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

by William Martin

  “I hope you got that in writing,” I said.

  “Ooh. In writin’, he says. We’ll give you writin’.” He let go my hand, sloshed over to the boardwalk, and said to Muggs, “Let’s go get fucked.”

  April 4, 1850

  A Man of Business

  I lay awake half the night trying to decide how to handle McLaws and his pardner. I spent the other half wondering how to bring Janiva into my bed.

  With the Australians, it seemed best to act as the boss. So in the morning, I ordered them not to insult Mr. Brannan and his assistant by asking for their weapons when they came aboard. McLaws tried to contradict me, but I cut him off. “No arguments.” And before he could answer, I turned on my heels and went below.

  We had decided to receive Brannan and Slawsby in the captain’s cabin, at the fine cherrywood table by the stern gallery, with the bustle of San Francisco as our backdrop. We would appear as part of the fabric of the city, part of its future.

  Presently, we could hear them descending.

  Janiva squeezed my hand and said, “Thank you. I have dreamed of this.”

  “I am shocked by this,” I said. “By all of it.”

  Some big men shriveled when they drew closer. Some small men expanded to fill a room. Sam Brannan was a big man in fine crimson coat and luxuriant side whiskers, and he filled every bit of vacant space in the cabin, so much so that we barely noticed the blustering Mr. Slawsby coming in after him.

  We exchanged pleasantries and took our places at the table.

  Brannan had single-handedly started the Gold Rush two years before. Learning of the discovery at Sutter’s Mill, he had quickly and quietly bought up all the shovels, picks, and pans he could find. Then he traveled to San Francisco, strode into the sleepy adobe settlement at Portsmouth Square, held up a bottle filled with glittering yellow dust, and shouted, “Gold! Gold! Gold from the American River!”

  He might have sounded like a cheap barker in a country carnival. But his cries awoke the nation. And no one had ever called San Francisco “sleepy” again.

  He was now reputed to be the wealthiest man in California. He was also a Mormon, one of the so-called Latter-Day Saints, though there was little saintly about him. I had heard that he could be crude, impatient, and outspoken, but his opinion was solicited on every matter. Such is the power of the money-made man … here or anywhere.

  He looked at Janiva and smiled. “A lovely lady is a pleasure.”

  I was reminded of an old word, “lickerous,” to describe the look in his eyes. He was eager, lustful, but constrained for the moment.

  He turned to me. “Will the lady be negotiating with us?”

  Before I could say anything, she said, “Yes. I will.”

  Brannan raised an eyebrow, as if asking me, Are you in charge here or is she?

  But Slawsby jumped in, eager to assert himself. “Mr. Brannan has little time. You know of his reputation. You know it will speak well of you to be in business with him. Eleven dollars a shovel.”

  “Is this fair?” Janiva said to me.

  Slawsby said, “Fifty percent, wholesale to retail, standard here and in the East.”

  Brannan’s eyes offered me a challenge: Did I have anything to say, or was the woman going to do all the talking?

  Janiva said, “We would do better to sell them ourselves.”

  Slawsby said, “That will require a warehouse, a store, a paid staff.”

  Brannan kept his eyes on me.

  So I slid our licensing agreement across the table. “Ames and Sons make the best shovels in America. They invented the back-strap shovel. They make other fine implements, too. And they are my cousins.”

  He inclined his eyes, read, raised a brow. “You come from fine stock, sir.”

  “They promise a second ship with another two thousand shovels and two thousand picks. The Madeleine M. left a month after the Proud Pilgrim, but she’s a fast brig, so the semaphore on Telegraph Hill will be announcing her any day now.” This was all as Janiva had described it to me.

  At a look from Brannan, Slawsby said, “Let’s not quibble, then. We’ll sell these shovels in Sacramento for twenty-two dollars apiece. But we’ll offer you twelve, a dollar more than wholesale.”

  I said, “I’ve been in a camp called Broke Neck.”

  “We’ve heard of Broke Neck,” said Brannan. “We’ve heard of trouble there.”

  I felt Janiva tensing beside me.

