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

by William Martin

  A few drinkers gave me a glance, and I thought I might see a Sagamore or two. But in the greasy lantern light, I recognized no one. So I set the jug down.

  The barkeep wore a sweat-stained beaver hat and carried an Ethan Allen six-shot pepperbox pistol in a holster at his belt. Considering the popularity of the liquor in the barrels behind him, it was no surprise that he greeted new customers with a suspicious squint and a glimpse of his gun.

  I said, “I’m lookin’ for Grouchy Pete.”

  “He’s nae lookin’ for you.”

  “George Emery sent me.”

  “Who in the name of Christ cares?” I heard the accent of the Scottish Highland.

  I said, “Even if you aren’t Pete, you sure are grouchy.”

  He pointed to the jug. “You want to fill that?”

  “It’s empty, ain’t it?” I was learning that sarcasm should be met with sarcasm, aggression with aggression, and men said “ain’t” for “isn’t.”

  “Don’t be smart with me,” he said. “You want to fill it, show some dust. One ounce and a quarter.” He pointed to the scale at the end of the bar.

  Instead, I pulled two Gold Eagles from my pocket. Twenty American dollars.

  They improved his attitude considerably. He said, “What’s your drink?”

  “Whiskey.”

  “Ain’t you the feller with the old soldier and the Irishman, workin’ a claim across from those Chinks?”

  I said that I was.

  He held up a coin. “And you’re payin’ with your seed money?”

  “I’m paying.” I did not look away or tell too much or act intimidated. “Paying is what counts, ain’t it?” Another ain’t for emphasis.

  “Aye.” He swept the jug from the bar and put it under a spigot, then he turned back to me. “Dinna you fellers figure it out when you saw Chinks? You’ll nae find gold where there’s Chinks.”

  “We’re learning,” I said.

  “Movin’ on soon, then?”

  I shrugged. Cletis might have had a better answer but I had never been a good liar, which my father had said would be both a blessing and a curse.…

  I waited, staring straight ahead, feigning lack of interest in idle chatter until I heard a voice behind me. “So … the traitor of the Sagamores.”

  I did not turn.

  Grouchy Pete looked up from the spigot and said, “Trader? You dinna say you were tradin’. What are you tradin’?”

  I just shook my head. “Nothing.”

  He looked beyond me at whoever was standing there, then seemed to lose interest, as if he had heard everything and did not care too much about any of it.

  I waited until he put the full jug on the bar, picked it up, told him to keep the change on account, then turned to face two Sagamores who had found their way to Broke Neck, after all: Hiram Wilson and Scrawny Selwin Gore. They did not look as if they had prospered. Wilson had lost a front tooth. Selwin wobbled and smelled of whiskey.

  Selwin said, “Hodges told us, if we saw you, we should give you a message.”

  “Yes?” I held myself very still.

  “He marks you a traitor for leaving,” said Wilson.

  “But you left,” I said.

  “Not in the dead of night,” answered Selwin. “Not before Hodges gave us the say-so.”

  “And here you are.” I changed the subject: “Have you struck pay dirt?”

  Selwin elbowed Wilson. “He’s learned the lingo already. Pay dirt, he asks.”

  Wilson—a little older, a little slower, a schoolmaster who had perhaps controlled his classes a little better—said, “We tried three places, pulled out a few ounces, but—”

  I wanted to be done with them, so I said as I stepped out the door, “Don’t get discouraged, boys. It’s only been two weeks.”

  But I sensed them following me across the street. Then I heard the sound of a hammer clicking and a cylinder clacking into place. This caused me some concern, but I kept walking. As I reached our burro in front of Emery’s, I noticed Cletis stepping out of the store with a sack on his shoulder. He saw me, saw them, and went straight back inside.

  Hiram Wilson, of Brookline, Massachusetts, once the shaper of young minds, stood in the middle of a dusty street in a plank-and-canvas mining camp and held a pistol with far less confidence than he might have held a ruler. He was not even pointing it. The ground appeared to be his target. He said, “I’m sorry, Spencer, but Hodges said if we saw you and held you and got word to him, he would not forget it.”

