The Gold Seekers (2 page)

“He’s learnt us what to do, Luke,” Dan reminded him. “And paid for the wagon and the horses and the supplies.” He jerked his head skyward. ” ‘Twill be sundown in half an hour. You’ll feel differently when you’ve a decent meal inside you.”

Maybe he would, Luke agreed, but without conviction, his resentment of Jasper Morgan growing. The captain had returned after his three-week-long absence, bringing, it was true, more supplies and a second wagon. He had also brought a girl with him—his daughter, according to Tom Gardener, the only one to have seen her—and instead of living with the rest of them in the tents, he had moved into the storekeeper’s house at Flycatcher’s Bend, three miles away, and spent less time than before on their claim.

Luke scowled up at the setting sun, shivering now that the upper part of his body was deprived of its earlier warmth, and found himself wondering about the girl, Morgan’s daughter. Morgan kept her well out of sight, which, in view of the proximity of the area’s main mining camp, was perhaps understandable. The men there were, on the whole, sober and well behaved; but there were more than two hundred of them, and inevitably there were a few that stepped over the traces, given the opportunity. They were men from all corners of the earth—Americans, of course, and British, Australians, Negroes from the southern states, Mexicans, Germans, Frenchmen, a few Irish, and a small bunch from Chile.

The elected camp committee had drawn up the bylaws, which were strictly and sometimes brutally enforced. But some of the miners struck it rich and then went to celebrate their good fortune by getting drunk, despite the extortionate price the storekeepers in the locality charged for liquor, most of which was rotgut stuff, illicitly distilled. The camps themselves were primitive; in some there were a few rough timber huts, but most of the miners slept under canvas. A handful of the men—those who had exhausted their grubstakes in their quest for a strike—existed without even a tent; and a pretty young female—and Morgan’s girl was pretty, Tom had asserted—would clearly be a sore temptation to such men, the more so since they had, for the most part, been deprived of feminine company for a long time.

Even so, Luke told himself sourly, Jasper Morgan had no call to spend half his time with her, leaving his partners to do all the work on the claim. They were not paid a wage, and because he had supplied their food and equipment, Morgan had demanded and arbitrarily taken a fifty percent share of their so-far meager returns.

“The captain’s a gentleman,” Dan always reminded him when he voiced his doubts. “And like he says, his word is his bond. He’ll not cheat us, Luke.”

But was he really a gentleman? Certainly Morgan talked with all the arrogant assurance that went with social superiority. His commission, he had told them, had been granted by the Queen of England, and he had fought in the Carlist War in Spain, as a soldier of fortune, with a splendid, jewel-encrusted gold medal, bearing Queen Isabella’s head, to prove his claim and his courage. But for all that, and in spite of the man’s glib talk of past glories and wide travel, Luke’s doubts had not been set at rest. Rather, they had increased and worried him more, particularly since the girl’s arrival. Her name was Mercy, Tom had said, which might or might not be Welsh. Or it was, perhaps, a shortened form of Mercedes… .

“Hi, there, Luke old son!” Tom himself hailed him from the creek bank, a big, genial fellow who, whatever the temperature, worked with his torso bared and in pants cut off above the knee. He and his brother shared most of the heavy digging with Dan, and in addition, Frankie Gardener had

volunteered to act as camp cook. “Frankie’s roastin’ them rabbits he snared, an’ he says they won’t be long. You c’n knock off now, lad, an’ git into some dry clothes. I’ll ‘tend to the riffles.”

“Thanks, Tom,” Luke acknowledged gratefully. He straightened up, flexing his cramped muscles and conscious of the pangs of hunger. It had been a long day, and he hoped, as he did most days, that they would have more than sand and a sprinkling of gold dust to show for it, although such hopes were seldom fulfilled. Morgan would not hear of their moving on, however small their return; he had chosen the Windy Gully site, bringing all his expert knowledge to the task, and to abandon it would be to call that knowledge into question.

As Luke made his way along the water’s edge, an appetizing smell of roasting meat greeted him, and he gave Frankie Gardener a friendly wave. At least he and Dan had struck it rich where the other members of their partnership were concerned, he reflected. The Gardeners were as fine a pair of men as any he had ever met—honest, hardworking, utterly dependable, and the best of company, even in the face of disappointment. He enjoyed listening to the yarns they told about Australia as they hunkered down beside their campfire in the evening. Both had been seamen until, like so many others, they had jumped ship in San Francisco and come to try their luck in the goldfields.