  But I remained calm and offered my prepared answer: “The Miner’s Council overreached their power. Trouble always follows when men seek to inflict their will unfairly on others.”

  “True in the mines,” said Janiva. “True at this table.”

  I had not expected that, but it was the perfect point. We made a good team.

  Slawsby huffed, “How does Broke Neck affect wholesale on your shovels?”

  “Traveling from Broke Neck, one goes through Sacramento, so one may visit Mr. Brannan’s fine store there, where a shovel much inferior to the Massachusetts-made Ames shovel goes for twenty-five dollars.”

  Slawsby reddened, scowled, picked a bit at his beard.

  But Brannan seemed to brighten, as if sensing he was in the presence of someone more formidable than he had first thought, and while he might not have liked that fact, he liked the challenge. So he sliced to the bone of the matter: “We’ll offer you fourteen.”

  I looked at Slawsby. “Yesterday, you offered sixteen.”

  “Sixteen?” Brannan turned his bushy side whiskers to Slawsby.

  “I heard a rumor that someone was planning to bid fifteen and sell at thirty,” said Slawsby. “I wanted them to know we’d be prepared to top it. But—”

  I cut him off. Time for the kill. Time for the deal. “If you would pay sixteen against fifteen, it means you think our shovels are worth seventeen. So—”

  “Do you see that city behind you?” Brannan slid his hands into his waistcoat pockets and pointed his chin at the stern gallery windows. “Do you know how much of it I own?”

  Intimidation by means of wealth and power was a game I had seen my father play.

  Before I could think of a response, Janiva said, “If you own as much as we’ve heard, you’ll need shovels to dig foundations. Many, many shovels.”

  Brannan almost smiled. “But if you hope to get more than thirteen, you’ll need to find another bidder. Who will bid against me?” Despite his reputation as a blowhard, he spoke softly when he spoke from power.

  But I had to earn his respect now. If I did not, I’d best flee on the Panama at the next trill of her whistle, because these men knew about Broke Neck. That meant the story was spreading and would soon swell into a nasty carbuncle, one that a man without the respect of his peers might never be able to drain.

  So I said, “Are you familiar with my friend, Mark Hopkins?”

  “Hopkins, the hardware man?” said Slawsby.

  “A license to sell Ames shovels would benefit Hopkins, undercut you, and develop a business relationship for me in Sacramento.”

  And competition made all the difference. Our back-and-forthing went on for a time, but we agreed. Arbella Shipping and Mercantile would sell 75 percent to Brannan for two years, shovels and picks at a firm price of sixteen dollars. But because I was loyal to my friends, I had to give Mark Hopkins a chance in Sacramento. And that might have been the most important position I took, for Brannan said, “A man who is loyal to his friends, even if they are my competitors, is a man I can trust.” I knew then that I would have an ally in Sam Brannan.

  He stood and shook hands and told Janiva, “You have chosen well, miss.”

  Civilized business, conducted in a civil manner. We closed the deal with a bottle of the departed captain’s De Luze cognac. Though Sam Brannan espoused Mormonism, he did not decline a good cognac.

  * * *

  GETTING RID OF TOM McLaws and Muggs Henderson proved more difficult. After we had signed the papers with Brannan in the new office of Reese Shipton on Portsmouth
Square, I returned to the Proud Pilgrim, went to the table by the aft deck house, put my pistol next to the inkwell, and called our Australians aft.

  When they were looming over me, I produced two sacks containing eight pounds of gold dust each—sixteen hundred dollars times two.

  “There’s your ten percent,” I said. “Good luck and thank you.”

  Trub said, “Ten percent? Each? That don’t look like ten percent each.”

  “Miss Toler tells me it was ten to split,” I said. “Five apiece.”

  Janiva stood behind me, hands folded, eyes shadowed by her straw bonnet.

  “Well, beggin’ your pardons, but Miss Toler’s as wrong as rottin’ fish.” McLaws pulled from his pocket a sheet covered in pencil scratchings, and read, “‘I hereby authorize Tom McLaws and Muggs Henderson, to receive payment of ten percent each for the total value of our shipment of Ames shovels upon completion of a sale in exchange for services. J. P. Dutton.’”