  “He’s proud of his memory,” I said.

  Selwin said, “Get to it, Hiram. Put the gun on him. We’ll bring him to Hodges—”

  “We don’t even know where Hodges is,” said Wilson.

  “Bring him to Hodges and maybe he’ll give us another horse, so we can—”

  From out of the corner of my eye, I saw Cletis Smith. Then a shovel whizzed past my ear and struck Hiram Wilson flat in the face.

  The schoolmaster went down. The gun went off. The bullet struck the ground.

  And as fast as the muzzle flash, Cletis was cocking the shovel at Selwin. “Whoever bothers my pardner bothers me. You botherin’?”

  Selwin said, “Your pardner is not to be trusted.”

  “I trust him,” said Cletis.

  Wilson rolled onto all fours. He wiped the blood from his nose, then wiped tears from his eyes. “I’m … I’m sorry, Spencer. I’m not made for this. Not for any of it. Not for gold mining. Not for partnering with a shipboard tee-totaller who takes to whiskey at the first sign of trouble. Not for—”

  “A man’s got a right to a drink,” said Selwin, “’specially if there’s no gold.”

  Cletis picked up Hiram’s pistol, dumped the percussion caps into the street, then handed it back to him. “If you ain’t made for it, best get on home.”

  “Don’t be listenin’ to him.” Selwin dragged Hiram up by the armpits.

  Hiram shoved the pistol into his belt. Then he wiped more blood from his face.

  Cletis said, “Saloon’s right behind you. Looks like you could both use a swaller.” Then he told me to buy my friends a drink.

  Like the country itself, Cletis was a strange mixture of violence and kindness, of brutality and beauty. I had seen it with Señor Vargas. I saw it now. If he told me to buy a drink for two men he had just beaten with a shovel, I would. I pulled a coin from my pocket and flipped it to Hiram.

  He said that he would not forget me, and he did not mean it as a threat. Then he grabbed Scrawny by the elbow and dragged him back toward Grouchy Pete’s.

  Cletis asked me, “Are they likely to follow us?”

  “They might. They’re lost. They’re wandering.”

  “We’ll watch out, then. Fellers like that are best sent on their way.”

  August 19, 1849

  The Specter of Samuel Hodges

  I did not sleep well. I could not erase from my mind the image of those two broken Bostonians. The dissolution of the Sagamores had put Wilson and Gore in a bad patch, and they had failed their first test. They had met disappointment and could not overcome it. Would they pass the second, learn from failure, and go home?

  I half expected to find them at our campfire when I awakened.

  I got up and scanned the riverbank. The Chinese were already at work. Flynn and Cletis were still asleep after an extra measure from the new jug.

  No Hiram or Scrawny. No Samuel Hodges, either.

  But Hodges was out there somewhere. Maybe he had gone to the northern mines, as planned. Maybe he and his loyal men were heading south. But he was out there, feeding his resentments, still dreaming of empire and unfulfilled ambition, still furious that the writer he brought to immortalize his deeds had deserted him for the company of an Irish waiter.

  Peter Fallon skimmed through the next few weeks.

  Spencer, Flynn, and Cletis Smith built a lean-to roof against the big skull-shaped rock and named their claim after the shape.

  Other miners staked clai
ms nearby and worked for a while. Some were friendly, others envious, a few resentful, because “placer mining, like life, proved to be unfair.” One miner might find a pocket of gold to work for a week, while another scraped ground not twenty feet away and found nothing.

  But Flynn, Spencer, and Cletis kept working, digging steadily in their hundred-square-foot plots, pulling out gold every day.

  Then, one morning …

  September 20, 1849

  A Surprising Proposal

  The aroma of tea awoke me. Tea?

  I grabbed my pistol and stepped out of the tent.

  Chin was squatting by our campfire, warming a pot. He stood when he saw me and said, “I help.”

  “Help? How?”

  “Dig more gold.”

  Flynn and Cletis both crawled out a moment later.

  Cletis said, “More gold?”

  “Tea, first.” Chin offered Cletis the cup. “Then gold.”

  Cletis scratched his behind through his breeches and took the tea, as if to signal his interest.

