Calico Palace (29 page)

Kendra looked up. She had begun to be interested. “Yes? What?”

Marny smiled, and her green eyes were wise and cool. “You haven’t told the boys,” she said, “what you told me about Colonel Taine and your mother. How you’ve dreaded going back to them because you feel you won’t be welcome.” Marny spoke impressively. “Kendra, if you come back with three hundred ounces of gold—you’ll be welcome.”

Kendra gave a start.

Marny said, “Even if the price of gold is down a little, three hundred ounces still means thousands of dollars. More than an army colonel is paid in a year.”

Kendra felt a tingle all over. It was exhilarating, like a rubdown after a cold bath. She turned to speak to the others.

“I’ll take it,” she said. “I’m sorry I made a scene.”

“She was a little shocked, that’s all,” said Marny. “Gene, you can measure the dust.”

Gene poured a handful of gold on the scale, added a little, pinched out a little, added a little more, and kept on till he had the right amount. He spread a sheet of newspaper on the table, and from the box of groceries he took a can holding coffee beans. Prying off the lid, he emptied the coffee beans on the newspaper and poured Kendra’s gold into the can. This done, he filled the can with coffee, replaced the lid, and brought the can to Kendra.

“Careful,” he warned as she held out her hands. “It’s heavy.”

Kendra took the can, and to her own surprise she began to laugh. How strange, and how laughable, to hold a coffee can that weighed nearly thirteen pounds. She would have to think of more ways of hiding gold. She could put some into her canteen—that was a good idea, gold under the drinking water.

“Will you sign the receipt, please?” asked Gene.

Kendra took up the pen. This was the first time she had been asked to sign her name since she had found that she was not Mrs. Ted Parks. Setting her lips tight, she wrote, “Kendra Logan.”

Involuntarily Gene frowned. He had never heard her called Kendra Logan. “Is that your name, ma’am?”

“It is now,” said Kendra. She felt suddenly proud of herself, as if she had seized her courage and walked over a shaky bridge.

She moved aside so Marny could take her place by the table. Gene turned a page of the ledger.

“Your friend Delbert brought in the dust, Marny. I guess you know—” He paused questioningly.

“Oh yes, I know,” she returned with a smile as she sat down by him. “He brought in eleven hundred and thirty-eight ounces. It was half his and half mine. That means, today I have on deposit here, five hundred and sixty-nine ounces, less the charge.”

Gene turned red. Then he turned white. Then his face grew splotchy as if somebody had been pinching it. His hands fidgeted with the pen. He bumbled,

“Gosh, Marny—I don’t know what to say—”

Pocket put his hands on the table and leaned forward. With an authority in odd contrast to his usual mildness he ordered,

“Say it, Gene.”

Wetting his lips and mopping his forehead, Gene demanded of the air, “What’s the matter with me? Why do I always have to bring the bad news?”

Waiting for no more, Pocket turned the ledger around. He looked down at the page and then up at Marny. She met his gaze directly. Pocket said,

“Marny, Delbert left you twenty ounces.”

Kendra gasped. Ning let out an ugly word. Gene sighed miserably. Curt, standing by the door to the safe-room, said nothing. His job was to stand guard, not to talk.

Marny’s eyes had narrowed to slits. Kendra remembered an angry cat she had seen once, crouching in a corner. The cat’s eyes were narrowed like that, with the same baleful green gleam. After a moment of furious silence Marny spoke.

“That means, Delbert stole from me, five hundred and forty-nine ounces.”

Pocket said, “That’s what it means, Marny.”

Gene mopped his forehead again. “Gee, Marny, how could I know he was stealing it? I thought—he told me—” Poor Gene floundered wretchedly.

“Just what did Delbert tell you, Gene?” she asked in a cold level voice.

“Well—” Gene began, and lost his words again.

“Go on, Gene,” ordered Pocket.

Gene doubled his hands into fists as if to give him strength. “Well—the day he got here he brought in his dust and I weighed it and put it in the safe. But the day before we all started up to Shiny Gulch together, Delbert came in again. He told me he’d changed his mind about leaving so much dust. He said he’d been foolish to bring it here, because gambling was a chancy business and the house might have a run of bad luck when it would need plenty of reserves on hand. He said he was going to take back most of what he had put in the safe.”

