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

by William Martin

  Oh, but Pompey was treading dangerous ground. If he had not brought the promise of women, he might have found himself in a noose right then.

  Becker said, “You better hope California comes in a free state, boy, or I just might decide to buy you.”

  “Or shoot you,” said Bunche.

  Becker stepped away from his wheel. Bunche stood from the faro shoe. The others in the saloon all took a step back.

  I was behind Pompey, close enough to whisper, “The one on the left keeps a knife in his boot. The one on the right will distract you, then the knife will fly.”

  Pompey flashed a grin. “Why, howdy, Mr. Spencer.” He had grown. Not physically—he was big enough already—but in the way he carried himself. A new suit of clothes and a pocketful of money can make any man walk a bit taller, no matter his race.

  Becker said to me, “So you’re a nigger lover, too.”

  “And now that I know your trick,” Pompey said, “why don’t you boys get back to business. But remember, a man who feel good down in his balls is a man who feel lucky all over. So you gamblers, y’all gonna thank me after the girls come through.”

  And that was a bit of sophistry fine enough for a Boston lawyer, never mind an uneducated Negro. He had negotiated his way right out the door and even left a few men laughing.

  On the street I said, “You’re looking prosperous. You’ll be able to buy your family soon if you keep this up.”

  He patted the money belt at his waist. “Once I have enough, I’ll git on back to North Carolina. And.… you know, you one of the few men ever ask me ’bout my family. I ’preciate that. So I got a nice woman for you. That little Mexican gal. She got some ’sperience on her now.”

  I did not like the sound of that.

  “She didn’t take to this work straight off, but we kept her at it, and, well, y’all get in line tomorrow night. You git a free poke, doin’ what you just done for ol’ Pompey. Nothin’ so sneaky as a fancy-dressed white man with a knife in his boot.”

  I had no interest in mounting a frightened girl. But perhaps I could help her. Perhaps I could get her out, get her back to a decent life. Perhaps in this I was still naïve.

  * * *

  AS I STARTED OUT of town, Mr. Abbott called to me from his Express Office.

  I asked him, “What about you? Will you speak for us against the tax?”

  “I’m neutral. I’m a businessman. And here is my business.” He put a letter into my hands. It came from Janiva.

  I took it into his office and tore it open.

  When I saw just four lines, I thought that she was telling me it was over, that she had found someone else. And the first sentence was not promising: “I cannot live like this any longer.” But she followed with, “I am on the verge of doing something amazing. And no one will be more amazed than yourself, sir. Your Love, Janiva.”

  That was all. I reread, puzzled, and must have shown it, because Abbott said, “It’s my business to be discreet. So I will not ask you what’s in that letter that just turned you as white as new canvas. I will only tell you to be careful on the trail.”

  “Why?”

  “When a man asks me a question about the deposits of another, I say nothing.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “So I said nothing to your friend, Harding, when he came by today, paid for a few letters, and started asking about you.”

  “Me personally?”

  “You … and your friends. Your white friends and your Chinese friends, too.” He brushed his hand up and down his vest, polishing those neat nails. “It’s like they’re trying to find out where you’re keeping your gold.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “I told him nothing. There’s loose lips in this camp. But not inside these walls, rough hewn though they might be.”

  I thanked him for his discretion.

  * * *

  I SAW ONE MORE thing that night in Broke Neck that I must report:

  As I was leaving Abbott’s, a man was riding up the road. He looked like a professional mourner. He wore a long black frock and a top hat in the shape of an upturned plant pot. He rode with his eyes straight ahead, as if fixed on some dark, distant star. He reined up in front of Grouchy Pete’s and dismounted. Then I saw the length of rope draped over his saddle. It terminated in a noose.

  Captain Nathan Trask had come looking for deserters.

  He glanced in my direction, but I withdrew into the shadows.

  * * *

  MY SENSES WERE SHARP as I rode home.

  There was a good moon, so the road ahead was well-lit, and the darkness beneath the trees did not threaten. Nor did the distant woofing and crying of the coyotes.

