by Jane Toombs
Chapter Four
Pamela and Selena climbed Telegraph Hill with the sky cloudless above them and the waters of the bay sparkling below. As if by unspoken agreement, neither mentioned Diego, though now and again Selena glanced covertly behind them. A day and a night had passed since Diego’s horse had been returned by a man Robert Gowdy had hired. Still, Selena expected to espy at any moment three horsemen in black.
“There’s Mr. Rhynne,” Pamela said as they neared the top. She gestured toward three men below them in frock coats and high plug hats. Rhynne kept looking from the pocket watch in his hand to the entrance of the bay.
Selena glanced at her mother.
“He’s offered to advance me money to open a store in the mining camps,” Pamela went on.
Selena nodded to herself, looking down at the tall man between his two companions. Was that the explanation for the scene she’d witnessed in her mother’s room yesterday? An agreement sealed with a kiss? It was certainly unlike Pamela.
“It would be wonderful to get away from San Francisco,” Selena said carefully. Actually her heart was leaping at the chance to go north, where there was gold and excitement. She added innocently, “Mr. Rhynne must be here to watch for the clipper too.”
“Mr. Rhynne is a gambler,” Pamela said. “I suspect he has his own private reason for waiting down there. As I told you, he’ll help us in our store venture—but with conditions. We must also operate a gambling and music hall. And a saloon as well, I suppose.”
“If we did, I could sing,” Selena said eagerly. “That man who heard me sing in New York said I should be on the stage.”
“You were a child then. I cannot have you exhibiting yourself in front of a group of drunken miners. Beyond the impropriety, it wouldn’t be safe. There’s no point in discussing it anyway because I’ve decided not to accept Mr. Rhynne’s offer. I discovered after talking to him he’s involved in another business besides gambling.”
“Which is?”
“He provides entertainers for the miners.”
“You mean singers and dancers?”
“No, I do not mean singers and dancers. You know who I mean. I mean women who cater to the baser instincts of lonely men. In our position, Selena, without prospects, we can’t afford to be associated with a man of that kind.”
“Who told you? Robert Gowdy? You know he’d say anything if he thought it would keep you in San Francisco.”
“I’m sure Mr. Gowdy was telling the truth. You have no idea, Selena, what some men are like, how far they’ll stoop to satisfy their lust for money and power. And if I have my way you never will know.”
Selena knew Pamela was thinking of Lord Lester. He was my father, she wanted to say. I couldn’t help loving him. But she said nothing, brushing away the thought as she brushed away all thoughts of that trek across the continent to California.
When they reached the top of the hill, they climbed onto a large flat rock to gaze out over the bay toward the Pacific Ocean. Overhead seagulls whirled and dipped. To their right was a hut with the windmill-like arms of the semaphore telegraph on top while below a ship was coming into the bay under full sail.
“It’s not the Flying Cloud,” Pamela said. “From her flag she must be a clipper on the China run.”
Selena heard the disappointment in her mother’s voice and thought guiltily that she herself didn’t care whether or not there was news from “home.” The Flying Cloud would have brought English mail, but to Selena, England was no longer home. California was.
When the ship passed the tip of an island in the bay one of the men with Rhynne threw his hat to the ground. “He’s giving money to Mr. Rhynne,” Selena said.
“I should have guessed they didn’t climb half-way up the hill for the view. They had a wager on the time the ship would reach the island.”
“Mother!” Selena clutched Pamela’s arm. “Over there, riding up the hill. I knew he’d come.”
A lone horseman, dressed in black and wearing the low flat-brimmed hat of the Californios, urged his mount to clamber over a steep rise, then galloped upward in a zigzag pattern. Sunlight flashed from the silver ornaments on the horse’s trappings.
“It is Diego,” Selena said. Her heart pounded. From fear? From longing? “What shall we do?” They were the only ones on the top of the hill and the semaphore hut was almost a quarter of a mile away.
“We’ll go to meet him, of course,” Pamela said.
