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

by William Martin

  The ground sloped away gently behind the saloon, rolling a hundred feet to the river that ran shallow and summer-sluggish.

  “They call the river the Miwok,” said Cletis, “named for the Injuns still slinkin’ around here somewhere. The town they named after an old boy who heard men shoutin’ on the bank and reckoned he’d best get down there and stake a claim. Went runnin’, tripped on a rock, fell on his chin and—”

  “Broke his neck?” I said.

  “Died like a damn fool after travelin’ all the way from Pennsylvania.”

  “So we’ve arrived, then?” asked Flynn.

  “Arrived at the strike. That’s why there’s two or three hundred fellers buzzin’ around here, and why the gamblers and grog merchants is set up, waitin’ to take their gold ’fore it’s even assayed. But this ain’t for us.”

  Just then, someone shouted from the side of the road. “Cletis? Cletis Smith?”

  “In the flesh,” said Cletis.

  The man came over to Cletis’s horse and offered a hand. “I thought you was dead. Heard you was jumped by a bunch of Greasers down in the valley.”

  “So I was. They took everything. Called it a toll for crossin’ their land. I got it back with the help of my new pardners.” Cletis introduced us to Drinkin’ Dan Fleener.

  Drinkin’ Dan squinted at us through his right eye. A patch covered the left and scars radiated out from it. “If Cletis speaks well of you, you must be right fellers.”

  “Right fellers, for sure,” said Flynn.

  I took his hand. It was big and gnarled and felt like wood rather than flesh.

  “So we got a strike here?” asked Cletis.

  “Already pulled out eighteen ounces.”

  “What’s the claim size?”

  “Miner’s Council done the usual: a hundred square on the flats or the hills, a hundred runnin’ feet along a ravine or a dry gulch.”

  Cletis took a chaw of tobacco and offered the rest of the plug to Drinkin’ Dan. “So, this strike is already big enough for a miner’s council?”

  “Gotta have rules.” Drinkin’ Dan took the tobacco and stuffed all of it into his mouth. “I’m on the council myself.”

  Cletis looked at us. “The richer the soil, the smaller the claim, so everybody can get a share.”

  Drinkin’ Dan said, “You’re welcome to use my tent for the night, boys.”

  “Nope. We’ll be movin’ upstream. But we’ll be seein’ you.”

  “Thank you kindly for the chaw,” said Drinkin’ Dan.

  And we rode on, leaving the noise and lanterns of Broke Neck behind.

  As deeper we went into the darkening country, Cletis said, “Remember, never give up more news than you get. And if you hear of a big strike, go a mile upstream. Chances are, if there’s gold in one bend of the river, there’ll be gold in another.”

  Then he pulled his horse suddenly and raised his hand for quiet.

  I felt my mount tense and skitter, but I put a strong hand to him and he held firm.

  Slowly, Cletis reached into his saddle pack and pulled out the blunderbuss.

  Then I heard something grunting and scuffling in the bushes nearby, something huge, from the sound of it, something powerful from the wide swath of brush that was spreading and cracking before the shadow of it, something moving off to our left and up the hill.

  After another silent minute, Cletis whispered, “Grizzly.”

  “You mean, there’s bears around here?” said Flynn.

  “Biggest damn bears you ever did see. Don’t tangle with ’em, especially the she-bears when they got their cubs with ’em.”

  Then he gave us a wave, let us go past, and brought up the rear with his gun at the ready, in case the bear decided that we might be worth eating. But the bear went one way, and we went the other, and I was damn glad of it.

  * * *

  WHETHER CLETIS SMITH DECIDED to stop because he had found his spot or because it was too dark to keep going, I could not tell. But after another half mile, he led us down to the riverbed and across to the other side.

  “Why are we crossin’?” Flynn asked.

  “I like to camp facin’ north. Just a way of doin’ things. You got any complaints?”

  “Not at all.” Michael Flynn had a powerful propensity for complaint, but he appeared ready to take whatever Cletis said without dispute. So we followed Cletis up the slope of the south bank, up about thirty feet to a big skull-shaped boulder.

