The Rock Child

by Win Blevins

  Sun Moon whimpered, rolled over, fought the bedclothes.

  Almost every day she dreamed the same, running, running, endlessly running.

  Sometimes she wished for death, and then she thought of the baby.

  Occasionally she pretended that the dark man in the dream was Q Mark, a fellow menacing enough, a ruffian …

  She would again ask Sir Richard to dismiss him, and Sir Richard would explain once more why she needed protection.

  She opened her eyes. The sun was setting. On fever days her sleep was more restful by night than day.

  With the dark came the cool. She shivered in the wet bedclothes, and drew an extra blanket on. Soon she was dreaming again.

  This time she saw the waterfront. Wharves, docks, great ships hovering, looming. It was dark, and foggy. Sun Moon knew that one ship had come from Canton, full of adolescent girls, destined to become hundred-men’s-wives. She shivered in the chill.

  She ran from that ship. In and out of patches of fog she ran, from gray night to black night to gray night. Sometimes she stopped and listened. She could not hear the dark man, but she knew he was there, following, tracking, hunting, nearing. Strange that for a big man he moved so silently. She sniffed the air. Salt. Wet. Fish. Oil. Peril.

  Porter Rockwell drew the sea air into his lungs. He didn’t like it. To him it felt like rot.

  He stood on the shore of the west side of San Francisco and looked toward China. He saw nothing but night fog, did not even see blackness, the darkness of the sea that stretched thousands of miles to Asia. In that darkness ships plied their way westward.

  He drew the fog in deep. Are you out there?

  He blew it out, drew it in again. Are you out there? Have you escaped me?

  The fog wisped here and there, bearing the answer.

  He stared at it.

  Porter Rockwell had bumped and banged 750 miles by stagecoach, moving day and night, scarcely sleeping, substituting whisky for wretched food, growling and angry as a tormented grizzly.

  In one week he had reached San Francisco. Now he had no idea how to find her, of course. There were thousands of yellows in this city. It was what Brother Brigham described, a place of whoring, murdering, and pestilence.

  Instinctively, he had come straight here, to the edge of the great ocean. And here he prowled, a great predator on the hunt. He did not use his mind but his nose. And his nose told them they were not out there, on the boundless sea. They were behind him somewhere. Within his grasp.

  He looked into the nothingness of fog, and onto dark, unreadable waters.

  It was merely a feeling, and was feeling good enough? All his life he had depended on instinct. His instinct said it was not over.

  The fog stirred and took new, inscrutable shapes. No answers there, none.

  He turned and faced east, to the interior of the land. He let his instinct grope for her. Yes, probably, she was behind, quarry still. Probably.

  So. You didn’t rush off the continent? Stupid of you. You missed your chance.

  Why had she stopped? He didn’t care. Where had she stopped? Where would the John Bull want to delay her?

  Without analysis he knew.

  Porter Rockwell would act carefully. He would check the San Francisco hotels for the John Bull. He would bribe the clerks of offices of steamship companies to look for a passenger with a British passport disembarking under the name Burton. He would check for female Celestials returning to China. He chuckled wickedly. He’d bet there weren’t any of those.

  He would also bet he’d find nothing here. And when he was sure, he would start on the back trail. The Comstock Lode was a little over two hundred miles back.

  In a bed in a hotel in Virginia City, Nevada, a woman dreamed. Again she fled, fled forever, her life nothing but running. Fear brushed her face and hair, it was the fog, and hopelessness was the endless whisper of the surf.

  She ran along a lonely beach on the western edge of San Francisco. In the cold sea her foot slipped. She stuck a hand out, and put it into a wind as cold as the void. She looked up and saw in the tendrils of fog a head, the head of Porter Rockwell, looking at her with eyes of congealed ice. The head was borne upon no body, but rode a whirlwind of cold.

  Sun Moon cried out, and the cry woke her. She sat up. She remembered the dream, the one she could never escape. She looked into the darkness and saw nothing. But she knew. She knew. She mewled a little and lay back down, sleepless, shivering, whimpering.

