California Gold

by John Jakes

“I want you off the property now. I’ll find a man to drive you into Newhall.”

  Wyatt thought it over, then lifted one shoulder casually to consent. It was so easily done, so relaxed and pleasant. Somehow it frightened Mack more than Wyatt’s ranting.

  “Sure—I’ll go. I don’t expect we’ve seen the last of each other, though. In fact you can count on it. Let’s find that driver. Partner.”

  31

  THE SOUTHBOUND OVERLAND EXPRESS slowed down.

  Mack snapped back the lid of his gold pocket watch. A few minutes after 1 A.M. on a Friday in June 1895. He put his tablet aside and leaned toward the window. Black out there—not a light showing.

  He sat back and reflected on the irony of traveling on the line he hated. The accommodations were comfortable enough. He was riding in a first-class Silver Palace sleeper similar to those of Pullman’s. A powerful ninety-ton 2-8-0 pulled the train. He’d observed the locomotive carefully before he boarded. It was one of those manufactured in company shops at Sacramento and had a straight stack—coal-burning—and the name RED FOX handsomely painted on. Too bad the men who financed Red Fox lacked the plain solid honesty of their engine.

  The elderly conductor came tiptoeing through. The other passengers had retired into curtained berths, but Mack had asked the porter not to make up his space, two seats facing each other, into a berth. He didn’t plan to sleep.

  The conductor was a paunchy man with yellowing bags under his eyes. He noticed Mack peering out the window.

  “There’s heavy fog tonight. We slowed down for the Tehachapi Loop.”

  Mack nodded and the conductor passed into the dark. The Loop was one of California’s engineering marvels. Ten miles north of the four-thousand-foot pass, and the start of the descent to the Mojave, the line twisted through the mountains on five levels. At one point a train chugged into the tunnel for which the Loop was named and came out directly below the point of entry. If the train was long enough, passengers could watch part of the same train going the opposite way.

  Mack’s shirt collar was open, his vest unbuttoned. On the seat opposite lay his reading material: John Muir’s new book, The Mountains of California; several issues of The irrigation Age; the latest number of Land of Sunshine, a new illustrated magazine promoting Southern California; Overland Monthly, a literary journal Mr. Bitter Bierce called the “warmed-overland monthly”; the Fresno Morning Republican, headlining the Supreme Court’s decision upholding injunctions against Eugene Debs, the railway labor leader who’d brought America’s rail traffic to a halt the previous year until federal troops broke the strike.

  Mack had laid them all out and hadn’t picked up one. He was struggling with a letter. He tore his sixth attempt off the tablet and applied his pencil to a clean sheet.

  Dear Nellie,

  Writing to you on the trip south from the Central Valley. Just bought more farmland there, a fine tract of 14,000 acres near Fresno. The promises of that old guidebook are finally coming true. I am striking more kinds of gold than I ever imagined—

  Air brakes hissed and iron squealed on iron. The passenger train was slowing again, perhaps for the station. A series of stop-and-start lurches shook the car. Behind an upper-berth curtain, someone muttered fretfully.

  but what I really want to tell you is that I am sorry your last visit ended the way it did. I am not involved with that woman you met—

  Frown lines cut into his brow. He hated lying. Was Nellie worth it? Yes.

  and never have been in any serious way. Can you please get away from Mr. H. for a few days, come down and discuss it? I want to show you a certain place I have picked out to build a new—

  More lurches and—rattles. The train crawled forward. He scowled and peered out. A few distant lights sprinkled the dark diffuse, misty lights. The fog was soupy, all right.

  Suddenly a ferocious lurch fluttered the low-trimmed wicks of the kerosene lamps mounted above him. Other passengers awakened and began to ask questions of each other. The car smelled of dusty carpet, bed linen, the kerosene in the lamps.

  From the shadows of the vestibule the conductor called out softly, “Tehachapi Summit. The station is Tehachapi.”

  Mack decided to stretch and take the air. On his way out he passed the berth of a Scandinavian couple, who were traveling with their daughter. He heard the wife. “What do you see, Nels?”

  “Blasted fog, dat’s all.”