  When he dismounted, we did, too.

  “Just unpack what you need for the night. We can do a bit of prospectin’ in the mornin’, but I don’t expect to find much around here.”

  “Why?”

  He pointed across the stream to the only other camp in sight. “Chinks.”

  “Chinks?” said Flynn.

  “You mean, Chinese?” I said.

  “Chinks,” repeated Cletis. “Not many Chinks around, but enough that white miners don’t like ’em workin’ new claims. The only kind of minin’ Chinks get to do is siftin’ the tailings that white men leave. If you see Chinks, you won’t see fresh gold.”

  “Do they ever cause trouble?” I asked.

  “They’re too afraid.”

  “Just don’t touch their women,” said Flynn.

  “Women?” Cletis Smith spit a bit of tobacco. “No Chink women in the diggin’s.”

  “I had the pleasure of meetin’ a few in San Francisco,” said Flynn. “Ever heard of a woman named Ah-Toy? She’ll give you a flash of her cooch for an ounce of gold.”

  “Is that a fact?” Cletis broke off another chaw of tobacco and stuffed it into his cheek. “Does China cooch go sideways, like they say?”

  “Straight up and down, just like a white woman’s, and as pretty as the sunset.”

  “Well, that’s somethin’ to think about,” he said. “A man could get rich sellin’ cooch up here, no matter if it was white, red, black, or yellow.”

  We pitched our tent next to the boulder, under the tall pines.

  We ate bacon and flour cakes cooked in the fat. Then we passed Flynn’s jug. When we were done, I announced that on the first night, I would wash the dinner pans.

  Cletis laughed and said he would be washing no pans, not that night or the next or the one after that. He said that in gold country, you didn’t bother with such things. Time spent crouched by the riverbank was best spent swirling a pan, not washing it.

  Perhaps, but for tonight, I would wash the dishes in that river rolling down from the mountains.

  Though there was still a bit of light in the sky, I carried Cletis’s lantern and set it on a rock. Then I crouched and washed, using handfuls of river bottom to scrub away the bacon fat. I rinsed one tin plate and put it aside. Then I scrubbed another and watched the current spread the sandy gravel and grease like a cloud.

  Then I sat back on my haunches and listened to the chatter from the camp of Chinamen. It sounded strange, heavily syllabic, tonal yet arrhythmic. I could not imagine myself learning such a language, nor could I imagine one of them learning to speak mine, so clipped and logical, each word comprised of no more than twenty-six sounds.

  Then one of them began to play a flute. The sweet trill of it carried above the burble of the running water, a magical sound, almost romantic in its lonely beauty.

  I let it wash over me, hoping perhaps that it might cleanse me of the horror I had seen that day. But I sensed already that ugliness and beauty, shocking violence and gentle quiet, existed side by side in this wild country. So I had best prepare myself.

  I grabbed another handful of sand and scrubbed the last plate, rinsed it in the river, swirled it, held it to the lantern light to see that it was clean, and saw something flicker.

  I leaned closer, and my heart jumped. It almost jumped out of my mouth. If such things could happen, it would have, because my jaw dropped wide open. I had reached into the river and swept up a fistful of gravel laden with gold.

  For the second time that day, I could not speak.


  And for the rest of the night, I could not sleep. Neither could Michael Flynn or Cletis Smith, U.S. Army retired. We had found “color.” We would know in the morning if we had struck it rich.

  THREE

  Thursday Morning

  “BROKE NECK WAS ABOUT six miles from the Sturgis vineyard,” said Peter.

  “You mean it’s gone?” asked Evangeline.

  “Most of those camps just disappeared when the gold played out.” Peter put his finger and thumb on his iPad and swiped so the satellite image zoomed in. “There’s the Miwok River, where Spencer found gold washing dishes.” He drew his finger south-southwest across the screen. “And there’s the Sturgis vineyard.”

  She studied the screen and said, “You’re coming with me, then?”

  “Sturgis invited me. Wouldn’t want to disappoint him.”

  “I’d rather have you along than have him hitting on me.”

