She told the other gentlemen to complete their transactions with Mr. McLaws, who had taken their weapons when they came aboard.
The largest of these, wearing the blackest coat and beaver hat, looked me over as though I still had the dysentery. “If this man offers you fifteen dollars a shovel, miss, I’ll offer sixteen.” From the mended bullethole in the hat. I recognized Jonathan Slawsby, the man who had greeted us from his rowboat that first day.
I said, “Sixteen? The Ames shovel is the best made.”
Slawsby played the high dudgeon that men of business sometimes affect when met by unexpected opposition. “Just who in hell do you think you are, mister?”
“I know exactly who I am, sir. Who do you think I am?”
Janiva said, “This is James Spencer, my partner.”
Slawsby said, “Partner? I thought those Aussies were your partners.”
“They’re my bodyguards. A Boston lady can’t go about San Francisco without physical protection, now can she?”
Slawsby said, “The gentlemen of San Francisco will do their utmost to protect your virtue, ma’am.”
“I worry less for my virtue than for my two thousand Ames shovels and the license to import more—”
Slawsby’s jaw flopped open, so that his beard dropped down over his shirtfront. “You hold an Ames license?”
She produced it from a sheaf of papers on the table.
Slawsby took off his hat, wiped the sweat from his forehead, and read the first few sentences before she pulled it away. He said, “May I bring this to Mr. Brannan?”
Janiva raised her finger for silence. In that she had met my father, perhaps she had learned the gesture from him. She certainly understood its impact, because Slawsby stopped in mid-sentence. She said, “You may bring Mr. Brannan here.” She then excused us with this: “My partner and I have business to discuss.”
* * *
SHE LED ME DOWN the gangway to the saloon, where we were suddenly, exquisitely alone. She stepped into the shaft of incandescent gold falling through the skylight, took off her hat, took a deep breath, and hurled herself into my arms.
My whole being ignited, as if the skylight were a magnifying glass focusing all the sunshine of that April morning.
I shall avoid the most intimate details of our reunion, except that I could not stop from pressing against her, absorbing the softness of her, inhaling the sweet perfume of her. And she responded with a passion that bespoke her willingness to endure a six-month voyage just to be with me.
How much farther we would have gone at that moment, I cannot tell, because a voice dropped down the gangway: “Miss Toler. Miss Toler!”
It was the first time that the Australian accent of Tom McLaws invaded our privacy, but already I sensed that it would not be the last.
He and his partner, I learned later, had signed on to the Proud Pilgrim when she put in at Valparaiso, Chile and attached themselves to Janiva’s cousin, John Toler Dutton, who had sailed as her protector and business partner. While the rest of the crew had deserted in San Francisco, along with the captain, these two had offered their services as bodyguards for Dutton, his goods, and “the lovely lady.” But their protection had not been enough. On his second day, Dutton had wandered down the wrong street, only to be found the next morning beneath a boardwalk, skull stove in and pockets turned out.
McLaws’ partner, Mr. Henderson, had accompanied Dutton and had brought the bad news, while admitting that he had fallen into a drunken stupor himself. McLaws had chastised Henderson with a belaying pin and promised that they would be vigilant in Miss Toler’s services henceforth. Vigilance, on the part of McLaws, appeared to have grown into jealousy, perhaps for Janiva, perhaps for her supplies.
I sensed this from the moment of that first interruption, as Janiva withdrew from my embrace and said, “What is it, Mr. McLaws?”
“Beggin’ your pardon, but will your friend be stayin’ aboard this afternoon?”
“Yes, he will.”
“In that case—” McLaws descended backward, big boots followed by big ass, then big, red face ducking under the beam.
“In that case—what?” Janiva smoothed her hair and the front of her dress.
“I didn’t tell him the rules.” McLaws spoke with the false friendliness of a man talking a child out of a sweetmeat.
“Rules?” I said, “About what?”
“About weapons on board. I take charge of all arms, so I’ll take the Colt Dragoon I spied under your coat.”
Here was another test. I said, “The Colt stays with me.”