  Yawning, Mack clambered down the steps to the platform of a spartan passenger station. Electric lights inside were muted by the cold wet fog, the thickest he’d ever seen. The station was empty. He gazed through the pane at the silent telegraph key. Why was no agent on duty?

  The baggy-eyed conductor trudged back from the engine swinging his bull’s-eye lantern, its tilting beam slicing the fog like a broadsword.

  “Can’t proceed till this fog thins out,” he said. “It’s a real hazard up in these mountains. The engineer hopes it will clear in an hour or so.”

  Passengers in robes or rumpled clothing poked their heads from the first- and second-class cars. One man climbed down and cornered the conductor. “We’re on the main line, aren’t we? Shouldn’t we wait on a spur?”

  “Only one line through here. There are no other trains this time of night.”

  Mack spied something at the end of the train, something that sent a nasty tickle of worry up his spine. Beside the track, the lens of a two-sided signal lantern shone green.

  “Conductor, even with no trains, shouldn’t that signal be red?”

  The Scandinavian couple appeared, the stocky wife wearing a hairnet heavy enough to catch trout and the husband attired in a fine satin robe, nightshirt, and pointed Turkish slippers.

  Mack was watching the conductor. Something was wrong and the man knew it. He tried to cover it with hasty assurances. “Oh, it’s some mechanical problem, that’s all. I’ll have the brakeman see about—”

  A train whistled in the dark. Loudly, stridently. Mack’s heart hammered. The train was behind them, chugging rapidly down the grade.

  “Jesus and Mary,” the conductor whispered, crossing himself. The passengers began to mill about and exclaim, consternation soon changing to panic.

  “That’s a down-bound train—”

  “On this track. Scatter!”

  “Kirstin,” cried the wife. “Nels, Kirstin’s asleep.”

  Her husband’s thick Scandinavian speech lapped hers. “Others, too—”

  “Get them out of there, conductor,” Mack yelled. Pop-eyed, the conductor raised his lantern and stared at Mack, his mouth working soundlessly. The roar and chuff of the unseen train grew louder.

  Nels, the husband, ran toward the rear, waving his arms. “Stop, hold up—” He lost one slipper, then the other. “Stop!”

  A broad white beam slashed around the last curve before the station. Intensified by its mirrored reflector, the headlight flooded the platform and the standing train with a glare as brilliant as a burst of lightning. The train itself appeared with a crescendo roar. Mack had a glimpse of the balloon stack of a woodburner. Shoving the paralyzed conductor aside, he ran up the steps and kicked open the door of the Silver Palace car.

  “Everybody get out—right now!”

  The engineer of the down-bound train signaled the impending calamity with a screaming whistle. Mack ran along the car, shaking curtains, shouting. “Wake up, there isn’t a minute to—”

  Impact. Crushing, crashing, hurling the car and the train forward with a violent motion. The lamps over Mack’s seat shattered. Hot oil splashed from the broken reservoirs and ignited. A woman poked her head from her berth, saw the fire, and began screaming. Mack struck her with an open hand. “Be quiet, get out, save yourself—”

  He heard another terrified yell behind him. Then he felt the car start to tilt off the rails. Everything was leaping flame, writhing shadow, the snap of breaking timbers, the yelp of bending metal. And above all, there were the screams.

  The shrillest came from the
berth of the Scandinavian girl. Evidently she was trapped. He fought toward that end of the car, a hopeless effort because the car was falling over. He lost his balance and tumbled into the open seat he’d occupied. Muir’s book and all his other reading were afire.

  Mack smashed down against the outer wall, now the bottom of the car settling on its side. His head slammed the frame of the broken window and he almost slashed his throat on jagged glass.

  Flame from the burning cushions ignited a shirt cuff and his vest. He fought to stand up, slapping out the fire. Passengers, bloodied and screaming, crawled or stumbled toward the ends of the car. Up and down the train, the screams multiplied.

  The worst was still the girl’s. What was her name…?

  He roared it. “Kirstin!”

  “Here! Who’s that? I’m caught—help me!”