  “He’ll hit on you anyway. But I need to see that country for myself.”

  They were in the Nob Hill Club, the hotel’s downstairs restaurant. Peter wished they served breakfast in the Top of the Mark. Twenty-six bucks wouldn’t be so bad for the buffet—coffee, pastries, lox, bagels, yogurt, “assorted” juices—if you got a great view along with it. But San Francisco was a high-priced town. It always had been. Peter didn’t need an old Gold Rush journal to remind him of that. So he spread cream cheese on his bagel, layered on the lox, added a few capers, and … heaven.

  Evangeline had just come down. She was wearing jeans, cowboy boots, a blue silk shirt, and a suede sport coat. Perfect for vineyard walking. Her hair looked blow-dry bouncy. But she seemed a bit groggy.

  She had taken coffee and a croissant from the buffet. That’s all. That this made them the most expensive coffee and croissant since the Gold Rush was not something Peter pointed out. Sarcasm, like comedy, was all about timing. And with Evangeline, the best timing was after she’d had her first cup. When he asked her how she slept, he did not even add, “in your separate bed.”

  “Exhausted enough to fall asleep right off. Agitated enough to wake up at four.”

  “Jet lag.”

  “A travel writer knows how to power-sleep through jet lag. You stay up all day and go to bed on local time. But if your after-dinner stroll includes angry Chinese locals and tong-boy Robin Hoods, it might be hard to get back to sleep once you wake up.”

  “Wine-tasting will be more fun. No Chinese gangsters in Amador County.”

  “And no Chinese girlfriends introducing you to pissed-off relatives.”

  “I thought you didn’t do sarcasm in the morning.”

  “That came out wrong.” She took a sip of coffee. “I like Mary, like her a lot. But a lot happened yesterday. A lot of moving parts to fit together. Like the ancient Ah-Toy telling tall tales to Mary’s grandmother about bags of gold—”

  “Or rivers of it.”

  “—then Ah-Toy pops up in Spencer’s journal.”

  “Did you finish it?”

  “I read myself back to sleep. Got to the part where they’re going up the river.”

  “They’re going up the river, and my son asks me to go with the flow.” Peter ate the last of his bagel. “Upstream in 1849, upstream today.”

  “And I thought you were coming because you’re jealous.”

  “I am.” He drained his coffee. “I’m also planning a side trip.”

  “Side trip?”

  “Field research.”

  Her cell phone vibrated. “It’s the driver. He’s outside.”

  * * *

  IN THE LOBBY, PETER noticed that woman again, the one with the red hair and the blue pantsuit.

  He stopped and looked right at her. She was scrolling through her phone. He supposed that if she’d wanted to disguise herself, she could have been reading another newspaper. Much easier to hide behind. So he should not have been so suspicious, but he stood for a moment in the middle of the Mark Hopkins lobby—small but as ornate as a Versailles sitting room—and her eyes met his.

  The message in hers: total disinterest.

  Evangeline tugged Peter’s arm and pointed through the front door. A guy in a chauffeur’s jacket and cap was standing by a big black SUV. He was holding a sign: “Ms. Carrington/Manion Gold Vineyards.”

  At the same moment, the concierge called, “Ms. Ryan—”

  The redheaded woman put away her phone and made for the concierge’s desk as he bragged about the theater tickets he had just scored for her.

  Peter whispered to Evangeline, “She was in Portsmouth Square last night.”

  “I didn’t notice her, and the red hair is pretty hard to miss.”

  “She was wearing a hat. But the sunglasses—”

  “She’s not wearing sunglasses now.”

  “She put them on yesterday when she followed us out of the hotel. Then she made a call. Probably bringing in somebody else to follow us, like the guy who jumped onto the cable car after us.”

  Evangeline gave her a longer look. “You also said she was carrying yesterday. But that jacket is cut to fit. So, no shades, no sidearm. Do you think she’s taking today off?”

  “By hanging in a hotel lobby?”

  “It’s a nice lobby. You can stay here and watch the world go by and score a few theater tickets.” The heels of Evangeline’s boots tick-tocked across the marble floor. “Or you can come with me. Your choice.”

