My Father's World

by Michael Phillips

  “And that’s why you’re buying up whatever claims you can, for the streams and the trees?” asked Pa, hardly hiding the sarcasm in his voice.

  “Well, that’s putting it a bit simply perhaps, but I suppose that catches the gist of it, Mr. Drum.”

  “You say the gold is played out for several miles, Mr. Royce. Just how far exactly?” asked Mrs. Parrish.

  “Not to worry, Mrs. Parrish,” the banker replied. “The Parrish mine is well out of that range and should have a few more profitable years left.”

  “This is a simply fascinating conversation,” said Mr. Singleton enthusiastically. Until then he had, though silent, been keenly observing the speakers. “The California Gazette will want a feature article on this subject.”

  “I should be glad to supply you with an interview,” said Mr. Royce.

  “Thank you kindly, sir,” replied the newsman. “But a woman’s perspective might be a novel approach. In fact, I can see two articles, one featuring the big mining operation like yours, Mrs. Parrish, contrasted with a small two-man partnership. Might you consent to an interview, Mr. Matthews?”

  “What?” said Uncle Nick, rubbing his face like he had just awakened from a deep sleep. “You mean you want to put what I got to say in that newspaper of yours?”

  “I believe you are representative of a large percentage of my readership, and thus your perspective would lend greater appeal. You must give it some thought, and you too, Mrs. Parrish.”

  Then the newspaper man smiled weakly at Mr. Royce who seemed suddenly to have been edged out of the proceedings. “And in the future,” he said to him, “I’m sure I shall also want to run an article on the banker’s view in all this.”

  Then some folks came and led Mr. Singleton away.

  Mr. Royce used the opportunity to return to the subject of Pa and Uncle Nick’s claim. He turned to Uncle Nick, who had begun sauntering away.

  “I understand, Matthews,” he said, “that the population around your little cabin has grown considerably of late.” As he spoke he nodded in our direction. “In light of that, I can understand your reluctance to part with the only roof over your head. Because of these new developments, I am prepared to double my previous offer for your land. It would give you the opportunity to move into town and start a new life for yourself and the young folks here—your long-lost kinfolk, as I understand it.”

  “We told you before, Royce,” said Pa, not even giving Uncle Nick a chance to reply, “our mine ain’t for sale. We’ll do just fine where we are—all of us.”

  “I only thought for the children’s sake—”

  “The children will be here only through the winter anyway.”

  My heart sank as Pa said the words, but I tried not to show my disappointment.

  “Oh, I see. I understood they had no other family but your . . . uh, your partner here, and that—”

  “Well, you understood wrong! You may be able to smooth-talk Pickins and MacDougall outta their claims, and I ain’t heard what Larsen’s decided to do about your offer. But Nick and I ain’t selling!”

  Mr. Royce said nothing further, merely tipped his hat and ambled slowly away.

  “There’s something about that man I don’t like,” Pa muttered. “I don’t think I altogether trust him.”

  “I hope you don’t take Mr. Royce’s words completely to heart, Mr. Drum,” said Mrs. Parrish. “Geology reports can be misleading at times.”

  “Oh, I don’t,” Pa replied.

  “You and the children’s uncle have put a great deal of labor into your claim. I would hate to see you give up on it.”

  “Royce can keep his geologists,” said Pa.

  Then followed an awkward silence. It was Uncle Nick who broke it. “Mighty fine speech you gave up there, Ma’am.”

  “Thank you. I hope it inspired you to attend our first church services here in Miracle Springs.” She said the words addressing my uncle, but I could see her glancing over toward Pa as she spoke.

  “Well . . . uh, let me see—when was that again?”

  “The children need to have their spiritual education enhanced, you know, Mr. Matthews . . . Mr. Drum.” Now she looked over at Pa.

  His mood changed abruptly. I don’t know if he didn’t like Mrs. Parrish meddling with us kids, or if he just wanted to be left alone to do his own thinking about religious matters. But he clearly didn’t much like her giving him counsel about us.

  “The kids’ll get along just fine,” he said, “without no one telling me what kind of education I oughta be giving ’em. Now if you’ll pardon me, Ma’am,” he added stiffly, touching the brim of his hat, “I gotta git along.”

