Blood Gold (11 page)

Florence was among them, and when I approached she came forth to meet me.

“What would you hunt a bear with, Willie?”

“A friend with a wide-bore gun,” I answered at once.

She gave me a smile and laughed, and put her hand out to mine.

And kept it there for a good long time.

When I saw Captain Deerborn again, I managed to ask, “Are there many bears in California?”

“Of course there are bears,” he said, “both grizzly bears and brown.”

He went on to name the genus and species of the large omnivores, and I wondered once again what sort of wild land I was about to encounter, and how I could make Florence a part of my life here.

The captain interrupted his recitation of animal lore when he saw that I was preoccupied. He rested a hand on my shoulder. “The Western bear does not bother visiting a lawyer, it's true,” he said. “But the really dangerous creatures out here are all human.”

The voyage against the river current was only expected to take two days—three if the wind was utterly contrary—and the labor at the pumps was enjoyable, in a rough sort of way. My fellow pump mates were good-spirited men who swore at the pumps, the smelly water, and the cheap whiskey, but sang about the sun being so hot they froze to death, and other popular tunes. I joined in, even when the liquor made my head ache.

I wanted to have another talk with Florence Barrymore. But I was so hard-worked—and so drunk with whiskey, like every other crew member—that I saw only the slopping water around my feet, and the cheerful features of Captain Deerborn when it was time to swig another dose of spirits.

But the memory of her smile—and the way she had taken my hand—stayed with me.

As we approached the crowd of river vessels along the wharf at Sacramento City, Captain Deerborn led me into his cabin.

He opened an oak chest with a stout iron key, picked out a coin about the size of a shirt button, and placed it in my hand. It was a gold U.S. dollar, and I closed my fist around it thankfully. He cocked his head, and gave me another just like it.

I thanked him sincerely—I was being generously paid for what was, after all, unskilled labor. Passage from San Francisco to Sacramento itself usually cost ten dollars.

“If you can drive a team of horses, William,” said the captain, “you've got passage up into the goldfields proper.”

I could not hide my eagerness. “I can drive any sort of coach, sir.”

After Mr. Ansted had repaired a wagon, I'd drive it out under the chestnut trees, just to make sure the wagon was sound. I knew how to handle reins and carry a whip—no mean accomplishment.

But in my heart I was not sure I was equal to the rugged gold-country roads.

“Are you sure you can handle a six-horse hitch?” he asked. We were both crowded around by crates and dreadfully warm, the iron stove throwing out more heat than we needed.

“Horses or mules, on any sort of road,” I insisted, nearly convinced that it was true.

“This will be uphill,” he cautioned, “all mire and boulders.”

This made me hesitate.

I had once forded a spring-flood creek while delivering a wagon to a drayage company in Frankfort, but I had no experience driving horses over mountains. I had driven well-mannered Philadelphia teams along the roads around town, and I had never had to lash the horses excessively. An experienced carriage man was called a whip—for good reason. To master stubborn, spirited animals, a skilled use of the lash was mandatory, and I was a novice at such driving.

I had barely enough pride and stubbornness to allow myself to add, “I think you'll find me equal to the task, sir.”

Captain Deerborn smiled. “I'm very glad, Willie. This is an advance against your wages as a wagon driver.” He gave me one more gold coin. “Although I'm close to being a pauper, except for my expectations.”

“We won't spend any time at all in Sacramento City?”

“You don't want to spend any time there,” he said with a wave of his hand, a man dismissing an utterly disagreeable subject. “That place is a cess-hole, and no place at all for a hardware merchant.”

I explained that I was seeking an old companion, and wanted to give him good news.

“You'll find him easily enough,” said the captain in his rough but kindly way. “Drop by the New York Hotel, not far from the river. But remember,” he added, “be back by noon, or I'll be forced to hire some other whip and be off without you.”

CHAPTER 29

The dockside was lined with abandoned vessels, schooners and flatboats.

From what we could see of it from the wharf, the entire town had the look of a place that had been set up just the night before.

