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

by William Martin

  Then we stood in silence, waiting for the water to do its work. But the wheel did not move. So Flynn plunged into the river, grabbed one of the spokes, and pushed a paddle down. The current grabbed, the hub groaned, and our invention began to turn.

  A cry of joy arose from both sides of the river, from Cletis Smith, from Flynn and me and Mr. Chin, and yes, from all the Chinese.

  The first scoop dipped down and swung up and dumped, just as we had intended. But as the trough at the top of the sluice was not yet built, the sparkling silver water cascaded onto Flynn’s head. He whooped like an Indian, pulled off his hat, looked up so that the next scoop poured onto his face, and cried, “I am baptized again, Lord, in a flowin’ river of gold!”

  Within two days, we had doubled our “take.” Our deal with Mr. Chin had paid a fine dividend. So we will be staying at Big Skull Rock.

  Yr. Ob’t. Correspondent,

  The Argonaut

  October 4, 1849

  Chinese Speculations

  Our flutter wheel turned and thumped in the steady current. Sometimes, miners going by would stop to admire it. Some would decide to prospect nearby. Most stayed a few days but were quick to leave because of the Chinese, who kept heads down and backs bent, on a claim that white men had abandoned. Others decided that we had found and claimed the perfect turn in the river, where gold had been dropping for as long as water had been flowing, and it was useless to look nearby.

  And in that, they were right, because we found gold day after day, while Michael Flynn talked and talked. On this day, he talked about how well we had built, about what a good idea it was to hire “Sam Who,” about how easily the job went. “But when they cheered the raisin’ of the wheel, did you not hear a high voice on one of them?”

  I admitted that I had not.

  “The smallest one. The one called Littler Ng.” Flynn looked downstream. “The one comin’ down to the river now, movin’ with them little girlie steps.”

  And it was true. The smallest one had a short, mincing gait more appropriate to a subservient female than a male, even a Chinese male

  Cletis chuckled. “I swear, Galway, you need a woman ’fore you try to fuck my sorrel mare.”

  October 6, 1849

  A Gift

  It was dusk. I was writing by the campfire. Cletis was already snoring.

  Michael Flynn was acting bored, frustrated, something. He got up and wandered down to the river. Half an hour later, he scurried back, crouched beside me, and with the firelight flickering in his eyes, he said, “I was right.”

  “About what?”

  “He’s a she. Littler Ng is a Chinese girl.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “I waited in the bushes till Chin come along. Then he waved the all-clear to Littler Ng. Then he—I mean she—ducked into the bushes, right in front of me and squatted. Prettiest little ass that ever shone in the moonlight, and, well, that’s why Chin stands there every night. He’s standin’ guard. She’s his girl … or his sister.”

  “Sister,” came the voice from the darkness. Chin stepped into the firelight and into our conversation. “I bring her Gum Saan to save her. Manchu would make her concubine.”

  “There’s folks here,” said Flynn, “might try to do the same.”

  Chin approached us. “You no tell, I take no more money. Wheel done. Payment done. You promise keep secret.”

  Flynn looked at me. “I guess he trusts us.”

  Chin said, “No choice. But you bother sister, I tell Miner’s Council you pay Chinee to build wheel. They no like.”

  “We’ll promise,” I said.

  “So long as you tell us her name,” added Flynn.

  Chin studied Flynn, as if he thought that giving her name would be a violation of her. The fire crackled. A gang of coyotes woofed and howled somewhere in the night. And through clenched teeth, Chin said, “Mei-Ling.”

  Flynn said the name and said it again, almost whispering it the second time, and he pronounced it a good name. Then he went into the tent and got the bag of peppermints Cletis had bought for him at Emery’s. He tore off a corner of the paper and wrapped three candy drops in it, then tied it with a twist to make a bag. “Give this to Mei-Ling. Tell her it’s from an admirer.”

  Chin looked at Flynn, then at the peppermints, perhaps imagining where such small gifts might lead. Then he took them and turned back into the darkness.

  “Now we know why he built the wheel for us,” said Flynn. “To keep us quiet.”

