If I Never Get Back

by Darryl Brock

  “Talk,” Jackson told Johnny.

  “It’s a Keplinger holdout,” Johnny said, his words running together. “Named for the fella invented it. Used to work in the circus. Did magic tricks. Saw him once and—”

  “Whoa,” said Jackson. “Just tell how it works, and we’ll check this gent to see if you’re right.”

  Le Caron sat like a coiled spring. Across from him, McDermott’s face was ashen.

  “It’s a contraption with pulleys and cords and telescoping tubes. You spread your knees and a sneak—that’s a little claw inside a double sleeve—moves down your arm to your hand. Close your knees, it goes back up. Makes cards appear or disappear. A Keplinger’s safer than the type that just shoots a spring up your arm and pulls it back with a rubber band, see, ’cause you gotta bend your elbow to make it work, and suspicious folks look for that, but never the knees, of course—”

  “And you’re saying this gent is in cahoots with the dealer?”

  “He fed his partner those tens,” Johnny said, “and you’ll find a fifth one—or maybe the fourth king you never had a chance of getting—in that holdout right now.”

  “It don’t much matter what’s in it,” Jackson said, turning to face Le Caron, “but whether he’s got one.” He stood up and jerked the table back from Le Caron. “Okay, put your arms out in front of you and spread your knees, like the nigger said.”

  Le Caron raised his arms slowly, bringing them up even with his head rather than stretching them in front of him. Just as I wondered about that, a suspicion danced in my brain.

  “Look out!” I yelled as he widened his knees and a card materialized in his left hand. “Watch his other—”

  It was too late. As eyes fixed on the card fluttering from Le Caron’s left hand, a knife blade flashed in his right. Positioned to throw, his arm blurred downward in a deadly sweep.

  Gunfire exploded in the room. I spun low and dove at the man behind. Johnny had the same idea, wheeling a split second later but moving so fast that our bodies brushed as we hurtled forward. I felt a hot whisper on my scalp as a gun erupted. We slammed into him, toppling him backward beneath us. The gun went off again. I reached frantically for it, guts knotted and body writhing in anticipation of a bullet ripping into me. His knees came up, bucking Johnny violently. I slammed my right forearm into his face, still trying to grasp his gun hand with my left. Johnny got there first—just as the gun fired again. He yelped in pain and rolled away. Then I had the man’s wrist pinned to the floor. I battered his head with short, brutal blows until his grip loosened on the pistol. Pulling Johnny in close, I propped the groaning, half-conscious man up as a shield.

  I peered over him in time to see Le Caron crash through the room’s only window. Jackson and Colbourn moved there quickly, their boots crunching shards of glass. They fired a volley through the window, reloaded, and stalked cautiously outside. McDermott lay against the wall, half covered by the overturned table, coins and cards spilled over him. He was groaning and his face was white. A dark flower of blood spread slowly on his coat below his right shoulder. Another man at the table lay still, facedown, on the floor.

  Le Caron’s knife, we learned, had passed between Jackson’s left arm and his side, inches from his heart, grooving his flesh and thudding into the wall behind him. Both Jackson and Colbourn had sent bullets into Le Caron before he upended the table as a momentary shield. McDermott, on the floor, made the mistake of reaching into his jacket. Jackson shot him before he could free his weapon. Le Caron produced a gun from somewhere and fired wildly to cover his dash for the window. Jackson was positive he’d nailed him again on the way. With three bullets in him, they figured they wouldn’t have much trouble tracking Le Caron down. They were wrong. He vanished in the darkness. In the morning we found a trail of blood leading out into the desert; and that too disappeared. I hoped he’d died under a bush somewhere.

  Johnny had grabbed the barrel as the gun fired. The bullet tunneled through his palm. The wound was ringed by ugly powder burns. The doc, a cynical, shaky-handed old drunk resigned to treating gunshot and stab wounds virtually every night, did a reasonably neat job of cleaning and bandaging it. He said the hand would never close as tightly as before and gave him a laudanum compound for pain.