Diego crested the hill and reined to a halt a hundred feet from them. Vaulting from his stallion with a single, fluid motion, he stood watching them. Despite his velvet suit with wide-bottomed slashed pants, he seemed, to Selena, somehow less imposing than he had at the rancho.
Diego approached them with a stiff-legged gait, as though once off his horse he had left his natural element behind. Pamela stopped, reaching out her arm to hold Selena back too. Selena had no intention of rushing forward, however. Though on first seeing Diego she thought she might throw herself into his arms, now that she faced him she saw him more as a threat, not so much to herself as to her mother.
Diego swept off his hat and bowed. Pamela nodded and Selena stared. Almost on tip-toe Diego walked toward them, like a wary puma stalking his prey, his eyes never leaving theirs. In his belt Selena saw the butt of a pistol she had not noticed there the day before.
“You had no cause for fear,” he said to Selena.
Pamela answered coolly for her daughter. “Selena changed her mind, Senor de la Torre. She does not wish to marry you. She will not marry you.”
Diego glanced from Pamela to Selena and back again. “I talked with my sister, Esperanza. I love Esperanza with all my heart, yet her words, seeming as gentle as the breeze, often gather force and become as the whirlwind.”
“Your sister didn’t make my daughter change her mind. I didn’t make her change her mind. Selena is old enough to make decisions. In our world, a woman of her age must decide for herself.”
Her mother, Selena thought, was more than a match for Diego. She wouldn’t have to say a word.
“You believe me to be . . .” Diego hesitated. “What is it the English say? A searcher for gold?”
“A prospector?”
“A man who marries for the dowry of his bride-to-be.” His dark eyes flashed. “I am not. I renounce your money. I renounce your lands beyond the seas. I am Diego de la Torre. That is enough.”
Pamela drew in her breath. “Don Diego,” she said, “we have no lands, no money. Our fortune consists of one parcel of land forty-eight varos wide in San Francisco. We have nothing else. Nothing.”
“At the Mission of Santa Clara you spoke of the green fields of your home in England where the lands of your husband, who is now dead, extended in all directions farther than the eye can see. You told me of your great house, your servants, your carriages, your many horses. You told me of all these things and more.”
“You must have misunderstood me. My husband owned those lands I told you of but he lost them. They were sold to pay his debts. Sometimes having too much land is worse than owning none at all.”
“You made me believe the lands were yours. You made me believe they became yours with the death of your husband. You made me believe your daughter Selena would receive a portion of the lands when she married.”
His voice had become quieter, more deadly. Selena wished he would shout and wave his arms as the Americans did. That she could understand.
“When one person speaks Spanish as his native tongue,” Pamela told him, “and the other is accustomed to English, there are bound to be misunderstandings. I thought you were the wealthy one with many leagues of grazing lands to the south.” She smiled but Selena noticed a tic at the corner of her mother’s mouth.
“So, senor,” Pamela told him, trying for a light tone. “We were both mistaken.”
Diego leaned forward until his face was inches from Pamela’s. He sneered, “You laugh, you make sport. And you speak less than the truth. It is you who do not unde
rstand. I am in disgrace. Diego de la Torre is the butt of sly laughter in the cantinas, at the ranchos of my friends, in my own house. I cannot ride to a fiesta ever again. I can never marry, for who will have me? I have become like the mud on the ground, like the droppings of cattle. I am nothing.”
“I’m sure—” Pamela began.
“I, Diego de la Torre of the de la Torres of Mazatlan, of the de la Torres admired throughout Castile, have been tricked by a woman. I have been held up to the scorn of the world by a woman. By you. My life is worth nada to me. Nada” He flung his hat to the ground.
“Diego!” Selena, her heart thudding, pushed Pamela’s arm aside and stepped past her. “This is not my mother’s doing,” she said.
“Selena.”
Diego’s voice was suddenly so soft, so tender, she felt an echo of the passion that had stirred in her such a short time before. “Selena.” His hand came up in supplication and she remembered that same hand on her breast.
