Blood Gold

by Michael Cadnum

  Her father excused himself, and drew the pistol from his inner pocket. He tiptoed in an exaggerated manner across the stage boards. I had been about to comment that I had never heard anyone praise the accuracy of such a diminutive firearm, but I kept my silence as his steps took him beyond the illumination of the few candles, and into the shadowy hallway beyond.

  The tiptoed progress of Mr. Castleman continued with painful slowness, and then stopped, somewhere off in the hallway.

  I held my breath, and not one of us made a move. A metallic click-click pierced the silence, the gun being cocked.

  He must have double-cracked the gun—used twice the normal amount of gunpowder. It’s a dangerous practice if the gun isn’t kept in prime working order—a double load of powder can cause a firearm to burst.

  The shot was very loud.

  CHAPTER 22

  “In fact,” argued Ben, “I think we have an obligation to travel with these fascinating people.”

  “To keep Mr. Castleman,” I suggested with sarcasm, “from shooting one of the ladies by mistake?”

  The pistol ball had made short work of the rat, which I had volunteered to dispose of in the back alley. I had stretched the deceased rodent respectfully on the ground where, judging by the growls, a pair of dogs quarreled over it as soon as I made my way up the steps.

  Ben had several different smiles, and this one meant: I’m waiting patiently for you to be serious.

  For the moment I made no further argument. My ears had stopped ringing from the pistol shot at last. We had just visited our third shipping company, looking for the name Ezra Nevin on the books. The clerks had been businesslike and crisp—the rosters were not for just anyone to look at. One clerk went so far as to say, “I couldn’t let my own brother look at these books.”

  We wandered Sansome Street, the place so crowded that men bumped into us as they made their way across the muddy street, barely calling back an apology.

  “We can’t let those two ladies and that dandified man,” said Ben, “travel upriver without help.”

  “Especially the ladies,” I said dryly.

  “They need our attentions, Willie, don’t you think?”

  A row of chairs had been set out along the street, and men sat there, watching the to-and-fro of the crowd in the street. The chairs were all occupied, but I took my place among them, watching the spectacle of hundreds of men walking too fast to wish each other a good evening, every man angling off in an independent direction. There was a long line of men at an office that sold tickets to Sacramento City, and even the approach of night did little to diminish the bustle around us.

  I felt a very definite thrill at the excitement, but I did not care for the company of Mr. Castleman any longer. I did not trust him, and I did not like the growing friendship between Ben and Constance. She laughed musically through her nose, tilting her head back. I had never seen anything quite like it, or the way Ben brightened under her attention.

  “What if we don’t ever find Ezra?” my friend was saying.

  “We will.”

  “But if we don’t, Willie, what’s your plan?”

  The truth was, I had wondered about this. I didn’t want to put words to such a fear—it might cause it to happen. And furthermore, my desire to find Ezra had weakened a good deal during our journey, especially since our arrival. So much excitement—and the promise of wealth—had made the former purpose of my trip seem dogged and lifeless.

  “I think whether we find Ezra or not is not so important anymore,” said Ben. He folded his arms to give his words more emphasis.

  I couldn’t answer him right away. I folded my arms, too.

  “We didn’t know what California would be like,” said Ben, a new quality in his voice. “Or how exciting it would be. People are getting rich, Willie!”

  He was putting into words the very thoughts that had begun to tease me, but that did not make what he was saying any more welcome. “Stay away from the daughter,” I heard myself say.

  “Constance?” he asked airily.

  “I don’t trust her.”

  Ben chuckled. It was a sort of artificial, humorless laugh I had never heard from him before, offhand and defensive. “And her mother,” he said. “I suppose you don’t care for her, either.”

  I was turning into Reverend Willie again.

  “How will we ever,” said Ben, “become men of the world?”

  I had no particular goal to become such a creature, I wanted to rejoin. But I did feel suddenly small-minded and ignorant.

  “Do you know why,” asked Ben, “the shipping clerks won’t let us look at their precious books?”