As we disembarked, a few townsfolk splashed down through the wet encampment to spit tobacco juice and comment cheerfully to one another on the character and dress of the newcomers.

The Barrymore party, their tattered greatcoats and mantles wet with the rain, milled about near the river-bank, while travelers who could afford them hired boys to carry their trunks into town. I tried to catch a further glimpse of Florence, but except for Nicholas, his white hair streaming wet, the group was now an indistinguishable mass of wet folk.

A step pressed the wet earth nearby, and I turned at the sound of my name.

“You will stop by Dutch Bar, won't you, William?” said a woman's voice hopefully.

Florence smiled at me from within a heavy oilcloth hood. I would not have recognized her if she had not spoken.

“You are a mistress of every possible disguise,” I remarked with a laugh.

Her green eyes peered into mine—she was not about to be put off with an idle remark.

“Where will I find Dutch Bar?” I heard myself ask. I very much wanted to have greater skill with words—and tell her that parting from her was more than painful.

“Somewhere up the American River,” she replied, looking around to see an approaching figure—Timothy, his long dark beard streaming rainwater.

“My uncle Jeremiah has a claim up there,” she continued, “and we're set to join him.”

Timothy's lips took on the shape of a word, and he took a long time in making a sound. “Come along, Flo,” he said, forming the sounds with difficulty, like a man with a crippling stammer.

If Timothy felt any friendship toward me, he disguised the emotion very well.

He kept one hand on Florence's arm, leading her along both protectively and like a guard securing a prize.

But she tossed her arm free and hurried to me.

“William,” she said, taking my hand, “I hope we see each other again soon.”

Some more artful person would have been able to say something poetic. I could only manage, “Florence, I hope so, too.”

She turned back in my direction, and gave me, I thought, a wave of melancholy—or even of longing.

And I stayed right where I was, until her family had led her along and I couldn't see her anymore.

The New York Hotel was a wooden building with a broad front porch, one of a few structures nailed together. Every other shelter was made of canvas—tall tents, broad tents, tents closed up, others open all around.

I spied the hotel long before I could reach it, impeded from my progress by the depth and variety of the ruts in the street. The wheel ruts were mountainous, new and deeper ones being cut, as I watched, by great dray wagons leaving long ridges of stiff mud in their wake. Men trying to cat-foot neatly across the street were soon mired to their boot tops. A single such boot stood alone near the edge of the street, where some exasperated pedestrian had extricated himself and escaped.

“Late from Paris, the renowned opera tenor Lionel Seymour,” proclaimed one theatrical advertisement, crowded around by others on adjacent buildings. I knew that Ben was bound to arrive here, with his traveling players—but I no longer felt such a longing to see him.

I was off adventuring on my own, and not doing badly—so far.

Open-sided tents sold mining equipment. A simple wood-shafted hoe cost two dollars, while a cradle and bucket—necessary gold-processing gear—cost twenty-five. If a gold seeker needed a tent of his own, it would cost twelve dollars, and I realized that if I had come to this country to seek my fortune, I would be too poor to even begin.

I was directed to the rear of the hotel, where a building resembling a stable leaned up against the two-story inn. Instead of livestock, the shelter was home to shelves crammed with bales and bundles of envelopes and yellowing newspaper.

“Express companies deliver mail up and down the Sierra,” said the clerk, a young man my age but with a manner so nonchalant and knowing that he made me feel like an unlettered savage. “Private companies deliver the mail,” he explained. “Sometimes just one or two men with a mule go out with the letters, and sell newspapers from the States at the price of a dollar. The U.S. Post Office disapproves, but nobody listens to bureaucrats around here. There's thousands of pieces of undelivered mail,” the clerk concluded, “right here in this annex.”

“I'm about to head up to the foothills myself,” I said.

“Is that right?” intoned the clerk with a show of the mildest possible interest.

“I could deliver a parcel of letters for you.”

He studied me for a moment. “Where are you going?”

I had no idea, and I am afraid my eyes gave away my ignorance. “I'm looking for Ezra Nevin of Philadelphia,” I said.