  Porter Rockwell, there on the beach, felt something stir in his chest. It was knowledge, a kind of knowledge. He was certain. She wasn’t here. He would go back.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  It was Tuesday of the third week we got our break. By that time the rattlety-rat of the telegraph key was music to my ears—I could hear meaning in it as easy as sass in a grace note. Like a lot of music, most of it had nothing to say a fellow would want to remember—SIX GROSS CALICO SHIPPED STOP BALANCE NEXT WEEK STOP or PLEASE SPECIFY QUANTITY STOP. A common one was, NO PAYMENT NO SHIPMENT STOP. A couple of the more interesting were, GO SET ON A CACTUS AND WIGGLE STOP and MEET ME AT TRAIN CARSON CITY OR I WILL MARRY WHOEVER DOES STOP. Told Sam that one and he copied it down.

  Our news came through loud and clear shortly before the office closed for lunch. The key rattlety-tapped out clear as a march strutting its stuff, addressed to the general manager of the Sergeant Mine. MCGIVERNEY REPORTS 12295 PER STOP SEND RECOMMENDATIONS IMMEDIATELY STOP. Alvord scribbled it out.

  Says I casual-like to him, “I’ll walk that over to the Sergeant on my way.” I didn’t say my way was up sky-high, whoop-tee-doo, diddledy-doo. I didn’t have to make no copy of this message—I’d never forget it.

  Daniel had coached me carefully. Ore got hauled across the Sierras for assaying, at least for the major mines. The little assayers in Virginia couldn’t be depended on for accurate figures, and could be depended on very well to tell every Tom, Dick, and Harry your good or bad news right quick. On the other hand, in San Francisco and Sacramento you might get a break of a day or two before everybody knew your luck. I’d memorized and memorized the assayers’ names—heckahoy, I dreamed the lists of names. McGiverney was a respected one.

  Twelve thousand a ton, stars and cornicles, four thousand would have been good news. The parlay of twelve thousand, McGiverney, and the Sergeant added up to a grand deduction for those who knew how to read the signals. The Sergeant’s stockholders were going from borrasca to bonanza. A thermometer thrown in boiling water wouldn’t go up any faster.

  I got lucky at the Sergeant. Mr. John Mayes, the general manager, asked me to come back in an hour. I jawed with Sir Richard at the hotel, came back in half an hour to carry Mr. Mayes’s important recommendations back to the telegraph office. And then straight to my secret employers.

  That afternoon I was at Virginia’s stock exchange. Those days it was just a blackboard at the curb in front of the brokerage house. The brokers marked up the latest prices, sold, bid, and asked. They also posted the prices that came by telegraph from the San Francisco Exchange. People bought and sold in silence—it was the only place in Virginia what was quiet. Surprising kinds of men and women bought and sold—not only prosperous-looking investors but women of substance, some of the town’s courtesans, widows who didn’t look to have the price of a cup of coffee, the owners of every kind of business, plenty of miners, and even several Chinamen. Watching that spot, you’d eventually see every kind of human critter that populated Virginia except an Indian. The Paiutes came into the city daily for every kind of laboring job you can think of, but they never bought or sold mining stocks.

  My task was simple. Buy $250 of Sergeant stock at the going price and register it in the office in Tommy Kirk’s name, the same in Daniel’s name, and $50 in the name of Samuel Clemens. Daniel knew its history: It had been issued at a dollar par about a year ago, had run up to over two dollars, dropped to seventy-five cents, and was still under a dollar yesterday. I did my job.

 
Then I went and found Sam at his favorite perch, the tavern, gangly form splayed out on the bar, foot on brass rail. I says to him, “Mr. Kirk wants to talk to you.”

  What the beaming Tommy Kirk had actually said was, “I wonder whether in these circumstances we might not be able to make good use of Mr. Clemens.”

  Sam ran his whisky down his gullet and then ran his legs down the hill to Chinatown with me. He was thinking to have a lot of his favorite kind of fun—dig up the lowdown, find out some skullduggery humans was up to, set it down in words in that comical way of his, and have a big old chuckle, kind of liking us rascally humans and teasing us at once. I’d made my peace with Sam since he tricked us in the coyote hole, and hoodwinked me with a fake gun. I regarded him as a friend, more or less. But I knew I needed to stand clear of his rage to write things down in the newspaper.