  October 7, 1849

  Sabbath Visitors

  Sunday in gold country is a day of rest. But as there are no churches, few preachers, and even fewer ladies, keeping holy the California Sabbath entails card-playing, jug-passing, small talk, big talk, loud talk, louder talk, and singing at the top of your lungs. And sometimes it includes a round of stomp-foot dancing, with men drawing lots to determine who leads and who follows. On a California Sabbath, you will hear little talk of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and their God but much about Mammon and his.

  I was writing. Cletis was mending socks. Flynn was studying the Chinese, who worked on the Sabbath as if they understood how little time they might have before white miners drove them off, or as Cletis suggested, simply because they were heathens.

  Around ten o’clock, I felt a wave of nostalgia. It was not something that bothered me except in my quieter hours. “Back home,” I said, “the bell of the Park Street Church would be tolling just about now.”

  “Aye,” said Flynn, “and I’d hear it in the dirty damn Hightower House. If me bed was empty, I’d hear the voice of me dear sainted mother sayin’, ‘Michael, get out to Mass and say a prayer for me.’ But if I woke up next to a female, I might slide her nightgown up to her hips, and slip meself in there, and—”

  “For a feller who grew up under the sign of the Catholic cross, you sure are a randy—” Cletis stopped in mid-sentence.

  Five mounted men turned off the road and descended the bank toward our wheel.

  Flynn whispered to Cletis, “You want your blunderbuss?”

  “Nope. Whatever this is, we’ll brazen our way out of it. Talk and smiles.” He pulled on his boots. “I’ll do the talkin’. You boys do the smilin’.”

  They all had the look of miners—stringy, sunburned, long-haired. Two we recognized—Drinkin’ Dan and Stinkin’ McGinty.

  The leader, in a white duster and a beaver hat, dismounted and apologized for coming onto our claim. “My name is Micah Broadback, late of New Orleans.”

  An ironic name, I thought, for a man so skinny.

  “And me and the boys here, Jonas and Edgar Johnson, and—I believe you know McGinty and Drinkin’ Dan—we been asked to talk to you about this here wheel.”

  “You the Miner’s Council?” asked Cletis.

  “Duly elected last May in Grouchy Pete’s”

  Cletis looked up at the wheel like a painter proud of his picture. “So … what about it?”

  “Well, sir, the flow is gettin’ pretty low downstream. Some boys think this wheel is cuttin’ into it. We’re here to ask you, gentleman-like, to shut ’er down.”

  “Shut ’er down?” cried Michael Flynn. “Now, listen here—”

  “Don’t mind Galway Bay. He’s one of them short-fused Irishmen.” Cletis made a gesture to Flynn—calm down—but he kept a smile for Broadback. “Now, considerin’ how dry it is, your flow got more to do with the weather than our wheel.”

  “Besides”—Flynn put his hands on his hips—“if miners go upstream and take the water away from us, we ain’t got a word to say about it.”

  “We ain’t askin’ you to quit minin’,” said Broadback. “It’s just that … you boys found a spot where the river decided to drop a lot of gold, and you got all the water, too.”

  “Could be the two things are related,” said Flynn.

  “Or maybe we’re just smart,” I said.

  Cletis shot me an angry look. In this country, it was all right to be smart but you did not remi
nd people of how smart.

  “Maybe the smart thing,” said McGinty, “was gettin’ into business with Chinks.”

  Cletis took a step forward. “Who’s sayin’ we’re in business with Chinks?”

  Broadback put up his hands. “It ain’t been said out loud. But the Johnsons—” Broadback gestured to the brothers, who had remained on their horses, saying nothing, looking stupid—“they’re sailors. They been to China. They seen wheels like this.”

  “Wheels is wheels,” said Michael Flynn.

  “White men’s wheels is round,” said Edgar, “but this here’s what you call a hexagon.”

  “Yeah,” added Jonas. “That’s a … a Chinese shape.”

  So they were as stupid as they appeared.

  Flynn pushed his hat onto the back of his head and chuckled. “You know, boys, a man would almost think you’re serious.”

  “They are,” said McGinty, whom I was beginning to dislike for more than his smell. “It don’t set too good when fellers is doin’ straight-up business with Chinks.”