  McDermott got less sympathetic treatment. Cheating at cards—at least getting caught at it—was a greater wrong here than manslaughter. McDermott was roughly patched and taken off to jail. The dead man was ordered hauled away by the sheriff. We were all questioned, and it was duly established that Jackson and Colbourn had acted in self-defense. The sheriff said he’d take a posse after Le Caron the next day. There was a reward for him; if we helped we’d have first crack at a share of the bounty. We didn’t jump at the chance.

  “Obliged to you’n the nigger,” Jackson said as we moved along the street. It was after midnight. During the fight he’d looked quick and agile, but now he walked laboriously and used his cane. “My brother”—he shrugged slightly as Colbourn turned to scowl at him—“said we shouldn’t get into that game, but I was of the mind we could hold our own.” He laughed and said, “‘Man born of woman is of few days and full of trouble.’”

  “Thank God you happened to be in there,” I said.

  “Looked like they intended you deadly harm,” Jackson said.

  “We had some problems back East,” I said. “They came here looking for me.”

  “I don’t guess they’ll be fit to look farther. The half-breed’s likely dead—we got him in places that don’t heal easy—and that Irishman won’t be laughing again for a spell.” He chuckled softly, a nasal sound. “Tell you what, after you get to Frisco, come on down and pay us a visit, place called Paso de Robles. Know of it?”

  Colbourn turned and stared.

  “Paso Robles?” I said. “Past Salinas?”

  Jackson shrugged. “County of San Luis, all I know.”

  “Christ, Dingus,” said Colbourn. “He’s a newspaperman, Yankee to boot!”

  Jackson spun toward him, pointing his cane like a pistol. “Don’t curse me, Buck.” He waited a long moment, then reverted to his friendly tone. “We’re fixin’ to spend some time at our uncle’s place.”

  “This ain’t right,” muttered Colbourn.

  “Paso de Robles Mineral Springs,” Jackson said, ignoring him. “We’re wintering there to raise my health up. Hot mud, clear baths, iron and magnesia in the water. Take a steamer down from Frisco. You’d be welcome.” His hazel eyes did their nervous blink. “Ask for us or D. W. James.”

  “Thanks,” I said, thinking that hot baths or no, visiting these guys would be about as much fun as dancing with a cactus.

  It wasn’t until later, in the paling light of the false dawn, lying on my cot, surrounded by hellish snoring, my imagination conjuring vivid pictures of Le Caron skulking outside the canvas walls, that I heard Jackson say the name of his uncle again in my mind: James.

  Chapter 26

  We traveled in elegance on the Central Pacific. Our Silver Palace car had dazzling white-metal interiors, spacious berths, private sitting and smoking rooms. Johnny was deep in laudanum-induced slumber as we stopped at stations scattered across the desert like rocks. Water lay in stagnant ponds so alkaline that cattle wouldn’t touch them unless they were dying of thirst. Because alkali ruined boilers, special water trains had to run daily to supply the stations.

  With no scenery to look at, passengers turned to each other to pass time. Jackson and Colbourn were in another car now—we exchanged nods at station breaks—and Johnny and I were sandwiched between two excursion groups. One consisted of ruddy Englishmen packing a small arsenal. They talked incessantly of the game they expected to kill.

  The other group, merchants and wives, was from Washington. One of the Washington men came over just after Johnny had taken the last of his laudanum and nodded off again. In soft southern accents he said his name was Kramer. I got the feeling he was glad to escape his group—or maybe just his wife. A baseball enthusiast,
he was curious about Harry and the Stockings. He responded to my questions about wartime tensions in the capital with anecdotes in which Lincoln figured as a buffoon. A staunch Democrat, he had little use for the martyred president or his ruinous policies.

  “What about Grant?” I asked.

  “A common drunk, glorified for butchery. The Radicals have him in their pocket.” Kramer paused. “Have you followed gold?”

  Only to Elmira, I thought. “No, why?”

  “One in our party is close to Grant’s son-in-law.” He pursed his lips. “Close enough to hear things.”

  “Like what?”

  “He’s buying gold fast as he can.”

  “Why? Does Grant set the price?”

  “No, it fluctuates in the open market. But what Grant does—or doesn’t do—influences that market. Two groups are competing for his support: ‘bulls,’ who invest heavily in gold shares and oppose all printing of greenbacks; and ‘bears,’ who own millions in paper currency and fight anything that boosts gold—such as its greater use for money. Each group constantly lobbies the government.”

