Canaan

by Donald McCaig

  Later that month, Eben traveled to Washington City to see Amos Hayward, now private clerk to George Boutwell, the Treasury Secretary. Hayward told Eben that Secretary Boutwell was urging Grant to release Treasury gold but Dan Butterworth, head of the New York subtreasury, was making Fisk’s argument: that national prosperity depended upon unregulated competition, that American entrepreneurs must have their reward.

  Like every other Wall Street speculator, Eben had been buying gold. The western miners couldn’t produce it fast enough.

  Three days after President and Mrs. Grant returned Jay Gould’s beautifully appointed parlor car, Amos Hayward telegraphed Eben that Presi-dent Grant was wavering and Boutwell was getting the upper hand.

  So Eben sold gold. He sold the gold he had and he sold forward contracts for gold he did not have. With the money he realized selling these contracts he sold more gold.

  Friday morning, Eben Barnwell had five twenty-dollar gold pieces in his pocket. He was wondering how far he could get on one hundred dollars.

  “Another champagne, sir?”

  “Thank you, Randolph. It is you, Randolph?”

  “Yes, sir. Mr. Delmonico has the uptown staff here today. I’ve never seen it so busy.”

  “You, Randolph. Are you buying gold?”

  “Sir, I have purchased a few December contracts. My mother . . . sir, Mother once enjoyed a better station. I look forward to restoring her circumstances. Mr. Fisk says gold will hit two hundred before Christmas.”

  Eben drank champagne. “Randolph,” he said, “this stuff seems awfully thin. I believe I’ll have brandy.”

  At nine, when the Gold Exchange opened, gold stood at 152. By nine-thirty it was 156.

  In his pocket, Eben slid gold coins over one another.

  “What of Fisk?”

  “Fisk is buying.”

  “Grant’s brother-in-law—what’s his name?”

  “Mr. Corbin has not come out of his home today.”

  “Yesterday, Corbin was buying.”

  “I don’t give a hang for Corbin. I’ll take twenty at one fifty-seven!”

  Inside the William Street Gold Exchange, the crush was so savage that if a man raised his hand to bid, it was difficult to bring it back down. The air burned Eben’s eyes and at ten-thirty, with gold at 159, he stepped outdoors and stood panting like a dog.

  Nutley sat in his parked carriage, his face the color of chalk. “One fifty-nine, Barnwell. One fifty-nine. I am a ruined man. Who will provide for my family?” He jerked the blind down and his coachman flicked his whip and the carriage rattled off.

  Why hadn’t Eben considered his family? Pauline, who loved and trusted him? Little Augustus Barnwell, helpless infant and Eben’s pride and joy? Eben’s few gold coins might pay a single man’s fare west but never his family’s. What work could he find? Without his money, who was he? Eben perfectly recalled the Knapp brothers’ farm and the shivering, runny-nosed, frightened boy he had been. Why, he was still that boy! All Eben’s adult life he had been playacting as the confident, amiable, energetic Eben Barnwell.

  Eben squeezed his eyes closed and prayed, “Dear Lord. Please don’t let Pauline find me out.”

  Nutley would do the honorable thing: the scrawled letter of regret, the icy muzzle of a revolver at his temple.

  Eben did not wish to vomit into the gutter.

  The telegraph office floor was awash with discarded buy orders from Boston, Philadelphia, even San Francisco—orders at yesterday’s price: 145. At 145, Eben would lose fifteen dollars for each ounce of gold delivered. At 160, he would lose thirty dollars. At 200, clever Jim Fisk’s estimate, he would lose seventy dollars. Why, that was a phenomenon!

  TELEGRAM FROM EBEN BARNWELL to Amos Hayward, 9:45 A.M., September 24, 1869:

  ANY NEWS STOP BARNWELL

  Hayward to Barnwell, 10:16 A.M.:

  G AGREES WITH B STOP

  CONGRATULATIONS STOP HAYWARD

  Eben Barnwell’s heart leaped into the top of his chest and hung for an instant before resuming its everyday thumping. He gripped the counter to steady himself.

  He stumbled into the street and flagged a jitney cab. “Driver, hurry! You must hurry! Here is twenty dollars. You will have a second twenty dollars from Mr. George Nutley of 27 Stuyvesant Square when you deliver my message. I am Eben Barnwell. You are to say Eben is vindicated. Just that. Vindicated. No more. Can you remember? ‘Vindicated!’ For God’s sake, hurry!”

