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

by William Martin

  Your Ob’t Correspondent, having made his way to Sacramento with the intention of wintering, took a position with a merchant named Hopkins, in the belief that it is always best to engage with the world you hope to write about. In his shop, I listened to big talkers and doomsayers alike, all commenting on the relentless rain.

  They marveled at the roar of it, thrumming and thundering on Sacramento rooftops. They watched it turn the streets from ankle-deep muck to quick-mud quagmires that could swallow a mule right down to his ears. But the river would never flood, they said. There was no need for a levee, they said. The great Sacramento Valley could soak up every drop that the heavens poured down. No need to do anything but keep to business, always business. All else would take care of itself … they said.

  Then, on January 8, came a deluge the like of which no one had ever seen, even in California. All day it rained, hard and harder, inches an hour, inches in minutes. Mr. Hopkins sent me home, for there would be no business on such a day. So I trudged through the mud to Sutter’s Fort, which sits on the high ground about a mile from the river.

  That night, I was awakened by what sounded like distant calls for help. But strange cries at night are common in places where Gold Rushers gather to drink, gamble, and satisfy their baser desires, so I rolled back to sleep. Then, at first light, I heard cries of “Flood! Flood!” I dressed quickly and scrambled up the blockhouse steps for a view.

  What I saw was enough to shock me all the way back to Boston. Sacramento lay under a sheet of dirty brown water, afloat with swimming rats and dead cats, with overloaded rowboats and empty packing crates, with all the effluence of a place that had been booming and building far too quickly for its own good.

  And the water kept rising for three days more. By January 12, Sutter’s Fort was an island in a wilderness of water stretching farther than the eye could reach. No first floor in the city remained uncovered, and the water all around us moved as if pulled by a current that carried off a fortune in ruined merchandise every hour.

  It was two weeks before the river finally dropped, while prices for everything began to rise.

  By then, however, I was insensible to all but my own misery, as California had done to me what it has done to so many: laid me low. For nearly three weeks, I was abed, suffering from fever, ague, chills, abdominal pains, and other symptoms of dysentery.

  I feared that I would end as badly as some of the men I had seen in a sad place called Rainbow Gulch. I might have but for those who brought me sustenance. Despite the meanness that I often describe here, kindness still abides on the precarious edge of the continent, and I have been the beneficiary of it.

  Yr. Ob’t. Correspondent,

  The Argonaut

  I did not tell the whole story of my sickness. To describe it would have required that I tell of certain bloody events on the road to Broke Neck the previous August, events I preferred to forget.

  After five days of confinement in the Sutter’s Fort Hotel, during which time I was barely able to reach the outhouse, a dark-skinned young man appeared in my room. As he leaned over me, he appeared, to my fevered mind, like someone I had known in another world. Harvard perhaps? But there were no such complexions at Harvard.

  I propped myself on my elbows and peered at him through aching eye sockets.

  He said, “Where are your friends, señor?”

  I knew now that he was no classmate. He had come to rob me. I fumbled for my pistol, which I kept in a holster on the bedpost.

  But he grabbed it first and asked again, “Your friends, señor, where are they?”

  I said, “Who are you?”

  He brought his face close to mine. “I am Rodrigo Vargas.”

  Now I remembered. The last time I had seen him, tears were streaming down his face while his grandfather moaned with the pain of a broken leg. Fearing that he had come to extract revenge, I tried to lift myself off the pallet. But he put a hand on my shoulder and said, “I am here to help you.”

  “Help me?”

  “My grandfather visits the fort for doing business. He saw you. He remembered. Then he did not see you. So he asked. Señor Sutter said you were sick. But so many are sick here, there are not enough to help them. So my grandfather sent me to help you.”

  “But—”

  “He remembers that you are a merciful man.”

  And Rodrigo Vargas proved Cletis Smith wrong: too much mercy would not get you killed. It might save your life. Rodrigo brought me water from a clean well on Vargas land. He brought me beef broth and lime juice. He did this almost every day.

