The Art of Love: Origins of Sinner's Grove

by A. B. Michaels

  Gus climbed up out of the hole and called for the crew from the other nearby holes to gather around. He fought to keep his voice calm and rational. “Looks like we got ourselves a winner here, boys. Now you all know we’re workin’ as a team and we all got our stake in this. So I don’t expect to see anybody tryin’ to steal what doesn’t rightly belong to them, ’cause the rest of us won’t be too happy. Am I right, boys? We’re agreed on this?”

  The men agreed, saying “Yessir” and “Damn right” and “Hell yes,” and began celebrating in earnest. One man pulled out a flask and handed it all around. Two men who’d been workin’ another shaft were eager to go down the hole, and others got in line to see the strike for themselves. Gus sent one of the men to fetch Shorty on Bonanza, but before the man had even gotten on his horse, Shorty came riding up.

  “Good news boys—number sixteen above is startin’ to pay,” he said as he rushed up to the group. When he saw that they were all standing around and not working, he said, “What are you all lollygaggin’ for?”

  Gus scooped a handful of dirt from the bucket and showed it to his partner. “I just brought his up,” he said. “What do you think?”

  “Goddamn, I think we’s gonna be rich!” Shorty said, grinning a picket-fence smile. “Lord a mercy, when it rains, it surely pours.”

  That night, Gus emptied the pouch of nuggets that had been brought up just in that one bucket. The bag that Shorty had brought from Bonanza was almost as full. Gus could tell without a doubt that sluicing the tailings from both claims, although it wouldn’t take place until the spring, was going to yield more gold than he or Shorty or any of the crew members had ever dreamed of.

  He couldn’t believe it: he, August Wilkerson Wolff, had struck it rich! At that moment he wished more than anything to hold little Annabelly in his arms and tell her she could have whatever doll she wanted. One with eyes that opened and shut, one with clothes made of silk and satin and lace and bows and even little gems if she wanted them. He’d give her a dollhouse too, and a big beautiful mansion to put the dollhouse in, and a pony, and…and everything. And he would give Mattie whatever she wanted too. She deserved it, after all. She’d put up with him, and waited for him, and given him a beautiful little girl to love. And maybe she’d put up with him enough to have more babies. They could afford them now that Gus had made it. And maybe they’d rekindle that fire that used to burn between them too.

  Then again, even if she wanted to stay together, how could he be sure she’d love him for him and not his newfound fortune? Could he put up with being with someone who only tolerated him because of the money in his bank account?

  He put the gold back in its bags and stashed the bags under his mattress. And for the first time ever, he thought about locking the door to his cabin. He shook his head at the irony of it all. Just a few days prior he’d been worried about all the things that could go wrong if he didn’t hit pay dirt. Now that he had, he realized his problems had just begun.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  July 17, 1897

  Gus woke up at three in the morning to the mournful blast of a tugboat’s horn. Curious as to the need for a tug in the middle of the night, he got dressed and headed to the main deck. Sure enough, a tugboat named the Sea Lion had maneuvered alongside the Portland and a young man in a pinstriped suit was in the process of boarding the ship. Gus ambled over to his long-time and now very rich friend C.J., who had also come topside to see what was going on.

  “Ethel will be sorry she slept through this,” C.J. said with a grin.

  They watched as the young man stumbled awkwardly onto the deck. He recovered his balance and straightened his jacket, then pulled a pad of paper and a pencil from his inside pocket and made a beeline for the two miners.

  “Gentlemen, allow me to introduce myself,” he announced in a slightly breathless voice. He stuck out his one free hand. “Beriah Brown Junior from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. I’ve come to interview you about your gold.”

  Gus and C.J. looked at each other.

  “Just what in the blazes are you talking about?” Gus asked warily.

  The reporter smiled. “Come now, gentlemen. I have my sources. And news travels fast from Frisco. I hear there’s a whole lot of gold on this ship and a whole lot of rich miners to go along with it. Your names, sirs?”