  Peter was going. He had a plan. He’d stay with it and keep a clear eye. He threw one more look over his shoulder and followed Evangeline out.

  Larry Kwan, the chauffeur, was a middle-aged guy with a wide face, a friendly manner, and a roll of belly fat that made him look like he didn’t sweat the small stuff. He drove a black Cadillac Escalade with tinted windows, black leather interior, and high clearance for going off-road in the vineyards.

  “Welcome aboard, folks. You’ll find bottles of water in the cup holders. Good to stay hydrated when you’re wine-tasting. We’ll be there in two hours and change. Going against the traffic all the way.”

  Peter took the front seat, Evangeline stretched out in the middle row. They were the only passengers.

  Peter glanced in the side mirror as they pulled away.

  Objects may be closer than they appear. But there didn’t seem to be any objects following them down California Street. That was good. And if anybody tried to hit-and-run this big SUV, they wouldn’t be running anywhere.

  So he decided to sit back and enjoy the ride.

  Larry Kwan said he was excited to be driving to Amador, courtesy of Manion Sturgis. He had done some driving for Sturgis before, he said, but Kwan’s Wine Tours usually headed for Napa or Sonoma. “High-end tours for high-end drinkers and classy bachelorette parties.”

  “Classy?” said Evangeline.

  “Where the girls only get a little drunk and nobody throws up in the way-back.”

  “That explains the nice new-car smell,” she said.

  Larry Kwan looked at Peter. “Your wife is funny.”

  “She’s not my wife.”

  * * *

  THEY CROSSED THE BAY Bridge, took Route 80 through Berkeley, cleared the tolls at the Carquinez Straights, and headed inland.

  A little over an hour later, they sped through Sacramento.

  Peter had been there for a book show once. And of course, he had toured Sutter’s Fort, all whitewashed and shining and dwarfed by the hospital next door. It had reminded him of other historical sites, like the Old State House in Boston or the Alamo in San Antonio, tiny places in the modern world that were enormous in the mythology of America.

  And he knew they were headed into the heartland of American myth, a place of unfettered freedom, of get-rich-quickdom, of dreamers who did and doers who dreamed, of no man better than another because of his name, his schooling, his father or mother … a place of second chances, and third, fourth, and fifth chances, too, because no one failed in this land of myth. They just quit trying. That was California in 1849 and Ca
lifornia today.

  Even speeding out of Sacramento’s suburbs and running across an open range of yellow-brown grass at 75 mph, Peter could see Spencer and Flynn sitting down to eat peach pie under a clump of trees. He could see forty-niners on rutted trails where superhighways now ran. He could see guys like Mark Hopkins, imagining the wealth of empire as they snapped at their reins and urged their mules up the hill. Sometimes, the modern world just faded away for Peter Fallon, and the past emerged like a parallel universe. Then he remembered that the past did not have big Michelins, AC, or Vivaldi on the Bose speakers. Best leave the parallel universe … parallel.

  Soon the road was rising into piney woods, rising gradually and steadily toward the Sierra.

  At a place called Shingle Springs, Larry turned onto Mother Lode Drive and followed that to the Golden Chain Highway, Route 49, two lanes, north-south, connecting all the quiet hamlets, villages, and strip malls that once had been Gold Rush boomtowns.

  Larry said that if not for Peter’s side trip, he would have taken Route 16 out of Sacramento, a more southerly route, since the Sturgis winery was down near Sutter Creek, “But like they say, six of one, half a mile of another.”

  “Don’t you mean ‘half a dozen’?” asked Evangeline.

  “I spend my days coming up with new ways to say things about wine. So I like to play with clichés. Keeps me sharp.”

  “Old wine in new bottles?” said Peter.

  “Cliché,” answered Larry.

  “Touché,” said Evangeline.

  “That’s another one,” answered Larry.

  Peter gave Evangeline a look. She laughed. They liked their driver.

  Peter also liked that nothing had gotten close to them. No one had followed them from San Francisco. No one had picked them up on the freeway.