  Michael Flynn pulled on his boots and joined us, too.

  “Now,” said Cletis, dropping onto a log by the fire, “what’s a Chink know about placer minin’ that we don’t?”

  “No call me ‘Chink,’ maybe I tell,” said Chin.

  Cletis sucked in a gulp of air to deliver a stream of insults.

  But I stopped him with a question for our visitor: “First, maybe you tell us where you learned English.”

  “From holy men in black robes,” said Chin. “They come China. Tell about white man-god, Christ.”

  “Missionaries,” I said.

  “Jesuits,” said Flynn.

  “They taught him good,” said Cletis.

  “He learned good,” said Flynn. “Now he come to California to prove how good.”

  “I come California to escape. I am Sam He Hui—”

  “Sam Who?” asked Cletis.

  “Sam He Hui. Secret society. Fight Manchu rulers. Manchu kill many, but I escape. I come with Uncle Bao, Friendly Liu, and three cousin, Ng-goh, the big brother, Little Ng, who play flute, and Littler Ng. We come to Gum Saan.”

  “What’s that?” asked Flynn.

  “Gold Mountain. Chinee call all this”—he gestured around him—“Gum Saan. We sail on Yankee ship. Work on Yankee ship. In San Francisco, we jump Yankee ship.”

  “You ain’t the first.” Flynn laughed. He always laughed easily.

  Cletis looked up at the sun and said, “We’re burnin’ daylight, Sam Who. So … how you mean to help us? And why?”

  “I watch every day you.”

  “Pretty bold about it, too,” said Cletis.

  “You carry dirt down to water and water up to dirt. I make for you to raise water.” Chin drew a circle in the air with his finger.

  “A wheel?” Cletis hooted. “You want to build a flutter wheel?”

  “Flutter?” said Chin.

  “That’s what it’s called in these parts,” said Cletis. “Flutter wheel. Chinese wheel … if you don’t know what it’s called, maybe you don’t know how to build one.”

  “I build one in China to water rice. I build one here. Then maybe you build Long Tom.”

  “What’s that?” asked Flynn.

  “A trough with a screen called a riddle,” said Cletis. “The riddle catches the heavy junk, lets the little stuff drop onto a run of sheet metal poked with holes called riffles. The riffles catch the gold. Works good, but it needs a steady stream of water.”

  “That’s the what,” said Flynn. “Now, give us the why. Why build it for us and not your pardners over there, squattin’ like women in the cold water?”

  “What we build for us, white men knock down.”

  Flynn sipped his tea and nodded. “That’s for fuckin’ sure.”

  “So I build for you.” Chin stood. “But you pay.”

  “Pay?” Cletis bit off a chaw of tobacco. “How much?”

  “Even share. One fourth.” Chin held up his fingers for one and four.

  Cletis stood. “Get back across the river. We’re in dangerous enough country as it is, just talkin’ to you. If it ever gets out that—”

  “Pay money for brain. I look. I think. I know. But”—Chin rolled his eyes—“if you know what to call wheel, maybe you know how to build.”

  “You are tryin’ me, Mr. Sam Who.” Which meant that Cletis did not know how to build a flutter wheel and was as annoyed at his own ignorance as he was at the Chinaman.

  I said, “You haven’t answered the second question. Why us?”

  “I come America do business, not squat in river. I start here. Do business here.”

  I looked at my calluses and flexed my sore shoulders. “I think it’s a good idea.”

  Cletis gave that a juicy brown spit. “You think it’s a good idea.… And what happens when white men hear we’re pardnerin’ with Chinks? What then?”

  “No tell white men. And no call me Chink.” Chin kept his voice calm, though it was certain that he had mustered all his nerve to come over here in service to his ambition. “One fourth or you all day carry dirt to water, water to dirt.”

  “Your friends … will they help?” I asked.

  “If I say.”

  “Even the woman?” asked Flynn.

  “Woman?” Chin’s eyes narrowed. “No woman. No Chinee woman in Gum Saan.”

  “If you say so.” Flynn looked over at the Chinese camp, where two men in stiff straw hats were squatting and panning.