  And when he could not, a servant girl from the hacienda visited in his place. She was a pretty, birdlike thing named Maria. But always, I was cared for. When I recovered, Rodrigo said that he and his family owed me no more and the next time I crossed his land, they would tax me. If I did not pay, they would kill me.

  I told him I would pay gladly because he had saved me from the miserable fate that put so many into the graveyard above Rainbow Gulch. Then I prayed for spring.…

  FOUR

  Thursday Lunch

  “THE 2013 RAINBOW GULCH old-vine Zinfandel,” announced Manion Sturgis, “decanted and ready to pour.”

  They were sitting at a garden table, beneath a green umbrella. The autumn vineyard glowed. The aromas of grilled meats and mesquite smoke rose from the barbecue pit, where two chefs were preparing lunch. And the wine awaited.

  Manion nodded to a waitress and watched her fill the big Reidel glasses, like a proud parent watching a child hit a baseball or play a sonata. “Our finest growth. Old vines, dating back to the Gold Rush.”

  “These grapes actually grow at Rainbow Gulch?” asked Peter.

  “Above it, on the flatland that drains into the gulch. When I bought the place ten years ago, the vines were overgrown and forgotten.”

  “I can’t wait to see them,” said Evangeline.

  “We’ll go out there after we eat,” said Manion Sturgis.

  “I’ve seen everything else,” she said. “Cellar, tasting room, restaurant. They even have a Gold Rush museum, Peter, with a big lump of gold found down in the gulch.”

  “And your opinion?” Manion asked her.

  She raised her wineglass. “This is why I love my job.”

  Peter had not seen her so relaxed in a long time. Wine-tasting at midday could do that. And wine cellars could be dark and romantic. But he wasn’t hitting the “jealous button,” not yet.

  Manion said, “‘Make your vocation your vacation.’ Twain’s best quote.”

  “Twain felt the magic in these foothills,” said Wild Bill Donnelly. “They inspired him.”

  Manion swirled the wine in his glass. “Or maybe it was Amador County Zin that inspired him.”

  “You sound like a commercial,” said Peter. “We’ll sell no wine till Twain says it’s time.”

  Evangeline said, “Just taste and enjoy, Peter.”

  “Yes,” added Manion. “Forget Napa and Sonoma and the hot drive from dusty old Broke Neck.”

  Peter sipped and said, “All is forgotten,” because this was one of the best Zins he had ever tasted. He hated to flatter Manion Sturgis, but he had to.

  And Manion flattered easily. “We’re making something rare here, Fallon. More European. Lower Brix. Still around fourteen percent alcohol but subtler, smoother, more elegant, a term that people don’t usually apply to Zinfandel.”

  Then the meal arrived: three artfully arranged baby-back ribs, dry-rubbed, a pepper-jack cheese polenta, grilled asparagus … a bite of rib, a taste of polenta, a swallow of Rainbow Gulch zin and … no more calls. They had a winner. Peter was smart enough to know that when food and wine worked this well and the setting was this pretty, you stopped analyzing and enjoyed.

  Wild Bill purred like a cat, a big, white-haired, red-faced Irish cat.

  “Enjoying the meal, Mr. Donnelly?” asked Manion Sturgis.

  “I’d agree with Ms. Carrington that this is why I love my job, if I had a job.
But now I’m just a retired detective reading thrillers and enjoying the view.”

  Evangeline said, “What did you detect around Broke Neck?”

  “We were exploring,” said Peter, “not detecting.”

  Evangeline said, “You weren’t making him drive all over without a plan, were you?”

  Wild Bill sipped the wine. “I know about looking at things without a plan, just looking, not really knowing what I’m looking for … or at. Detectives do it all the time.”

  “That’s why we’d love to look at Rainbow Gulch,” said Peter.

  * * *

  AFTER LUNCH, THEY HEADED out in a six-passenger electric cart, the kind airports used to ferry old ladies, except this one had a nice hard top to keep off the sun. Manion took the wheel, and they sped past rows of vines that etched the landscape north of the main complex.