  I snatched the sheet, glanced at it, showed it to Janiva.

  She nodded. “That’s my cousin’s signature.”

  “Well, then,” said Trub, “it’s a contract, gen-u-ine.”

  “The signature may be genuine. But”—I held the paper between two fingers—“the document has been altered. Someone inserted the word ‘each’ in a darker pencil, and it’s not initialed. If a caret is not initialed, it’s invalid.”

  “Carrot?” said Muggs, about whom I worried less each time he opened his mouth. “We ain’t talking about bloody vegetables. We’re—”

  Trub raised a hand for his partner to be quiet. Then he looked at Janiva and jerked his head at me. “Is he a lawyer? Because he talks like one.”

  “I’m not, but up on Portsmouth Square, there’s a lawyer named Shipton. We can ask him.” I stood and picked up my pistol.

  McLaws kept his eyes on Janiva, as if to express an unspoken attachment, as if to say that the real man to protect her was himself. “This is how you’d treat us? Men who’ve tooken care of you and—”

  She said, “I won’t let you cheat me, Tom. You’re released from your contract.”

  After a moment, Trub McLaws picked up one of the sacks of gold.

  I said, “That’s the full amount, though we’ve only contracted the sale of three-quarters of the shipment. Take it, or we can go see that lawyer.”

  McLaws hefted the gold. “Outside of a few police and some weak-kneed judges, there ain’t much law in San Francisco. Men comes and goes and does as they please, and them as has the strongest hand has the strongest chance.”

  “That’s why I never give up my pistol,” I said.

  “But that little popgun won’t stop the Sydney Ducks. Ever heard of them?”

  “If he ain’t, he should,” said Henderson.

  “Right you are, Muggsy, me boy.” Trub leaned on the table. “They live in Sydney Town, over by Telegraph Hill. They ain’t the nicest blokes, and they been comin’ in bunches, ever since word reached Down Under about this here Gold Rush.”

  “Aye.” Muggs laughed. “More hairy-faced Australian fucksnakes every week.”

  I was looking for a chance to take this conversation back, and Muggs gave it to me. I picked up the pistol and jammed it against his red, vein-streaked nose. “Miss Toler is a lady. Use those words in front of her again, I’ll put a bullet right through your pudding pot of a brain.”

  “Easy,” said Trub. “What Muggs is sayin’, in a crude way, is that we got bad Australians in San Francisco, and we got worse Australians. We come from a penal colony, you know. So most of us is escaped convicts, or former convicts, or the sons of such.”

  “So what?”

  “So some folks say the big Christmas fire was set by them Sydney Ducks, lookin’ to do some lootin’ while the city burned. Considerin’ that you two are settin’ up a tradin’ outfit, with your own warehouse and all, you’ll need some lads who know how to fight fire with fire.” Trub McLaws could sound quite logical when he wanted to.

  Even so, I pretended not to understand his meaning. “Fire with fire?”

  “In a manner of speakin’. So let’s forget the lawyers and such. For one ounce of gold per day, per man, we’ll protect you from the Ducks, the Chinks, the Greasers, and all other comers, whether you’re here on the Proud Pilgrim or in a warehouse ashore. And from what I heard, you got another ship comin’ any day now. You need our help.”

  So, this hairy-faced Australian fucksnake was an eavesdropper, too.

  Janiva and I went below to talk it over, and we agreed that once the second ship arrived, we would need storage on land, and storage would need protection.

  “Besides,” Janiva added, “better to have these ‘fucksnakes’ inside the tent pissing out than outside pissing in.”

  I laughed. “Such language.”

  “I’m not Hallie Batchelder, James. I’m a woman of the world.”

  So she was. She was also right. We were stuck with these two. We could never trust them. But if we dispensed with them, they could make even more trouble. So I would let them enhance our presence—if not our respectability—in San Francisco. Arbella Shipping and Mercantile would have its own protection force. They would protect our goods and, by association, Sam Brannan’s. And they would be well paid. That ounce of gold a day would be an investment in our safety … or a deal with the devil.

  But I told them that if something happened to me, all agreements would end and Miss Toler would return to Boston.

