Bound for Gold--A Peter Fallon Novel of the California Gold Rush

by William Martin

  LJ put up his hand, apologized, and stood, “Dad, I have to take this.”

  The maître d’ gestured toward a door at the end of the buffet. “The cell-phone booth is that way, sir.”

  LJ told his father, “Check your email. I sent you the first section of the journal, just to whet your appetite. Passed down from Maryanne Rogers, typed by my secretary.”

  “So that means we only have to find six?”

  “See? The job is already easier than you thought.”

  Peter took out his phone and saw first that he had a text from Evangeline: “RE: weekend. Driving or AMTRAK? And what ETA in NYC?”

  After a two-month “trial separation,” Peter and Evangeline were planning a weekend in New York. Plays, museums, dinners, all on her turf.

  Peter didn’t want to blow her off. But his son almost never asked him for anything. So he texted back: “How about trip to San Fran instead? Doing job for LJ.”

  Text answer: “Are you lying? No using son as excuse.”

  “No lie. Come along. On me. Separate beds.”

  “Side trips? Just pitched article on California old-vine Zins.”

  “Side trips to old-vine vineyards, yes. Side trips with old-vine boyfriends … up to you. Although a certain boyfriend unavoidable.”

  That boyfriend would be Manion Sturgis, Spencer descendant.

  Her answer: “OK. I’ll book the Mark Hopkins. Separate beds.”

  “Drinks at the Top of the Mark, on me.”

  Then Peter clicked to the email, opened the link to the journal pages, and saw the beginnings of a grand national adventure. Sixty pages, starting on January 10, 1849. He glanced up at the portrait of Thaddeus Spencer, who would have been hanging right there on that very day, then he began to read. And to his astonishment, the first entry brought him to exactly where he was sitting.…

  The Journal of James Spencer—Notebook #1

  January 10, 1849

  My Iliad Begins

  The day had come. I had made my decision. I would do what drove me and not what tradition prescribed.

  I know that this displeased my father. Thaddeus Spencer may have passed on to the heavenly counting-house where God now provided him with ledgers to balance and coins to number and then to balance and number again, like Sisyphus on holiday, but his eyes still stared down upon me from his portrait, as they would upon any who ever again called for a plate of oysters or a tureen of duck liver pâté in the Arbella Club dining room. And those eyes did not approve … of anything.

  I had determined, as our friend Richard Henry Dana had put it, to serve my time “before the mast,” to live fully in the world of men, visit our distant shores, and write of my adventures. I would “see the elephant” before settling down to a life as remunerative and yet as unremarkable as my father’s. And so, on that bright, cold Wednesday, I had invited to the Arbella Club my brother and five women whom I loved or merely tolerated—sometimes simultaneously—so that they might hear the words of two men named Samuel, one who always encouraged me and one who left me quietly intimidated.

  I had not revealed that last bit to my mother. I had forewarned her of my announcement, so she was unhappy enough already. She took her seat at the round table, with her husband’s portrait peering over her shoulder and her other children flanking her like an honor guard, and she pursed her lips at me in long-suffering disappointment.

  To her left sat Diana, the slightly more cheerful of my siblings.

  Beside Diana, the portly Samuel Batchelder, editor of the Boston Transcript, admired the champagne bubbling into his glass. To his left, his wife, Hallie, maintained a stream of happy chatter about the depth of the snow in Louisburg Square, the beauties of the new Boston mural on the wall behind me, and the miracle of the even newer, green-and-gold Belgian-loom carpet on the floor.

  My brother, Thaddeus Jr., sat at Mother’s right like the Spencer prince regent, a title that was his inheritance by virtue of his place in the birth order and his due by virtue of his efforts in the family business.

  His wife, Katherine, a meddlesome ninny with a crinkling eye and an irritating laugh, was crinkling her whole face in my direction, as if the prospect of planning a spring wedding appealed to her almost as much as the prospect of spring itself.

  The object of her speculations, Miss Janiva Toler, sat next to me.