“Selena,” said her mother quietly, with a quaver in her voice. Selena knew what she must do.
“Diego,” she said, “listen to me. You did not ask for my hand in marriage. You never asked me. Never.”
“I asked your mother.” Diego seemed confused. “Your father is dead. I asked your mother who promised you to me.”
Selena looked quickly behind her. Pamela’s heightened color told her Diego spoke the truth.
“You never asked me,” Selena insisted. “Perhaps in Spain or in Mexico a mother speaks for her daughter but not in my country. Not here in California. You must ask me.”
“I will ask you then. Selena, will you ride with me for the rest of your days? Will you be my wife?” Selena kept her eyes on him, resisting the urge to glance away.
“No, Diego, I will not. I cannot. It is not what I wish.”
Diego removed the pistol from his belt. Selena stepped back. Pamela gasped.
Diego flipped the pistol in the air, caught it by the barrel, and extended the gun to Selena. “Take this,” he said.
Puzzled, she accepted the gun. Trimmed in silver, it had a shorter barrel than most of the pistols she had seen on the trail or in San Francisco.
“There is but one bullet in the chamber,” Diego said. “It is for me. Shoot me, Selena, take my life. If you deny me your hand, my life is over; if you scorn me, I will become like a rider of mares. So you must kill me, Selena.”
Selena tossed the gun to the ground. She had a sudden nervous compulsion to laugh, but when she looked at Diego’s desperate face she almost reached out to comfort him. Yet she did not.
“Diego,” she said. He looked at the ground at her feet. “Diego,” she said again, “the horse I rode from the rancho has been returned to you. You will always be in my heart.” Still he would not look at her. “I’m sorry,” she said.
Selena turned to her mother, who stood staring down at the inbound clipper ship rounding the point at the entrance to the cove. “Pamela,” she said, “it’s time we went home.” She took her mother’s arm and together they walked past Diego to the path leading down the hill.
Diego watched them go. He was very tired. His rage was spent--a cold hatred had taken its place. He knelt to retrieve his pistol and thrust it under his belt. He picked his hat from the ground, brushed the brim with his sleeve, and placed it squarely on his head.
I will have her, this Selena, he promised himself. I will have her again and again until she begs for mercy and I will not give her mercy. I will send other men to her and I will watch when they are with her and I will laugh. She will become a puta, a whore, and worse, and I will watch and laugh.
The older one, the mother, I will kill. But not until she sees what I have made of her daughter.
As the two women descended the hill, Pamela walked slower and slower, often stumbling. Her eyes were moist and every so often she had to stop to dab at her nose with a handkerchief. To Selena, she looked ten years older than the thirty-eight she knew her to be.
“The fever,” Pamela said when Selena asked if she was ill. “The after effects of the fever. The doctor said it sometimes takes months before you recover.”
They came to Portsmouth Street, opposite the first wharf, where workmen were shoveling sand, rocks and dirt from a wagon into the water to reclaim the tidelands. From the town they heard the pounding of hammers and the rasping of saws.
“Pamela,” Selena said, “you told me Mr. Rhynne offered to advance us five thousand dollars.”
Pamela nodded.
“On the condition that we allow gambling.”
Pamela nodded again. “We’ll see him later today and we’ll tell him we accept. We’ll open a store and a gambling hall but we will not countenance . . .” Selena paused. “We will not tolerate harlots. We will draw up an agreement to that effect.”
Pamela took her daughter’s hand and for a moment their eyes met. Pamela’s fell away first. “Perhaps that’s what we should do,” she said slowly.
“Not perhaps. We will.”
Pamela hesitated. At last her head dropped. “All right, we will,” she said.
Selena walked on toward the hotel, her mother a step behind. I’m no longer following, Selena thought. She was frightened. Her mother was obviously wary of Rhynne, and so was she. Yet, anticipating her future in the brawling camps to the north, she did not slow her pace.