  Speculators scurried between the Gold Exchange, Del’s, and the telegraph office. Eben broke into a sweat. His teeth chattered. In London he always stayed at Brown’s Hotel. He wondered if Pauline would like Brown’s Hotel. He wondered if more land might be purchased for Stratford. Were any adjacent plantations for sale? He wondered where his young Augustus would go to college when he became a man.

  Most of Del’s tables were vacant, but speculators were three and four deep at the bar. Randolph attended him at a table beside a window. “One sixty, sir,” Randolph said happily.

  “I’ll have the consommé. Please bring me a bottle of Sillery.”

  “Not too thin, sir?”

  “I believe my palate—my palate was distressed.”

  “I’m fetching five glasses of brandy for one of champagne today, sir.”

  At eleven minutes to twelve, Friday, September 24, 1869, the telegraph announced President Grant would sell Treasury gold until the price had stabilized. The news flowed down the street to the Gold Exchange and into Del’s, where it was disbelieved, contested, hotly denied, and rebutted as Del’s emptied and men ran into the street, some to the telegraph office, others to the brokerage where Fisk and Gould had been all morning; where Jay Gould had been (as everyone later learned) selling gold.

  The mob would have done Gould and Fisk grievous injury if the pair hadn’t fled through a back door into the alley where their carriage was waiting.

  Wall Street’s anguish was worse than when Lincoln died. One man came into Del’s, ordered a bottle of rum, and, hoisting it to his mouth, drank, recorked the empty, and walked out as sober as he had come in.

  “Some bastards knew about this,” a speculator screamed, his finger roving from bewildered face to bewildered face. “Somebody was in on it.”

  Eben poured himself more champagne. It might have been water.

  “Gold’s at one thirty and falling,” someone shouted.

  Eben had imagined that becoming rich would make him happy; that he would shout his good news and buy champagne for everybody. Instead, he felt as if he had robbed someone.

  The weary, no longer runny-nosed, no longer frightened boy Eben Barnwell stacked four twenty-dollar gold pieces beside his glass as a tip for Randolph.

  CHAPTER 44

  WASHITU STRAWBERRIES

  JESSE CLEARED HIS THROAT. “I HELPED BUILD THESE FORTIFICAtions,” he said.

  Assistant Secretary Methuen said, “That so?”

  Jesse said, “In ’63, I was paid twenty dollars a month to work on Washington’s defenses. Seemed all the money in the world.”

  “Um-hum,” the assistant secretary said, consulting his watch.

  “Then I enlisted—38th USCT. Fought on the Petersburg line.”

  “They should have been here an hour ago. We can’t keep the river bottled up forever.”

  An assistant secretary of the Interior, James Methuen, and Jesse Burns, assemblyman from Richmond’s Marshall Ward, waited beside a fifteen-inch Rodman gun in a stone emplacement above the Potomac River. The gun crew and its captain sprawled on the grass smoking and enjoying the beautiful morning.

  On the broad sweep of the Potomac, gunboats prevented a flotilla of sail and steam vessels from proceeding downstream. Just visible through the gun captain’s glass, other gunboats performed similar service at the far end of this makeshift firing range. From cap to muzzle, the Rodman gun was twelve feet long. The largest rifled gun in the United States could hurl a fifteen-inch missile four miles.

  The assistant secretary fretted.r />
  The colored tailor who had made Jesse’s suit made the Virginia governor’s suits, and Jesse’s suit was the same cut though cheaper material. Jesse had admired a broad-brimmed beaver hat, but when the tailor rolled his eyes Jesse had purchased a bowler.

  This morning, on the Richmond, Fredericksburg & Potomac train Jesse’d folded his jacket across his lap. Consequently his garment was unwrinkled. The assistant secretary’s shirt collar was frayed, a jacket button hung loose, and his bowler had a quarter-sized grease spot above the hatband.

  Yesterday, the Richmond Customs inspector personally delivered the telegram to janitor Jesse Burns.

  EDWARD RATCLIFF ACCOMPANYING RED CLOUD

  PARTY STOP SECRETARY OF INTERIOR COX

  REQUESTS YOUR PRESENCE IN WASHINGTON STOP

  “What they want you for, Burns?”