  He spun around and strode off down the wooden sidewalk. Uncle Nick just stood there a moment longer, then walked off in the other direction toward the Gold Nugget. We stayed with Mrs. Parrish and she never mentioned our pa again.

  Chapter 22

  Dinner with Alkali Jones

  Over the next several days, mining and the status of gold in the streams and rivers and hills about Miracle became a major subject of conversation. Pa never discussed the mine with us kids. But when he was talking to Uncle Nick, or to anyone else whenever we’d go into town, that’s mostly what they talked about. And I could tell he was more concerned about it than usual. He seemed to spend every spare minute either at the mine or at the stream.

  I wanted to learn all I could about gold digging. It was such an important part of everyone’s life around here. Pa was short on details, but Uncle Nick would answer my questions whenever I’d ask him.

  I did learn a little about the two basic kinds of mining—placer and quartz. Most of the small claims around Miracle were placer operations in the rivers and streams. They used sluice boxes of many types, and lots of water. Pa and Uncle Nick had several sluice boxes situated on the stream at places where the water would run swiftly through them and sift out the gold as they dredged up dirt and gravel with a shovel and threw it into the top of the box. Watching them shovel and sift the dirt, and then pick through the bottom sections of the wooden chute looking for the specks of gold left behind, I could tell it was a lot of work for what little they found. I tried to draw a sketch of them working to put in my journal.

  A person could find a lot more gold with quartz mining, but only rich men and mining companies could afford to do it profitably. Instead of above ground digging in streams, quartz miners dug and blasted their way into the side of a hill where they figured gold might exist, hollowing out a cavern that went inside the mountain. They searched about, hoping to run across a whole vein of the ore.

  Pa and Uncle Nick began placer mining in the stream, but they dug out a cave up there at the mine, too, so I guess they had been trying their hand at both methods. They were digging it out by hand with a pick rather than dynamite, and Uncle Nick said it was slow going because it was just the two of them. But he said that’s where the real gold is—inside the mountains, not in the streams. Pa warned us several times to keep away from the mine, especially the younger children.

  “You gotta stay clear of the cave,” he’d tell Tad and Becky every day. “You never can tell when one of them roof timbers’ll give way.” Then turning to me and Zack, he’d add, “You keep ’em outta there, you hear?”

  One day, Alkali Jones came out to the cabin and stayed for supper. I learned more from the talkative old miner in that one day than I might have in weeks from our tight-lipped pa and carefree uncle.

  “I tell you, Drum,” said Mr. Jones, “that’s jest stuff an’ nonsense about the gold bein’ all dried up.”

  “Franklin Royce’s geologists come all the way from Harvard College in Massachusetts,” said Pa. “Leastways, that’s what he claims, though I don’t believe them neither.”

  “Aw, what do they know about minin’ way back there?”

  “If they was workin’ for anyone but Royce, I might have to pay ’em some heed. But like the Indians say, Royce tends to speak with a forked tongue.”

  “He�
��s a snake, is that what yer meanin’?”

  “Maybe that’s a mite harsh, Alkali. I don’t like him much neither, but he is a banker.”

  “One an’ the same, iffen ya ask me.”

  “I gotta agree with Alkali,” put in Uncle Nick. “I think the varmint’s up to no good around here. I wouldn’t put nothing past him.”

  The talk lulled as I brought a plate of fresh biscuits to the table. Pa lifted two from the dish, buttered them, ate one in two huge bites, and then spoke as the other two men did likewise.

  “Well,” said Pa, “our placer operation on the stream is slowing down, and there’s no denying it. What do we get, Nick, an ounce, maybe two a week, if we’re lucky and work at it? That is if I can keep you here working at all!”

  Uncle Nick grinned half-sheepishly and looked over at Mr. Jones.

  “Weren’t it the underground potential you was lookin’ for in this claim when ya got it in the first place?” asked Jones.

  “Wasn’t really looking for nothing,” Pa answered. “Not long after we got here, Nick won it in a Monte game from old Phil Potter.”

