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

by William Martin

  I wanted to sheathe the knife and pull my pistol, but any motion would attract her. Bullets would only anger her and alarm the camp, too. So … sit, hold my breath, and hope she moved away.

  Down below, a woman came out of the longhouse. She was carrying a bucket. She chattered some at the men guarding the saw pit, then went over and dumped the bucket. Fresh slops.

  The grizzly snuffed, liked what she smelled, and down the hill she went, pushing through the bushes, down toward the sleeping camp, down toward the sweet aroma of garbage, down with her two yearling cubs tumbling after her.

  I exhaled, then I unbuttoned my trousers and took the piss that had almost poured out of me unbidden a few moments before.

  Then I heard one of the guards say, “What the hell is that?”

  The other said, “You wait here.”

  His surprise was not long in coming. He shouted, “Oh, Jesus! Jesus!” And boom! A gun went off. The other man leaped up.

  Now, the saw pit was unguarded.

  In an instant, doors were banging, men were running and shouting, and the great mama bear was rising onto her hind legs. When the outhouse door swung open and all but slammed into one of the cubs, she turned to deliver a mighty swat that caught Moses Gaw in the side of the head.

  Someone else shot into her huge back, which only enraged her. She whipped her paws about in a great arc as the terrified cubs scurried around her.

  Moses Gaw tried to stand. The bear turned to the movement and with thunderous bellow and another swat, all but ripped his face off.

  I heard him scream, saw him turn and stumble into the slops pit.

  For a moment, I wondered if I should let this confusion unfold or take advantage of it. Then Cletis made the decision for me. He started shooting. His rifle flashed in the dark on the opposite bank, then his musket, then his rifle again.

  Meanwhile, the men in the clearing did not seem to know where to shoot … at the grizzly now lumbering and bellowing and swatting at anything that came near, or at the terrified cubs, or at the hillside where muzzle flashes were flaming like starbursts in the night.

  I ran to the front of the log pile. Two heavy stakes kept the pyramid in place. I kicked one out, then ran around to the other side and did the same. The pyramid held for a moment. Then, with a roar, it collapsed into a moving wall of two dozen logs … pounding and thundering down the hill, bouncing over their own stumps, flattening canvas tents, knocking down work stations, destroying sluices, and making a perfect diversion as I dove after them, down into the shooting and shouting, while the bears bellowed and the horses and mules that Chin had loosed came galloping into this scene of riverside chaos.

  Hodges was at the door of the main building, shouting, “Not the bear. We’re under attack. Forget the bear.”

  A rifle shot from the hillside whizzed past him and ricocheted off into the dark. He stopped shouting so abruptly that I thought he was hit.

  I went straight to the saw pit. The logs had shattered the table and chairs, and the guards were running around with all the other Triple MWs, trying to make sense of what was happening in the torchlight. I grabbed the boards and threw them aside.

  Flynn and Ng-goh looked up, and Flynn said, “What kept you?”

  A bullet flew past my ear.

  Flynn said, “We can’t climb. They got our hands tied.”

  One of the Missourans saw me and pulled a pistol. I reached for mine, but a shot from the far bank took him in the side and sent him spinning away.

  Flynn held up his hands and cried, “Cut the bonds! Cut the bonds!”

  I took my knife and slashed through the rope. Then I cut Ng-goh’s bonds. Meanwhile, the bear was still bellowing, and men were shooting at it, and the cubs were yowling, and Cletis was still firing. All was confusion, just as we had hoped.

  Hodges shouted, “Stop shooting! Stop! Or we’ll be shooting ourselves.” Then he called, “Moses! Moses!” and was answered with a strangled cry from the slops pit.

  The bear stood up in the moonlight, and the noise that rose from her made the ground shake.

  Flynn bounded out of the hole, then grabbed one of the shattered chair legs for a weapon. Ng-goh sprang up after him.

  I said, “Come on!” and turned.

  And there stood Nathan Trask, in his long frock coat and hat, with a noose in his hands. “Going somewhere?”

  “Straight to hell,” said Michael Flynn, and he delivered a blow with the chair leg that squashed Trask’s top hat and maybe split his skull. Down went the captain, and away went three fugitives from angry justice.

  A woman on the bunkhouse porch was waving in our direction. “Samuel! Samuel, they’re by the saw pit! The saw pit!”

  Hodges came stumbling out again with a musket at his hip, shouting, “Stop! Stop in the name of the Miner’s Council!”

  “Where are we goin’?” said Flynn.

  “The dam!” I pointed him and Ng-goh across the river.

  And we raced through the confusion, past men who saw us and started to give chase, others who were still trying to chase the bears or grab the panicked livestock now galloping about.

  And all the while, I could hear the crack of Cletis’s rifle, then the report of his smoothbore musket, and in between, the peppering shots of Rodrigo’s pistol. Then came the boom of Hodges’s gun and Ng-goh spun down. I grabbed him and dragged him to his feet. But he had taken it in the belly, the worst place for a musket ball.

  Hodges threw down the musket, pulled a pistol, and shouted for us to stop. As he raised it to fire, a shot from the trees hit him in the leg and took him down.

  “Keep running,” I said to Flynn. “Across the dam and up the hill.”

  Then I heard the shrill warning of Little Ng’s whistle. No tune, no birdsong, just a scream above the shouting of men and the bellowing of animals and the crying of women.