Neither of them planned to stay in America.

“Soon as we make a worthwhile strike, we’ll be off back to Sydney Town,” Tom had said many times, and smiled as he went on to talk of his wife and children and his longing to end what had become a three-year separation from them. He had talked also of a fellow Australian named Hargraves, Luke recalled, a merchant seaman serving in the same ship, with whom Jasper Morgan had had some dealings.

Frankie had said of Hargraves, “He has his head screwed on the right way, has Ned. Reckons the country in our Bathurst an’ Goulburn areas is as like this here as to make no difference. So if there’s gold here in California, then there’s every chance there’ll be gold in New South Wales, an’ I, for one, can’t wait to go back an’ find out. All Tom an’ me are waiting for is just one good strike an’ we’ll be hightailin’ it home!”

But there had been no good strike-Just a few small bags of dust, won after days and weeks of backbreaking toil and sweat. And it was backbreaking, Luke thought sourly. Each spadeful of earth took effort; each laden barrow must be wheeled over the rough ground to the cradle, tipped into it, rocked, and washed. Placer mining, it was called. Panning was easier but less rewarding, and in any case, after a day spent swilling river sand in a heavy metal pan, a man’s muscles ached and his head reeled. And they were working their claim with the knowledge that other miners, more skilled and experienced than they themselves, had worked Windy Gully and moved on. Besides—

“Hey, Luke boy!” Frankie, hands cupped about his mouth, hailed him from the tent site. Luke obediently halted and looked up to the top of the rocky bank, some thirty feet above.

“Yeah, Frankie? You want something?”

“A bucket o’ fresh water, lad. Make sure your bucket’s clean—it’s for makin’ the coffee. Don’t want to swaller no dust with our coffee, do we? Nor any nuggets, neither.”

It was a jest that had long since worn thin, and Luke did not laugh. He glanced back to where Tom and Dan were busy scraping out the riffles and saw Dan shake his head in answer to his unspoken question. Just dust, then, he thought with bitterness—dust, a pinch of which would buy a drink or two, and a handful sell for twenty dollars; barely enough to keep them in flour and coffee, with prices what they were at the diggings. It took nearly an ounce of dust a day just to keep one miner fed and working… .

“Right,” he called back, swallowing his disappointment. “I’ll get your water, Frankie.”

He returned to the stream, the water squelching out of his worn cowhide boots. Conscientiously he rinsed the bucket, then filled it with fresh creek water. The bank at this point was steep; there was an easier ascent a few yards back, but in his present mood of black depression, Luke did not bother to walk back.

That this was a mistake he quickly realized as his wet boots

slipped on the lichen-covered rock and he had to put out his free hand swiftly to grasp the exposed roots of a scrubby manzanita growing in a crevice, in order to avoid spilling the contents of his bucket. He managed to steady himself, losing only a few drops of the water, but then, without warning, the manzanita roots lost their frail hold, and Luke found himself having to cling to the edge of the crevice with both hands, letting the bucket fall.

Cursing, he watched the bucket roll out of reach and was about to go down to retrieve it when something in the interior of the crevice caught his eye. Where the roots of the mountain shrub had been there were pebbles lying as they might have done in a bird’s nest; only the pebbles were larger than any bird’s eggs he had ever seen, and in the last, faint rays of the setting sun they possessed a dull, reflected gleam.

Scarcely daring to believe the evidence of his eyes, Luke reached into the crevice and picked up one of the pebbles, an impulsive shout strangled in his throat. Best to make sure, he told himself, his heart pounding like a living thing against his ribs. There had been so many failures, so many dashed hopes; it wouldn’t do to yell out to Dan and the others that at long last he had made the strike they had dreamed of. Not until he was sure.

It did not take him long to make sure. He had seen and handled other nuggets before, and there was no mistake about these: Weight and feel were right. They were gold! And there were—God in heaven,~there were eight of them, varying in size and shape, the largest, as nearly as he could guess, weighing around five pounds.

An even larger one was embedded in the rock. His hands trembling, Luke took out his jackknife and, with infinite care and some difficulty, pried it out. Again resisting the impulse to call to the others, he filled his pockets with the smaller nuggets and clambered down to fetch his bucket, into which he placed his last find.

