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

by William Martin

  But here I was, riding again toward those distant mountains, crossing countryside now as green as the land of Michael Flynn’s birth. While I headed east, backtrackers were streaming west, washed out at last. But for every one of them, two newcomers were trudging or riding or wagon-wheeling along with me. It seemed that the worst of the winter rains were over, so the roads were drying, which made for better going.

  It took me two hours to cross what I now recognized as the Vargas ranchero, but no one rode out to demand a tax. And to El Patrón, I would have paid.

  I did not stop in the grove where Flynn and I had our meeting with him. But about five miles later, I was drawn to another grove, drawn by the need to pay witness, though to what, I was not certain. Turkey buzzards floated in the sky above. Crows cawed in the branches. And the air hung heavy with the stench of rotting flesh, as when we come upon a dead animal in the woods.

  Then I saw something hanging from the branch of one of the live oaks. It was a man, hands and feet bound, head to one side, mouth open, tongue like a sausage grotesquely bloated from his mouth. A crow was perched on the corpse’s shoulder, pecking at his eye, not bothered in the least by the soul-gagging smell.

  I recognized the blue jacket, cut at the waist. Second Mate Sean Kearns had been wearing it when he signed the Sagamores aboard the William Winter. Around his neck was a crudely lettered sign: Deserter. So the stories about Trask were true.

  I would have buried the corpse, but I had no shovel.

  * * *

  I REACHED BROKE NECK as the evening chill settled and felt like a man returned to the ancestral manse, only to find a new family moved in. The camp seemed more crowded yet less busy, as if everyone who had put aside mining for the rainy months had found their way here, to winter where supplies, whiskey, and gambling were easily come by.

  And Grouchy Pete could accommodate them. He had been building a proper saloon when we left. Now it was finished, a fine place to escape the rain and occasional snow of the foothill winter. He had even imported a handsome mahogany bar and stand-up piano from San Francisco, so music was rolling out of the saloon, along with loud talk, louder laughter, and a large collection of legless drinkers.

  Noticing a familiar sorrel horse tethered outside, I stopped for a swallow of whatever McDougall was passing off as brandy.

  Faces turned as I stepped in. Some I recognized through the cigar smoke and lantern light. Some were new. A few I had not seen since the Sagamores broke apart. At two tables in the far corner, a pair of gamblers—one wearing a top hat and satin vest, the other a white suit contrasting with pomaded black hair—were mining more gold than the miners with much less effort. Cletis was standing just inside the door. Micah Broadback and a few others had collected around the wood stove. They were chatting and half listening to a loudmouth by the bar, who was declaiming, “Once a mining camp gets big enough, you need to expand the council.”

  Cletis seemed in no way surprised to see me. “Did you get my letter?”

  “Letter?” I leaned against the wall beside him.

  “Wrote you a letter. Brung it to Abbott’s three days ago.”

  “What did it say?”

  “‘Where the hell are you? I ain’t heard a peep out of you.’”

  “I was sick.”

  Cletis gave me the once-over. “I’ll say.”

  “Almost sent for you to help me. But Vargas sent his grandson, the boy Rodrigo.”

  “Vargas?” Cletis cocked an eyebrow. “Strange country. Friends become enemies. Enemies make friends.” He gestured toward the bar. “You got any friends over there?”

  “I know a few. Wouldn’t call them friends, exactly.”

  “They been askin’ for you. Been doin’ a lot of big talkin’, too. And speakin’ of big talk, where’s Galway Bay?”

  “In San Francisco.”

  “What’s he doin’ there, outside of fuckin’?”

  “More fuckin’,” I said. “Have you met Hodges?”

  “Not yet. But his friends are stirrin’ for an election, and—”

  The air was ripped by a gunshot. All the jawing and laughing and music stopped. Grouchy Pete waited for the shock to settle, then he lowered his pepperbox and shouted, “I’m done with all this political yammerin’. You’re cuttin’ into my business. I say we run a new election, then get back to drinkin’.”

  Micah Broadback jumped up and shouted, “We picked a council nine months ago, agreed on the particulars, and done what needed to be done.”