  “Well, I’m serious, too,” answered Flynn. “A serious fuckin’ feller I am, and if me or me pardners decides to do business with Chinks, Niggers, or Miwok Injuns, we—”

  Cletis interrupted whatever was coming next, directing himself to Broadback, age and reason to age and reason. “What would you like for us to do?”

  “Stop the wheel,” said Broadback. “Give us better flow downstream.”

  “All right. We’ll do it,” said Cletis.

  Flynn and I both looked at him as if he had lost his mind.

  Then Cletis added, “In exactly one week.”

  “We was hopin’ for a bit sooner,” said Micah.

  “Now, friend, there ain’t nothin’ the Miner’s Council can do except ask. Upstream men got upstream rights. Still and all, we want to be friends. So we’ll shut ’er down in one week. But we spent a lot of time buildin’ it. We need to get somethin’ back.” Through the whole speech, Cletis kept smiling, as if to signal his best intentions.

  Broadback gazed up at the wheel. “Sure is a fine-lookin’ piece of work.”

  “Chinks is good builders,” said McGinty.

  “Yep,” said one of the brothers. “In China, they got a wall a thousand miles long.”

  Cletis offered his hand to Broadback. “One week?”

  And the time was set. One week.

  McGinty looked over at the Chinese, who had not even raised their heads. “We can’t stop the wheel, but we can get them to movin’. Bad enough we got Greasers all over the diggin’s. Don’t need Chinks, too.” And McGinty, who up until then had shown little commitment to anything but whiskey, felt strongly enough about the Chinese that he reached for his gun.

  But Broadback grabbed his hand and held the arm as the gun came free. “We move ’em off here, they may come down to where we’re workin’. Let ’em be. Let ’em clean up somebody’s abandoned claim. That’s best for all concerned.”

  “Yes, sir,” added Cletis, “you boys just trust us to keep an eye on ’em. If they get too uppity, we’ll drive ’em off ourselves.”

  As soon as the Miner’s Council had gone, Flynn turned to Cletis, “Why in hell did you agree?”

  “A little agreein’ beats a lot of fightin’. And we ain’t givin’ up much.”

  “We ain’t … aren’t?” I said.

  Cletis looked up at the sky. “Rains’ll come soon. River’ll rise faster than beer piss in a chamber pot, and run so fast, it’ll sweep them Chinks all the way to the Bay, ’less they put off their heathen ways and start prayin’ to Jesus. Won’t be able to work. Might not be able to sleep. May even start buildin’ that ark that Jesus told Moses about.”

  “Noah,” I said.

  “No to what? Can’t say no to winter rains,” answered Cletis, “even in California.”

  I decided not to go on with the Bible class. “Rain’s better than snow.”

  “Yep,” said Cletis. “But the best part for you boys, once it comes, we won’t be able to work. It’ll be time to head for the fleshpots to spend some of that gold.”

  “That’ll be a happy day,” said Flynn.

  We laughed, but something new had come to Big Skull Rock. Men were angry that they were not doing as well as we. In time, their anger might overflow. Would it swamp us, or the Chinese, or both?

  October 9–11, 1849

  Change at last

  The rain began on Tuesday, just before dawn. In all my life, I had never been so happy to hear the sound of droplets pattering. It kept on and off for two days. By Thursday morning, the river was up, running just enough to make riffles on the rocks. Cletis said that now, there would be water flowing for the downstream miners, so we could run our wheel, and no one would complain.

  And no one did. For most of a month, Spencer recorded only mundane activities. Soon, green shoots appeared on the brown hillsides. As Spencer wrote for the Transcript, “The approach of winter in California signifies something far different than in New England, where the earth falls into sleep, frozen and brooding. Here, the moistened ground revives, then brightens and blooms.”

  November 3–7, 1849

  Raining Harder

  On the 3rd, the showers that had been so intermittent and gentle turned to something entirely new, a pelting, punishing all-day downpour. No one worked for four days, not even the Chinese. And the rain that fell on the 7th fell harder and faster than any before, playing its torrential music to the tune of old Niagara.

  November 9, 1849

  Cutting Timber

  Awoke to sunshine and the sound of the Miwok roaring and huffing and hurtling over the rocks like a Boston & Worcester steam engine.

