the States,” she said. “To Baltimore—New York.”
“Oh Lord no,” he protested. “I hate New York.”
“Why Ted! Don’t you want ever to go there again?”
Ted laughed a little as if in apology. “But darling, we’ve been there! Wouldn’t you rather see something new?”
Kendra laughed too. It was like the dreaming glory of fairy tales. Shiny Gulch was what they called a placer. The Spanish word “placer” meant pleasure, delight, and now men were using it to mean any spot where they found gold scattered around them, waiting for them to pick it up. Kendra felt as if she were living on a magic island, cut off from past and fu
ture, without need to think of either one.
They were glad they had reached Shiny Gulch when they did, for they had made their start before the real rush began. Throughout the month of May men had been coming into camp, some to stay, others to wander on looking for placers yet unfound; but these had come in groups of two or three, mostly from the fort or the ranch country near by. Then all of a sudden the little camp almost exploded. Parties from San Francisco began pouring in, twenty or thirty men at a time, lusty and noisy and eager for gold.
It began in June. Kendra was resting on the grass near her cook-fire, reflecting that somebody had better go down to the fort and bring back some food, or pretty soon she would have nothing left to cook. The hard outdoor work gave the men vast appetites, and they were eating their supplies twice as fast as they had expected. She decided to make a salad of dandelion greens to go with supper this evening. The dandelions at Shiny Gulch were like no others she had ever seen: the flowers were great fluffy wheels the size of a silver dollar, and the little young leaves were delicious. Kendra had made up her mind that she and her friends were not going to get scurvy from lack of plant food. She had never seen a case of scurvy, but she had been told it was a dreadful illness.
She was about to get up and gather the salad leaves when she heard a voice shouting, “Miss Logan!—I mean, Mrs. Parks!” Running toward her she saw Foxy, the packing boy from Chase and Fenway. Kendra was almost surprised that he recognized her, for living outdoors had browned her face, and instead of the city clothes she used to wear she had on a dress of heavy dun-colored cotton with a checked gingham sunbonnet pushed back and hanging by its strings around her neck. But Foxy knew her and was glad to see her. With a grin that stretched all the way across his long buck-toothed face, he grabbed her hand and shook it hard, and began to talk, as volubly as he used to talk all day at the store.
He said he had reached Shiny Gulch several hours ago, with a party from town. While they were looking for a place to make camp somebody had told him that she and Ted were here. “And that red-headed lady with the freckles, is that her tent yonder?”
Kendra told him the Calico Palace was not open for business so early. However, she added, Marny was probably there, arranging the tables and the bar.
Foxy said he had brought a little present. He gave her a can of coffee, to Kendra’s delight as her own supply was running low. Then Foxy candidly let her know that his gift was not entirely disinterested. She had a fire already made—maybe if he brought Marny, Mrs. Parks would brew a pot of coffee for all three of them? He sure would enjoy having a nice cup of coffee with his lady friends.
Kendra consented, and Foxy set off to find Marny. When he came back with her, Kendra filled their three cups and they sat under a tree. Kendra inquired about her mother and Alex.
Foxy told her Colonel and Mrs. Taine were fine. They had come into the store together one day a little while back; Foxy could not remember just when, because so much was happening, it was enough to mix up a fellow’s head.
He said Hodge had left town with him, and so had the other two packing boys, Bert and Al. The boys were down yonder making camp with the rest of their party. Hodge had gone up to the sawmill, to see the place where the first gold had been found. “Myself,” said Foxy, “I think he’s plumb crazy to go up there. That place is old now. I’d rather find a spot not so worked over. Maybe a new placer, a new one.”
“With all this digging for new placers,” Kendra said, “you men are going to turn the country inside out before summer’s over.”
Foxy paused a moment to look around and listen to the clang of picks and pans. “Well, I’ll stop a while anyway, till I learn how things are. Looks like they’re pretty busy around here.”
Kendra said yes, everybody was busy around here. Marny asked about Messrs. Chase and Fenway.
Doing fine, said Foxy. All the traders were doing fine, selling supplies to men leaving for the placers. Did Mrs. Parks remember that sailor boy, Loren Shields? He was working for Chase and Fenway now. They paid him good, but Foxy thought it was pretty silly of him to stay in town.
Loren had already told Kendra he preferred a steady life to a venturesome hunt for gold. She asked, “Why is it silly if that’s what he wants to do?”
“Why Mrs. Parks,” said Foxy, “the town’s dead. Men like Mr. Chase and Mr. Fenway, at their age, they must be mighty near forty, it’s all right for them, but why should a young fellow like Loren stay there? Ted was smart to leave when he did. I wish I’d gotten out early, like him. When was it he first came up here—March?”