  “Damn right,” added Stinkin’ McGinty from the end of the bar. There was not another drinker within five feet of his smell. Some things did not change.

  The big man who had been doing all the talking grinned and put a hand on the bullwhip coiled at his belt. The brown of the leather whip was the only color on him. Shirt, pants, boots, and vest were as black a priest’s cassock. “My brother and me and our friends, we just want things on the up-and-up.”

  Broadback said, “This council been on the up-and-up. Me, the Johnson boys, Drinkin’ Dan, Stinkin’ McGinty, we’ve played fair all across this district.”

  “And we thank you for it,” said the man.

  “We?” said Broadback. “Who in the hell is we?”

  “My brother and me—” He gestured to the man standing next to him, who looked like a deflated version of himself and actually wore a minister’s collar with his black outfit—“and the men of Triple MW.”

  “The what?” said McGinty.

  “The Massachusetts and Missouri Mining and Water Company,” answered a man standing in the shadows near the bar. I had not seen him until now: Deering Sloate.

  The big talker approached Broadback. He was still grinning, as if he knew that there was something sinister about flashing white teeth in the nest of a black beard. “My name is Moses Gaw, late of Joplin, Missouri. This here’s my brother, David.”

  “Biblical fellers, are ye?” said Cletis.

  “All good names are born in the Bible, sir,” answered Moses.

  Brother David kept his peace and kept his dark eyes on me. These were the men that Lyons had warned me about.

  Cletis said, “If it’s biblical names you favor, do you got a Jesus Gaw in the family?”

  “Basphemy is not our way, sir,” said David Gaw.

  “Namin’ someone Jesus ain’t blasphemy to the Greasers hereabouts,” said Cletis.

  “Is that a fact?” Moses Gaw kept grinning. “Well, we won’t be worryin’ about them too much longer.”

  Brother David said, “We’re just good Christian white men askin’ for new rules.”

  Broadback said, “We agreed on hundred-square-foot claims and a hundred runnin’ feet along dry gulches. We hang a man who kills and flog a man who steals. What more rules do we need?”

  Moses Gaw said, “We need rules on water, rules on Niggers, Chinks, Greasers, and any others the Lord did not see fit to make white, and rules on whether such as them have the right to work on an equal basis with white miners. We need—”

  “Too many rules get confusin’,” said Broadback. “‘Come and go and do as you please, just so long as you don’t bother no one else.’ That works just fine.”

  “A place without rules ain’t a place to last, and we mean to last in Broke Neck.” Moses Gaw spread his arms. “So, as claim holders in this district, we’re callin’ for a new election in due time, as is our right.” And out of the corner of his mouth he shot this at Broadback: “You honor the rights of white miners, don’t you?”

  “What’s due time?” asked Broadback.

  “A week,” said Grouchy Pete. “That’s fair, ’less you want to step down, Micah.”

  “Hell no,” said Broadback.

  “It’s settled, then. All candidates gather in front of the saloon at noon a week from Sunday,” said McDougall. “You got any complaints, Mr. Moses Gaw?”

  “To prove that I have none, I’ll stand every man to a drink.”

  That brought a cheer from the crowd, but from Mic
ah Broadback a plaintive whisper to Cletis: “Ain’t I done fair in this district?”

  “As fair as Solomon cuttin’ his kid in two.” Cletis had been Bible-reading again.

  The crowd got back to drinking and betting and yakking, but then Stinkin’ McGinty shouted, “Who in hell said I stink?”

  “I did,” said Deering Sloate. “And I’m not voting for anyone who stinks.”

  And the room fell silent. Certain men had a sound to their voice, a timbre of trouble, that could stop any conversation. Sloate practiced it.

  “Hell, Sloate,” said another Sagamore, “we all stink.”

  “I’m not voting for a man who smells like his own asshole.” Sloate kept at it.

  “He’s goading,” I whispered to Cletis, “just to show how dangerous he is.”

  “McGinty does smell awful bad,” said Cletis.

  “And he’s an easy one to goad,” said Broadback.

  Everyone was listening now. Even the roulette wheel had clattered to a stop.