“I been lookin’ after this lady’s safety for ten days now, sir, and not a bit of harm has come to her. But for me and me mate, she’d have been all alone after the demise of Mr. Dutton. You should be thankin’ me for that.”
“I did,” I said mildly.
“Well, then—” He held out his hand and gave me a grin, secure in the knowledge that his bulk intimidated most men.
I said, “You missed your chance when I came aboard.”
His smile fell off, and the blood drained from his face, almost as if he had willed it. “Miss Toler was so happy to see you, I didn’t want to spoil your reunion.”
Janiva, whose emotions played on her face like projections from a camera obscura, showed sudden and surprising fear. She said, “James, it’s a good rule, I think.”
“He can have his gun when he leaves, miss,” said McLaws, turning to me. “Stayin’ at the El Dorado, are you? They ain’t finished rebuildin’ the Parker House yet.”
I kicked open the shuttered door behind me and threw my sea bag onto one of the berths. “I’ll be staying right here.”
McLaws looked at me with no expression, which was more unsettling than his grins and scowls. Then he said to Janiva, “I can protect you, ma’am, from them who knows enough to fear me. But I can’t protect you from every man you bring below.”
It was as if he was leaving me out of this, as if this was only between them.
So I asserted myself: “I’ll keep my gun, and you will give us our privacy.”
“Is that your wish, ma’am?” asked McLaws
Janiva said, “We have business to discuss.”
“When you do, remember our deal.” Then he climbed the gangway.
“Deal?” I said to her after he was gone.
“He and Henderson are promised ten percent of the profits for security.”
“Each?” I asked.
“I’m not sure. I was so upset when my cousin died, but … oh, James, I’m glad you’re here.” She led me to the stern, to the captain’s cabin, which extended the width of the ship and was an even finer space than Trask’s on the William Winter.
As soon as we had closed the door, I said, “I’m going home.”
She folded her hands in front of her, lowered her head in that way she had of expressing disappointment, so that she seemed to be looking at you from under the darkest, angriest eyebrows God ever gave a woman, and she said, “I have come all this way to build something with you, and you would go home?”
“I was going home to build something with you,” I said.
Her answer was simply to stand, still and silent, framed by the four windows of the stern gallery, with the blue of the bay and the light of the day pouring in around her.
So I told her of all that had happened, from finding the first gold to the final good-byes a few days earlier. And with each detail, her posture relaxed a bit, her expression blossomed slowly from anger to surprise to awe to shock, and when I was done, she said, “Did you leave your gold?”
“Five pounds, safe under Big Skull Rock.”
“And the rest?”
“On account with Abbott Express. The value of twenty pounds was shipped to Boston in January. Following it home seems the safest course.”
“But is it the right course? You fought for something up in those hills, James. You helped the weak confront the strong. Running can’t be the right course.”
“I�
��m tired of deciding the right course,” I admitted.
She turned to the windows. “So you’d go home to Boston, where your family, your friendships, and your standing among your peers will speak more loudly than Samuel Hodges?”
“Isn’t that why we live in a society?” I said. “To have the trust of neighbors and the benefit of reputation?” I realized that I sounded like my father.
“To have the benefit of the doubt, you mean?” She pivoted back, crossed the cabin, came close, looked into my eyes.
A week earlier, beside the Miwok, I could only have dreamed this moment, alone in a clean, well-furnished place, with Janiva’s eyes on mine.
She said, “What you seek in Boston, you can have right here.”
What I sought was her. But she was not offering herself. She was talking about something grander. She said, “You just need to build it, James. Build it through business, through relationships, as my father and your father and their fathers did it in Boston.”
“You would”—I searched for a word—“replicate Boston in San Francisco?”
“I would remind you of how the world works.”
“I’ve seen how the world works. It works harshly.”
“Then let us set about changing it.”
“You mean, civilizing it?”
“We start with Slawsby and his boss, the famous Sam Brannan. We make a deal for the shovels and other Ames equipment. We establish ourselves, so that if Hodges comes to extract vengeance, he’s assailing a man of business, a man with friends, a man with a reputation.”