  “What’s Grant done?”

  “That’s the point. Absolutely nothing. Everybody is waiting for him to take a position.”

  I thought for a moment. “So if you knew in advance, you’d clean up?”

  “That knowledge would be of truly inestimable value to an investor.”

  “And so Grant’s son-in-law—”

  “—is obtaining all the gold he can,” Kramer finished. “A consortium of powerful buyers is driving the price higher. People with gold certificates are getting rich.”

  “What’s the risk?”

  “Only one thing could ruin it: if Grant instructed the treasury to release gold reserves, deflating the market.”

  “That won’t happen?”

  Kramer shook his head. “He’s so sick of being yammered at that he’s privately decided to let the bulls and bears fight to the finish, then set his policy.”

  Johnny groaned and shifted in his sleep, his hand hurting him again. I worked a cushion beneath it. He was sweating. I fanned him until his breathing deepened.

  “What if some of the big buyers dumped their shares?” I said. “Wouldn’t that collapse the whole thing?”

  “You grasp these matters quickly,” he said. “The consortium’s agreement is not to sell any shares whatsoever until gold reaches two hundred dollars.”

  “Where’s it now?”

  “One thirty-seven. Only two days ago it was one thirty-three.”

  “So it’s already started.”

  He nodded solemnly.

  “Are you in?” I asked.

  “With everything I own,” he said cheerfully. “Already I’m richer by fourteen thousand. If I cared to sell, that is, which I certainly do not. Keep your eye on things the next few days. There’s still time to make yourself a pile. Chance of a lifetime. And the more that go in, naturally, the bigger the profits for us all.”

  “I see.”

  He looked to the front of the car. “Pardon,” he said, with little discernible joy. “My wife requires me.”

  After that, whenever our eyes met, Kramer winked.

  Elko, Nevada, was supposed to be only a supper stop, but with our locomotive developing a “hot box”—an axle bearing overheating dangerously from friction—we limped in for a longer stay.

  Like Promontory, Elko was booming. A large Chinese settlement lent it a different tone, but esthetically it still had a long way to go. The ever-present alkali dust swirled in head-high clouds, stirred by mule trains and eight-horse stages clattering off to the White Pines silver mines.

  Johnny stayed in our car to rest, his appetite blunted by the laudanum. Most of the others headed for a hotel restaurant. I held back, having no stomach for more fried meat. I was about to buy some fruit from a vendor when a Chinese boy walked by. He wore the customary blue overshirt and pants, wooden clogs, and round hat from which a braided cue stretched nearly to his ankles. Looking at him, I had an inspiration.

  “You wan’ my food?” he said incredulously when I overtook him. “Chinee food?”

  I held out two silver dollars and nodded. He looked at them in astonishment. Meals along the CP ran a buck and a quarter. To a Chinese boy whose family lived on a fraction of what whites earned, my offering must have seemed a small fortune.

  “Not ’nuff,” he said, eyeing me shrewdly. “Fo’ dollah!”

  The little bandit! The trouble was that suddenly I was ravenous for Chinese food. I handed him two more dollars.

  He led me through narrow packed-dirt alleys. I asked questions about the settlement and gathered that it consisted mainly of discharged CP workers. Groups moving along the alleys or standing and smoking cigarettes stared at us, the babble of their conversation slowing momentarily. I sensed no hostility, merely curiosity. There were no women anywhere in view. He led me inside a frame shack where I sat on the floor before a low bench.

  The food was worth every penny: heaping bowls of steamed vegetables and rice, dumplings filled with spiced pork, succulent chicken and duck, and apple-shaped pastries coated with melted candy. I plied my chopsticks as fast as I could.

  Onlookers surrounded the repair crew. The harried engineer said it would take several more hours to fix the axle. I had a mug of coffee in the station and picked up a day-old paper with the caption ACTIVITY IN WALL STREET'S GOLD ROOM. Volume was heavy and the price had risen from 139 to 141 dollars an ounce. Hadn’t Kramer said it was 137 dollars? I thought of Twain’s thousand dollars. Wouldn’t gold be more sensible than a flying machine?

  I stopped by the telegraph desk. A boy about nineteen sat self-importantly behind the key.