  “Edward and I served in the army together, sir,” Jesse replied.

  “You’ll provide a full report, on your return.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You’ll commend me to Secretary Cox.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  When Jesse won election, Jimson had expected—Jesse didn’t know what—that the new assemblyman would have a fine job with a fine title and Jimson Burns, his campaign manager, might have a fine job too.

  When it didn’t happen, Jimson went back to the Knockabouts. Sudie pretended nothing was wrong—“He all growed up now”—after Jesse surprised her crying.

  When he told her he’d been called to Washington, Sudie asked, “Interior Cox, he important?”

  “He reports to President Grant,” Jesse said.

  “Jesse, why they want you?”

  “Because Edward is with Red Cloud and his Sioux indians, and I am Edward’s friend.”

  “But why would they want you?”

  Sudie’s not-insensible question was answered by Assistant Secretary Methuen, who met Jesse at the depot. “Red Cloud refuses to move his people to the Agency. He has outraged Secretary Cox with his demands. Apparently your friend Ratcliff has Red Cloud’s confidence. Chief Red Cloud won’t trust us but trusts a renegade negro.” Metheun shook his head. “I’ve seen Ratcliff’s army record.”

  “Edward was cited for bravery,” Jesse said.

  “He was court-martialed for striking an officer.” He grimaced. “Tom Custer, no less.”

  “Might be,” Jesse said in a thick slave voice, “Tom Custer needed strikin’.”

  The fixed smile on the assistant secretary’s face flickered as he registered then disregarded Jesse’s insolence.

  “We intend to show Red Cloud he cannot trifle with the United States. Jesse, you are an elected official and an employee of the United States Customs House.”

  “Assemblyman Burns,” Jesse corrected him.

  “To be sure,” Assistant Secretary Methuen said.

  In the Washitu year eighteen hundred and seventy, which Lakota call “the year when Many Strikes was killed,” in the Moon of Ripening Strawberries we left the Tongue and came to the North Platte to meet Red Cloud. It had been a bitter winter and hungry spring. Though Plenty Cuts and White Bull hunted far, blackhorns were scarce.

  Now, as I walked beside our travois, I put tiny, sweet strawberries into my mouth and the sky was as it always had been and the creeks flowed from the melting snow as they always had and my new baby stirred in my belly.

  After Plenty Cuts and I owned her ghost, Red Leaf took Low Dog’s place in my dreams and she told me my second child would be her sister. Dreaming with Red Leaf was as pleasant as my waking. One night Red Leaf took me to the great Washitu village where years before Low Dog had shown me the Seizers parading. So I was not surprised when Plenty Cuts told me Red Cloud would go to Washington City to meet the Great White Father and we would go with him

  Seizers met us at the railroad outside Cheyenne. Red Cloud and the Seizer chief smoked the peace pipe. The Lakota cheered as Red Cloud, Plenty Cuts, Red Dog, High Wolf, Yellow Bear, Lone Wolf, and Black Hawk boarded the train. The only other wives were Whistling Duck and Falls Down Woman.

  I had never ridden in a railroad wagon. The wagon swayed and shook and rattled like a wican’s rattle and hard black cinders came in the windows and warriors knelt at Washitu spittoons to be sick.

  Our wagon had hard benches for sitting and a tiny room where you could relieve yourself onto the speeding earth below. The wagon behind us carried fifty Seizers. The eating wagon in front had wallpaper and dark wood and brass lamps and it reminded me of Reverend Riggs’s parlor at Yellow Medicine Mission. Men as black as Plenty Cuts cooked meat and potatoes, but Lakota do not eat potatoes.

  Red Cloud and Plenty Cuts talked late into the night, Red Cloud asking Plenty Cuts about the Washitu, for surely they are a peculiar people.

  Our train stopped at the Missouri River, where we left it for a ferry. Seizers kept curious Washitu away with their bayonets. The train waiting for us on the other shore made thick smoke like green cottonwood.

  It was pleasant sitting beside the window as the grassland rushed by. When we stopped for coal and water, the Seizers wouldn’t let us get off the train. They were afraid we would run away. Open prairie became Washitu farms. Washitu villages hurried past, each bigger than the one before. I shuddered. “They are so many.”

  Plenty Cuts took my hand. “We will be in Washington City soon.”