  McGinty said, “You must’ve gotten your nose awful close to my asshole to know what it smells like, mister. Are you one of them nancy-boys who like assholes?”

  “Am I what?”

  In point of fact, he was. I must say it honestly.

  Moses Gaw said, “This ain’t talk for a friendly saloon. Take it outside.”

  “Yeah,” said Grouchy Pete. “Outside.”

  “If they take it outside,” I whispered, “McGinty won’t come back.”

  That seemed to be what Sloate was goading for. He said to McGinty, “If you want to talk more about your asshole, I’ll be in the street. Maybe I’ll give you another one.”

  McGinty said, “I ain’t afraid of you, you asshole-sniffin’ son of a bitch.”

  I took a step, but Cletis grabbed my arm. “You got a wall at your back. Keep it there.”

  Micah Broadback did not hear that advice, for he certainly did not heed it. He pushed past us with his hands up high, not threatening, and approached McGinty. “Now, boys, let’s don’t do nothin’ rash.”

  “He looks at me crosswise,” said McGinty, “I’ll pull on him, by God.”

  “That ain’t a good idea,” said Broadback.

  Sloate said, “I’m lookin’ at you crosswise right now.”

  And Micah Broadback made his mistake. I had seen him stop McGinty before for his own good, right at our claim. He reached now for the pistol in McGinty’s holster, and McGinty tried to knock Micah’s hand away, a simple motion that sealed his fate.

  The blast and smoke hit McGinty at the same instant. He looked down at the hole in his belly, then dropped like a hundred pounds of brick.

  After a moment, Moses Gaw broke the silence: “He was pullin’ on Sloate. You all saw.”

  “I was takin’ his gun,” said Micah Broadback. “It was an accident.”

  “Accident pullin’ on Sloate,” Moses Gaw looked around. “Ain’t that right, Brother David?”

  “So saith the Lord.”

  From somewhere in the shadows, a familiar figure pushed forward and knelt over McGinty. He said, “I’m Doctor Beal.”

  McGinty was moaning in rhythm to the blood pumping onto the sawdusted floor.

  Grouchy Pete leaned over the bar. “Want a whiskey for him, Doc? On the house.”

  Doc Beal shook his head and told McGinty, “You just lie quiet.”

  “I … I can’t feel my legs,” said McGinty. “I can’t feel my goddamn legs.”

  Doc Beal reached into his little black leather case and pulled out a bottle of laudanum. “This’ll take the pain.”

  I stepped from the shadows with my hands well away from my sides.

  Sloate’s eyes shifted but showed not a glimmer of surprise. His gun was back in his holster, and he seemed entirely composed, strangely satisfied, as if he had just finished a good meal or a good … something else.

  I tried not to look at the wide circle of blood spreading under McGinty.

  Sloate spoke as casually and contemptuously as if we were aboard the William Winter or back at Boston Latin School. “What is it this week, Spencer? Pencils or pens?”

  Now, every eye turned in my direction.

  I turned mine to Doc Beal. “Hello, George.”

  Doc Beal gave me a nod, poured a measure of laudanum into McGinty’s mouth, and told him to swallow.

  McGinty’s eyes were searching the ceiling, as if watching his soul leave his body.

  Sloate said, “Write it down for the Transcript that I killed a man in self-defense.”

  “Same excuse as when you shot one in San Francisco?” I said.

  Sloate looked at bleeding McGinty. “Same result, too.”

  McGinty let out a final low groan, a loud fart, and breathed his last.

  Moses Gaw stepped between me and Sloate, still grinning like a hungry bear finding a fresh carcass of elk. “So this is the writer.”

  Cletis stepped up behind me. “And I’m his pardner. Welcome to Broke Neck.”

  The sight of the blunderbuss crooked in Cletis’s arm warmed my heart.

  Moses kept grinning. “Glad to be here. Maybe your friend will write a speech for our candidate.” He shifted his eyes to me. “You heard of him, I think. Samuel Hodges.”

  “Tell him to come by and say hello,” said Cletis.

  February 4, 1850

  Morning at the Claim

  The cry of a rooster awoke me. A rooster?

  I had been expecting Hodges or his men, not roosters.