  Our recent appearances about town—at museums, musicales, and poetry readings—had set Boston to wondering. Would this be the young lady to capture James Spencer? The answer would be no … for the moment. And when I returned from my adventure, the answer might still be no … forever. It was a chance I had to take.

  Until she graced you with her smile, Janiva usually presented a dour expression to the world. But on this day, her jaw seemed to have grown so heavy with disappointment that she could do no more than keep her mouth tightly shut, or it might drop open, causing her to resemble one of those old women who wears lead-matrix dentures and goes about looking as if the weight of the world may not be on her shoulders but is surely in her mouth.

  The heaviest weight at the table, however, the true force of gravity, sat opposite Sam Batchelder, between my sister-in-law and Janiva. He did not make much in the way of small talk but greeted each guest cordially, then took his seat and allowed the conversation to flow around himself as the rock allows the stream.

  While the ladies were most solicitous of him, the coolness of his demeanor suggested that he did not find female attentions unusual. Of course, the ladies would have been solicitous even if he were not, as my sister whispered when he entered the dining room, “as darkly handsome as Byron himself, in black velvet cutaway and gold waistcoat.” Samuel Hodges’s wife had died eleven months earlier, leaving him with two small daughters. So ladies were inclined to see tender bereavement beneath his black brow. I saw the rock and the rock-hard surety of an experienced man.

  The waiters—in crimson cutaways and breeches—finished pouring the champagne. Then the two Samuels exchanged glances, and Batchelder raised his glass.

  “A toast,” he proclaimed, “to the monthly ladies’ lunch and our female guests, who bring to this masculine space a refinement that inspires us all.”

  “Here, here,” said Hodges, and we gentlemen concurred.

  Hallie Batchelder, who was happily taken in by her husband’s charms, gave a giggle, took a drink, and said, “Oh, Sam, you’re too kind.”

  My mother, who had never been taken in by charms of any sort—which may have explained her attraction to my father—barely touched her glass to her lips.

  “And now”—Sam Batchelder aimed his glass at Hodges and me—“to the Sagamore Mining Company. May they pass safely to California and leave there a bright example of New England democracy … while leaving with all the gold they can carry.”

  It was plain that this toast brought consternation to the table.

  My sister, easily consternated, said, “Who are the Sagamore Mining Company?”

  “We are,” I answered. “Samuel Hodges and I and ninety-eight more, a joint stock company going to the Gold Rush on the ship William Winter. We leave Friday.”

  “The Gold Rush?” said my brother.

  “That crazy thing in California?” said my sister.

  “The very thing,” said I. “And a real thing. So says the president of the United States.”

  “But the wedding,” said Katherine. “I thought this was about the wedding.”

  And Janiva broke her silence. “There’s not to be a wedding … at least for now.”

  “Oh, James,” said Katherine, seeing her spring plans fade, “how could you?”

  “A fair question.” My mother pursed her lips even more tightly.

  Hallie Batchelder tried to change the subject. “I … I love champagne, so decadent in the middle of the day, and so icy cold.”

  “Chilled out in the snow, my dear,” said her husband.

  “From the faces I see around me,” said Samuel Hodges, “we might have chilled it r
ight here at the table.”

  “Forgive us, Mr. Hodges”—my mother haughtily raised her chin—“but I had hoped for news of my son’s engagement to Miss Toler. Instead we learn that he is bound for a barbarous shore and foreign country.”

  “The territory of Alta California is now an American possession, ma’am.” Hodges spoke neither aggressively nor defensively, as if facts were facts and needed no adverbs. “It’s been so since the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo last year.”

  “I daresay,” offered my brother, “had Mexico known of the gold, they might have driven a harder bargain.”

  “I doubt it,” said Hodges. “They are an inferior people.”

  “How do you come by such knowledge, sir?” asked my brother.

  I explained that Hodges was supercargo for the Boston Leather Works. “So he’s been to California many times to procure hides.”

  “They called you Bostoños, do they not?” asked Sam Batchelder.

  Hodges nodded. “When word goes out that a Boston ship has entered the great bay, the rancheros slaughter their cattle by the thousands to trade.”