  He had trouble reaching her. Choking smoke filled the aisle. He had to crawl and clamber over the berths that now formed a floor for the car. Tearing the curtains off the girl’s berth, he found her huddled in tangled bedding, hands jammed to her throat, blue eyes round and wild. He yanked the covers until he unsnarled them, freeing her. What had really imprisoned her was her own fright.

  “Reach up. Arms around my neck. Quick.”

  She obeyed. Coughing, he lifted the girl out of the berth and teetered there, trying to decide. The end of the car? No, fire from his seat had leaped across the aisle. He found the partition separating the girl’s berth from the next. “Kirstin, hold on to this wall.”

  “Don’t leave me here, oh please don’t.”

  “I won’t—be quiet.” He ripped down the curtains of the berth across the aisle; it was now above him. He braced himself, then crawled up into the berth and beat at the window with his elbow. Turbulent red smoke almost hid the girl beneath him. He struck the glass again.

  Again.

  Again—

  The window broke and he shielded his eyes and face, but not in time, the glass slashing his cheek and opening a long cut on his forehead. A fleck lodged under his left lid, a needlepoint of incredible pain. “Oh, Christ.” He blinked and blinked, felt tears well in the eye. Then, mercifully, the needle was gone.

  Fire spread rapidly now, brightening the car’s interior. “Kirstin, take hold. I’m going to pull you up and boost you through this window.” She saw the ragged glass all around the window frame and cowered.

  “Come on,” he yelled, and grabbed her wrist too hard, hurting her. Never mind a broken bone; this was a question of her life. He wedged himself in the berth and somehow dragged her up. Then he put a hand under her hip and shoved.

  “Somebody out there help this girl!”

  Voices, then heavy footfalls, a man running along the side of the overturned car. “Yes, coming. Here, girl—”

  In a moment Kirstin was safely in the man’s arms out there in the firelit murk. Mack gulped sweet damp air, listening to a bedlam of questions, the crackle of fire, the wailing of the frightened or injured. He reached through the dangerous glass-toothed opening to find a hold and lift himself to safety—

  He heard a voice, a feeble male voice. Someone else trapped. Save yourself, something said to him, but he didn’t listen. He dropped back inside. The smoke was acrid, almost opaque. Covering his nose and mouth with his handkerchief, he heard the faint plaintive voice again.

  “I can’t move. I think my leg’s broken.” Mack’s face poured off sweat. The cry came from the other end of the car, from a berth beyond the flames that created a hot bright barrier across the aisle, just where he’d been sitting. I don’t want to do this, he thought.

  He knuckled his eyes, dragged a blanket from a berth, folded it, and wrapped it over his head for protection.

  Then he held his breath and ran toward the fire barrier, and through.

  Mack rested in his double bed in the cottage. He’d designed the room with a wide window beside the bed; that way he could always wake to the sight of the derricks pumping money from the ground.

  His arms and shoulders were dressed with cotton batting over a paste of oxide of zinc and ground acetate of morphine, the latter for pain relief. Roller bandages held the batting in place. He’d been lucky—no burns worse than first-degree, and those over a limited area. A smart young doctor up in the mountains had minimized the burn damage by soaking him in cold water in a horse trough, then applying household molasses.

  His eyelids tended to droop; that was the opium tincture the local doctor prescribed for pain. Mack was ashamed to lie helpless in front of visitors. Sickness was unmanly.

  Nellie sat on a chair, Bierce behind her. They’d shown up with no advance warning. Nellie looked tired and uncharacteristically pale, but Bierce was his elegant self in a spotless ivory suit and vest and a flowing bow tie.

  Bierce laid a small book on the coverlet. “That might amuse you while you recuperate.”

  Mack picked it up: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians. “Yours?”

  “Yes. The usual portions of grue and vitriol. Read it when you hate the world.”

  “Not right now,” Mack said. His tongue felt thick and clumsy. “I’m thankful to be alive.”

  “You’re a hero,” Nellie said. He’d rescued the girl Kirstin, and then the man trapped in his berth. Nellie’s tone conveyed her pride.

  “If you don’t think so, Uncle Willie’s minions will make sure,” Bierce added.

  “Are you two down here to write about the wreck?”