  Cletis heard me stir, and from his pallet he said, “That damn rooster’s the only bad thing about the Chinks having chickens.”

  I went to the cabin door and looked across the river.

  The Chinese were moving about in the chill morning air. One was gathering firewood. Another was stirring a pot. A third was tossing cornmeal to a dozen pecking birds.

  “They spent good gold dust to get a few hens and a rooster. Now they got chickens and eggs. Ever taste egg blossom soup?”

  “You mean they feed you? You don’t even like them.”

  Cletis scratched at his stubble. “They like me, and I like their soup.”

  “You liking their soup I understand, but them liking you?”

  “I warned ’em when the river was fixin’ to rise. Figured it was the Christian thing to do. Saved all their gear. After that, they adopted me. Now, they bring me hot soup, and I give ’em weather wisdom and Bible verses.”

  “You’ll make Christians of them yet.” I looked out at the flutter wheel, standing firm in the middle of the stream. “River’s gone up and down some since I left.”

  “It’ll come up again with the snowmelt,” said Cletis. “Yes, sir, a river’s a livin’ thing, risin’ then fallin’, runnin’ then walkin’, then gettin’ up and leapin’ like the Lord.”

  My claim and Flynn’s were underwater. So Cletis suggested I stake one a bit above the edge of the river. “Don’t want those Triple MW fellers thinkin’ there’s any room for ’em here.” Cletis poked up the fire, greased his pan, cracked four eggs into it. “That was some nasty gunnin’ your Boston friend put on last night.”

  “He’s not my friend. Not now. Not when we were in Boston.”

  It was good to sit again at the rough table with Cletis and swallow strong coffee in the morning. The cabin felt like home now that it had a proper door, which Cletis had built himself and hung with leather hinges.

  “I tell you, I worry some about them Chinks.” Cletis flopped two fried eggs on my plate. “What that Moses Gaw feller said ain’t far from the truth.”

  “About what?”

  “About makin’ rules on who can mine where. This country belongs to the United States now, so real Americans should have the say-so.”

  Cletis had his contradictions, I knew. I ate some egg and sipped some coffee and waited for more wisdom.

  He put the frying pan on the table—he still avoided dirtying plates—and sat. “Foreigners catchin’ it all over … like the French down Mormon’s Gu
lch. They was infringin’ considerable on the rights of us Yankees, doin’ what they pleased, no matter what the Miner’s Council said. Pretty damn saucy—”

  “Good term for a Frenchman.”

  “What?’

  “Saucy. The … unh … the French. They’re known for their sauces.”

  Cletis gave me a long look, as if he was thinking about calling me an educated fool again. Then he returned to the point. “These Frenchies got so troublesome, the local alcalde decided to go round to the other diggin’s to get some help.”

  “For what?”

  “For drivin’ them out,” said Cletis. “He come back with a hundred armed Yankees and give that gang of frog-eaters five minutes to pack up and leave, or else they’d run ’em off and sell the tools and tents at auction.”

  “By what right?”

  “Miner’s Law and the plain rights of God-fearin’ white Americans.” Cletis shoveled an egg into his mouth and wiped a dribble of yolk from his chin. “French ran like rats. Then there was that gang of Chili-eaters down Sonora way.”

  “Chili-eaters?”

  “Fellers from Chile. Good miners. Too damn good. Made the whites resentful. So they got chased. And don’t forget the Injuns. Over in Woodsville, them sneak-thieves was stealin’ food and tools, even jackasses. White miners had to take a few scalps and send ’em skedaddlin’ with their squaws and papooses.” Cletis finished his coffee. “Yes, sir, too many dusky folks around here, and more comin’ every day.”

  “So you’re for chasing off the Chinese?”

  “I ain’t. But others will be. With less gold to go around, it stands to reason it’ll get nasty. But the trouble them Chinks have, it’s as old as dirt. Don’t make it your trouble, too. Even if you like that little Chinese gal.”

  “Who said I liked her? Flynn was the one giving her candy all the time.”

  “I seen how you looked over there last night … and just now. She’s awful pretty with her little Chinese feet and her little Chinese titties.”

  “How do you know?”