  “What leads you to conclude that they are inferiors?” asked my sister.

  “Why, their indolence, miss. They take only the hide and leave the rest to rot in the open country … sirloin for the vultures, rump steak for the dogs.”

  The plain-speaking Mr. Hodges was bringing a harsh new level of discourse to the ladies’ lunch. “These Spaniards and their Mexican serfs are not worthy of California’s bounty. I’m glad we’ve taken it from them.”

  “All I know,” said my mother, “is that California is more than six months away.”

  “There’s no time to waste, then, is there?” said Sam Batchelder.

  My mother turned her eye onto our old family friend. “What are you after, Sam?”

  “Dispatches from the Gold Rush,” I said, “And I’m going to deliver them. I’ve always wanted to be a writer, Mother, not a businessman. This is my chance.”

  My sister said, “What makes you think you’re even half the writer that Dickie Dana is? You’ve never written anything more than a love letter in your life.”

  I was tempted to say that she should not comment on love letters, as she had received so few of them. But I would not see her for a very long time, so I refrained from hurting her feelings and said, “I know that I’ve written too many ledger entries.”

  And Hodges took my part. “Your brother will chronicle our efforts, miss, to show New Englanders how a noble band of their own kind shapes a world-historical event.”

  “Noble?” My brother scoffed. “How noble can a shipload of fortune hunters be?”

  “How noble?” Hodges swung his big head at my brother, like an ox swinging a horn at something that annoyed him. “In California, we will demonstrate the quality of our breeding, sir. A hundred Christian New Englanders, all signing articles of incorporation, all putting up bonds of three hundred dollars apiece for tools, food, and provisions, all prepared to confront the disorder and chaos of California—”

  “Just a moment”—my brother raised a finger, a gesture of pure pomposity learned from my father—“James can make his own decisions about where he goes and what he does. He’s twenty-four. He’s of age. But if he’s pledging company funds—”

  “You are a small-minded man, Mr. Thaddeus Spencer, Junior.” Hodges’s tone could have chilled a jeroboam of champagne, let alone a few glasses.

  Sam Batchelder tried to thaw things. “Now, Thaddeus, the fact is that the Transcript is putting up the bond for your brother.”

  “If you think it’s such a good idea, Sam, why not go yourself?” asked my mother.

  “Someone needs to stay and edit your son’s dispatches. Besides”—Sam patted his belly—“I’m too fat.”

  “You get seasick, too,” said Hallie.

  “So does James,” said my mother.

  “Seasickness passes,” I said.

  “Death does not,” answered my mother.

  “Oh, Abigail,” said Sam Batchelder, “they’re picking up gold by the fistful out there. A series of dispatches from one of our own? It’ll be a sensation.”

  As my elders batted my fate about like a shuttlecock, my eye was drawn to the waiter filling Hallie Batchelder’s water glass. He was new and was doing something unheard of on the staff. He was listening to our conversation, listening with such rapt attention that the glass came close to overflowing.

  But no one else noticed him. They never noticed the waiters. They were all listening to Sam Batchelder tell my mother, “Half the young men in America are headed west, half of Europe, too. Don’t keep James from the story of the century.”

  “The story of the century,” asked my brother, “or the myth?”

  “The myth, yes”—my sister rolled her eyes—“the myth of the Golden Fleece.”

  I was beginning to think that I should have left without saying good-bye to anyone but Janiva. So I asked them, “If Miss Toler understands, why can’t my family?” I took her hand, which rested on the table beside mine. And her touch told me that she did not understand … or approve. It was limp and cold. And suddenly it was wet.

  The waiter had reached between us to fill her glass, which overflowed and spilled onto her sleeve. He snatched the towel from his arm and sopped the water on the table. Then he began daubing at Janiva herself.

  She pulled away. “It’s all right. It’s quite all right.”

  Hodges said, “Pay attention to your own business, mister, or I’ll have your job.”

  “Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.” The waiter hurried away.

  But something about him annoyed Samuel Hodges, whose dark eyes followed him all the way to the kitchen door.