  “Naturally,” Bierce said. “Rushed to the scene by another special train from the beloved SP. Frankly, it’s a relief. For weeks I’ve been flogging the Crime of the Century, as our proprietor christened it: A sleazy little Sunday-school superintendent at Emanuel Baptist did away with two of his female pupils. I can find nothing else sensational or titillating to say about the undergarments of the deceased. We came on from Tehachapi to see how you were. Tenderhearted Nell insisted.”

  She reddened, embarrassed. Bierce ignored her. “That was an unscheduled work train, you know, with an inexperienced engineer. Further, when word of the train passed down the line by telegraph there was no one at Tehachapi to receive it. The agent was malingering in some deadfall.”

  Mack hitched higher against the bolster. “I noticed the station was empty. I also saw a green signal that should have been red.”

  “They still don’t give a damn about the safety of passengers. We’ll roast them with our usual crusading verve.”

  “Not that it’ll do a lot of good,” Nellie said. “Fairbanks is already paying off the passengers. The one man who was killed worked for them.”

  “The conductor,” Mack said.

  “Yes. He was crushed when the cars overturned. His widow filed a damage suit in San Francisco, but we had a telegraph message this morning saying she’s withdrawn it.”

  “Why would she do that?”

  Bierce sighed. “What a naif you are, Mack. I expect she realized that silence and a pension are superior to justice and poverty.”

  “Bastards.” Mack stretched to take Nellie’s hand. “I’ve said it before: I’ll help you nail them one of these days.”

  She kept her hand just out of reach. After a nervous glance at Bierce she cleared her throat. “I hope to be able to do a much better job of that in New York.”

  Mack’s stomach twisted. “You’re going?”

  “Not immediately. But I’ve made the decision. Mr. Hearst is off in Europe with Tessie. Before he left, he sent our business manager, Charley Palmer, to New York for preliminary negotiations. There are four newspapers for sale. The Times, Advertiser, Recorder, and the Morning Journal. Mr. Hearst plans to buy art objects in Europe, and then come back and buy one of those failing papers.”

  “Oh, the Journal, by all means,” Bierce declared. “It’s so cheap and racy. They call it the chambermaid’s delight. Onward and upward with the bright banners of journalism.”

  “When is this likely to happen?”

  Nellie said, “Before the end of the year, I should think.
Mr. Hearst wants me to be the sob sister. And keep an eye on Mr. Huntington’s tricks. At the moment, Huntington’s other priority besides the harbor is the railroad’s debt to the government. It goes back to the days of construction in the sixties. Huntington wants Congress to cancel the debt, or reduce it drastically. That would be fraud on a mammoth scale. It’s disgusting.”

  “It’s the dear old Southern Pacific.” Bierce patted his various pockets one by one. “Here a legislator, there a legislator—soon you have exactly what you want.”

  “Ambrose,” Mack said, “would you leave us alone?”

  Surprise erased his sardonic smile. “I beg your pardon?”

  “I need to speak to Nellie privately.”

  “Certainly. If I hear any sounds of unbridled lust, trust me to remain discreet.”

  He turned away. Nellie watched the back of his jacket with visible desperation. She didn’t want to be alone with Mack.

  Humming, Bierce closed the door.

  Mack wasted no time on polite preliminaries. “Nellie, forget New York.”

  She dabbed at her stubby little nose—a nervous, unnecessary gesture. She wasn’t a woman given to showing anxiety. But he saw it in her eyes now.

  “And do what, Mack?”

  “Marry me. I’ve bought a fine piece of land in Riverside—”

  “More property?” She laughed in a hollow way. “You’ve become a spendthrift.”

  “I’m rich. I’m making investments. Don’t change the subject. The property is beautiful, up on a hill in a subdivision called Arlington Heights. Orange groves cover most of the acreage. I’ll show it to you when the doctor lets me out of this damn bed.”

  She folded her hands and sat still, gaining control.

  “What is it?” he said. “Carla Hellman? Would I be proposing if she meant anything to me?”

  Nellie shook her head. “Afterward, I was so ashamed of what I did. I only flared and walked out because I do care for you. Deeply. Your proposal is tender, and lovely—”

  “A man covered with white goo and doped with opium isn’t tender or lovely.” A pause. “But he means it.”