California Gold

by John Jakes

  Mack clenched his sweaty hands between his knees. He must have presented it poorly…

  Suddenly Hearst’s head snapped up. “I like it. A capital scheme. It’ll roast those fellows where it hurts most—in their wallets. I can loan you what you need to get started.”

  Mack thought it over for a few moments. “That’s very generous, sir. But if we’re to stay in business, and grow, I think we need a good solid banking connection—Something wrong?”

  Hearst was shaking his head. “You won’t get a dime from the local banks. They’re all snugly in bed with the railroad. If you’re willing to do business in New York, that’s a different matter. I’m on excellent terms with some bankers there. What about the vessel you propose to buy? Is she sound?”

  “She looks that way to me. My partner, Mr. Bao, swears she is.”

  “Good, we’ve already satisfied one key consideration in a bank loan—collateral.”

  Mack’s heart leaped at that. “Then you think we’d be able to arrange one?”

  “If Mr. C. P. Huntington doesn’t get wind of your dealings before the vessel’s yours. If he does, he’ll fight like a mountain lion. He has his own eastern connections. Powerful ones. If I know him, he’d pay many times the cost of that boat just to block your scheme. Huntington hates embarrassment, or any diminishment of the railroad’s power. Which is really his power.”

  Hearst jumped to his feet, startling Tessie, then ran to the rail with his characteristic bobbing stride. There he spun back, stabbing a finger out.

  “Our hope lies in moving fast. I’ll be back in town this evening and I’ll draft a telegraph message. It’ll be on the wires by midnight.”

  On Thursday of that week, Vasco found Mack in one of the paddocks. “Governor’s asking for you up at the house.”

  “I’ll go up as soon as I finish with—”

  Vasco snatched the pitchfork out of his hand. “Now.” Mack had never seen such a scowl, heard such curtness, from the Basque.

  Soon he stood before Leland Stanford in the sitting room. Dust motes danced their slow dance in bars of light falling between the lace curtains. For once the eyes of the governor showed emotion. On a marble table beside him, a file lay open, and Mack saw telegraph flimsies.

  “Young man…” The voice was as ponderously deep as ever, but anger quickened it a little. “It has been…brought to my attention…that you, as a principal…of something presuming to call itself…the Oakland Bay Transportation Line, have applied for a bank loan…in New York City…for the purpose…of buying a steam launch. You were assisted…by the offices of that damnable…lying puppy William Hearst.”

  “Sir, how did you learn that?”

  Stanford’s Buddha eyes regarded him. “Sir, you are not here…to interrogate me. Mr. Fairbanks…of the company legal department…conveyed the information.” Thick white fingers tapped the flimsies and the handwritten memoranda peeking out beneath. “He was advised…of the loan…by Mr. Huntington’s staff…in the East. What do you have to say?”

  Mack straightened his shoulders. Damned if he’d be intimidated.

  “That I applied for the loan for a friend, a Chinese the banks won’t deal with because the law doesn’t permit it. He’ll be the one operating the ferry.”

  “A specious answer, sir. You are involved. Do you…or don’t you…intend to compete…with the established ferry service…of the Southern Pacific Railroad?”

  “Yes, I do. It’s just what you say, Governor. Competition. Don’t you believe in competition anymore? I guess you don’t have to…most of the time.”

  Leland Stanford’s hand moved with sudden, astonishing quickness, striking the open file. A tiny vase holding silk flowers fell off the table and broke.

  “You are arrogant, young man. Arrogant…and insulting. I believe in protecting…my interests and my property. I gave you…a position here…in good faith. You have…abused my trust.”

  “I fully intended to come to you, to explain, and resign—”

  “Oh, did you? Why do I hear…a lie in that pious…protestation? You’re discharged.”

  “Don’t call me a liar. This is just—just business.”

  Stanford struggled from the chair like a great whale breaching. Mack thought he heard doors slide open, but he was fixed on the lobster face of the governor. Stanford was no buffoon; there was dangerous strength in his stance, and violence in his eye.