  C.J. shrugged. “They’re gonna find out sooner or later,” he said to Gus. “May as well be sooner.” He turned to the eager newsman. “You’ve got a lot of spunk, young man, coming way out here in the Sound when we’re not supposed to reach Seattle for another three hours. The name’s Clarence Jesse Berry. That’s Berry with an e and a y. C.J. for short. My wife’s name is Ethel. She’s sleepin’ downstairs. And this here’s my good friend August Wilkerson Wolff.”

  Gus glared at his friend. “C.J., if I had wanted to tell the pup my name I would have told him my name.”

  C.J. slapped Gus on the back good naturedly. “Oh, don’t get your knickers in a twist. You’re gonna be famous, man. You’d best get used to the limelight.”

  “Well, I don’t like it,” Gus said. He turned to the reporter and pointed to the young man’s chest. “And you don’t have permission to use my name. You use it and I’ll sue your paper. I’ve got the money to do it too.”

  “All right, all right,” C.J. said. “Listen, young man, forget about him; he’s been too long without his wife, if you know what I mean.” He winked at the reporter and slapped him on the back much as he had Gus. “Me and Ethel’ll give you a story that’ll knock your socks right off your feet.” He raised his eyebrows at Gus and steered the young man toward the other side of the deck.

  “Hell and damnation,” Gus muttered.

  An hour later the young man climbed back down the side of the ship and back onto the tugboat. He’d apparently interviewed several additional miners, all willing to crow about their new-found riches. He’d talked to the captain too. Gus had gone back to his cabin, hoping to catch a little more shut eye before arriving in Seattle; he wanted to be at his best when he met Mattie and Annabelle later that day.

  The Portland continued steaming its way southward through Puget Sound, on its way to port. At a little after six in the morning it docked at Schwabacher Wharf and the sight that greeted Gus and his cohorts was nothing short of amazing.

  “Show us the gold! Show us the gold!” The frenzied cry rose from a crowd of what looked like thousands of people swarming over the wharf. Several held up copies of that morning’s edition of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer—the same paper the young reporter from the tugboat claimed he worked for. Someone tossed a copy of the special edition onto the ship’s deck. The headline read:

  GOLD! GOLD! GOLD! GOLD!

  68 RICH MEN ON THE STEAMER PORTLAND

  STACKS OF YELLOW METAL!

  SOME HAVE $5,000, MANY HAVE MORE

  A FEW BRING OUT $100,000 EACH

  THE STEAMER CARRIES $700,000

  Gus couldn’t believe his eyes. How in the hell had that kid gotten that information all the way back to Seattle and off the printing press so damn fast? He scanned the rest of the article, which even had a list of the miners and how much gold they’d brought down from the Klondike. Fortunately the paper had covered its butt by using the sentence, “Some of the miners included…” and left Gus’s name off the list. Apparently the cub reporter was smarter than he looked.

  Gus seemed to be one of the few who didn’t want to publicize his recently acquired riches. In response to the shouts from the crowd, many of his fellow passengers laughed and held up their bags, satchels, boxes, even blankets full of gold. Truth was, the amount of treasure declared in the headline was on the low side. Gus himself was carrying over a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of nuggets and dust, and he was by no means alone. In all, the Portland had actually brought back two tons of that so-called “yellow metal.”

  Gus looked down the railing and saw C.J. and Ethel smiling and waving to the people onshore. Ethel pointed at someone and began jumpi
ng up and down. She clasped her husband’s arm and blew kisses out toward the person on shore. It was obvious she saw a familiar face—maybe a family member or dear friend. Gus scanned the crowd and wondered if Mattie might be out there. Then again, why would she? She had no reason to believe he’d be returning on this particular ship. Still, he’d told her in his letter last fall that he’d be coming back right after the spring thaw, so maybe she would make the assumption. He didn’t hold out hope.

  The crew finished mooring the ship and the miners began to make their way onshore. As each one reached land, hundreds of spectators swarmed around him like locusts devouring a field, all shouting and grabbing at him and wanting to touch whatever bag he was carrying. Gus watched in disgust as policemen stepped in to pull away some of the more aggressive crowd members. He saw the faces of many of his friends turn from confidence to wariness, and in some cases to outright fear. C.J. hustled down the ramp with his arm around Ethel, trying to shield her from a gaggle of reporters and photographers, while the both of them clutched bags, jars, and bottles filled with gold. Someone they knew met them and helped carry their belongings. C.J. looked back and waved farewell to Gus; they’d agreed to stay in touch via the front desk of the Madison Hotel.