  Right quick we were seated across from Tommy Kirk in Tommy’s back room. I wondered whether I was steering off course, spending so much time in the back room of an opium den recently. Brother Young would have disapproved of that, and it made me uneasy, too.

  Sam got disillusioned quick—he found out Tommy Kirk didn’t mean to give him something but get something from him.

  “Mr. Clemens,” Tommy said, “we have news. Big news. A bonanza. At a major mine.” His fingers toyed with the edges of the telegrams. There were four of them now, to and from San Francisco. Sam’s eyes prowled over them, but they were blank side up. “I believe that is worth something to a gentleman of your persuasion.”

  Sam Clemens raised his eyes to Tommy and glowered. Good thing he and Sir Richard never got into a glowering contest, someone would have got killed. Sam, I expect, as the younger hand.

  Sam also nodded, and Tommy Kirk took that as a green railway light. “Perhaps if I were to give you proof positive of this big news—I can see the headlines in your publication now—you would do us a favor in return.”

  “Crack the egg,” says Sam. “I can’t eat the shell.”

  Tommy registered that with a funny look and went on. “We know the situation with some clarity from these telegrams, which as you know Asie pinched. Read them.”

  Sam took his time and studied them thorough.

  “We have taken a position, a substantial position. Yet more information might be useful.”

  “What information?”

  “When the Sergeant plans to make the announcement and how they intend to finance the expanded operation.”

  “What’s this to do with me?”

  “With these telegrams you can beard the lion in his den. Then use whatever wiles you newspapermen have to seduce a fuller story out of Mr. Mayes.”

  “Why should I?”

  “I’m sure you want a fuller story.”

  “But why should I tell you?”

  “It’s tit for tat.” He took on a self-congratulatory expression, maybe from showing off such a common phrase. “And since you’re one of my investors, you stand to gain with us.”

  He handed Sam a receipt for the stock in his name.

  The gangly man grinned. He put the telegrams in his pocket. I believe he was as tickled at his own rascality as at ours.

  Sam spread the telegrams on the desk with his fingers and looked up at Mr. John Mayes. He saw a big man with the nervous energy of a caged beast, who ate the telegrams with his eyes.

  “Congratulations,” said Sam. He paused. “On your strike. Your big strike. Your bonanza.”

  Mayes didn’t pick the telegrams up, had no need to.

  “Why, the whole town will benefit from your discovery, the whole territory.”

  When Sam waited long enough, Mayes said, “Those telegrams are private, Clemens. Where did you get them?” They’d been hail-fellow acquaintances before, but the pretense of cordiality was gone now.

  “Respectfully enough, Mayes, that’s none of your concern. I’m a newspaperman. My job is to gather information the public wants to know. I’ve done it.”

  “I’ll report you to the sheriff.”

  “I’ve broken no law.”

  “Have you gotten close to my secretary?”

  Sam pictured Asie and kept his smile to himself. He shrugged, hoping the woman could take care of herself.

  “Enough of this folderol, then. Get to the point, Clemens.”

  So Sam put his cards on the table: The Territorial Enterprise had these excellent documents and was prepared to make immediate announcement of the bonanza—why, tomorrow wouldn’t be a bit too soon—printing the news ahead of the competition was the main object.

  Mayes just eyed him rudely.

  “Yet it occurs to me, as a friend of the Sergeant and the Nevada mining industry, that the most prompt announcement from the newspaper’s point of view might work some hardship on the company.”

  Now he had Mayes’s full attention. It felt dangerous, like drawing a mountain cat’s attention.

  Sam explained how he was acquainted with the ways an expansion due to a big strike was usually financed. Some mines borrowed from banks, but the Sergeant didn’t have the equity for that. Some borrowed from big entrepreneurs, but then the lenders ended up with the real profit. Sometimes companies floated a stock issue, which without the crucial information could easily fail. So the most advantageous way was for the company to buy up existing shares of its own stock at the current price, make the announcement, wait for the price to soar, and then sell. “Why, that’s what I would do if I was the company. And for that a man would need a little time. A few days, at least.”