  “Anything about gold over the wire today?”

  “You’re ’bout the hunderth to ask.”

  “What’d you tell the other ninety-nine?”

  “That’s a dandy!” He slapped his knee. “What’d you tell the other ninety-nine!”

  I decided he was simple, not putting me on. “Do you know today’s closing price?”

  “Up over one forty-two,” he said. “Everybody says it’s just the beginning.”

  “I suppose you’re in too,” I said.

  “Would if I had the cash.” He grinned. “I know who has jumped in on the sly.”

  “Who?”

  “Mrs. Grant, that’s who.”

  Was the first family really so flagrant, I wondered, that every yokel in the Nevada desert knew their business?

  I drank two more coffees and watched the uninspired panhandling of several ragged Sochoche Indians. Then I walked back to the train. The moon was just beginning to climb over the horizon. I took a gold eagle from my pocket and stared at it. It gleamed with the reflected radiance of ten thousand stars overhead.

  Reno was the CP point nearest the fabulous Comstock mines, which for the past decade had channeled limitless millions through San Francisco into the world. The place was well-equipped for financial dealing. After breakfast I found a Wells Fargo office on North Virginia, where I learned that already the price of gold had risen fifty cents that morning. That decided me. With fourteen hundred dollars of my letter of credit, I purchased a certificate for ten ounces of gold.

  I hurried back to the station thinking that the few times in my life I’d tried slot machines, I’d never hit for more than a handful of quarters. This time the jackpot would be bigger. Much bigger.

  With a second locomotive attached to our train—doubling the noise and smoke—we moved out of the Nevada basin upward into the pine-sloped Sierras. I saw yellow wildflowers that reminded me of backpacking trips I'd made near Tahoe. As we crossed the California border I felt my heart beat faster. This was home.

  Evergreens covered the mountains like shaggy blankets, broken only by the log chutes used by timber crews to stockpile quick-hewn railroad ties. We climbed the twisting canyon of the Truckee and came upon a magnificent view of Donner Lake. Predictably, guidebook accounts of the ill-fated Donner Part
y, embellished with grotesque details, echoed through the car.

  Near Cisco we lunged into darkness. The train butch laughed at our startled reactions. Lighting the car’s lamps, he informed us we were in snowsheds extending the next fifty miles.

  “Just when we get country worth seeing,” Johnny said.

  Snow here didn’t drift like eastern snows, but lay in mammoth caps. The CP, at a cost of twenty thousand dollars per mile, was enclosing everything. Stations, tracks, water tanks, woodsheds, turntables, stalls for locomotives—all were to be roofed over before next winter’s paralyzing storms. Fortunately for us, sections remained where we could see through unfinished walls.

  At almost every station Indians, mostly Shoshones and Paiutes, climbed in and out of the baggage cars. One Paiute chief stalked through our car in stately fashion with a blue blanket draped around his shoulders and a ragged black hat on his head. The CP, tiring of attacks on its crews and trains, had showed more acumen than the UP by issuing free passes to tribal leaders; hostilities ceased immediately.

  From the snowsheds only a hundred miles remained to Sacramento. Half of it was a roller coaster of straining ascents, breath-squeezing curves, and stomach-wrenching descents. Brakemen ran atop the cars spinning the brake wheels—air brakes didn’t exist yet—adjusting to prevent the cars picking up too much speed. Or separating from each other due to uneven braking. Or going into a skid if wheels overheated from friction. Only two brakemen worked the entire length of bumping cars. Their thudding feet overhead reminded us how close we were to catastrophe.

  We careened through Blue Canon and Dutch Flat and Gold Run, halted at Cape Horn to look down a dizzying abyss at the American River, a green ribbon two thousand feet below. We thundered through another stretch of snowsheds, where, reflected in the windows of workers’ houses, I saw our axle boxes smoking and our wheels glowing like fiery discs.

  After hours of it we finally leveled off and emerged into the brilliant sunshine of the Sacramento Valley. At our next stop we sniffed the air and gazed around in wonder at flower-strewn meadows watered by curving streams. After the desert wastes and the Sierra chill, it all seemed like paradise. We stood silently. Insects buzzed. Birdsong floated around us.