  Cletis leaned close to him. “White miners get awful touchy when foreigners are doin’ better. Can’t say what they’ll do if they find out it’s Chinks doin’ better. Might set this whole damn riverbank on fire.”

  “They might,” said Michael Flynn, “but I don’t much appreciate fellers tellin’ me who I can work with and who I can’t.” Flynn squinted through the campfire smoke at Chin. “So … will you take a tenth? A tenth is worth it. A fourth is too much.”

  Cletis Smith lifted a leg and farted.

  Chin gave Cletis a glare and said, “I build for one-sixth, but he no do that again.”

  “That might be hard,” Cletis said, “considerin’ all the beans we eat around here.”

  “One-eighth,” I said. “Split the difference. It’s the best we can do.”

  And Chin agreed.

  Flynn finished his tea and said, “So damn the bully boys. Let’s build a wheel.”

  September 30, 1849

  A dispatch

  Mr. Jack Abbott was quickly becoming my friend. Letters and dispatches, posted regularly, payment in shiny Gold Eagles … those made me one of his best customers and therefore one of his friends.

  In the letter, I told Janiva how much I missed her. I did not tell her that my longing was as much physical as emotional. I did not think she would understand the need that came upon men, sometimes at dawn, sometimes before sleep. I told her instead that I dreamed of embracing her. I told her that I still wore her neckerchief. I did not tell her that her fragrance remained in the fabric, a faint but real presence, and sometimes I held it to my face to bring back the memory of her and the sensation of her, too. Instead, I told her yet again that no matter the pain of our separation, it was best that she had stayed in Boston. To inhabit this universe of greed, ambition, elation, and frustration, in tents that stunk of butt sweat and bean-farts, on claims that broiled in the sun and puffed dust into the desiccated air, this was not something that a woman should be asked to endure.

  And in the dispatch for the Transcript, I told the truth about the Chinamen:

  If you could leave your Boston parlors and by some magic fly through the air to the far edge of our continent, you would be pleased to see what we have done on this gentle slope, at the place we call Big Skull Rock.

  We—Cletis Smith of Kentucky, Michael Flynn of Galway, and Yr. Ob’t. Correspondent—have applied one of the basic principles of New England, that water in motion is a transformative force, able to change the contours of the l
andscape and the economies of men. With the help of our neighbor, Mr. Wei Chin of Manchu, China, we have built a device similar to the water wheels that irrigate the rice paddies of his native land.

  We bought planks from the saw pit in Fiddletown, nails and rope from Emery’s Emporium, fittings and sheet metal from the blacksmith in Quartztown (at a cost of $3 a pound for 12 pounds). And we invested a weeks’ worth of our own perspiration to construct a “wheel” that is actually two wooden hexagons joined together by three-foot paddles at each angle.

  As the current drives the wheel, a wooden box attached to the downstream side of each paddle scoops water to a height of eight feet and dumps it into a trough that feeds a sluice connected to something called a Long Tom, thereby delivering a steady flow of water. We then dump gravel into the upper end of the Long Tom and sift gold at the bottom.

  We built the wheel on the north bank, burying its moorings on either side of a pool that, even in late summer, is still hip-deep and well-served by the current. Then we tied ropes from the wheel to the horses on the south bank. Smith gave the count and, with a mighty shout, urged the horses to pull. Meanwhile, on the north bank, Flynn and I and Chin worked levers to lift the top of the ten-foot wheel off ground.

  Up, up slowly, but up and up and then … it stopped rising. We groaned. The horses strained. But the wheel hung suspended until Chin called to the other Chinese. These “Celestials” provoke curiosity by their peculiar dress and clannish habits and are admired for their industriousness, but they are generally timid, for not all white miners approve of them. Still, two strong young Chinamen, the brothers Ng-goh and Little Ng, came running, put their weight on the levers, and the wheel began moving again.

  But we did not want it to move too quickly, lest it topple onto the other bank and shatter. So Flynn and I dropped our levers, leapt to the counter lines, and exerted guiding pressure, thereby letting the wheel settle and drop—with mathematical precision, may I say—into the cradle.