  And I did not fear the Triple MWs. They had gone to such lengths to assure the legality of their predations that an ambush would be out of the question. Nor did I fear Mexican phantoms, though there were stories of banditos riding in the night, robbing the Yankees who had driven them from their claims. And I did not fear the grizzlies that Cletis said were awakening now in late March and wandering the hills, ravenous and dangerous.

  No. It was that cryptic letter from Janiva that vexed me. What on earth would be so amazing? And how, this far away, could I be amazed by what she was doing in Boston?

  I dismounted at the road above our claim and led my horse down the bank, toward the flutter wheel that stood like a sentinel in the night. For a moment, I stopped on the north bank and watched the water, running with a steady rush and swish, doing its springtime business day and night.

  Then, over its burble, I heard a voice:

  “Trouble comes.” Chin’s shadow stood to my right, on the narrow bank between the bushes and the water. The moonlight shone off his forehead.

  “Trouble. Yes.” I saw the bags of gold dust over his shoulders. “When it comes, it may come as quickly for us as it does for you.”

  “So bury gold.” He spoke just loudly enough to be heard over the water. “Bury one bag. We bury the other on this side. That way—”

  And I made a decision. Chin had earned our friendship. He deserved our help, no matter what Cletis said. I took one of the bags and told him, “Nine o’clock.”

  He furrowed his brow, as if he did not understand.

  “Big Skull Rock is round, like a clock. Flynn’s gold is buried at two o’clock, Cletis’s at noon. Mine is at ten o’clock. I will bury yours at nine o’clock, three feet down.”

  But I would not tell Cletis. In this, I would remain anonymous.

  March 30, 1850

  A meeting

  Sunlight streamed like warm liquid through the east window and awoke me for the first time since we had lived there. A week after the vernal equinox, a man could feel the turning of the earth, hear “the music of the spheres,” as Professor Agassiz had described the celestial hum of the planets around the sun. Such were the thoughts that filled my mind for a moment or two before consciousness came upon me. Then I heard the simpler music of the river. Then I heard the crowing of one of the Chinese roosters. Then I heard something—or someone—else.

  Flynn was stumbling through the door, bootless and bottomless, naked from the waist down. I asked him what he was doing.

  He said, “Takin’ a piss. Go back to sleep.”

  But I was awake with the sun in my eyes. So I got up, pulled on my breeches, and slid on the soft moccasins I had bought at Sutter’s Fort. Even a hillside in the California wilderness can seem more like home when you have soft footwear in the morning.

  I stepped outside, grabbed a few splits of wood, and threw them on the embers smoldering within the circle of campfire rocks. The ground had not yet dried to a crispy brown, so we did not worry about our campfire, and we preferred to cook outdoors, where smoke and smells dissipated readily. I was puzzled to see Flynn’s wet smallclothes hung to dry on the grate, but I poked a bit until the flames began to jump, then I grabbed the coffeepot and went down to the river. I knelt, dipped the pot, and over the rush of water, came a voice:
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  “I’ve been here since first light, hoping to catch you alone.”

  On a boulder on the other side, shielded from the downstream view by shrubs and deep shadows, sat Samuel Hodges. He pulled a white handkerchief from his pocket, almost like a flag of truce. “I’ve come to talk, James.”

  I left the coffeepot and stepped across from rock to rock.

  With the handkerchief, he brushed off the boulder next to him and invited me to sit. As I did, I remembered the power in his bulk.

  He said, “I’m sorry for what happened. You and your partners worked hard to build that sluice.”

  “Your partners did not have to work at all to destroy it.”

  “I won’t deny that I’ve made common cause with rough men. This is rough country. But I’ll build a legacy here, however I must.”

  “If the legacy means that you drive away men because of their skin color—”

  “We are white men of European descent, James. We are builders.” He spoke calmly, as a counselor. “Mexican sneak thieves, Digger Indians, spineless Chinese claim squatters … they block the path of progress. You should have learned that by now.”

  “I’ve learned that it’s easy to unite beaten men against an enemy that doesn’t exist, then use them for your own purpose.”

