Calico Palace (37 page)

Marny was happy about the way things were going. Her cloth house was larger than the tent and more festive. She hung whale oil lamps from the beams overhead and hid the ugly canvas walls with curtains of bright red calico. At each end of the bar she set a model of the picturesque Chinese sailboat called a junk, and in the junk she put smoking sticks of punk for lighting cigars. “Try the punk from the junk,” Chad would say to the customers.

They liked it, as another of Marny’s amusing ideas. Marny, however, told Kendra that the real idea was to keep them from dropping lighted matches on the floor. In this gimcrack town fire was a constant danger. Marny was taking no risks if she could help it.

“So far, we’re doing fine,” she said to Kendra. “And look what Warren brought me from Honolulu.”

She showed Kendra a gold pin made like a woven basket, with jewels of many colors above the edge like flowers.

“A nice new scalp,” said Marny, “if I should ever go back to Philadelphia.”

Several days after this, Loren came home from Oregon. Kendra put her arms around him and shed tears on his shoulder. Loren was touched by her tears. But since he was a happy-minded man who had never thought to look deeply below the surface of things, he was also astonished.

“My darling girl,” he exclaimed, “you weren’t worried about me! I had a perfectly safe journey. The
Malek
is one of the stoutest brigs in the coast trade—didn’t you know?”

Yes, she knew. It had not been fear for Loren’s safety that had kept her sobbing through that dreadful night. But she could not tell him this. Nor that her tears now were tears of thankfulness for the simple strong goodness of him, which she could be glad of even if she could not fall in love with it.

In the second half of February the rain stopped. The sun appeared and the mud began to dry. With Serena, Kendra made frequent trips down the hill to lay in supplies in case she had to stand another deluge.

Mr. Fenway told her sad stories about the launches coming down from the gold country, bringing men half dead from scurvy and fevers. Barefooted, frostbitten, sick, with bloodshot eyes and trembling hands, the poor fellows lay on deck begging stronger men to help them carry their loads.

“Loads of what?” Kendra asked.

“Gold,” said Mr. Fenway. “They can’t eat it, can’t wear it, can’t use it to keep off the snow. Now they’re so sick they can’t even carry it.”

Kendra thanked heaven that she and her friends had taken Ning’s advice and left the hills in time. Mr. Fenway, never loth to find some comfort in other people’s troubles, was telling her that all this had made his own life easier.

“Here’s all they need,” said Mr. Fenway, his big bony hand holding out a bottle of lime juice. “We’re getting this stuff in casks now from these British vessels. We pour it into empty gin bottles and keep it for sale. It’s bringing us quite a lot of business.”

He spoke with gloomy satisfaction. By this time Kendra had learned that Mr. Fenway—like herself and no doubt like a lot of other people—had worked out his own way of finding content.

T
HE NEXT MORNING THERE
were clouds on the hills, but by the time Kendra and Loren had finished breakfast the day was bright. Ralph and Loren set out for the store. While Serena cleared up the kitchen Kendra went upstairs to attend to the bedroom.

As she was slipping a pillow into a fresh case she heard quick footsteps on the stairs. Almost before she could turn around Loren burst into the room.

Loren’s light hair was all a-tumble, his cheeks looked even pinker and healthier than they usually did. He was almost breathless with his news.

“Kendra! The steamer!”

Kendra dropped the pillow. “In the bay?”

“Not yet. But she’s been sighted. Come on, we’ll have a look—bring the spyglass.”

Ralph had brought Kendra’s horse around to the front of the house. Already the streets were full of people, on horseback and on foot. They were all shouting, laughing, hurrying in whatever direction they thought would give them the best chance to see the steamer as she puffed through the narrow gate between the two peninsulas that enclosed San Francisco Bay.

Over the racket Loren called,

“Let’s ride up the hill to get a look. We’ll have time to come down to the waterfront before she drops anchor.”

It was not easy to ride up or down or crosswise, for everybody was getting in the way of everybody else. But Loren and Kendra struggled through, with Ralph and Serena close behind them. They rode up and up, beyond the last scattered tents and houses, and climbed a ridge from which they could see out to the strait between San Francisco and the upper peninsula. As they paused, Kendra was surprised to see how many other people had thought to come the same way. On all sides of her, riders were straining their eyes toward the strait, while behind them still others were plodding up the hill. Spyglass at his eyes, Loren had begun to search the distance.

The wind was sweeping the hilltop with nothing to break its force. But this same wind had cleared the air, so that Kendra could see down to the water and across to the slopes on the other side. Also she could see that Loren was trying to tell her something. But every soul around them seemed to be talking at once. Between the noise and the wind, Loren had to repeat his words several times before she understood that he had sighted the steamer and was offering her the glass so she could see it too.

Eagerly Kendra put the glass to her eyes. At first she could see only the faroff hills and the whitecaps tossing on the water. Then, as she turned this way and that, she found the steamer, and as she found it she felt a shock.

Before she left home Kendra had seen many steamboats on the rivers. But these had been smart little craft with paint always new and brasswork polished every morning. This steamer in front of her was the ugliest thing she had ever seen on water.

She saw it all at once—a squat ungainly vessel with a big paddle-wheel and a smokestack belching out clouds of smoke. Along with the smokestack she saw three masts sticking up like giant black toothpicks; she supposed they were there to carry sails if the engines gave out. And the steamer was not only ugly. She was also a mess. She was scratched, battered, stained with salt and blistered with sun.

—She looks, thought Kendra, as if she hasn’t been scrubbed or painted since she left New York. And that was last October. Twenty-one weeks ago.

But then Kendra guiltily reminded herself that this was the first steamboat ever to make her way from the Atlantic Coast of the United States all around to the Pacific side. No wonder the crewmen had had no time to keep her looking pretty. They had been too busy just getting here.

But the steamer was here. And she had brought an astounding lot of people. Watching, Kendra saw men and women packed on deck, more of them than she thought could possibly have been crowded into the berths inside. Loren knew more about vessels than she did, so giving him the glass she cupped her hands and shouted to him through the wind.

“How many passengers was she built to carry?”

After a study of the steamer he shouted back, “About a hundred.”

“There must be,” she exclaimed, “at least three hundred of them on deck!”

“Three hundred?” Loren repeated. “I’d say nearer five.”

“Where,” Kendra demanded, “did they all sleep?”

As he knew no more about this than she did, Loren could not answer. Kendra wondered if they had used the berths in shifts, as men were using the beds in the City Hotel. She saw an astonishing number of women, and shivered as she thought of what those women must have had to put up with in a ship so crowded that they could hardly have had any privacy at all.

The people on deck were milling about, as eager to see San Francisco as the people on shore had been to see the steamer. Beckoning Ralph and Serena, Loren proposed that now they ride down toward the waterfront and watch the boat come in. They made their way down and stopped their horses at a spot from which they could look over the point where Kendra had landed from the
Cynthia
’s rowboat last year.

At the reminder Kendra felt a start. The
Cynthia
had brought her to San Francisco in February, 1848. Now it was February, 1849. In that year how much had happened! A year ago she had never heard of Ted, nor of Marny. She had not dreamed that the creeks of California were flowing over golden sands. She had not dreamed that one day she would be married to Loren Shields.

A year ago this had been a village of nine hundred people. Today—she did not know how many were here now, nobody had time to count them, but there were thousands. A year ago mighty few people in the whole world had heard of a town called San Francisco. Today mighty few people in the whole world had not heard of it.

She caught sight of Marny and Archwood, on horseback, a little way farther down the slope toward the waterfront. Marny had already seen her and was waving. Kendra and Loren waved back. After some trouble they maneuvered their horses so that they were all together, watching the show.

Marny wore a new spring bonnet and a riding dress with a big rippling skirt. Pinned to the bosom of her dress was the jeweled brooch Archwood had given her, but in this crowd she was taking no chances; she also wore the belt that carried her little Colt pistol. Marny’s red hair was blowing rakishly around the brim of her bonnet, and her green eyes were big and bright and vivid. She was nearly breathless with excitement.

Archwood was interested but not excited. With his usual air of urban elegance, he was smiling faintly as he watched. Archwood kept himself a bit aloof from San Francisco. He was enjoying his adventure here, but his home was still New York.

Marny, who had brought a field glass of her own, looked at the steamer and whistled softly.

“So many people!” she exclaimed. The wind here was not as strong as on the hilltop and she could talk without effort. “Loren, Kendra,” she went on, “don’t you think there
must
be somebody we know?”

Archwood gave her a glance of amused indulgence. “Marny can’t get that out of her head,” he said to them. “I’ve told her there are several million people who might have boarded that steamer, and the chance of our knowing any who did—” He shrugged.

“I don’t care,” said Marny, “we might know some of them!”

Archwood smiled. He liked all this. Archwood might laugh at Marny, but one reason why she delighted him was her talent for enjoying whatever went on around her.

Kendra was glad the steamer was arriving on a sunny day. The water of the bay was so bright that it dazzled her eyes. She thought even the deserted vessels did not seem as forlorn as when she had looked at them through the rain. And the ships of war, about to give the Commodore’s official greeting to his countrymen, were magnificent.

In the bay were five ships of war besides the Commodore’s flagship. From the moment he had received the report that the steamer was in sight he had been preparing his welcome.

Some men of the navy had deserted but many more of them had not. Now these stood proudly at their posts. They had emblazoned their vessels with every flag and pennant they could find, and they had manned every gun. The ships had been stationed in two lines, the smallest of them nearest the Gate, the next larger opposite and farther in, and so on until the largest, the flagship itself, would be the last that the steamer would pass. The men at the guns stood ready to fire salvos.

The steamer came in between the two rugged strips of land that enclosed the bay. The watchers began to cheer. On the hills and rooftops, leaning out of windows and shoving on the waterfront, they yelled their welcome, they waved flags and scarfs and pages of newspaper. The steamer came on. Spewing smoke, she whiffed and belched and at last she drew into line with the first of the waiting warships. The sailors shouted, the guns gave a broadside salute. The steamer growled and went on, passing one ship on her left and another on her right. The guns thundered, the smoke rolled up in great black clouds, the wind blew the clouds to shore. Loren choked, Archwood began to cough. Kendra felt her eyes pricking with tears. As she dried them she heard Marny say, “The damn thing is throwing soot all over my bonnet!”

But it was quite wonderful. They all agreed to this. They coughed and wiped their eyes and laughed and said hoarsely that it was a great day and they wouldn’t have missed it for a fistful of gold.

The first Forty-niners were here.

W
HEN THE SMOKE CLEARED
, they saw the steamer anchored near the Commodore’s flagship. She had brought several army officers and their wives, and already boats from the flagship were receiving them. The rest of the passengers waited, clutching such baggage as they had managed to cram on the steamer along with themselves. If they waited long enough the crew would row them ashore. But already men with boats of their own were rowing out, to bring in those willing to pay for the ride.

It was now almost noon. The watchers on shore were crowding as close as they could to the waterfront. Marny was not the only one saying, “Maybe the steamer has brought somebody I know.”

Ralph and Serena moved a little way off to join some friends of their own. Kendra and Loren, Marny and Archwood, stayed where they were, in sight of the point. Several peddlers were walking around, selling dried fruit, walnuts, and jars holding pickles or candy drops. Others offered wine and gin, each of them carrying a tin cup which he passed from buyer to buyer with the utmost democracy.

Kendra and her companions would have liked some refreshment, but they did not feel tempted by what was being hawked around them. Kendra proposed that Marny and Archwood come home with Loren and herself. “I have cold meat,” she said, “and cheese, so there’ll be no trouble putting a lunch on table.”

But neither she nor the others wanted to leave yet. The first boats were coming in, the first passengers were stepping ashore. At sight of them the waiting onlookers began to murmur with shock and sympathy.

Kendra thought she had never seen people who looked tireder, dingier, more bewildered, or more miserable. Men and women, they looked as if they had been starved of sleep and food. Men and women, they looked as if they had been wearing the same clothes for weeks. Whatever had been their circumstances at home, today they were unwashed, uncombed, exhausted, and in wretched disarray.