  Peter rode next to Sturgis and enjoyed California wine country in October, with the grapes harvested, the vines fulfilled, the leaves turning in the soft sun. Over the hum of the motor, he said, “We were reading about Rainbow Gulch on the ride down.”

  “In a guidebook?” asked Manion.

  “In ‘The Spencer Journal.’ I have three of his notebooks now.”

  “Three?” said Manion. “You’re doing well.”

  “I didn’t find them. My son did.”

  From the middle seat, Evangeline said, “LJ is doing such a good job, I’m wondering why he asked you to come out here.”

  “You mean you’re wondering what you’re really looking for?” asked Manion.

  “Do you know something we don’t?” asked Peter.

  “I bet you’ve heard about the bags of Chinese gold,” said Manion. “Some people think they’re buried someplace around here.”

  There it was again, thought Peter. Another echo from Spencer and Flynn and ancient Ah-Toy: “‘the Chinese gold of Broke Neck, the first trickle from the lost river of gold.’”

  “Have you read about this Chinese gold in the journal?” Evangeline asked Peter.

  “Spencer’s met some Chinese,” said Peter. “He thinks they may be finding more gold than they let on.”

  “Legends from the past,” said Manion. “The future is what interests me. And the future is up there.” Up where the trail ended, the land dropped into a ravine, then rose to a range of rolling brown hillsides.

  Manion stopped the cart, and they got out amidst the gnarled, brown grapevines. “Rainbow Gulch. Tomorrow’s best wines from yesterday’s best vines.”

  “How many acres?” asked Evangeline.

  “Just four of the old vines.” Manion gestured around him. “Zins love the heat. We have heat. Zins love volcanic soil. We have plenty of that. And old vines make the best wines. These may be the oldest vines in California.” He looked at Evangeline. “Are you writing this down.”

  “I’m remembering every word,” she said.

  Peter thought he heard an extra something in her tone, as if she was as taken with the winemaker as she was with the wine.

  Manion Sturgis kept talking: “They’ll try to tell you that Napa Cabernet is the California grape. But it’s Zinfandel, sibling of the Primitivo, offspring of the Croatian grape, Crljenak Kaśtelanski, planted right here by thirsty Gold Rushers in ground that defined the Golden State. You feel the soul of the country in every grape. You taste California history in every sip.”

  “The terroir,” said Evangeline. “You taste the terroir.”

  And you feel the passion, thought Peter. He never faulted passion, even in someone he didn’t like. Manion was passionate about his wine, like Peter about history. And for the second time that day, Peter felt history all around him. Rainbow Gulch looked like an open-air theater where the actors had played the matinee, then stepped out for dinner before the evening performance.

  The hillsides sloped into the ravine, all covered in dry yellow straw grass, scattered over with brush, blue oak, and buckeye. A natural gutter dropped from the vineyard plateau and still carried off the rains of a thousand years. Rocks and stones along the bottom marked the path of a stream that would flow again the next time it rained. And silence hovered above it all, deepened by the sound of a turkey buzzard flap-flap-flapping overhead.

  But Peter saw miners working their claims, cooking their food, lining up to have their clothes washed by the only woman within miles. He saw shacks and tents and covered wagons. In some of them, men were weighing out their gold. In others, they were dying of dysentery. And across the ravine, up on the bald hilltop, a wrought-iron fence marked the graveyard where Spencer and Flynn had buried Hiram Wilson.

  “Tailings everywhere,” said Wild Bill.

  “Tailings?” Evangeline had missed the earlier lesson.

  Wild Bill pointed out the grass-covered hummocks lining the gulch.

  Manion said, “I’ve been told that those piles still hold gold today.”

  “Why don’t you get it?” asked Evangeline.

  “I’m not letting anyone come onto my land for placer mining or drift mining or heap leach mining, either, dumping pulverized rocks and dirt onto a rubber sheet, then sprinkling it with cyanide.”

  “Cyanide?” Evangeline wrote that down.

  “Good for attracting gold,” said Manion, “but not for improving the terroir.”

  “I can see the reviews now,” said Peter. “A great old-vine Zin, with hints of spice and the nutty almond nose of a well-blended cyanide solution.”