It was good sense, though tinted with more hope than realism. I said, “When Hodges appears.”
She went to the desk and wrote a note. “You sign first. The male in the partnership should sign first.”
And I think that in the sudden intensity of her dedication, I loved her even more, no matter that her litany left out the most important leg on the stool of reputation: a man with a wife. A wife gave a man the stability of a rock in any corner of the world, and surely in wild and wifeless San Francisco.
I read the letter: “Dear Mr. Slawsby, Please inform Samuel Brannan that we shall await his visit aboard the Proud Pilgrim tomorrow, Saturday, at 11:00 a.m.”
After I signed, she snatched the paper and scratched her signature beneath mine, then said, “What shall we call our partnership?”
I said, “Is it a full partnership?”
But before I could answer, we were distracted by an ear-piercing whistle as the steamer Panama came thumpering past, so close that her side filled the stern gallery, and her wake caused us to rise and rock and dip.
Janiva grabbed the table for balance and must have seen something on my face, something that reflected my uncertainty, because this exploded out of her:
“James Spencer, I did not endure my parents’ shock, my friends’ derision, and the leering looks of passengers and sailors alike, nor did I suffer awful food, cramped quarters, and water so layered with green slime that it smelled like a millpond, nor did I torture myself with seasickness, boredom, storms, and the death of my own cousin, all so that you could look longingly at the steamer that might take you back to Boston. I am here, James. I am here for you. I expect you to be here for me.”
I let her words hang in the air for a moment, to lessen their impact as the ship stopped rocking, then I said, “If I look longingly, miss, it is only at you.”
She lowered her chin and gave me that angled eye, from under that dark brow. “Then you are staying? It’s your name on the Ames license. They’re your cousins, not mine. Tell me that you are staying.”
“Tell me that you did not come all this way just to sell shovels. Tell me that and I’ll stay. Stay to build something more, out there”—I gestured to the stern gallery—“and in here”—I gestured to the space between us.
“Soon, James. Soon. If we can build a company, we can build a life. But the company first. The shovels. The deal with Brannan.”
Such ambition she had, for a woman. But what she said was enough. Soon was enough.
Since we were not yet joining our names, I suggested we find a title for our partnership that bespoke our Boston background. We tried “Union,” after the Union Oyster House. No. “Atheneum.” Too bookish. “Beacon,” for Beacon Hill? No, but what held memories on Beacon Hill? The Arbella Club. So … Arbella Shipping and Mercantile.
Janiva wrote it on the letter, beneath our signatures, then put the letter in an envelope. “We need to get this up to Sam Brannan straight away.”
* * *
ON THE DECK, I called for the rowboat.
McLaws said, “Me and me mate, Muggs Henderson, we’ll do the rowin’, sir.”
Henderson was shorter than McLaws and carried a belly that protruded over his belt like a flour sack flopped over the edge of a buckboard. He gave a touch of his knuckles to his forehead, like a sullen seaman. “Pleasure to meet you, sir.”
I had known Janiva’s cousin, J. T. Dutton, and had never thought much of his judgment. I thought even less of it now that he was dead. Looking at these two, I thought that perhaps his judgment was the reason he was dead.
I told them I could row myself. The Clay Street Wharf was not far. But they insisted. They said that the day’s business appeared to be done on the Proud Pilgrim, so Miss Toler would be safe aboard. And they had business of their own in town.
“Yeah,” said Muggs, positioning himself on one of the thwarts and gripping the oars. “Ah-Toy’s Palace of Pleasure is a good place to work off the stiffies.”
“You heard of Ah-Toy?” said Tom McLaws, stepping into the boat after me.
“The Chinese princess of whores,” said Henderson.
“And we’re two randy kangaroos,” said McLaws.
“We sure is, and protectin’ a pretty lady like Miss Toler, it strains the loins.”
“But don’t worry, mate.” McLaws patted my leg. “We been good boys.”
I just looked at them. I had learned that sometimes, just looking was enough to unnerve a man, force him into saying what was really on his mind.