  I thought for a moment. “They’re following the shipping company rules.”

  “We’re expected to bribe them,” said Ben. “They want gold, just like everyone else—and we don’t have any.”

  CHAPTER 23

  It was hard to sleep that night.

  Ben and I were stretched out on the plush furniture of the Castleman sitting room, our heads on feather-stuffed pillows. We were comfortable enough. But men in the street outside were liquored up, cheering and arguing. Some sort of contest was going on in the dark street, a footrace or a wrestling match. When the drunken competition had concluded at last, something like silence descended over the neighborhood.

  Then Mr. Castleman’s voice resounded through the walls. I could not make out the words, but only the distinct rise and fall of his speech, a man in love with his own voice. Now and then his wife made a sound, a reassuring murmur. She had a beautiful speaking voice, it was true. Mr. Castleman would start in again, and, for all his talk, I began to wonder if he was as confident as he wished to be. What would our duties turn out to be, I wondered? Would we help to drive a team of mules, and nail stage scenery into place? Or would we act as bodyguards in some unsavory business?

  I was aware, too, of the soft steps of his daughter in the room adjoining ours.

  Ben slipped into the slow, steady respiration of a sleeper. The building shook faintly when someone leaned heavily against the exterior wall of the place, and the joints and timbers of the house creaked in the wind. But I was pleased to have a bed within walls and under a roof, and before much longer I enjoyed a dreamless slumber.

  A whisper woke me.

  Someone had spoken.

  Or was it a laugh?

  Ben was gone, leaving only a tangle of blankets.

  I groped through the poor light and found my knife.

  CHAPTER 24

  “There’s no need to shout,” said Ben.

  “I am not shouting,” I said, in a careful whisper, and retreated from the room.

  I had not made any loud exclamation. I had taken in a sudden gasp of air, quite shocked. But as far as I was aware, no actual shout had escaped my lips.

  As I returned to my blanket, I ran through the lurid images that had just confronted me: Ben half naked, Constance little better, the two of them in a stuffy, freshly painted little side room, lit by a stub of a candle.

  I sat there on the floor, waiting for Ben to hurry into the room.

  I was ready to entertain his protestations of innocence with an air of worldly sophistication. I would show him that I was not a man easily offended, and certainly not jealous—not at all. We were all broad-minded here in San Francisco.

  It did not trouble me a bit that a young woman—who looked very much like the marble nymph in the corner of the sitting room, and in a similar state of undress—had chosen Ben as her consort.

  Instead of me.

  But there was still no sign of Ben.

  I pulled on my boots, tucked in my shirt, found my hat. I dragged a satchel of my belongings from the steamer trunk in a room filled with tailor’s dummies and wig stands, all of it giving off the odor of newness. I shouldered this satchel, not caring if Ben heard me, or anyone else.

  A distant, domestic snoring sounded from what I took to be the bedchamber of Mr. Castleman and Lady Macbeth, and an odd near-silence pulsed
from the shut door of the trysting place of Ben and Constance. I made a certain amount of noise on purpose. I shuffled my feet, and thumped the floor as I hefted the satchel along, all the way across the kitchen, and down the back steps to the alley.

  I clumped my way down the steps and out into the alley, expecting with every step to hear Ben call after me.

  He caught up with me in the street at last, an outlandish nightshirt stuffed into his trousers, a huge garment of white linen, something Hamlet might wear. His suspenders dangled, and one foot was thrust into a curl-toed Persian slipper four sizes too small. Early-morning bustle already filled the street, but no one gave Ben’s costume a second glance.

  “This is the opportunity of a lifetime,” said Ben, in a low, urgent voice.

  “Opportunity for what?” I spoke in an equally low voice, but with great feeling. “To lounge in the bedchamber of”—I made a mental effort to come up with the right phrase—“of a Delilah?”

  Ben folded his arms.

  I said, “You’re a man of weak character, Ben.”