  “On a journey like that, I’d go with her meself,” said Trouble Tom McLaws.

  Such an answer gave me the resolve to sleep every night with my cabin locked, and my pistol or Janiva—or both—at my side.

  And that night, to my everlasting joy, it was both.

  April 5, 1850

  A New Day

  Janiva awoke with these words: “I cannot believe that San Francisco is ever anything but the most beautiful place on earth.”

  “If it isn’t,” I whispered, “we will make it so.”

  She rolled toward me. “But if we hope to bring our new city a bit of respectability, we’re doing a rather poor job of it.”

  I told her I respected her more with every caress of her hand and touch of her leg.

  So she pressed her leg against mine and ran her hand along my arm.

  In all my imaginings of this morning, I had never anticipated the transformation it would make in me. I was drained of all but pleasure by the softness of her flesh, by the satisfaction of my own, by the salt-sweet aroma of our bodies filling my lungs and soul.

  The captain’s narrow berth, built into the little gallery that bowed out on the larboard side, was just wide enough for two, if two slept entwined as one.

  “You’re different than when we embraced after musicales at the Atheneum.” She touched my cheek, just below the whip scar. “You look harder.”

  “The men who made the scar made me harder.” I got up and pulled on my breeches. “Before we’re done, we may both have to grow harder still.”

  “But not today. Today, I prefer to be a wanton.” She threw her arm over her head, giving me a frankest yet most innocent view of her sweet breasts that I could ever have hoped for. Her sudden smile lit the room. Her brown hair, which she had never unpinned for me before, spread across the pillow and framed her face in a dark halo.

  But I could hear the Australians moving about. They had hired another pair, known only as Brizzie and Bludger, so now they were four. And they were making breakfast. I smelled coffee brewing, bacon cooking. Time to take control, a task that I expected I would have to perform every day for as long as they were in my employ.

  I bent to put on my boots, glanced out the stern gallery, and noticed the semaphore on Telegraph Hill. A new signal had appeared: arms extended, at two o’clock and three: A brig. They were signaling the arrival of a brig.

  I said, “Isn’t the Madeleine M. a brig?”

  “A brig, yes, and fast.”

  “This could be her, then.” I looked
at Janiva, half-wrapped in the sheet. “But the wind is from the east. It will take her an hour to work her way onto an anchorage.”

  “An hour can be a long time.”

  I undid my galluses and dropped my breeches, then I knelt beside the berth and touched her leg, slid my hand along the smooth skin, kissed her again.…

  And a voice in my head whispered my prayer, that Samuel Hodges forget me.

  April 9, 1850

  A Pre-Dawn Visitor

  First entry since the arrival of the Madeleine M.:

  Our brig brought all that we expected and more: Ames shovels, picks, and pans; flannel shirts, boots, hats; a hundred pipes of rum; a hundred cases of French champagne; a hundred crates of salt cod; a hundred other foods in every kind of container from tin to sack to hogshead; and four pianos manufactured by Chickering & Company of Boston.

  Why had we received all of this?

  My brother Thaddeus had decided that my California adventure might have merit after all. At the insistence of his wife, Katherine (surely meddlesome but perhaps not the ninny I thought), he had been a great help to Janiva, first by persuading her father that she had the fortitude to endure a long sea journey, then by aiding her in the Ames negotiations. Of course, I suspected that he acted for his own benefit as well as mine. Opening a new market in San Francisco or quieting a querulous wife in Boston were high ideals for any man of business. But I was glad that he had decided, in his fashion, to throw in with us.

  And I was glad that, in addition to her other assets, Janiva Toler had the backbone to push my brother, confront her father, and challenge me.

  Unloading our treasures took most of three days.

  Brannan brought a crew to take three-quarters of the Ames shipment. He paid for the shovels, picks, and pans with 99.9 percent gold dust, which we left on deposit in the safe in his warehouse on Sansome Street. He gave us space in the warehouse—for a price, of course, but a fair one.

  Until our goods were properly stored, the papers signed, and the Madeleine M. on her way back to Boston for more, I had no time to ask Janiva if it was time to marry.