Bound for Gold--A Peter Fallon Novel of the California Gold Rush

by William Martin

  August 4, 1849

  Jumping

  Some time after midnight, I wrote a note to Samuel Hodges.

  I never spoke with him. He was drinking when I returned to the William Winter, drinking hard. I had only seen him sip a few glasses of port in the captain’s cabin, and these had produced pleasant effects—a looser tongue, a broader laugh, a more relaxed demeanor. But that night, he had worked his way through a bottle of bad whiskey and was starting on a second. He appeared sullen, and beneath that, belligerent, a man of thwarted ambition.

  So I chose to write rather than talk. I should have looked him in the eye, but drunk or sober, he was certain to see betrayal in my actions. And he had been betrayed enough.

  Besides, it was not only Hodges who radiated anger. Most everyone who remained a Sagamore, twenty-five men in all, seemed in the same state.

  My note explained that since the company had dissolved, they no longer formed a clear prism through which I might show this Gold Rush to the people of Boston. It was my job to find a new perspective. I did not expect Hodges to accept my argument. But by the time he read, I hoped to be long gone.

  * * *

  AFTER THE SHIP’S BELL rang once for four-thirty, I waited a few minutes so that anyone bestirred by the sound might slip back to sleep. Then I left the note on the saloon table and tiptoed up to the main deck.

  Lanterns burned bow and stern and bled light into the fog. I had my sea bag on my shoulder, my pistols in my belt. I moved quietly and breathed lightly. I was a shadow.

  The Negro Pompey and Christopher Harding had the watch. Christopher was asleep on the forecastle deck. That was good. But Pompey’s voice cut through the darkness from the stern. He said, “If you’s thinkin’ of sneakin’ off, Mr. Whoever-You-Are, I got the oarlocks. Ain’t supposed to let no one leave at night. Not after last night.”

  “You owe me a favor, Pompey,” I said just above a whisper.

  His shadow picked up the lantern and came down from the quarterdeck. He held the light to my face. “Mister Spencer?”

  “How was that touch-ee?”

  “Got a fine yeller woman to stroke my dick, and it—”

  “You owe me, then.”

  Pompey glanced toward Christopher Harding, who was still asleep. I thought, for a moment, that I saw someone asleep behind him, with an arm thrown over him.

  “Besides,” I said, “after last night, there aren’t many left aboard to worry about. Mr. Harding isn’t even worried about … sleeping on the deck.”

  Pompey said, “Him and his friend done more than sleepin’, when they thought I was asleep. Mr. Harding, he have a ass that shine like moonlight, and—”

  I was not surprised to hear that, but I cut him off. “Will you row me in, Pompey?”

  “You can’t take nothin’. Cap’n’ll flog me if you—”

  “I want nothing but to get ashore.”

  Pompey gave another glance toward the two sleeping men on the forecastle deck. Then he blew out his lantern. We lowered ourselves into the small rowboat, Pompey fitted the oarlocks, and we pushed off.

  Reverend Winter looked down from beneath the bowsprit, and I fancied that I saw disapproval in his eyes. But with each dip of the oars, I felt growing relief.

  Then the voice of Samuel Hodges cut through the night fog. “Goddamn you, James Spencer. You desert me, too?”

  Had he gotten up to piss and seen the note? Had Christopher Harding awakened him? Or Sloate? For it was certainly Sloate asleep behind Christopher.

  “Don’t say nothin’,” Pompey told me.

  “Come back,” said Hodges. “Come back, and I’ll forget this ever happened.”

  Pompey kept pulling, and the oars rocked rhythmically in the locks.

  Clink, clank, splash. Clink, clank, splash.

  “Turn that boat around or we’ll start shooting,” cried Hodges.

  “Shooting?” I heard Christopher Harding say. “I can’t shoot Jamie Spencer.”

  “I can.” That was Sloate’s voice.

  “Don’t say nothin’,” Pompey whispered, “Be harder for ’em to figure out where to shoot in the fog. Bad enough I’se makin’ noise with the oars.” Clink, clank, splash.

  Hodges shouted, “You came to tell the world my story! Our story!”