  “Get…out. Get out with your…juvenile threats…and your prattle of…business. Business…indeed. I am…the businessman here. You are nothing but…a grimy…upstart. You’ll see…who has power…in the City…my railroad…or a piece of…trash…like you…”

  Mack’s face turned just as red. “I’ll go, but we’ll break your damned monopoly.”

  “You…young fool. You’ll be the one broken.”

  “Leland,” said a woman’s voice from the doorway. Mack spun around and walked out past her, leaving Stanford wheezing like a donkey engine. In the hall, the governor’s wife rolled the doors shut and followed Mack.

  “My husband liked everything he heard about you until this happened. But nothing comes before business.”

  “Or money. Or property. It’s a good lesson,” Mack said, cold with fury.

  She had some of her husband’s toughness. Her poor weak eyes challenged him. “We did give you a job as well as money, food, shelter, generous allowances of time whenever you asked. Faithlessness is not a virtue, Mack. That is another good lesson—if you have the moral character to learn it. Which I now doubt. Be so good as to leave the governor’s house.”

  On the train to Oakland, Mack stared through the dusty glass, miserable with guilt. Some of what Jane Stanford had said was true. He’d betrayed an employer. Maybe the employer inspired, even demanded betrayal. Still, he never wanted to make that mistake again.

  Mack moved into Bao’s hovel. The seller’s attorney readily agreed to let them risk their labor before the loan was approved, so Mack and Bao spent long days scrubbing out the Grace Barton, touching up her paint, and checking out her equipment.

  In the evenings, Bao taught Mack how to cook Chinese dishes. Mack’s favorite was a sweet-sour soup with thin slices of black mushroom floating like anemone in the golden broth. He balked at learning to prepare a favorite delicacy, young dog.

  After a meal he usually took a stroll through the neighborhood. He liked the hardy, lively, energetic Chinese. They brightened their squalid huts with festive paper lanterns, and sold an amazing array of goods from wicker baskets and lacquered trays set out in their doorways: dried fish and goose livers, fresh vegetables, opium pipes and silk slippers, packets of face powder and hair combs made out of shells.

  One evening, as he was out walking the lanes, savoring the summer air full of buzzing conversation and sweet incense, he heard someone call his name. He saw Nellie running toward him, exuberantly waving an envelope.

  “From New York. Good news.”

  On Monday morning of the third week in July, the newly rechristened Bay Beauty accepted her first passengers at the Oakland municipal pier.

  At first the pier officials insisted it was illegal. Mack showed them the business license obtained with Hearst’s help. Then they objected to a Chinese in the pilothouse, and Mack said Bao was a passenger, not the pilot.

  “There’s the pilot.” He indicated a runty middle-aged man with a weathered face and no teeth.

  “That’s Bill Barnstable,” one official said. “Whiskey Bill. The SP fired him for drunkenness.”

  “He looks sober to me,” Mack said, and went on snugging lines to cleats with a distinct air of defiance. Secretly, he and Bao were worried about Barnstable, who was the only harbor pilot willing to sign on with them.

  But the neatly dressed passengers were very willing to ride. Mack and Bao had hired some street boys to hang outside the depot where the SP trains deposited commuters from the outlying areas around the Bay. There the boys passed out handbills advising the commuters of the availability of a
5-cent ferry. By 8 A.M. they had eighteen passengers aboard, and they heard only one complaint. “We’ll have benches soon, very soon,” Bao promised, smiling.

  Barnstable tooted the whistle and Mack cast off. He was exhilarated by the fresh morning, and what seemed like an ambitious start. The wink of a brown flask, hastily stowed out of sight by Captain Barnstable, didn’t bother him, but he felt less chipper when he noticed a hulking man with a long red beard watching the departure. The man pointed to Bao and said something to a pair of scruffy companions.

  Soon the swift little boat overtook one of the larger railroad ferries, El Capitán. Barnstable gave way to port and signaled that he meant to pass. Excited passengers rushed to starboard, waving their hats and shouting at their stunned counterparts on the larger vessel.

  “To hell with the railroad! Hurrah for the Oakland Bay Line!”

  The new little ferry spread a saucy wake as she passed El Capitán. Mack could see the furious faces of her pilot and crew and the amazed and disheartened faces of the SP passengers. He leaned far over the rail, trumpeting through his hands.