  “Phil was always talking about a bonanza vein and such like,” said Uncle Nick. “But I think all that was just so we’d let the claim cover the pot on the table, which was worth more’n we ever took from this stream. Probably nothing but talk.”

  “I don’t know,” mused Pa. “He was from the coal mines over in Cornwall, England, and all his friends hereabouts said he knew his stuff.” A slow smile spread over his face as he recalled the incident. “That was some game,” he said. “You had them cold, and they never knew it.”

  Uncle Nick laughed. “And now they got their revenge—sticking us with a dead mine!”

  “Potter’d be bound to know more’n any blamed Harvard geologist!” said Mr. Jones.

  “Too bad Phil ain’t around no more,” said Pa. He popped the second biscuit into his mouth in one piece. The talk slowed while he chewed and the other two men concentrated on their plates.

  When the meal was finished, Pa leaned back in his chair and lit up a cigar. Mr. Jones put his feet up on a log and filled up his pipe, and then lit it with deliberate satisfaction. Uncle Nick threw a quick tickle toward Tad and Becky, then shadow-boxed a couple punches in Zack’s direction. The resulting giggles from all three contrasted with the serious talk always coming out of Pa’s mouth. I think Uncle Nick might’ve liked to be more involved with us kids, but was just a little afraid of what Pa might say. Even though he was a man to us, every once in a while I’d catch a look in his eye that made me think he almost looked on Pa as a pa too, more than just a big brother—or brother-in-law. But the talk soon settled back again around the topic of the future of the mine.

  As the smoke curled silently up in the air from the cigar and pipe, the girls and I started to clear the supper things off the table. But I moved quietly, hushing the little ones up every so often so I wouldn’t lose the thread of the conversation.

  “So what’re ya aimin’ t’ do, Drum?” Mr. Jones finally asked, punctuating his words with a wisp of smoke. He talked mostly to Pa, more or less acknowledging him as the head of the partnership, even though it seemed to be common knowledge that the claim was in Uncle Nick’s name. Folks in town called it the Matthews claim. To all but their best friends, Pa tried to pretend he was just in the background. I still didn’t know why.

  “That’s one of the reasons I wanted to see you, Alkali,” replied Pa. “I know you’re bound for Marysville—and you’d find better pickings over yonder on the Feather. But we were thinking—and me and Nick’s talked this over and are in complete agreement. If you wanted to stay in Miracle, you could work here with us and help us get the mine deeper into the mountain. Three men could do a lot of things two men just can’t.”

  “There’s lots of fellers who’d jump at the chance o’ teamin’ up with the two o’ ya, Drum—younger an’ stronger than me. Hee, hee!”

  “Yeah, but none we’d trust like you. Nick and me, we’ve got . . . well, let’s just say there’s some of those fellers you mentioned who would be a mite too inquisitive to suit us, and we got some things we just can’t let get out.”

  “Nobody can stop that mouth of yours,” laughed Uncle Nick from where he stood by the fire, “but you know when to keep it shut, too.”

  “Thank ya kindly—that is, if yer meanin’s what I think it is!”

  “Don’t worry,” added Pa, chuckling himself. “Nick was paying you a compliment.”

  Mr. Jones might have blushed his pleasure at my pa’s words, but it was impossible to tell for certain since so little of his skin showed through the hair and grime. His beard was at least four inches longer and two inches thicker than Pa’s.

  “It might turn out Royce’s eastern fellers are right,” Pa went on. “I’m guaranteeing nothing. All our efforts could be for nothing—”

  “Pshaw!” exclaimed Alkali Jones with a wave of his hand in the air. “That’s the least of my worries. I been workin’ all my life fer nuthin’, anyhow! Hee, hee! No reason to stop now!”

  “I’m going on nothing more than Phil Potter’s word and my own gut instinct.”

  Mr. Jones winked coyly. “Ya may like t’ keep it quiet, Drum—an’ I know ya got yer secrets houndin’ ya from wherever ya come from—”

  Pa shot him a keen glance. But a moment’s look apparently satisfied him that Mr. Jones knew nothing more than he was saying, and meant no harm by the statement.

  “—but I know you! You know yer own share o’ that geology stuff.”