  I felt a pang at that. Hodges was right. I would never have begun this adventure if not for his willingness to take me on.

  “Is it that damned Irishman? Are you throwing in with that bog-hopping scum?”

  Pompey whispered, “If I’se runnin’, I’d run with Flynn, too. He know how to get by.”

  Hodges’s voice grew thicker. A note of defeat seemed to creep in, or perhaps it was the fog, deadening it, “Be careful of him, Spencer. He’ll find a noose sooner or later.” Then he added, “What will your mother say? Your father?”

  And that sealed the matter. My father would tell me to stay. So I was going.

  “I won’t forget this, James Spencer! You’ve backstabbed me. You and that Irish son-of-a-bitch will come to grief, by my hand or somebody else’s. You mark my words.”

  But Hodges did not pursue, perhaps because there were not enough awake to pull the big longboat. Soon, our rowboat slid up to the Clay Street Wharf, just forward of the schooner Anne-Marie.

  Pompey took my hand. “If not for Cap’n Trask, I be jumpin’, too, but no man treat me better. He give me a job, give me my own caboose to cook on, give me a chance to make the money for to buy my wife and babies out of North Carolina, so—” He released his grip. “I hope to meet you again, sir.”

  “Tell them that I put a gun to your head and made you row me in. They’ll go easier on you, and … I’ll pray you make enough to buy your family.”

  August 9, 1849

  Sutter’s Fort

  This morning, I put into the hands of John Augustus Sutter himself a dispatch which he promised to post when he journeyed to Monterey.

  It has been said that in warfare, no plan of battle survives contact with the enemy. I would add that in California, no plan of organization survives the enormity of the landscape or the unleashed ambition of men come to extract their fortune from out of it.

  And so, I must report that the Sagamore Mining Company has dissolved. Men have taken their shares and gone on their own, and I have no certainty that I will ever see any of them again. However, if it is any comfort to families, investors, and friends, dissolution is the common fate for all companies soon after debarking in California.

  So I have joined with a man named Michael Flynn, and we have struck out on our own.

  We left San Francisco on August 4 aboard the schooner Anne-Marie, a vessel of fifty feet and twenty ton, with a shallow draft for getting over river bars. We beat across the bay, passed through the Carquinez Straits and Suisun Bay (named for a tribe of Indians that once lived there), and entered a vast delta formed by the confluence of the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers, a maze of waterways, marshes, and islands that resemble Eden before the fall (assuming there were sparrow-sized mosquitoes in Eden).

  Tall grasses wave in the delta breeze. Oak and willow festoon the water’s edge. Salmon roil the streams. Waterfowl darken the sky. Deer and elk graze the banks. And all of these creations of God exist entirely oblivious to us and our ambitions.

  A few passengers took pot shots at the deer, but our captain did not stop when one was felled. We protested, as fresh meat is a luxury, but we came to understand his reasoning at the next bend, where we spied on the bank the most enormous four-legged creature that ever I have seen, a silver-brown bear as big as a deck house, his face buried in an elk haunch, his muzzle and claws covered in blood.

  Someone said that the bear was called a Grizzly, that he was as ferocious as he was huge, and that it was best to leave the riverbank to him. The man spoke with such confidence that all accepted his judgment.

  Indeed, there seemed as much confidence as knowledge on that boat. But in California, a man who speaks with confidence is assumed to have knowledge.
I could write a volume about the men aboard who spoke confidently of the riches they would find. They have big dreams and have come to a place big enough to hold their every aspiration.

  The vistas, even from the river, are long and broad and big. The river is big, too. Its breadth doubles our Merrimack, just as the mountains that birth it are reputed to reach twice the height of those where the Merrimack takes life. Even the sky is big … and hot. No New Englander experiences the kind of baking, bone-drying heat that cooks this California country. The mercury glass on the mast registered near a hundred on the first day, surpassed it on the second, and came a few degrees shy of hellfire on the third.

  By the time we reached Sacramento, the chill San Francisco wind was but a fond memory. Aside from the heat, however, this is San Francisco in miniature. A dozen abandoned ships serve as floating storehouses. Scores of shacks and tents line the riverbank. And two structures dominate: the three-story City Hotel and a windowless warehouse with a sign proclaiming “S. Brannan & Co.”