  As a girl I had lived on the edge of the Washitu empire and as a woman that empire stretched to the Yellowstone River. Knowing that something is and seeing it are different things. So many farms, so many villages, so many towns, so many miles of railroad track, so many Washitu. When a hunter kills a blackhorn but does not skin it, after a time in the sun its skin falls away and the pale worms underneath are as numerous as the Washitu.

  JOURNALISTS AND OFFICIALS surrounded Red Cloud’s party as they approached the Rodman gun.

  Jesse put out his hand. “’Lo, Edward. I feared you were dead. My letters came back unopened.”

  Edward Ratcliff’s arms bulged from his elaborately beaded vest. His Medal of Honor lay on his bare chest and an eagle feather dangled beside his cheek. “Mail service ain’t worth much west of the Platte,” he said. “Damned if you ain’t dressed just like Ol’ Master.”

  “I am elected, Edward. Can we have imagined it? One of twelve negroes in the Virginia Legislature. Negroes can vote like the white man and Virginia’s readmitted to the Union. We will yet achieve equality.”

  “You won’t live that long.”

  “Then my daughter will harvest what I am sowing.”

  “Jesse, you ain’t changed none. I ain’t Ratcliff to the Lakota, I’m Plenty Cuts. This here’s She Goes Before.”

  Jesse lifted his bowler to his friend’s small bright-eyed wife.

  The gun crew assembled at the Rodman gun.

  Plenty Cuts said, “She’s shy, but she talks better’n I do. Reads and writes too.”

  “I will be truthful, Edward. I am here to influence you to make Red Cloud accept the government terms.”

  Plenty Cuts smiled. “Nobody makes Red Cloud do nothin’. He talks with the Big Bellies and he talks with the Shirt Wearers and he doesn’t say nothing until he puts it all together and when he talks he makes so much sense it’s like you thought of it yourself. The Washitu—white men—can’t figure him out. Red Cloud asks one thing then another thing and says no he never promised this and no he never promised that and when he’s got a good grip on their privates, he yanks ’em and the Washitu sing Red Cloud’s tune.”

  “Attention, please,” the assistant secretary said. “Sergeant Ratcliff, please interpret.”

  The gun crew were alert and confident.

  “This Rodman gun uses Mammoth powder, which is, I dare say, unlike powder you are accustomed to. Mammoth powder produces a steadier, more regular explosion.” The warriors fingered the fat hexagonal flakes. The women covered their ears.

  The gun crew uncapped the gun barrel and rammed a charge home. The gun captain sighted down the long
barrel, nodded his satisfaction, and jerked the lanyard. The big gun bellowed its projectile, which, as a black dot, was briefly visible high in its trajectory before it dove into a water spout miles downstream.

  After the gun captain lowered the muzzle, the next projectile skipped four times—like a boy’s stone in a pond. The gun captain grinned. When Red Cloud said something, the indians laughed.

  The assistant secretary demanded, “Sergeant Ratcliff, what does Chief Red Cloud say?”

  “Well, sir, Red Cloud says he could have four arrows in that gun captain before he could uncap the muzzle.”

  That evening, we rode in carriages to the house of the Great White Father. Plenty Cuts’s friend Jesse came too. He had been told to influence my husband. What do Washitu think of the Lakota? Are we such fools?

  We entered a long room where hundreds of candles in glass wheels suspended from the ceiling glistened and quivered and chased points of green and red and blue light around the walls. The Washitu have many powerful things, but this was the first beautiful Washitu thing I ever saw.

  The Washitu came in while I was admiring the dancing lights. The men dressed in black, but their wives’ gowns shimmered. Grant, the Great White Father, introduced his wife to Red Cloud. Grant’s daughter, Nellie, gave Red Cloud flowers and Red Cloud smiled at her. He had daughters too. A bearded Washitu chief bowed to Red Cloud and said he was Lord Murray, and had the honor to be Her Britannic Majesty’s ambassador. He asked how many Lakota (he said “indians”) Red Cloud represented. Red Cloud handed Murray the flowers and asked the Great White Father why the Lakota couldn’t trade at Fort Laramie where they always had and why wouldn’t the Washitu give them powder?

  The Great White Father said, “Tonight we smoke the peace pipe. Tomorrow we talk of serious matters.”