She nodded slowly. “I understand. That was when he had decided to leave me for good and go Lump-hunting.”

“He took out all but this twenty ounces,” said Gene. “He said this was to take care of you in case the Calico Palace went broke.”

Marny’s lips moved silently. Kendra suspected that at least part of what Marny was saying about Delbert consisted of words she herself did not know.

“I thought it was—considerate of him to leave you anything,” Gene lamented. “Damn, I seem to have bungled things all round. I guess I’m stupid.”

Marny laid her hand on his unhappy fist. When she spoke her voice was smooth. “You’re no stupider than I was, Gene, when I trusted him in the first place. Now measure what he left me and I won’t bother you any more.”

Gene spoke from under a burden of guilt. “No, no, I really was a galoot.” Suddenly he glowed with righteousness. “I tell you, Marny—to make up, I’ll pay the deposit charge on that twenty ounces myself.”

“Oh, don’t be silly,” she retorted. “You did what a bank is supposed to do, you returned a deposit on demand. I’m not destitute. Figure the charge.”

Gene glowed even more brightly. This time he had the brightness of one who has earned a reward in heaven without putting himself to any inconvenience on earth. “You’re a grand girl, Marny. Next time I come to San Francisco I sure will drop by your place. You’ll be having a card parlor there, I suppose?”

“Oh yes. Glad to see you any time.” Marny too glowed brightly. Hers was the brightness of one who has gained a friend and a customer. She knew Gene was likely to spend far more in her card parlor than the small deposit charge on twenty ounces.

Gene poured her gold into the weighing pan on the scale. While he concentrated on his task, Pocket gave Marny an admiring smile.

“You’re taking it mighty well,” said Pocket.

She smiled back at him. “Don’t worry,” she said. “Somewhere in the world there’s some chump of a man who’s going to pay me for this. Trust me, Pocket. I’ll find him.”

N
ING STAYED AT SUTTER’S
Fort. If they hadn’t learned to manage without him by now, he said, they deserved to get hurt. The others went on.

The rest of their journey was hot and tiresome, but not difficult. As they rode down, they met new gold seekers on the way up: men from far places such as the islands beyond Honolulu, and young fellows just mustered out of the volunteer troops. Here and there they saw other men skulking apart, trying to keep trees and bushes between themselves and the beaten track. The volunteers said these were deserters. Some of them were sailors who had run away at their first glimpse of gold dust, leaving their vessels stranded. Others were men who had deserted the army or navy, hoping to pick up fortunes and get out of California before they could be caught.

Because of these and others like them the way back was dangerous, but the men never all slept at once. Marny also took her turn at guard duty. At mealtimes, while Kendra cooked, Marny kept watch so the men could rest. She carried her little gun. “This,” she said to them tersely, “may look like a toy. But I assure you, gentlemen, it’s not.”

Pocket gave her a respectful grin. “I shouldn’t like to have you mad with me, Marny,” he said.

“I’m not mad with anybody right now,” said Marny. “Except Delbert, of course.”

But she accepted even Delbert with grim humor. She made up a song, and warbled in her blithe tuneless voice as they rode along.

“Thought he was wonderful,

But I was blunderful,

Now I feel thunderful—

Damn
!”

“Miss Marny,” Pocket said to her, “not only have you got manners like a jaybird, but when you sing, you
sound
like a jaybird.”

“What delicate ears you have, Pocket,” said Marny. “All right, I’ll stop singing. I’ll just be glad he’s out of my way.”

As they made camp the evening before they were to ride into San Francisco, Kendra felt tremulous. Tomorrow she would have to go to Alex and Eva. She broiled the beef, and cooked potatoes and carrots they had brought from the fort, but she had not much appetite.

The next morning she and Marny put on the dresses they had washed and mended at Shiny Gulch and saved for this day. They braided their hair closely, so the wind would not blow it to pieces, and tied on their best sunbonnets. In front of her cracked piece of mirror Kendra decided that she looked well. Her face was darkly tanned, but this only accented her blue eyes, and after these months of rough outdoor living she was as firm and flexible as a young tree. And she had three hundred ounces of gold.