  Ben heaved his shoulders like a person trying to control his temper.

  “I’m ashamed of you,” I said, more sharply, perhaps, that I had intended.

  Ben shook his head.

  “I’m not ever going to be able to put into a letter to Elizabeth,” I went on, “the things I’ve seen you doing on this trip.”

  Ben spoke after a tense silence. “Do you know why Ezra Nevin is going to be too busy to so much as speak to you, Willie?”

  I knew better than to respond to a question like that.

  “Because,” he said, “he’s a gentleman. And you’re”—Ben searched for the word to deliver his judgment in all its flavor—“you’re so uncultured!”

  CHAPTER 25

  “She’s taking on water through her hull,” said Captain Deerborn of the Nyad.

  “Leaking?” I suggested.

  I had been directed to this ship by a sooty, unshaven clerk. It was the first vessel bound for Sacramento City and the goldfields to leave this morning, and there was no shortage of passengers. I paused on the wharf, uncertain what I should do. A trip across San Francisco Bay, and up the Sacramento River, some one hundred miles was the most reliable route to the gold country, but I was certain every moment that I would see Ben.

  “Not leaking, so much as sinking,” he said with little concern, leaning forward to spit carefully over the ship’s side.

  It was dawn, but already the two-masted ship was crowded with trunks and passengers. The odor of fried eggs and bacon drifted over the wharves, and I was hungry as well as feeling keenly the absence of my friend.

  Surely, I told myself, Ben would come running along any minute, out of breath and eager to join me.

  The captain looked at me over the gunwale of the two-masted ship, taking my reluctance to embark to be evidence of quite another sort of crisis.

  “If you lack money,” he said, “you can work your way upriver.”

  I could guess what work he had in mind. “Helping to man the pumps?”

  “We can use another able body,” he said, in a quiet voice. He was a big man, with square head, thick neck, and massive shoulders.

  I shot another glance up and down the wharf.

  “Or maybe you’re waiting for a certain friend,” he said.

  I gave a nod.

  “She’ll not come to see you off,” he said, not unkindly. “They never do.”

  Nicholas Barrymore and his family were among the passengers on this crowded ship. The white-haired man gave me a friendly wave from his seat near the prow, and the dark-bearded man with the knife gave me a humorless smile from his position near the rail.

  I smiled right back at him, feeling an odd relief at seeing familiar faces—even menacing ones. For some reason I felt a genuine liking for this gang of rascals. I searched the Barrymores, men and a few women, for a glimpse of that thin-faced thief. Perhaps travel makes us grateful for familiar faces, regardless of their character.

  Aaron Sweetland and Isom Gill were among us, too, although most of the Tioga County Mining and Assaying Company had elected to wait for a larger boat to allow them to transport every ounce of their considerable mining equipment. I was glad to see my two former traveling companions, too, but something about the Barrymore party continued to draw my eye. Nicholas folded his arms with an air of cheerful excitement, and the thin, black-bearded man stayed at his side.

  Their air of rough comradeship was welcome to me, after the confusing worldliness of the Castleman household. The Barrymores might be potentially dangerous, but it was a familiar, gritty sort of menace. Something else plucked at my attention, too—a quality about their company that I could not name.

  Only as I turned to carry my satchel down the companionway did I begin to guess what it was. I hurried back on deck to verify what I had seen. There among the burly, intimidating group was someone in a gray dress, a demure, full-sleeved garment, complete with a bonnet that totally shadowed her features.

  Nicholas lifted one of his white eyebrows and said something to Blackbeard.

  I shifted the plug of tobacco in my cheek and made my way to the shabby, adventurous-looking family.

  So they dress thieves in women’s clothing in California, I was about to say—certain that I had stumbled on the truth.

  But before I could make this challenging remark, rehearsing it over and over again in my mind, the womanly figure turned to meet me.

  The words died in my mouth.

  Nicholas introduced his daughter, Florence. “William here has told me he can repair anything from a carriage to a shotgun.”