  “What do you want?” said Mayes, low like a growl.

  “How do you intend to finance your expansion?”

  “You know that.”

  “When do you plan to announce the strike?”

  Mayes breathed in and out. “How long is the Territorial Enterprise willing to wait?”

  Each man eased a little in his shoulders and hands. Now they didn’t give the impression they might strike.

  “Three days.”

  Mayes looked at Sam cynically. “You’re not looking just to improve your story.”

  “Not just,” Sam agreed amiably. They looked at each other, scoundrels both. Sam smiled to himself. He liked both the man across the desk and himself well enough. What they were doing was common, legal, the way smart men operated. He’d long since learned that the American economy was a large, impersonal machine, dispensing wealth whimsically. A wise man watched his chance, reached into the machinery, taking care not to get his hands caught in the gears, and helped himself. Sam himself had made a million and lost it already.

  Mayes decided to talk. “We’ll buy stock every day. Mostly in San Francisco. As quietly as we can, not stirring up the market more than we can help. We have a price limit in mind. When the stock goes that high, we’ll announce. At a certain price above that we’ll become a seller.”

  Sam nodded his understanding. “The Territorial Enterprise will decide when to break the news.”

  “I need a week,” said Mayes.

  “We can manage five days,” said Sam. “And I need everything. Assays at different locations in the new shaft. Extent of the vein. How many men you intend to hire, at what wage. How much equipment you’re ordering, from what companies. All of it. Revealed at the right time, this information will help you.”

  “You may have it Friday.” Which was four days.

  Sam nodded, tickled.

  Mayes nodded, wary.

  Sam stood, and they shook hands.

  “Clemens, on your personal account, don’t buy too much.”

  Sam grinned, thinking of Tommy Kirk. Mayes had no idea.

  “You neither,” said Sam, and left.

  They both grinned. A little extra cash will make a man grin. A lot will keep him grinning a long while.

  “I don’t want a woman like that touching me,” she said to Sir Richard. He was proposing to have a Chinese prostitute dress her and do her hair.

  “Oh, pooh, what a snob.” He turned on his heel to leave. “You need he
r,” he said. “You must become an Asian grande dame. You know this perfectly. Else you will be a target for every schemer and seducer half the world round. She’ll be here about five.” He brushed through the cloth door confidently.

  Sun Moon knew he was right. She had to play the grande dame on the stagecoach to San Francisco, from there on the sailing ship across the Pacific Ocean to India, and from there in the caravan across the Himalayas to the holy city of Lhasa. All the way she must play the great lady, dressed, coiffed, imperious, possessed of the manners that go with wealth. If she looked like a pregnant poor woman, or worse, a pregnant nun …

  She also felt a pang of guilt. Sir Richard had these fine dresses made for her. She must not be ungrateful.

  She looked at herself in the mirror. Could a great lady have such a scar?

  Sir Richard opened the new hotel room door, and said, “Miss Sun Moon, Miss Polly,” and closed it behind him.

  The moment she saw the girl, Sun Moon was sorry for her attitude. China Polly was beautiful and elegantly dressed. Instead of an air of defeat there was a devil-may-care spirit in her eyes.

  Polly came behind her and lifted her left braid. “Always wear hair in braid? Too bad, lovely.”

  Polly’s rough, singsong English made Sun Moon feel strange. Fingers began undoing the braid.

  “I must do so,” Sun Moon said politely, watching herself in the mirror. Polly might not be acquainted with Buddhists in her part of China, or at least with convents. From girlhood until her abduction, Sun Moon had borne the short-cropped hair of the nun. After her abduction, it grew out, but she certainly hadn’t wanted to make it look beautiful.

  She forbade herself to remember too much. “What is your name?” she asked.

  “China Polly.” The answer was automatic.

  Sun Moon switched to the Chinese language. “No, your true name. Your name in Chinese.” Sun Moon had hated being called China Polly.

  The girl gave Sun Moon a calculating look. “Ah Lo,” she said in a neutral tone.

  “I am Dechen Tsering, from Zorgai, in Kham,” Sun Moon replied. She saw the puzzlement in Ah Lo’s eyes. “Tibet.”