  John Anderson, who’d brought out sixty thousand dollars’ worth of nuggets, struggled off the ship with a large suitcase tied with leather straps. Halfway across the gangplank the handle broke and he lost his balance, tumbling down and sending his suitcase careening nearly over the edge. Gus ran down the ramp and got to John in time to keep the case from tipping into the drink. The people closest to the ship let out a collective gasp, but Gus had no doubt that if the case of treasure had fallen overboard, a hundred desperate souls would have jumped right in after it and claimed “finders keepers.”

  Gus extended a hand to help John up; his friend winced as he put weight on his ankle.

  “Gol darn it,” he muttered. He hopped over to his case, still perched near the edge of the gangplank, and sat on it while the rest of the miners picked their way around him. “Thank ye kindly, Gus.” He sighed and wiped his face. “This here is plum loco, if you ask me.”

  “This here is plum out of control,” Gus agreed. “Where you headed? You got kin in town?”

  “Yessir, a sister. She’s got a new baby, or she woulda been here by now. Just as well. Before I see her I gotta figure out a way to get this loot over to Wells Fargo without gettin’ myself trampled to death.”

  Gus nodded. “I aim to do the same.” He glanced over to see one of the ship’s crew members that he’d played poker with once or twice on the long journey from St. Michael’s. Gus looked back at John. “I’ve got an idea,” he said. “Hey, Peter,” he called to the deckhand.

  Peter came down onto the gangplank. He was grinning. “This how-do-you-do is somethin’ else, ain’t it?”

  “It’s somethin’ else, all right. Listen. Peter, how’d you like to earn fifty dollars?”

  Peter’s eye grew big. “Sure as shootin’ I’d like that. What do you need?”

  Gus gestured to John’s trunk. “First, help me get this trunk back up onto the deck.”

  John shot him a quizzical look. “That ain’t the direction I need it to go.”

  “Trust me,” Gus said, turning back to Peter. “Then I want you to head on over to the Wells Fargo office on Second Avenue and tell them to bring two guards and a cart right away if they want the business of two of the Klondike’s wealthiest men. You got all that?”

  “Yes, but sir, the bank won’t be open this early.”

  “You knock on the door until someone comes to answer it,” Gus said. “And you tell them what I told you. They’ll open.”

  “Yessir.” Peter lifted one side of the broken suitcase and Gus hefted the other. Like spawning salmon on the Yukon, they worked their way back up the gangplank through the departing miners, with John Anderson hobbling behind.

  An hour later, Gus and John rode in a fine black carriage driven by two burly bank guards, one with shotgun at the ready. At their feet lay nearly one hundred and seventy thousand dollars in gold nuggets, bars, and dust. Ninety minutes after arriving at the bank, the two men walked out again, John using a silver-tipped cane borrowed from the manager of the branch.

  Gus walked on to the Madison Hotel, where he planned to get a nice hot bath, a shave, and a new set of clothes. He fully intended on looking the part of the successful man he always told Mattie he’d become.

  Then he’d go and collect his family.

  “What do you mean, she isn’t here?” Gus felt the already too-tight collar of his starchily ironed white shirt begin to tighten even further. His blood was starting a low boil. He stood up straighter, both to relieve the pressure and to assert his authority. “Where is my wife, Madam?”

  Mrs. Eugenia Partridge, a buxom woman of indeterminate age, didn’t flinch one whit in response to Gus’s posturing. She looked up at him with thinly veiled disdain. “I don’t know how much more clear I can be, sir. She’s been gone well over six months. Since last fall, as a matter of fact.” The woman went back to straightening the tatted white doilies on the parlor furniture of the Empire Rooming House, which she’d been doing when Gus knocked on her door five minutes before. As if he weren’t there, she shook her head, muttering, “You’d think a man would know the whereabouts of his own wife.”

  Gus reached out to get her attention. “I assure you, I do…or did know where my wife was, Mrs.…Partridge, is it? My wife moved in here with my daughter last summer.”