  “My purpose is to build something I could never have built in Boston.”

  “You were well respected in Boston.”

  “My father kept ledgers. He moved from one shipping house to another. It would have taken two generations for Hodges sons to rise to the level of the Spencers or for daughters to know the comforts that Spencer women know.”

  “Sons? Is Gaw’s girl-child with a child of her own? Have you married her?”

  This comment unnerved him. He was making a larger point, but in this elemental place, with the river at our feet and the sun slanting through the trees, I would take no larger points. What was in front of us was what mattered.

  He stared at me, as if trying to decide whether to submit to his anger or continue to conciliate. He chose the latter. “In California, I can make a future. Then I can bring my little girls. Then perhaps I will marry. But first must come the building. So I come to you as a friend. We are days from completion of the dam. I come to propose an arrangement.”

  The rooster crowed again, and the hens began to gabble and cluck.

  Hodges looked toward the sound and said, “We are ringed by enemies, James. Best know who your friends are. I’m yours, as I was in Boston, as I will be forever if you commit to us. In exchange, I will give you and your partners ten shares of stock.”

  “Do you include Flynn?”

  “He can stay. As the new law is written, a foreigner is anyone who has come directly from another country. Flynn came from Boston. And he’s white. But not the Chinese. I cannot go back on my word to the men of this district.”

  “I cannot go back on my word to my friends.”

  “You went back on your word to me. You were one of the few men on that ship that I trusted. I’m proud of what you’ve done here. But you betrayed my trust.”

  Those words gave me a pang of sorrow for denying him, a burst of pride for earning his admiration. I had proven myself.

  Just then, Michael Flynn stumbled out of the cabin, pantless and oblivious, and headed for the outhouse.

  Hodges said, “I watched your Irish friend this morning. He was down here before dawn, down here with one of the Chinamen. Is he that sort? Like Sloate and Harding?”

  I shook my head, but in shock that Flynn was meeting Mei-Ling.

  Hodges waited for a response to the larger question.

  I fixed my eyes on the water forming V-shaped riffles as it cut over the rocks.

  Hodges watched the water himself for a time, then clapped his hands on his knees and stood. “All right, then. Let me tell you what will happen if I go up that hill without an arrangement.”

  I stood and looked him in the eye. I would not let him intimidate me.

  He said, “We will divert your water at our dam. Then we will finish the trenches. The first will carry water to Broke Neck. Once those claims are supplied, we will run another to Rainbow Gulch. Your complaints to the Miner’s Council will be denied. I will win. And it’s all legal. Ask Lyons.”

  By damming the water, he could create a reservoir and keep sluices flowing all season, at a volume that would not be affected by the meandering watercourse, the natural absorption of the streambed, or evaporation in the summer heat. That his trench bypassed Big Skull Rock would bother most miners not at all.

  But I did not give him an answer. And he did not offer his hand. He simply turned and stalked off.

  * * *

  FLYNN BY NOW WAS sitting at the campfire, with his pants on, warming his stocking feet. “What did he want?”

  “A son. Or an arrangement.”

  “I hope you told him to go and fuck himself.”

  “In so many words.” I put the coffeepot on the grate and recounted my conversation. Cletis came out, scratched his rear end, listened, and said, “So we got trouble comin’.” Then he went up to the outhouse.

  I waited until he was beyond earshot before telling Flynn, “Trouble coming downstream and trouble across the river, if you’re shaking the shrubs with Mei-Ling.”

  “Did Hodges—?”

  “He thinks you were doing it with a Chinaman, which could get you hanged on general principle.”

  Flynn gave a nervous laugh. “I got up to piss before dawn. I looked down at the river and saw somethin’ movin’ in the water. So I went, very quiet-like, till I was close. And it was Mei-Ling, cleanin’ herself. She looked up, looked right at me. I figured, now you’ve done it. She’ll scream and all the Chinks’ll come runnin’ and—”

  Was I envious? I suppose. I could not take my eyes from Mei-Ling. But as I had told myself before, if her eyes were for Flynn, I would be grateful for a temptation eliminated.