  This Brannan appears to be everywhere, as are the gamblers, the grog merchants, and the grifters, working their schemes in canvas pavilions or at tables under the trees. Merchants pile their open-air depots high with goods, secure in the knowledge that no rain will fall between May and October. And all of them pile their prices high, too, knowing that men will have to pay or go back to San Francisco for a better price.

  Two miles south, on higher ground, stands Sutter’s Fort, wise grandfather to this adolescent riverfront, a four-acre compound, enclosed with a fifteen-foot wall of whitewashed adobe, blindingly bright in the afternoon sun. But all is not brightness. It appears a heavily used place, busy and bustling, but in truth, worn to a nub.

  Two years ago, John Sutter was a wealthy man, a sort of feudal lord who welcomed wayfarers to an agricultural empire served by hundreds of mechanics, farmhands, and Indian slaves. He grew crops, ran cattle, tanned hides, milled grains, all on a Mexican land grant of 50,000 acres. By most accounts, he was a benevolent despot. But when one of his men found gold at his sawmill, forty miles up in the hills, Sutter tried to keep it quiet, not out of greed but because he knew what would happen. And happen it did.

  Portly, courtly, with bushy side whiskers and polished walking stick, Sutter strolls the compound today like a man who has gained all that he sought in California. But his eyes reveal bewilderment, for all that he sought is being swept away, his dreams destroyed by the thousands who have swarmed across his land pursuing dreams of their own.

  As his fort stands at the confluence of the Sacramento and American Rivers, it was inevitable that it would become the nexus for thousands of Gold Rushers. But it seems that people who come to draw riches from the earth believe that anything the earth renders is theirs. They have trampled Sutter’s wheat fields, stripped his orchards, plucked even green apples for cider. And pens that held cattle are now empty, because rustlers have stolen most of the livestock that grazed on the wide plains around us.

  Representing myself as a Boston correspondent, I sought Sutter out. He told me of his misfortunes and said, “I never believed that people could be so mean.” He is preparing to leave for Monterey, where a statehood convention may bring a degree of order and give him the authority to put squatters off his land. It is a measure of gold’s power that this new possession called California may pass more quickly to statehood than any since the first thirteen.

  Despite everything, Sutter’s Fort remains a jump-off point for those heading inland. So horse traders, muleteers, and wagon drivers are everywhere about. A newspaper called The Placer Times is published on a hand press. Brannan & Co. has another store here, to sell to the buyers they miss at the landing. A billiard table and an actual bowling alley compete for amusement. Indeed, there is so much commerce, so much trading, so much buying and selling, that a restaurant serves food here around the clock.

  We pitched a tent outside the fort, traded information about San Francisco and the gold country, and purchased overpriced goods from the Brannan Store. My partner, however, has won steadily in card games on the boat and at the fort, so we have eaten well and provisioned well, and in his final game, he won two horses and a burro from a short, fat, and very unlucky Mexican named Carlos.

  This is the way of things in California. Great agrarian empires are wantonly destroyed, livestock and money casually wagered on the turn of a card. But in a country so big, there is always a chance that tomorrow will be better. In a country so fertile with possibility, chance rules, and second chances are plentiful.

  And so, we strike out to play the great game.

  Yr. Ob’t Correspondent,

  The Argonaut

  By mid-morning, we were riding east across the rolling dry grasslands. About a mile ahead, a cloud of dust floated above a wagon train hauling goods into the hills. To the south, a plume of smoke marked a California prairie fire, a fast-moving beast that seemed to devour both the earth and the air above it. But as the flames were burning south before the breeze, the fire remained a distant spectacle, like the mountains faintly visible beyond the foothills.

  We let the horses go at a steady gait, covering not much more than seven or eight miles in an hour. From time to time, we passed groups of miners, most of them moving along on foot. Some had a mule carrying their gear. Others rode in wagons or carts. We exchanged greetings, like ships passing, and kept on. This was the last phase of the rush to the goldfields, but no one seemed to be rushing in the heat.