  Mrs. Partridge looked at Gus’s hand on her arm until he dropped it. “Indeed she did, and what a beautiful child that little girl was, and that’s a fact. But, as I’ve repeatedly said, they’re gone now.”

  Gus gritted his teeth to keep from throttling the prissy old bat. “And where did she say she was going?”

  “I believe she said she was going down to Los Angeles. She got along right well with Miss Bethany Jones, who lived next door.”

  “Yes, she mentioned the woman in her letter…to me,” he emphasized.

  “Well, Miss Bethany had to return home to take care of her ailing father, and Miss Mattie, your wife, said she’d go with her. That’s all I know.”

  Gus scratched his jaw, which was beginning to itch from having been recently shaved. He thought fleetingly of his worn but comfortable flannel shirt. “What about her job? She had a job while she was here.”

  “Yes she did. Had to work to pay the bills, now, didn’t she?” There was judgment in her voice. “She worked at Mrs. Clements’s shop on Albermarle Street near the park. Mattie was right handy with a needle and thread.”

  “I’m aware of that,” Gus ground out. “Did she…did Mattie leave anything? Any letter or message for me?”

  “No, only that she was leaving with Bethany Jones and if anyone inquired about her—she must have meant you—that she would be residing at Miss Jones’s ranch in Los Angeles.”

  A cold empty feeling was beginning to spread throughout Gus’s body, and it had nothing to do with the temperature inside the room. “Do you know the name of the ranch, by any chance?”

  “Yes. I wrote it down, as a matter of fact.” She looked Gus squarely in the eye. “But I’m not inclined to give out such information unless I’m sure it won’t be used to hurt my former resident in any way.”

  Gus counted to ten. The woman was only being protective, after all, and that was a good thing. But for God sake, Mattie was his wife! “Listen, lady…”

  At his tone the older woman took off the proverbial gloves; she was apparently not going to take any guff from him. “No, sir, it’s you who’d best listen,” she said. “This old world is full of men like you who find a pretty young girl and have your way with her, and likely as not get a babe on her and then, then you leave her high and dry. And then she’s damn lucky to find a place like the Empire where we all watch out for each other. So pardon me if I’m not all chirpy when you come round here lookin’ like the biggest toad in the
puddle, expectin’ to just take up where you left off because you’ve got a few more wampum in your pocket than you had last week.”

  Gus almost laughed at the irony of it: Mattie had walked away from him. No doubt she’d left that part of the story out of the conversation with her landlady. But that didn’t mean there wasn’t a bucketload of pricks who abandoned their women just like she described. And he had a sick feeling that with gold fever hittin’ a high pitch in the Klondike, that story was gonna play itself out a hell of a lot more in the days to come. He tried softening his tone. “Mrs. Partridge, I can sure appreciate your concern, but I can also assure you that I mean Mattie no harm. I been up in the gold fields and miss my family. So if you could just tell me where to find them, I’ll be on my way.”

  The woman took a moment to size up his intentions; apparently he passed muster—barely—because she pursed her lips and walked over to a small wooden writing desk by the window. She opened the top drawer and took out a slip of paper whose words she copied onto another sheet. She handed it to him and he read “Double J Ranch, Temecula.” Gus reached into his wallet and pulled out a hundred dollar bill, an amount that would have paid for Mattie and Annabelle’s lodging for well over a year. “Thank you for taking good care of them,” he said.

  Mrs. Partridge looked at the sum and nodded slightly before putting it in her apron pocket. “You take good care of them and don’t you be leavin’ them anymore,” she admonished.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “Good day to you.”

  After leaving the rooming house, Gus headed over to Albermarle Street where he found Mrs. Clements’s dressmaker’s shop. An older woman was hard at work on a treadle sewing machine. She looked up at the sound of the bell jingling on the shop door.

  “Mrs. Clements?” Gus inquired.

  The woman stood and smoothed her skirts. “Yes, sir, may I help you?”

  Gus took off his hat (which he’d forgotten to remove at the rooming house and which might have helped his cause with Mrs. Partridge if he had). “My wife, Mattie Wolff. I understand she worked for you last year?”