  “You know what she done?” Flynn looked off into space, as if reliving the wonder. “She smiled. I swear to God, Jamie, she smiled like she was invitin’ me. She covered her titties with one hand and her little black snatch with the other, and she smiled. Then she climbed onto a rock and disappeared into the bushes. Oh, but the sight of her sweet little ass was like lookin’ at honey made flesh. Me dick went as stiff as—”

  “What did you do?”

  “I crossed the river. That’s how I got all wet. I followed her into a little hollow in the bushes. She was sittin’ there, holdin’ her black gown up in front of her.”

  “Did she say anything?”

  “She just looked at me.”

  “Did you say anything?”

  “Wasn’t the time for talkin’. I knelt to kiss her. Then she heard somethin’, and she tensed like water freezin’ to ice. I thought, what’s that? A grizzly? A Chink? Felt like I was back in New York, standing outside that window—”

  “You never did finish that story.”

  “Someday … But faster than a fairy, she put that gown back on and shooed me away, sayin’, ‘Go. Go.’”

  “She can speak English?”

  “Maybe the most important things. So … even with an extra bit between me legs, I scrambled across the river and stumbled back to bed bare-assed and ballocky, which must’ve been a bad way for you to wake. Oh, but I tell you, Jamie, I think I’m in love.”

  “In lust at least.”

  “Always that. But she was so delicate … so innocent when she looked at me … I guess them peppermints worked.”

  “So you won’t be coming to town tonight? Big Beam’s bringing the girls back.”

  “Like hell. I’ll lead the way.”

  “When you do, keep a clear eye. Watch for a man in a top hat and black frock.”

  “A sea captain with a noose instead of a ship?” said Flynn. “He don’t frighten me.”

  * * *

  AROUND MIDDAY, CLETIS BEGAN to pile his goods on the back of the burro, and as we watched like deserted children,
he said, “Damn good little beast, this burro. Works all day, carries more than his weight, goes where no horse could. Gotta have my Miguel.”

  “You call him Miguel?” said Flynn, as if this was the greatest insult of all. “Miguel’s Spanish for Michael.”

  “Boys, we made a deal to hang together till the winter rains. Now, it’s, it’s—” He gestured up at the sun arcing ever higher into the sky, as if he could not finish the sentence. He tightened the cinches on his saddle and said, “I ain’t stickin this old neck out no more. I got enough gold to live like a king. Could never get a woman to love me, but now I can pay for all the women I want, so … I hear they got some fine ones in San Francisco.”

  I felt deserted, deprived. Cletis was more than just a friend. He had become a counselor and guide, with a view of the world that was narrow but always clear.

  I said, “You were right about the men in town. None of them want to stick their necks out. Not even George Emery.”

  “Good faith plays out fast. Just like a claim. You boys can keep the black fryin’ pan.” He shook our hands solemnly, wished us luck, then swung a leg and rode past the shattered remnants of the second sluice. At the river’s edge, he stopped and looked back, “Are you sure you won’t come along to Frisco?”

  “We been there,” answered Flynn.

  “Suit yourself, then.” Cletis gave his horse a kick and headed up to the road.

  “Now what?” I said to Flynn.

  He stood. “We clean up and go to town. I got an yearnin’ for Sheila’s round rump.”

  * * *

  THAT NIGHT, THE TOWN smelled of sex. It was in the air, something copulative, creative, a commingling of scents to excite the spirit and then the loins. Big Beam squirted perfume onto the tents so that if there was a breeze, the aroma took life. And the sweet smell of anticipation, of men finished with their labors looking forward to fulfillment, that was so strong, it almost hummed. And if anticipation was keen enough, cleanliness might follow, so that the smells of soap, hair pomade, and bay rum danced on the currents of air, too.

  Or was I confusing the smell of sex with the smell of stew? Almost as many men had trooped into town to get themselves a bowl at the huge steaming kettle that Pat Emery was stirring in the tent beside Emery’s Emporium.