  We knew by then that the California climate could turn against us like a Boston January or a disappointed woman (and her Boston father). We would need more than a lean-to for shelter, so we spent the day cutting pine logs and dragging them to a place about ten paces east of the big rock. There we would build a cabin.

  The Chinese watched us for a time, then Chin came up the bank and asked us if he could “rent” our ax to begin their cabin.

  “A good ax rents for two dollars a day,” said Cletis. “Buy one instead.”

  Flynn said to Chin, “You got three ounces of dust? I’m headin’ into town to buy us a second ax and more peppermints. Give me three ounces, I’ll buy one for you, too.”

  Chin pulled out four ounces and asked that we buy tea also, black tea.

  November 10, 1849

  News of a Strike

  The axes arrived in the afternoon, carried through the rain by George Emery himself. He had been sold out the day before but promised a new shipment. And here it came. We were hauling and hammering and welcomed a rest. So Cletis invited Emery into our half-built cabin, bid him sit on a log in the driest corner, and poured him a mug of coffee.

  Michael Flynn asked about a new strike at a place called Rainbow Gulch.

  “Plenty of fellers movin’ down there,” said Emery.

  “Hurtin’ your business?” asked Cletis.

  “My store got a stone foundation and a wood floor and stock enough to keep me sellin’ for six weeks, no matter how bad the roads get. We got plenty of what them Rainbow Gulch miners need. And come next summer, so will you.”

  “What would that be?” I asked.

  “Water.”

  “They don’t have water?” asked Flynn.

  “Right now, they got plenty, down in the ravine that the gulch drops into. But this looks like a strike to last. Come next July, when things dry up, the only way to wash dirt down there’ll be to piss on it, unless somebody figures out how to get water in. That’s when a flutter wheel in a good-runnin’ river could mean a nice profit.”

  “Run water to Rainbow Gulch?” asked Flynn. “How far?”

  “About six miles southwest, as the crow flies,” said Emery. “All downhill.”

  “You mean, dig a trench?” I said.

  “You boys got muscles, ain’t you? A
nd you got your Chinks. By spring, there’ll be a lot more of them.”

  “A lot more of everybody,” said Cletis.

  “But they ain’t exactly our Chinks,” said Flynn.

  “That’s not what some fellers think,” answered Emery. “Put ’em to work diggin’ trenches. Keep ’em out of the diggin’s.”

  Cletis said that we were doing well mining. “Prob’ly better than we could deliverin’ water to other miners. But let’s talk again come June.”

  “A man needs to think ahead, is all,” said Emery. “It won’t be miners that make this country. It’ll be them who figure out how to give the miners what they want, get their money and spread it around, so everybody can make some, every feller who knows how to forge a horseshoe or drive a nail or barber a shave. That’s how the world works.”

  And a voice from the doorway said, “In June, if this no Gum Saan, we go. No ditch dig.” Chin stood outside, with the rain dripping off his wide-brimmed straw hat.

  George Emery said to Cletis, “Is that the head Chink?”

  “Yep,” said Cletis. “We call him Sam Who.”

  “And he speaks English?”

  “Taught by the Jesuits.” Flynn waved for Chin to come in and gave him one of the axes. “As ordered. Now go build yourself a fine cabin.”

  “I almost forgot.” George Emery reached into a pocket under his oilskin and pulled out a sack of tea. “You asked for this, too. Five dollars a pound.”

  The Chinaman took the tea and thanked him.

  George Emery stood, smoothed his rain gear to his body, and said, “Take a ride down to Rainbow Gulch. See if you don’t think we could make a profit runnin’ a trench. I’ll supply the shovels and the wood for sluicin’. You do the work. We’ll make a team. And if you go, you’ll see a few friends.”

  “Friends?” I said.

  “The boys who met the backside of Cletis’s shovel a few weeks ago.”

  “Hiram and Scrawny?”

  “Scrawnier now, so they say,” said Emery. “Plenty of gold down there. Plenty of dysentery, too. Them Boston boys got it bad, so I hear. They been askin’ for their friend from Broke Neck.”