Chapter Five
Arm in arm, Danny O’Lee and his father swung down the track from their lodgings at the foot of Telegraph Hill. The abandoned ships in the cove were dark but lamps were being lit in the canvas tents and wooden shanties on both sides of the road as they walked.
The two men turned onto California Street, heading for the bay front. Soon they were surrounded by its hubbub. Chinese wearing long queues pushed past them, mingling with Chilenos, Peruvians, Mexicans, an occasional Kanaka from the Sandwich Islands, Indians. They heard the twang of New England, the slow drawl of the South, the flat accents of the Midwest.
“Would you look at that?” Michael said to his son. They went over and joined the men in front of the Parker House. The men were watching two women, one on either arm of a frock-coated man, coming toward them from Whittaker’s Restaurant. The older woman, dressed in black, was veiled, but the younger one wore green, a deep midsummer green. Golden curls fell from beneath her matching green hat to her shoulders. Her face glowed with animation as she talked to her escort.
“That’s Rhynne, the gambler,” someone next to Danny said. “Lucky devil.”
Rhynne held the door to the hotel’s private entrance and then followed the two women inside. The crowd of men lingered after the women were gone, shuffling their feet, then slowly dispersed.
“That lass was as lovely,” Michael said, “as your sainted mother in the bloom of her youth.”
Danny said nothing. When he had seen the golden-haired young woman something had leaped inside him. He closed his eyes trying to recall the exact tilt of her nose, the precise shade of her hair. She was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen.
“Come along, Danny, we can’t be dawdling here all of this night. Ah, the colleen. It’s out of your mind you are to be still thinking of her. For it’s the gold in the ground we’re after, not the gold in a lass’s hair.”
They stopped in front of a pitchman who stood behind a blue-painted board laid across two barrels.
“Ah, temptations on all sides of us,” Michael said.
“Gentlemen,” the pitchman cried. “I can tell by your looks you’re sporting men willing to risk the coin of the realm or a pinch of dust to prove your eye is quicker than the hand. Look here.” He lifted one of three large silver thimbles on the board to show them a shriveled pea.
“Now,” he said, “keep your eye on the thimble with the pea.” After shifting the thimbles hither and thither on the board, he raised his hands, palms out. “Now, who can tell me which thimble hides the pea?”
“Why,” Danny whispered to his father, “it’s clear it’s under the middle one. Th
is fool and his money will soon be parted.”
A bearded miner put a pinch of gold dust in the pitchman’s open pouch. “That one,” he said, pointing to the middle thimble.
The pitchman raised the thimble. There was nothing underneath. “We’ll try the others,” he said, “to prove the game is on the up and up.” He found the pea beneath the right-hand thimble.
“Sure, and it’s one of the devil’s own games,” Michael said, frowning as they walked away.
In front of an auction house a plug-hatted man had mounted the bottom rungs of a stepladder to harangue a semi-circle of men.
“Only a single dollar,” he was saying as Danny and his father joined the throng. “One dollar for the opportunity of a lifetime. The chance to win a lot on Market Street certified to be eighteen varos wide and forty deep. Last month exactly the same size lot next door sold for one hundred and sixty dollars. Yesterday it brought five hundred. You heard me right, gentleman, five hundred American dollars. Next month they’ll be selling for a thousand and more.”
“And what may a varo be?” Michael wondered aloud.
“Three feet,” someone in front of them said without turning around.
“The drawing’s in one week’s time,” the man on the ladder was saying. “Only a week to wait before you make your fortune. No digging in water up to your knees, no cradling, no panning. Remember the words of the immortal bard, ‘There comes a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fame and fortune.’ The tide’s rising, gentlemen, the crest approaches. For one dollar, fame and fortune can be yours.”
Danny and Michael moved off. From Bidwell’s Saloon came laughter, the clink of glasses, voices raised in a wavering chorus of Auld Lang Syne.
“We’d best be off to bed soon,” Danny said, “if we’re to be up and away to the diggings in the morning.”
“Listen a moment, first. Do you hear the selfsame heavenly music I hear?” A man’s voice was raised in song: