Calico Palace (40 page)

Norman gave a sigh of his own.

“The trees hung over the water and dangled great big vines, sometimes such a tangle of vines that we couldn’t get through, and the men had to hack a way. They had brought big long knives for this.”

“We were scared half to death,” said Rosabel. “Those creatures with those knives, yelling and howling all day long. They couldn’t keep steady. One bongo would hit another and that one would hit the next one, and so on down the line. They would all hit and scrape and bounce, and we had to hold tight to keep from being thrown into the water, and those men would stop poling and we had to sit there while they yelled and waved those knives. Every one of them was shouting that somebody had hit his bongo on purpose and they were all threatening to kill each other.”

“We wouldn’t have cared,” said Norman, “if they had only killed each other, but we were scared they were going to kill
us.
We had money and food, and anyway they looked like the sort who might have killed somebody for the fun of it. We never all slept at once.”

“Where did you sleep?” asked Kendra.

“Huddled up in the bongos, or on the ground by the fire. We couldn’t cook much because the rain kept everything so damp. Mostly we nibbled on hardtack and jerky. But we tried to keep a fire going at night, because of the mosquitoes, and to scare away animals. Sometimes we couldn’t even keep that much fire going.”

“One night,” said Rosabel, “those savages had a monkey roast. Made me sick. It looked like they were tearing babies apart. But then it rained, and put out their fire too.”

“How did you get out of the rain?” asked Kendra.

“We didn’t,” said Rosabel. “We bunched together under our umbrellas, or under the bushes, and then steamed. It was like being boiled alive.”

“We were on that river,” said Norman, “three days and three nights, every minute of it plain horror. That’s the time it took us to go thirty miles. When we’d gone that far we came to a village called Cruces. This is the end of the river.”

“Cruces was worse than Chagres,” said Rosabel.

“Right,” said Norman. “Hotter, wetter, dirtier. And nobody in Cruces knew
anything.
Chagres is a port, the people have to do a little something. In Cruces they don’t even move. They just sit and sweat. They are there because they were born there and it’s too much trouble to get out.”

He gave a long low whistle.

“This,” he said, “is where we were supposed to get mules to take us to Panama City. Hell, damn, by—oh, excuse me, Mrs. Shields. Here we were, nearly two hundred of us, and there weren’t that many mules around. Or donkeys or horses or anything else that could carry us. And some people who had animals wouldn’t sell them. Not for any money—and no wonder, what could they buy in a place like that?

“But we had to get out, and fast. The place is a pest-hole—malaria, yellow fever, smallpox, everything. Two or three of us were already sick.

“The boatmen were going to take the bongos back to Chagres—that’s easy, the current carries them down—and some of our crowd said they were going right back to Chagres and back home. Said they wouldn’t move another yard through this hell if they never saw a speck of gold.”

Kendra smiled as she listened. She knew nothing about Norman’s talent as a gambler, but she was recognizing the trait that made Marny admire him. He had it, and so had Rosabel. They were not halfway people. It had not occurred to either of them to turn around at Cruces. They had set out for California and they meant to get there. Norman was saying,

“Those fellows had their minds made up to go home. They wanted to sell us their tickets on the Pacific steamer, Panama to San Francisco. Most of our party wouldn’t buy them. Said we had our own tickets, who’d want any extra? But—”

Pausing, Norman sent a flash of his black eyes toward Rosabel. She laughed under her breath, and added,

“But Norman said there might be somebody at Panama City who would want to go to San Francisco, and would be glad to buy a ticket on the steamer. So we bought the tickets from men who were going back. Of course it was a gamble—”

“Norman Lamont,” said Marny, “is the smartest gambler I ever knew. I’ve been saying so for a long time.”

Norman accepted her praise with a comradely smile. Evidently he had a similar opinion of her.

“We spent a day in Cruces,” he said, “buying all the mules and donkeys we could. We didn’t dare stay longer because we knew we’d catch our death if we did. We had left a lot of our baggage in Chagres, now we had to throw away more because we couldn’t carry it. Rosabel and I got a mule and a donkey, and they had to carry us and our stuff too. And we were lucky. Some men paired up and bought one donkey for both, and took turns riding it. Some of them walked the whole way with their bags on their backs.

“We had to spend a night there, lying on the wet ground and slapping mosquitoes. Some of the ladies cried all night, and some of the men never stopped swearing. Blossom gathered her girls together and put her arms around them and they sat there in a bundle of misery. Next morning we started out.”

With a desperate look, Norman poured brandy into his glass.

“Cruces to Panama City,” he said, “is only twenty miles, but it’s twenty miles of mountains, rocks, bugs, heat, rain, torment. Away back, three hundred years ago when the Spaniards used to carry treasure across the Isthmus so their ships could take it to Spain, they made a sort of trail. But now the trail is overgrown, and piled with rocks that have rolled down the slopes. And steep—!” He whistled again.

“We climbed over mountains made of solid rock,” said Rosabel. “They were so steep that they went almost straight up in the air. In the steepest places those old Spaniards had cut notches, like steps, so the mules could climb without sliding backwards. These mule staircases were so narrow that only one mule could go up at a time. Sometimes a pack would drop off a mule and people’s clothes would fall out and their money too, gold and silver coins clattering down the mountain and rolling into the cracks between the rocks.

“Then when we got to the top of the mountain we had to go down the other side the same way. It was so steep, some folks fell over the heads of the mules and got hurt. We had to tear up clothes to make slings and bandages for them. Blossom knew how to do this. She showed me how and made the other girls help. One man fell so hard he broke his bones all to pieces. He screamed and screamed and at last he shot himself.

“After that,” Rosabel continued grimly, “I walked. I let the mule carry my bags but I
walked.
”

She laughed suddenly.

“My dears, I wish you could have listened to those men! I’ve heard a lot of blue words but I never heard so many at one time. Army and non-army. Blossom and the girls too. The ladies wept and sobbed and prayed and begged the ministers to pray for them. The ministers did pray. They prayed for us all, even those who played cards on Sunday.

“Those fifty miles across the Isthmus,” she said clearly, “took us a week. Seven days. And there’s a lot of minutes in seven days and every minute I thought I was going to die and I thought, What good will it do me to have a solid gold tombstone? But at last we got to Panama City.”

“When you got there,” said Marny, “were your troubles over?” Norman and Rosabel broke into sardonic laughter. Like Norman before her, Rosabel reached for the bottle.

“Panama City,” said Rosabel
,
“is a town of two thousand people and forty million bugs. It is hot and wet and sticky and when we got there they were having an epidemic of cholera.”

“Have you ever seen anybody die of cholera?” Norman exclaimed. “Well, I hope I never have to again.”

He continued. He said the people of Panama City were more civilized than those of Chagres, and in general they were a good-natured lot. But like most people who live in the smothering heat of the tropics, they spent most of their time drowsing in the shade, and moving as the shade moved. They had no idea what to do when a mob of Yankees exploded into town like a bunch of firecrackers.

The
Falcon
’s passengers burst into Panama City one day early in January, 1849. They demanded food and shelter and a steamboat to take them on their way.

Food? Well, the town had a market. Shelter? There wasn’t any. Panama City had no hotel. As for the steamer, nobody knew anything about it.

Most of the Americans had to sleep outdoors, on the ground. Only a few of the most persistent, like Norman and Rosabel, managed to get lodgings.

“We went around and around,” said Rosabel, “until we found a woman who would rent us a room. The room had fleas in it, and cockroaches and spiders, but at least it kept off the rain. And the house had a well, so we could wash. We kept as clean as we could because our people were getting sick.”

“The whole Isthmus is a plague-spot,” Norman said shortly. “Some of our friends died right there on the ground. The natives dragged their bodies off and threw them into the sea.

“All we could talk about or think about was getting away. There were no boats in the harbor except rowboats and fishing smacks, nothing fit to put to sea. We simply had to wait for that Pacific steamer and hope we’d live till it came in. The town has an old wall, about twenty feet high and I guess pretty near twenty feet thick, left by the Spaniards. Part of it has broken down but part is still there. On the ocean side of the wall they left some big guns, real cannon, two or three tons apiece. Every day all day you could see men straddling those cannon, watching for the steamer.”

Norman gave his neck a stretch as if to cast off a burden.

“But those first days were simple,” he said. “Pretty soon it got worse.”

“What now?” Marny exclaimed.

Norman answered, “More people.”

“They started coming in before we’d been there a week,” said Rosabel. “A new crowd came in nearly every day.”

“They told us,” said Norman, “the whole United States had gone wild about gold. The President had shown Loeser’s gold to Congress, and papers all over the country had printed Colonel Mason’s report. Everybody wanted to go to California.

“But this was midwinter and they couldn’t drive wagons across the prairies till the snow was gone. If they wanted to go to California right now, they had to take a boat. When the second steamer of the Atlantic line left New York she was packed with people like the
Falcon
at New Orleans.

“Of course they didn’t know what they were getting into, any more than we had. That steamer got to Chagres a few days after we had left to go up the river. She dumped them all, like the
Falcon,
and went back for more. And those poor fools started across the Isthmus, like us.

“And in the meantime, other ships loaded with gold hunters had set out from Boston and Norfolk and Charleston and New Orleans and the Lord knows where else. They brought more people to Chagres. And all those people started across the Isthmus.

“Like in our group, some of them gave up at Cruces and went back home, some of them died on the way, but a lot of them got to Panama City somehow. By the time we’d been there two weeks, there were more Americans in town than natives. The family we were living with doubled and redoubled our rent because the people coming in were offering to pay practically any price to get under a roof.

“And we were all waiting for that one Pacific steamer, the
California.
”

Norman ran his hand over his black hair. He had a bewildered look, as if he could hardly believe what he himself had seen. He said,

“And in the meantime again, that steamer—Rosabel, pass me the brandy.”

Laughing a little, she obeyed. Norman offered the bottle to Marny, but she shook her head.

“No thanks, I’ve got to deal this evening. Go on, Norman. What was the steamer doing?”

Norman told them the steamer had been having a good voyage. About the time that Norman and Rosabel were getting out of Chagres in a bongo, the steamer
California
had reached the port of Callao in Peru.

Captain Forbes stopped here to take on fresh food and water. To his astonishment, fifty Peruvian men came to him, saying they wanted passage to San Francisco.

The captain did not understand it. One or two passengers would not have surprised him, but fifty was an astounding number. Why on earth, he asked, did all these men want to go to that little village up the coast?

The Peruvians were surprised at his ignorance. They asked, Didn’t he know? Hadn’t he heard that in California people were running about, picking up lumps of gold like children gathering seashells on the beach?

No, Captain Forbes knew nothing about it.

As Kendra had read in the
Alta,
Loeser had stopped in Callao on his way to Washington. He had told his news of gold, and people in Callao had been talking about it ever since. But when Captain Forbes had left New York, Loeser had not yet reached the United States. The gold talk there had been no more than a gentle buzz. Captain Forbes had hardly heard it. Now he and his crewmen listened in wonder.

The steamboat line had been licensed by the government to carry Yankee mail and Yankee passengers. There was no rule forbidding Captain Forbes to take foreigners if he had room for them, but the understanding was that he would always give precedence to United States citizens.

However, every passenger berth on the
California
was empty. Captain Forbes had reserved space for the twenty-odd persons he expected to meet at Panama City, but his vessel was built to carry a hundred. When the steamer left Callao fifty of her berths were occupied by these men of Peru.

On the eighteenth of January, Norman and Rosabel and their weary friends heard a shout from the men straddling the cannon on the wall. The steamer! Oh, that splendid steamer, with her red paddlewheel and her American flag! The steamer anchored in the deep water and lowered a boat to take the captain ashore.

Now Captain Forbes received what was probably his greatest shock since he first went to sea. Instead of a dozing village he found a place of horror. Instead of twenty ladies and gentlemen and a few elegant maids and valets he met thousands of frantic people, pleading for passage to San Francisco. When he stepped off the boat, Captain Forbes was nearly crushed by the mob that rushed upon him.