  We reckoned that we would get to the camp called Sutter’s Creek by sundown. Sutter had gone there in the spring with a crew of Indians and had done well until the traveling grog shops had opened and enticed his Indians to spend more gold than they mined. Soon they were all in debt or drunk or both. So Sutter had given up mining altogether and left only his name in the diggings.

  Flynn allowed as how grog shops would be no distraction to him. I was inclined to believe him, in that I had never seen him drunk. But he was Irish, so I had my dubieties. If he needed drink, however, it would not be to loosen his tongue. For that, he needed nothing but the air in his lungs. Lord but that man could talk.

  We had agreed to take only one canteen each and to drink little, so by mid-morning, my mouth was as dry as the grass. But without a sip of water or a swallow from the jug of whiskey he had bought at Sutter’s, Flynn talked and talked. He talked about Ireland, about the Fenians, about Boston, about his mother and his sister. He talked about the ceaseless sun, about the men we met on the road, and about our plans for mining, too. He even talked me out of one of the Colt Dragoons, saying that if we were to be partners, best we both were armed. Then he talked as he loaded the gun.

  His commentary became like the steady drone of a bug in the heat, except when he chose to sing. Then “The Wild Colonial Boy” or “Billy Broke Locks” or some sea chantey would roll out of him, and I would thank God that he could carry a tune. He even sang the song about all of us bound for this heat-stroked Promised Land.

  But a question vexed me: Who was this Irishman? Had I betrayed men of my own background to throw in with a scoundrel? I thought I had been able to gauge his character at sea. How would he perform in a crisis on land?

  I would not have long to find out.

  * * *

  AFTER ABOUT TEN MILES, we came to a side trail marked by a sign—whitewash on an old plank—Sutter’s Creek, Twenty Miles.

  We peeled off, moving now in a southeasterly direction, across that sea of yellowed grass and dry brush, dotted here and there with dark clumps of oak that seemed to be floating atop their own black shadows.

  The high sun hammered my hats, the one I was wearing and the one Flynn had stolen from me in Boston. But there was something liberating about sailing our saddleback schooners through the heat. We were on our own, away from the cramped ship, the teeming mud ruts of San Francisco, the know-it-all braggarts aboard the Sacramento boat, and the migrants on the trail. If I rode a few paces behind, I did not even hear Michael Flynn … going on. />
  We saw few dwellings. One we glimpsed at great distance, a cluster of white adobe buildings with red tile roofs. It shimmered in the waves of heat like the exotic castle of a Muslim prince.

  Around noon, we came to an inviting grove of oaks. With the land beginning to rise and the hottest part of the day still ahead, we decided to stop and rest. We staked the animals on long tethers, took the saddles from the horses, and let them graze. The burro just stood, eyes closed, head nodding. Flynn said that the animals could go without water until we reached the Cosumnes River, which lay somewhere ahead.

  I dropped my saddle against the trunk of a big oak and reclined against it.

  Flynn dropped his saddle on the other side of the tree.

  I took a swallow of water. It was lukewarm after hours of sloshing in a wooden canteen, but I splashed a bit on my face, wet my red and yellow-paisley neckerchief, and discovered that even warm water would cool the broiling skin on the back of my neck.

  “And now”—Flynn reached into his saddlebag and extracted a whole pie, wrapped in paper—“a work of art made from the last peaches in the Sutter orchard.”

  “But ten dollars for a pie?” I said.

  “A damn sight better than beef jerky.”

  I did not disagree, so we enjoyed the sweetness, the texture, the satisfaction that came with … pie.

  Then Flynn lay back and said, “Only thing to make this better’d be a woman.”

  “A woman? Out here?”

  “Why not? You think women can’t handle the heat or the ride?”

  I thought of Janiva and how angry she had been when I told her she could not endure this world. I also thought of how much I missed her.

  Flynn kept talking. “Like the man said, I’ll take any woman. Marryin’ woman, loose woman, young woman, old, pretty, ugly, it don’t matter. Wish I had one as pretty as the one you left back in Boston, though.”

  I did not answer. I knew that Flynn did not need an answer.

  “Ain’t you worried that she won’t be there when you get home?”