The clerk made no further remark.

I recalled Ben's comment about bribes—it seemed so long ago. I pulled out my three U.S. dollars.

I put one of them down on the counter.

The clerk looked at it with the smallest amount of interest. “I haven't seen an actual minted coin for quite some time.”

I waited.

“Ezra who?” he asked after a silence.

I put another dollar there on the counter, beside the first.

“This is a land crammed with Ezras,” said the clerk. He leaned forward and confided, “It's a very common name.”

I put my third—and last—dollar on the broad oak counter. I would be very short of funds, now, and forced to live on pancakes and water.

He snapped the coins off the shiny countertop and said, without a pause, “I know the man.”

I was astonished at this news, and must have given an involuntary jump, because the clerk took a steadying step back away from the counter.

Something about my enthusiasm melted his reserve, and he gave me the hint of a smile. “Well, it's possibly another Ezra with the same surname,” he said. “He has a standing order for the Philadelphia
North American
.”

“That's him!” I said, trying to restrain my high spirits.

“And what's strange,” said the clerk, “is that another man was here looking for him just yesterday. A gentleman with red hair, by the name of Murray. With a couple of rough-looking companions.”

CHAPTER 30

It seemed like a legend from a distant era—Ezra confronting Samuel Murray on the field of honor in a green meadow outside Philadelphia, the big redhead losing his nerve and hurrying off into the dawn.

But there was a stony logic to it, too: the banking scion stubborn in his humiliation, determined to track Ezra down and win honor at last. I thought of it in those romantic terms, the same ideals that drove men like Murray and Ezra—and, indeed, had until recently compelled me to travel so far from home.

I picked my way along wooden boards arrayed across the muddy street, conflicting responsibilities making me oblivious to the unsteady footing. I wheeled my arms and balanced precariously, and would have fallen into the quagmire if a cheerful man with a Scottish accent had not seized my arm.

“Right you are, there, friend,” said the Scotsman, hurrying off across the planks.

Right I am
. It was a hopeful turn of phrase, and I liked it.

But I could not bear the thought of Murray finding Ezra—Murray and his two rough companions.

“I wouldn't go near that place,” called a voice.

A man in mud-caked boots stalked across the mud, oblivious to the swampy street, already filthy with it. He gestured with the ax he was carrying, using the tool the way a dandy might flourish a silver-knobbed walking stick. “That hellhole,” he added, indicating the shadowy site with the ax handle, “is the hospital.”

Rows of men lay on cots, attended by shadowy figures. Men were prostrate, mouths agape, and a faint but unmistakable odor of illness drifted out from the confines of the wide, canvas-hooded shelter.

Captain Deerborn was having trouble with a roan horse when I found him, the animal tossing his head and spattering foam all around. The captain was trying to check the animal's bridle, and the horse had taken a particular dislike to him.

“Damn it, Willie, I thought you'd run off,” said the captain.

I quieted the animal by making a soft clucking noise. The big roan turned to eye me and shook its head vehemently. My thoughts were in a muddle, and I was grateful to have a practical, immediate problem to attend to.

I pictured all too clearly the jaunty, life-loving form of Ezra Nevin shot through by Samuel Murray, the banker's son.

The image continued to give me little pleasure—far from it.

“This is an angry animal,” said Captain Deerborn. “Cunning and resentful.”

“I think he's a noble beast,” I said hopefully, rubbing the horse between the eyes with my knuckles.

“Noble, possibly, but mad,” said the captain. “As many monarchs are.”

The big roan was going to be my left-side leader, one of two lead horses in the team of six. The other horses wore blinders and had the stolid, worn-in quality of animals that had hauled freight for many years. Even so, the high spirits of the roan were making them work at their bits and stir from the placid mood most horses fall into when there is nothing much to do.

I climbed up onto the wagon. I perched there high above the ground, and felt the weight of the reins in my hands. I regretted taking on this responsibility, but felt that it was far too late to back down. Furthermore, I didn't want to disappoint the captain.