  Sam Batchelder, however, kept talking. “This is no myth. A tea caddy containing two hundred and thirty ounces of fine gold, carried across the continent by military courier, put on display in Washington? That is evidence of glittering reality.”

  My brother scoffed. My sister rolled her eyes. My mother pursed her lips.

  * * *

  CONVERSATION CALMED AFTER THAT, perhaps because even when upset, the Yankee stomach is always ready for chowder, which was soon emerging from the kitchen.

  An ancient waiter named Jonas led with a silver ladle and a towel on his arm.

  The new man followed, holding the tureen with the grandest of ceremony, extending it to arm’s length, moving with a measured gait, not taking his eyes from it, as if by watching it he could keep from sloshing it. But he was not only ceremonious. He was slow. And the tip of his tongue peeked out of the corner of his mouth, proclaiming that he was nervous, too. Whatever experience he had gained from life had plainly not come in service. Nevertheless, he arrived at the table without spilling a drop.

  I gave him a nod, as if to let him know that I approved. He winked, as if to say that he had just put one over on all of us, except perhaps for me.

  Ladies first, Jonas ladled, and the aroma set my mouth to watering.

  But our new waiter seemed distracted. Jonas had to give him a hard jerk of the head to bring him along from my mother’s place to my sister’s and so on.

  Sam Batchelder watched the chowder fill his wife’s cup as a child watches the cutting of his own birthday cake. “Hurry, Jonas, before the ladies’ chowder cools.”

  “I can’t wait.” Hallie Batchelder dipped her spoon.

  My mother pursed her lips at the woman she sometimes called “Hungry Hallie.”

  Jonas stepped to Janiva’s shoulder and again jerked his head.

  My brother said, “Our new man’s a bit of a laggard, Jonas. What’s his name?”

  “It’s Michael, sir,” answered Jonas.

  My brother flicked his eyes at the new man. “Where do you hail from, Michael?”

  The waiter said, “Unh … I … I hail from … the … the—”

  “Come now, man,” said Hodges, “you must know where you were born.”

  “The British Isles, sir.”

&n
bsp; By now, everyone had noticed his accent.

  Hodges gave a snort, as if deciding whether to charge. “Which British Isle?”

  Through clenched teeth, old Jonas whispered, “Go back to the kitchen, Michael. You’re wanted in the kitchen. Go back. Go.”

  “Which British Isle?” repeated Hodges, as if he already knew the answer.

  My brother stroked his beard and said, “The second largest of them, I suspect.”

  “That would be Ireland,” said my sister, forever proud of her geographical knowledge, though she had seldom traveled much beyond Boston Light.

  “You mean this fellow’s Irish?” said my mother. “Irish? Call the club secretary.”

  “Hightower!” shouted my brother. “Mr. Hightower!”

  Mother grumbled, “Bad enough that we have to put up with them on our streets—”

  But for the muffled sound of Hightower’s footfalls on the new carpet, the dining room had gone quiet.

  Jonas reached for the tureen. Michael pulled it back, sending creamy hot chowder sloshing and splattering. I jumped up to avoid it and snatched Janiva out of the way, too.

  Hallie Batchelder gave out with another, “Oh, dear.” And while she was distracted, her husband slid her chowder over and spooned some into his mouth.

  I might have found the whole scene hilarious, except that Hodges had picked up his butter knife and was wiping it off so methodically that it appeared something he had done before, with sharper knives. Skinning knives, perhaps.

  So I put myself between Janiva and the Irish waiter and told him to hand over the tureen.

  He looked into my eyes, then into the chowder, as if deciding whether to give it to me or throw it at me. He was slightly shorter than I, not much older, with black hair and refined features quite unlike those of the ape-like Micks caricatured in the newspapers. He glanced at Hodges, then he grinned and proffered the tureen, “If you think you can do a better job, sir—”

  By now, the cadaverous Mr. Hightower had reached our table. “Back to the kitchen with you, Michael. There’s dishes to be washed—”

  “—and debts to be paid.” Michael Flynn plunked the tureen on the table and retreated.