“So,” said McLaws, pushing off, “how’s the whores up in gold country?”
I said nothing.
Muggs chuckled. Maybe they would not be unnerved. “The quiet type, Trub.”
They said no more until we looped a line around a piling on the wharf and started walking. They positioned themselves on either side of me, more as a threat than as bodyguards. After we had gone a short distance, sidestepping stevedores and piles of goods and scatterings of garbage and debris, McLaws said, “Did you hear what Muggsy called me? ‘Trub’?”
I did not answer, as if I was not in the least interested.
“It stands for ‘Trouble.’ I’m known as Trouble Tom. Trub for short. ’Cause I’m nothin’ but trouble for them as gives me such.”
“Do I call you Trub, then, or Mr. McLaws?” I picked up my pace. I could imagine one of them stabbing me and leaving me to drop in the swirling confusion of dockhands and cargo and carts, so I wanted to be off this wharf as quickly as possible.
But McLaws kept pace. “You can call me Tom, so long as there’s no trouble.”
“Don’t make trouble,” I said, “and there won’t be any.”
McLaws looked at his partner. “Now there’s a right answer, Muggsy, me lad.”
I pointed to the dirty old brig Euphemia, anchored between the Clay Street and Long Wharfs. “Wouldn’t want you to end up on the jail ship.”
Their laughter told me that they underestimated me. Let them.
Now we approached one of those sights only seen in San Francisco: the whaleship Niantic, run onto the mudflat, propped with huge redwood supports, and surrounded with a fine new dock. They had covered her deck with what resembled a New England barn, cut a doorway in her side, and put up a sign: REST FOR THE WEARY AND STORAGE FOR TRUNKS. A larger sign along the ridge beam announced, NIANTIC STOREHOUSE.
“Amazin’, it is,” said Muggs, “doin’ all that to a ship.”
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“What’s amazin,” said Trub, “is the things people thinks of to make money. Some men makes things. Some makes the space to store things. Some digs things out of the ground. And some serves the rest.”
“It takes all kinds,” I said.
“Me and Muggsy, we serve. Don’t you think it was good of us, stayin’ on like we done to serve Miss Toler in her hour of need.”
“Aye,” added Muggs, puffing his beery breath, “’fore you was anywhere to be seen, Mr. Spencer of Boston.”
“So true, Muggsy, me lad, so true.” Like a bad actor, McLaws took off his hat and placed it over his heart. “Kept her safe from all manner of evil fate in a dangerous place.”
“Damn dangerous, Trub. As dangerous as the hairy-faced Australian fucksnake.”
“Ever heard of him, Mr. Spencer?” Trub McLaws put his hat back on.
“Not a snake I’d worry about, so long as it stays in Australia.”
We crossed over one of those long docks running at right angles to the wharfs, following the line of Sansome Street. On the landward side, tip carters were dumping fill and shovelers were spreading it, creating new-made ground on which buildings rose as quickly as the land dried. But dry land was more hoped-for ideal than terra firma reality. When the tide rose, the new ground might still take on the consistency of buttered oat gruel, as I discovered when I stepped off the wharf into the ankle-deep mud.
McLaws and Henderson had a great guffaw at my expense.
Yes, I was stuck and damned embarrassed about it, too.
McLaws shouted, “So, our new pardner ain’t smart enough to step ’round a big puddle when it’s right in front of him.”
I was not their pardner, but now was not the time to argue, stuck as I was with the mob of San Francisco—the walkers and hawkers, the workers and wagoneers, the muleteers and drivers and barking dogs—all sloshing and splashing around me, all oblivious to this little exchange of insults and threats.
McLaws came close and offered his hand. Reluctantly, I took it, preferring his help to falling facedown in the mud.
He said, “See how good we treat them we works for? A pair of stout blokes, we are. But we’ll be paid fair. Ten percent of everything that comes out of your partnership. You understand? Ten percent. Each.”
Bound for Gold--A Peter Fallon Novel of the California Gold Rush Page 43