As they left the camping place, Hiram rode beside her. She looked him over—reddish brown hair and beard, hands crusty from work, torn shirt and shabby breeches and broken boots—he was not at all like the spruce young officers who used to ride with her. But she liked him better. Hiram was a person in his own right. One glance at him and you saw his ruggedness, you felt his abounding vitality. Hiram did not try to be impressive. He did not need to.

After a while he spoke to her.

“Kendra.”

“Yes?”

“This may be my last chance,” said Hiram, “to tell you how great you’ve been this summer. Kendra, you’ve got guts.”

His words made her throat hurt and her eyes sting. “Thank you, Hiram,” she said in a low voice. “You’ve been a mighty good friend to me.”

“I like you,” said Hiram. “And I wish you well.”

“And I wish you well!” she exclaimed. “Hiram, what are you going to do now?”

“Pocket and Ning and I are planning a business, at the settlement growing up around Sutter’s Fort. While Pocket and I are buying tools and equipment in town, Ning will set up the workshop.”

“Making what?” she asked.

Hiram grinned proudly, like a man with a good idea. “Rockers,” he said.

He went on to explain. As she knew, the military leaders had smiled when they first heard the talk of gold. But when they realized that the talk was true, they had written letters to be sent home.

President Polk and Congress were in Washington, and neither Commodore Jones of the navy nor Colonel Mason of the army had authority to send a battleship around Cape Horn merely to carry a letter. But they did the best they could. For couriers, they chose two resourceful young men, Midshipman Beale and Lieutenant Loeser. Beale and Loeser were now on their way. They were traveling separately, but their orders were the same: Go by any route you can, no matter how often you have to turn on your tracks. Take any means of travel you can find, no matter what you have to pay for it. Only get there. Get there and tell them the news.

“And when the news gets around,” said Hiram, “can’t you imagine what it’s going to be like? Men will start coming here from the States the way they’re coming now from the islands. So we’re taking a hint from Sam Brannan. Right in front of the placers we’ll have a shopful of rockers, ready made.”

Hiram’s strong confident smile shone at her through his rusty beard.

“I told you,” he said, “I came to California to seek my fortune. I meant it. I still mean it.”

“You have a thousand ounces of gold!” she exclaimed.

“I want more than a thousand ounces,” he returned quietly. “I want ten thousand. I want to be
rich,
Kendra.”

She looked him up and down, thoughtfully. “You will be, Hiram. You’re the kind of man that gets what he wants.”

He flashed her another smile. “I hope you’re right.”

Pocket and Marny came riding up, to discuss the problem of where they would all sleep tonight. Men they had met on the way had said San Francisco was crowded to the bursting point. Pocket suggested that they rent space in a vacant lot, and set up a tent if they could buy one. If they could not get a tent they would simply have to spread their bedrolls in the open.

While they talked, Kendra was making up her mind that Marny was not going to sleep on the ground again. Marny could share her room in the house on Stockton Street. Alex and Eva would know nothing about her except that she was a friend from Shiny Gulch, and by the time they learned more Marny would have had a chance to find a place of her own.

The track made a turn, toward the yellow-brown hills half swathed in mist. Now they could see San Francisco, growing like a toadstool and just as ugly. As they came nearer they could see it more plainly, the gaunt slopes, the shacks and shanties and tents stuck over them like bugs on a pile of potatoes. Then as they climbed a hill they saw the deserted vessels swinging at anchor in the bay.

Because of the fog and the curving shoreline they could not be sure how many there were, but Kendra thought there must be thirty or forty of them. The crews had run off to the gold fields, and here stood their argosies, helpless and forlorn. She looked at Hiram, and they both shook their heads.

The track led across the sandbanks at the southern end of town and brought them into Kearny Street. The street was crowded with men who all seemed to be going somewhere in a hurry. Most of them wore red shirts and dark corduroy breeches, and carried picks and shovels over their shoulders. Among them were a few frontiersmen in buckskins, and traders in business suits, and miners in scraps and tatters, just back from the hills, and in this last ragtag group were undoubtedly some of the richest men in town.

Wagons and handcarts and wheelbarrows creaked by, horses and mules thudded over the choppy ground; in empty lots men stood on barrels, surrounded by bales of goods which they were offering for sale in thunderous voices; and the men in the street all seemed to be talking, shouting to be heard above the din. Kendra thought of her first ride through these streets, in the days when nothing ever happened in San Francisco.