The light had almost gone, and he strode back to the gentle ascent they usually took, mounting it as if he were walking on air. Dan and Tom were spreading out the day’s small mixture of sand and dust to dry in front of the fire, and Frankie, busy with his rabbits on their spits, observed, without turning around, his tone mildly reproachful, “That you, Luke? Took your time, didn’t you? Let’s have the water; these rabbits are just about done.”

“I brought something better than water,” Luke said. His voice was so hoarse with excitement that it sounded unnatural, even to himself, and Dan, quick to sense the emotional strain under which his brother was laboring, jumped up and grasped him by the shoulders.

“What is it, young Luke? What is it, boy?”

“This,” Luke stammered, his throat tight. “We—we m-made it, Dan; we made our strike! Praise be to God!”

He dropped to his knees by the fire, and as the other three watched in stunned amazement, he turned out first his pockets and then upended the heavy bucket, placing his haul on the strip of canvas on which the few handfuls of dust and sand were drying.

They stared with mouths agape, momentarily bereft of words. Then Tom picked up the largest of the nuggets and leaped to his feet, emitting a wild, triumphant yell.

“Jesus, boys, we’re rich! This must be worth—God Almighty, a bloody fortune! We can go home, Frankie! The kid’s made it for us, and made it big! Luke, you’re a marvel!”

One of the precious jackrabbits fell from its spit into the fire, but Frankie did not trouble to retrieve it. He wrung Luke’s hand, his tanned face aglow and his blue, seaman’s eyes full of tears as he sought vainly for words.

“Where?” he managed at last. “Where did you find all these, Luke?”

Luke told him, feeling suddenly as if it were all a dream and fearful that he might waken from it. “Pinch me,” he pleaded. “I—I can’t believe it, even now.”

It was Dan who brought them down to earth. He rescued the charred remnants of their supper and said soberly, “Ain’t you forgetting—half o’ this belongs to Captain Morgan?”

“He didn’t find them nuggets,” Tom protested. “Young Luke did, on his own.”

“We got a partnership agreement, Tom,” Dan reminded him. “Morgan staked us, and he brought us here. He’s entitled

to fifty percent; we four divide the rest between us.” He grinned at the young Australian’s chagrin. “Why, for crying out loud, lad, there’s enough for all of us! That lump o’ gold you’re holding must weigh ten or twelve pounds by itself, and the storekeepers are paying sixteen dollars an ounce. They pay more at the Branch Mint in ‘Frisco by all accounts —twenty dollars maybe.”

Tom attempted to work out figures in his head and finally, his smile returning, resorted to counting on his fingers.

“God!” he exclaimed, awed. “Oh, my God!”

“And there could be more,” Dan pointed out, “buried in the bank o’ the creek where Luke found this little lot.” He gestured to the congealing rabbit meat. “Let’s have our meal, boys, an’ put some coffee on. You fetch up the water, Tom.”

“I fancy going to the camp,” Tom countered obstinately, “and buyin’ me a skinful o’ whiskey to celebrate. We’ve waited long enough for something we can celebrate, haven’t we?”

Dan sighed. “Not till we tell Morgan. He has a right to know. Go fetch the water, lad. There’ll be time enough to celebrate. And Luke, get you into some dry gear. You don’t want to die of pneumonia, do you, now that we’ve made it at last?”

They both obeyed him, and Frankie asked, taking out his knife to slice the rabbits, “You aiming to tell Morgan tonight, Dan?”

“No.” Dan’s headshake was firm. “At first light we’ll take a good look at where Luke made his find. Then, when Morgan does show up, we’ll tell him and see what he has to say.”

Next day, when Jasper Morgan arrived on horseback for his accustomed daily visit to the scene of his partners’ activities, he had plenty to say—little of it to their liking, Luke thought rebelliously as he listened.

Tall and well dressed, with his Colt revolver slung as always from his belt, Morgan dismounted and, throwing his horse’s rein to Frankie, inspected the nuggets with little visible sign of emotion, apart from a gleam in his dark eyes that swiftly faded. He said peremptorily, “There’ll be no going to the mining camp—understand that, all of you. If there’s even a whisper of our having made a find of this magnitude, the gully will be overrun. We want to keep it to ourselves, and we cannot hope to do so if any of you shoots his mouth off. If you want a drink to celebrate, I’ll supply it.”