  “Only five cents on this line.”

  All of them heard.

  That night, in Bao’s hovel, they counted coins and currency.

  They’d been able to make only five round trips because officials on the San Francisco side had delayed them an hour when they tried to tie up with their second load. Barnstable defied the officials and put the vessel into the pier long enough for Mack to jump off and go running to the Examiner. Willie Hearst sent one of his lawyers back to insist that all the licenses were in order, and Bay Beauty could not be prevented from docking. The passengers, in bad temper because of the delay, swore they’d never again take a chance on the new line. Even so, at the end of the day, the owners were satisfied. Bao busily ticked off the beads on his abacus, then sat back.

  “Nine dollars and forty cents. The mountain begins to yield gold.”

  Mack felt fine and proud. “Only the beginning, partner.” His browned hand clasped the yellow one across the table.

  The first full week gave them a sense of their profit potential. Bay Beauty made ten round-trip crossings each day. Passenger loads were heaviest going over to the City in the morning and returning at night. On the trips between, with word of the service spreading rapidly, they began to attract women going to San Francisco to shop, and then a whole cross section of those with business on one side of the Bay or me other: domestics, day laborers, messengers, students. For the week, they’d averaged about fifty passengers per round trip.

  Bao clicked the abacus beads with astonishing speed. When he finished, his round face shone. “For ten trips, twenty-five dollars. In six days, hundred and fifty dollars. In one month, we will have six hundred dollars.”

  “Jackpot,” Mack cried, clapping his hands. “We’ll be able to buy a second boat.”

  “Yes. Soon we’ll have many.”

  “I expected more fight out of the railroad.”

  “Only one week has passed. We must be watchful.”

  That prompted a decision to move their belongings to the ferry, so they could guard her at night. Mack had stored the guidebook in the hovel while he lived there, but there were too many risks of water damage on a boat. He asked Nellie to keep the book safe. She said, “Of course I will. You put such stock in this. I intend to look into your Mr. Haines someday. Discover who he was, what he did.”

  Bao kept meticulous records. Using a pointed brush he recorded everything—number of trips, passenger count, how much coal bought and consumed—in a small rice-paper book. Soon Chinese characters filled all of its pages and he started a second book.

  At the end of their third week in business, the SP began to fight back.

  They were on their way to the City, second trip of the morning. Heavy whitecapped waves rolled at them from starboard. Captain Barnstable zigzagged, alternately taking the waves on the bow and the quarter. It allowed for a safer trip, but cost them speed.

  Mack stood in the pilothouse with the captain, relishing the sight of the passengers packed on the deck below. Inside the main salon, formerly the card and barroom, he had installed eight hand-built benches, and those too were occupied. Bay Beauty rode low in the wave troughs this windy morning.

  “…the night the Golden Star blew up and sank, Captain Straws had his whore aboard and wasn’t paying no mind to the river. I was his deckhand, a mere lad. I believed Straws when he introduced the tart as his wife.”

  Barnstable loved to tell stories of the old days, when Sacramento swarmed with paddle-wheel boats carrying the dreamers and the disillusioned up and down the river. The story had temporarily diverted Mack from watching the Bay traffic fore and aft. Suddenly a passenger shouted something and gestured, and Mack turned to the stern.

  High as a tall house, an SP ferry loomed. It was the Santa Clara. She was close enough for Mack and Barnstable to discern the face of her pilot, fierce and hawkish, pressed to his window.

  “What the hell’s she doing?” Mack said. “She’s too close.”

  Barnstable snatched the whistle halyard and blasted her with a warning signal. Lumbering, gigantic, Santa Clara bore down. A few passengers watched from her spray-swept decks. Those on Bay Beauty were starting to exclaim in alarm.

  “She must give way to pass,” Barnstable growled. “We stand on. Rules of the road.”

  “She isn’t going to give way.”

  “By God, I won’t.” He recognized the SP captain and flourished a fist at him. “What are y’trying to do, Septimus, kill us?”