Kendra nodded. With a shrug, Foxy continued,
“Well, I’m not the only one who wasn’t smart. Back then, hardly anybody believed it. Folks didn’t really start believing it till around the first of May, and most folks not even then. First week or two in May, men were creeping out of town, I mean really creeping like they were ashamed of themselves, making up reasons why they had business across the bay so people wouldn’t laugh at them if the whole thing turned out to be a flop. Some soldiers and sailors deserted, not many, but a few.”
Foxy scratched his head and tried to justify himself for having hesitated like the rest.
“Nobody had any reason to leave, really. Town was booming. Must have been fifty buildings going up—stores, warehouses, houses for people to live in. And a fine new hotel, the Parker House on Kearny Street facing the plaza. The editor of the Star went up to the sawmill, came back and wrote a piece for his paper. Said there wasn’t enough gold to make any difference, like that time around Los Angeles. Said if men had any sense they’d stay on their jobs.
“And then—do you remember Mr. Brannan, that rich Mormon who lives in the big house on Washington Street corner Stockton? Well, he went up to see about his store at Sutter’s Fort. Came back to town after you’d left.”
Kendra and Marny exchanged glances. They were remembering the store at Sutter’s Fort, and Gene Spencer’s telling them how Brannan had stuffed it for men on their way to the mines. Brannan knew men would soon crowd up to the mines; he was going to see to it that they did. Foxy went on.
“Well, one day me and Bert and Al, we were working in the storeroom at Chase and Fenway’s, and we heard a commotion outside. We thought it was just somebody drunk and hollering, but the noise came nearer and the commotion got bigger and we went out and looked. And who did we see running down the street but this here Mr. Brannan, and he looked like he was drunk and crazy both. He had a quinine bottle full of gold dust and as he came running he was waving this bottle over his head and yelling ‘Gold! Gold! Gold from the American River!’”
“Bright young man,” murmured Marny.
Foxy spoke in a voice of awe.
“Ladies, you never saw anything like it. He was yelling so loud you could hear him half a mile, and men were running out of their stores and workshops all along the street to see what the fuss was about. But he didn’t stop, he kept right on running and hollering and waving that bottle over his head. So the men started running after him to find out if it was really gold.
“I tell you, by this time his face was so red it was shining, and with him running and all those other men tailing after him, it was like a comet going down the street.”
At the memory, Foxy mopped his forehead with his sleeve.
“Well naturally, he couldn’t keep going forever. By the time he got to the waterfront he had such a crowd after him he had to stop. Me and the other boys, we went out too, and we all huddled up around him wanting to see that bottle of gold. Soon as he got his breath he showed the bottle around and told us we could pick up that much in practically no time.
“So, me and the other boys, we decided we’d go up there and get some gold. But everybody else decided the same thing.”
Foxy spoke impressively.
“Ladies, as the word went around that day, it looked like every man in town quit what he was doing. The carpenters working on the Parker House, they threw down their hammers right where they stood,
left their saws in the boards they were sawing. Didn’t even wait for the wages due them. Just walked off. And the same with all those other buildings half built.
“It was like that all over. The shoemakers and clerks and stable boys and the gamblers in the City Hotel and the cooks and bakers and the teacher at the school and the doctor who ran the drug store—they left. It was like somebody had said Boo and the whole town had gone off in a puff of smoke. At the market on Kearny Street, the market man put up a sign that said ‘Help yourself,’ and he went off, leaving his meat and produce right there. And he wasn’t the only one.
“But Mr. Chase and Mr. Fenway said they were going to stay in town and sell their goods. Mr. Chase told us boys if we’d wait two or three days and help him, he would give us our whole outfit, boots and shirts and picks and shovels and jerky and salt pork, all free for nothing. So we stayed on. Men were buying food and clothes, and picks and pans and knives and shovels and horn spoons. They bought anything that would hold gold dust—bottles and cooky jars and jam pots and snuffboxes and tea canisters, anything. Mr. Chase kept putting up the prices but they didn’t care.
“We ran out of everything they could possibly use at the mines. But they kept coming in, begging us to sell them things we didn’t have any more. A man came in with a bag of money and said he’d pay fifty dollars for a shovel. Just a plain shovel he could have bought for a dollar before the rush began. But we didn’t have any. I had the shovel Mr. Chase had given me for staying on, but I hid that in a box of cabbages.”
Marny and Kendra laughed appreciatively as they listened. Kendra filled the coffee cups again.
“And, folks,” said Foxy, “you should have seen the trouble they were having, getting out of town. Any man who had any kind of boat could make money taking people to Sutter’s Fort. All along the beach they sat, with their bundles of food and clothes and their picks and pans, hoping for boats. Not just men, but whole families, even ladyfolks with babies that couldn’t walk yet, sitting on boxes, waiting.