  “How very clever of you, William,” said Florence. I did like being called William, and not Willie—for the moment. Especially when I heard her give the name a saucy spin.

  Her face was thin and pale, her eyes green. I had little doubt that I had seen her before—and that she was, in fact, female. She removed her bonnet, shaking down a lock of her long brown hair, perhaps to banish any doubt from my mind. She was striking in appearance, a slight, determined-looking, beautiful young woman.

  “No doubt you are faster with your hands,” she said, “than you are on your feet.”

  Nicholas and Blackbeard gave me measuring looks with twinkling eyes, not bothering to disguise their amusement.

  Perhaps the sight of my speechless surprise awakened her to something like pity. She added, with a glance at her companions, “Although you could easily outrun any of the other men I know.”

  This graceful person was, in truth, the thief I had chased through the twilight in Panama City. “I am glad,” I managed to say, “to see you in such good spirits.”

  “Oh, none of my family are ever sick,” said Florence, implying that ceaseless good health was a fault. “The entire Barrymore clan can live on fried shoes and boa constrictors.”

  “Although your dog, from what I understand, suffered some ailment.” I was trying to sound urbane, and to prove myself not a complete fool.

  “Timothy killed him,” said Florence.

  Blackbeard nodded, and his features took on a self-conscious glow.

  “For barking,” added Florence.

  “Timothy has the regrettable habit,” said Nicholas, “of being quick with his knife.”

  CHAPTER 26

  We had been out of San Francisco half an hour, sailing across the bay, heading toward the inland goldfields.

  Captain Deerborn was introducing me to the water sloshing in the Nyad’s hull. “You notice the bilge is dark and smelly,” he said.

  “Very,” I agreed. Very dark, I meant, and likewise very smelly.

  “That’s a good sign,” he said cheerfully. “It means she’s leaking slowly. But it won’t last—as soon as she sails against the river, her planks will start to work.”

  “I see,” I said, understanding in part what I was being told.

  “They’ll work and leak,” he continued. “I don’t care at all—this is my last voyage on this li
ttle ship. I’ll tie her up at Sacramento City, and the sturgeon fish can set up housekeeping in the cabin, for all I care.”

  “You’re already rich?” I had to ask.

  “Rich?” He chuckled thoughtfully, but he was polite enough to take the question in all seriousness. “No, not entirely within the normal definition of the word. But I do have my prospects.”

  “Have you staked a claim?” I asked, using a bit of gold-mining jargon I had picked up. Miners joined with companions to file papers, naming a given plot of land theirs to exploit as they wished.

  “I was a lawyer’s clerk,” he replied, “for a shipping company back in Baltimore, but what I really loved was digging and planting.”

  “You’re going to sell seed?”

  “Mining essentials,” he said, but for the moment gave me no further information, as though he had taken out a patent on a new invention and kept it secret to himself. He did, however, produce a stoneware jug, unstopper it, and offer me a drink of fiery spirits. I accepted it with a show of good manners, eager not to offend my employer.

  He leaned close and whispered, “Hardware.”

  “That sounds very important,” I said, still largely mystified.

  The captain clapped me on the back. “Shovels, Willie. And picks!”

  The captain and I emerged into the fog-filtered daylight to see a stew of passengers, two men locked in combat in their midst. One of them fell as we approached—or slipped on the wooden deck—and people flung themselves out of his way as he scrambled to regain his footing and failed in the damp morning air.

  A man with a copper-colored, spade-shaped beard stood with a whip handle—a short, stubby truncheon—in his gloved hand.

  Timothy Barrymore crouched on the deck, men crowding away from him. Nicholas emerged from the crowd and helped his family member to his feet. Florence was nearby, peering from behind a stocky passenger, her eyes bright.

  “This man stuck an elbow into my side,” said the man with the whip handle. “Pushing me like I was a sack of coffee beans.” He gestured, demonstrating a quick, painful jab in the ribs. “And so I hit him. And I’ll hit him again.”