  On the stern deck, Bao Kee wigwagged his arms to warn off the larger vessel, but still she plowed ahead, not fifty yards behind, the battering waves affecting her less than they did the smaller craft. Bao dashed up the pilothouse steps. A wave broke over the starboard bow, soaking passengers there. They yelled and cursed.

  “Turn,” Bao shouted, practically thrown into the pilothouse by the ferry’s sudden rise on the next swell.

  “I’ll not,” Barnstable shouted back, and yanked the halyard. Five short blasts: collision warning.

  Bao seized him and threw him aside. He pulled the halyard twice, two short blasts to signal his intent to alter course to port. Then he flung the wheel over.

  Mack nearly went through a window headfirst. Captain Barnstable reeled around, screaming, “Mutiny!” Mack heard the roar of Santa Clara passing and saw the malicious faces of her master and crew glide by above.

  Then the bow wake hit them. Bay Beauty nearly broached and a cry went up that a passenger had fallen overboard. Frantic, Mack clambered down the slippery stairs and flung a preserver out to the man. They hauled him aboard safely but he promptly vomited up water. When he left the ferry he promised a lawsuit.

  They ran back to Oakland empty except for one Irish housemaid, who huddled on a bench inside, clicking her rosary beads. Barnstable sneaked a fortifying swig from his brown bottle. Bao Kee caught him and took the bottle away. All of them finished out the day in a bad mood.

  A hand-inscribed letter arrived at the Oakland First National Gold Bank, where they deposited their daily receipts. It was from Fourth and Townsend, and was addressed to “The Proprietors, Oakland Bay Transportation Line, Gentlemen.” A cold legalistic paragraph asked them to name the purchase price of the line and all its assets, stated that the railroad would pay a 5 percent premium for a sale closed within thirty days, and requested the favor of immediate reply. Mack showed Bao the signature: “Walter Fairbanks III, Assistant General Counsel.”

  Bao’s pensive gaze stayed on the fine parchment letterhead with the railroad’s name engraved. “It is war in earnest,” he said.

  “They lost this round.” Mack tore up the letter and threw it into Bay Beauty’s galley stove, where the flames disposed of it. “Not for sale,” he added with a smile.

  When Nellie came aboard for a Saturday-night supper, she confirmed that the war was indeed in earnest.

  “Collis P. Huntington registered at the Pal
ace Hotel this afternoon—six weeks ahead of his regular semiannual visit. He’s hopping mad about the nickel ferry. In the past, Huntington’s never tolerated competition any longer than it’s taken him to get rid of it. He hasn’t changed.”

  “We’ll worry about that later, Nellie,” Mack said. “Sit down, please.” He wore a canvas chef’s apron. A bottle of dark red merlot from a Saint Helena winery stood on the galley table, already uncorked.

  At the stove, Mack checked his skillet. “Just right.” Then he served up the fragrant mixture of scrambled eggs, bacon, and fried oysters on three stoneware plates. He poured the wine and took his seat, beaming. “Hangtown fry. Dig in.”

  “I’ve heard of it but I’ve never had it,” Nellie said.

  “Pa brought the recipe back from the diggings. It’s supposed to be the dish a condemned man requested for his last meal. You couldn’t get bacon or eggs very easily in the mines, let alone oysters, so the man figured it’d be some time before they hanged him.”

  Bao laughed and Nellie clucked in a skeptical way. “You’re both in a wonderful mood, considering that you’ve succeeded in bringing the great Huntington, and his wrath, all the way from the Atlantic seaboard.”

  Mack raised his wine cup. “We’re going after a second ferry. We decided this afternoon.”

  She clicked her cup with his. “My, you are feeling expansive.”

  He was; he felt jubilant, successful, and brimming with love for this small, bright girl, even though they hadn’t made love, and had hardly kissed or embraced, since Yosemite.

  He told her about the Fairbanks letter. “Getting that offer is enough to make a man feel like David after he knocked out Goliath.”

  “I hope your story comes out the same as the biblical one,” she said. “This Goliath is far from dead.”

  She wasn’t joking.

  The next week passed with no further harassment by the railroad. Passenger loads remained steady, and they began to carry small freight parcels from businessmen who heard they undercut the SP ferries by 30 percent.