  “Very funny,” said Manion. “But if I ever allow heap-leaching here, I’ll get bad reviews for the wine and the worst reviews for my life.”

  Evangeline said, “I think you love this vineyard more than your ex-wives.”

  “My ex-wives were as useless as the lump of gold on display in the tasting room … soft, inanimate, no practical application, nothing more than nourishment for the vanity of human wishes. Flashy women and flashy metals. Not like … not like this.”

  For some guys, thought Peter, why did arriving at self-knowledge always sound like self-congratulation?

  “What did Warren Buffet say?” asked Wild Bill. “Something about how we spend our lives digging gold out of holes in the ground called mines, just to put it into holes in the ground called vaults. Better to do something useful with our energies.”

  “I like your friend, Fallon. He gets it.” Manion pulled a bottle of Rainbow Gulch Zinfandel from the basket on the back of the cart. “So he wins a prize. Real California gold … the grape, grown with love, refined with care, appreciated like a lover.”

  “What I don’t get,” said Peter, “is why you won’t help us with the journal.”

  “Even after seeing all this? After tasting the wine? If you spread legends about bags of Chinese gold, you’ll have people crawling all over this land, all over again.”

  So, thought Peter, Manion Sturgis had read a section of this journal.

  “Besides”—Manion pointed to the northeast—“just beyond those hills, the Emery Mine is getting back into operation. They’ll bring trouble enough.”

  “And you mean to protect your vineyard?” said Wild Bill.

  “I mean to protect my land,” said Manion. “That’s a story as old as the West.”

  * * *

  PETER DIDN’T WANT TO talk about Manion Sturgis in front of Larry Kwan, who had already established his credentials as a talker and was probably a full-fledged gossip, too, especially when it came to gossip about big names in winemaking. Peter really didn’t want to talk about Sturgis at all. So, on the ride home, he talked about the Sturgis wines.

  And Larry knew what he was talking about. He also knew the wine-country driving rule: “Swirl and spit, baby. Swirl and spit. You can’t drive the drinkers if you’re drinking yourself. But you won’t know where to drive them until you’ve drunk what they’re drinking in the places you’re driving them to.”

  Evangeline laughed. “Can I quote you?”

  “Just spell it right: Larry Kwan’s Wine Country Tours.”

  “Guaranteed,
” she said.

  “Maybe I’ll team up with your detective friend for a new tour. History and wine.”

  “You know the wine,” said Peter. “I’ll bet you know the history, too.”

  “You have to if you want to know the wine. I’ll show you.”

  They were taking Route 16 back to Sacramento, two lanes, undivided, with a 60 mph speed limit. After about ten minutes of gentle descent, Larry pulled off into a little roadside lot with a marker. “Welcome to Michigan Bar, westernmost of the Gold Rush sites, hardly noticed now but a boom town in the 1850s. The Cosumnes River runs about a mile to the north. But it never carried enough water, so they dammed the flow back in the foothills—”

  “And dug the Michigan Ditch some fifteen or twenty miles.” Peter recited his lesson from earlier.

  “Very good,” said Larry.

  “Ditch?” said Evangeline. “For what?”

  Larry explained: “In 1852, a guy figured out the quickest way to get at gold in gravel banks was to wash away the hillsides with high-pressure hoses, wash everything into long sluices lined with mercury, which attracts gold. Every few days, they’d clean the riffles, drop it all into a big still, boil it off, and get molten gold at the bottom. Hydraulic mining.”

  The land on either side of Route 16 was a moonscape of buttes, cuts, dips, and escarpments. It could have been sculpted by nature over millennia. But hydraulickers had spent less than a generation ravishing this virgin countryside … all for gold.

  Larry opened the liftgate of the Escalade and pulled out a shiny black drone and said, “One of my kids set this up for me. Very smart boy, applying to Caltech. A drone with a camera connected to my laptop.”

  Peter and Evangeline watched the screen. Larry drove the drone up and out in an ever-widening arc that revealed patterns in the topography, otherworldly and beautiful now, but evidence of staggering destruction more than a century and a half before.