  “I may know a thing or two,” consented Pa, “and I’m trusting to that.”

  “That strike o’ yers, when ya went over t’ Rough an’ Ready by yerself back in ’49—that was more’n pure luck.”

  “Maybe. Though it didn’t do me much good, and here I am still scratching the soil for nothing more than dirt.”

  “The gold’s here,” said Uncle Nick. “I can feel it!”

  “There’s no cash in feeling it in a lame-brained head,” said Pa with a wink in Mr. Jones’ direction. “You gotta feel it in your hand!”

  Mr. Jones took the opportunity to let loose a high-pitched cackle.

  “And we still gotta account for Royce’s statement,” Pa went on, serious again. “What reason would the man have to spread false rumors?”

  “To scare folks off and buy claims up cheap!” said Uncle Nick.

  “He could never get away with it,” Pa replied. “If there really was much gold left, he’d never pull a swindle like that off. This ain’t ’49 or ’50. We’re not just a batch of greenhorns anymore.”

  “Don’t ya believe it, Drum!” said Alkali Jones. “You and I and Nick may be too smart fer that. But there’s still enough of the other kind around.”

  There was a long pause while the two men smoked in silence, rocking back and forth on the legs of their two chairs. Uncle Nick still stood with his back to the fire. I guess Zack had been listening to the conversation, too. Now he looked over to where Pa and Mr. Jones were seated.

  “Mr. . . . uh . . . Mr. Drum,” he said hesitantly, his high-pitched voice both cracking and lowering as he spoke. “I could work at your mine.”

  Pa stared up at him as if it was the first time he had even noticed my brother. But before he could say anything in reply, Mr. Jones spoke up.

  “Hee, hee, Drum! Looks like you don’t need me after all! Hee, hee!”

  I could see a cloud come over Zack’s face. Right then there was nothing he hated more than being treated like a child.

  “I’m a real good worker,” he said defensively.

  “The mine ain’t no place for kids,” said Pa, exactly as he had a hundred times before.

  “Hey, Drum, hold up a minute,” said Uncle Nick, with a hint of fun in his voice. He saw an opportunity to speak up for us kids when Pa couldn’t say too much to contradict him. “Watch how you’re talking about my sister’s boy! He’s no runt—even a mite big for his age.”

  “If I’m t’
be one o’ the princeeples in this here operation,” chimed in Alkali Jones, “well, I figure we need jest about all the help we can git.”

  “He’s just a boy, Alkali,” said Pa. “Blastin’ and pickin’ our way into that hillside is man’s work.”

  “Why, jest look at them muscles shapin’ up in his arms,” Mr. Jones went on. “Drivin’ a rig across them plains got him in fine shape fer gold minin’. ’Sides, he’s yer partner’s kin. So ya can trust him better’n ya can trust even the likes o’ an ol’ coot like me! Hee, hee!”

  Pa saw he was out voted. He took a long, agonizingly slow puff on his cigar, all the while looking Zack over from head to foot as if pondering his friend’s words. Finally he spoke again.

  “You know how to do what you’re told, boy?” he asked sternly.

  Zack nodded.

  “Well then, maybe we’ll give you a try one day. But mind you, there ain’t going to be no larkin’ on this here job!”

  I found that last statement a strange one considering what a hard time Pa was always giving Uncle Nick for getting into scraps that took him away from the work. Yet working the mine seemed to have suddenly become more important to everyone. I wondered if it had anything to do with us being there, or if something inside Pa just wanted to prove Mr. Royce wrong.

  Whatever the reason, activity at the mine began to pick up. The buckboard, drawn by Alkali Jones’ mule, made several trips into town bringing back loads of mining supplies and cases of dynamite. Meanwhile, Tad insisted that he was almost as big as his brother and should be allowed to work, too. And Becky’s natural recklessness and curiosity kept her constantly in the way. It was all I could do to keep Tad and Becky out from under the men’s’ feet.

  But winter was coming on too, and days of rain kept halting the work altogether. Uncle Nick said that in the spring they’d really be able to get going.

  I couldn’t help thinking that if Pa had his way, by springtime we Hollister children might be on our way back East.