  Chin and Little Ng had risen from the water on the far bank, and Chin was shouting, “Run! Run!”

  We kept dragging Ng-Goh behind us. He was losing strength, but we had almost reached the planked walkway across the dam when Sloate came out of the shadows. He did not tell us to stop. He did not warn us. He raised his gun and fired. The bullet went over our heads. Then he lowered, pointed at me, but before he shot, he fell to his knees, dropping the gun and grabbing at the back of his head.

  Chin had hit him with a perfectly aimed rock that knocked him senseless. Then Chin cried for us to hurry because Hodges was up again, limping toward us. Two or three others had broken off chasing the bear and were coming, too.

  I kicked Sloate’s gun away and leapt onto the dam. Flynn kicked Sloate in the face and leaped after me. But Sloate grabbed Ng-goh by the leg.

  I turned to grab Ng-goh and then I saw the brush-covered door floating toward the dam and the hidden fuse burning in the brush.

  Chin screamed, “Run!”

  I pushed Flynn ahead and stumbled after him. We both tumbled onto the bank as a flash lit the world. An invisible fist knocked me sideways, knocked me down, and punched through the air with a burst of sound that sent the dam flying into the sky.

  Rocks and chunks of wood rained down everywhere. And a torrent of water swept through the breach, shooting down the ravine, slamming up and over the bank where the river turned, and roaring down the valley.

  * * *

  WE MADE IT BACK to our camp before dawn. But the water had made it well before us, racing down the little narrow gorge with enough force to knock the flutter wheel off its supports and somehow deposit it right against Big Skull Rock.

  But our concern was Rodrigo. He was dying. He had sent pistol shots into the night, drawing wild gunfire back, and one of the shots had hit him in the gut. Now he was bleeding out, and there was nothing we could do.

  We got him off his horse and into the cabin, where we laid him on the pallet.

  “I’ll stay,” said Cletis.

  “He won’t be alive for long,” said Flynn.

  “Then he needs a friendly face, even
if it ain’t a pretty one.” Cletis studied Rodrigo and listened to his breathing and said to us, “You boys best be goin’.”

  “What about you?” I asked.

  “I can brazen my way out of anything.” Cletis spit tobacco and laughed at his predicament. “Strange country. Friends become enemies. Enemies get to be friends. And too much mercy, well—”

  “Too much mercy’ll get you killed,” I said. “You need to come with us.”

  Then we heard commotion outside.

  Chin, Mei-Ling, Little Ng, and Friendly Liu were coming up the hill. They looked somber, sad, frightened, as gray as the pre-dawn light. They were leaving with everything on their backs but without Uncle Bao and Ng-goh, both now dead.

  And there was something else. Half their gold was still buried under Big Skull Rock. Chin had insisted that they not dig it up until our attack was over. That way, if we failed and our claims were raided, the gold would still be safe for Mei-Ling to find later. But they would not be digging now, because the flutter wheel lay wedged in the way.

  Chin grabbed at it, tried to move it, let out with a great bellow of frustration, then called for the ax, which Friendly Liu carried.

  While the others watched, he began to swing the ax, swing hard and angry, but as soon as it began to echo off the hillsides, Cletis stalked out of our cabin and said, “That gold won’t be worth a damn if the Miner’s Council hangs you Chinks. I knew you planted it there and never touched it. I’ll never tell anyone. So git. Come back for it later.”

  Chin stopped straining, as if he knew that Cletis was right and was a man of his word, too.

  Then, from inside, Rodrigo cried, “Señor Smith. Please.”

  Flynn stepped toward Mei-Ling. She stepped toward him.

  Chin stepped over the wheel and put himself between them. “You go north, Irish. We go south.”

  Flynn gave a long look at Chin, a longer look at Mei-Ling. Then he pulled a bag of peppermints from his pocket and put them into her hand. “We will see each other again.”

  She looked down at the bag, looked into Flynn’s eyes, and tears filled her own.

  Her brother grabbed her by the arm and said, “Never see again.”

  Cletis shouted from inside the cabin. “Y’all better be gone ’fore that sun gets up and those boys get their livestock together and come ridin’.”

  I headed west for San Francisco and the first Boston boat, even though my gold from the last four months was now pinned under the rock, like Chin’s.

  The Chinese aimed south for the Chinese camp, where such as they would be welcome, and where they might lose themselves in the anonymity of their race.

  And Flynn, with his gold in his saddlebags, took one of the horses and headed north.

  April 2, 1850

  Shocking Intelligences

  I reached Sacramento late in the afternoon of April 1 and checked into the Sutter’s Fort Hotel, as there was no passage aboard the Senator until the afternoon of the second. I slept with my pistol loaded on my lap, expecting a posse of Triple MWs at any moment.

  Then, this morning, two backtracking miners stopped for breakfast in the fort and discussed the events they had seen in Broke Neck. I ate and listened … and listened.

  The Miner’s Council had arrested Cletis in the morning. They tried him in the afternoon in Grouchy Pete’s with Hodges as judge.

  Cletis testified that he had slept through the night. Then a Mexican boy had come to him before dawn. Cletis explained that he had tried to help, but the boy had died. He may have thought these were good lies, but Samuel Hodges did not believe any of them.

  Then they asked Cletis about his friends.

  Cletis said that they had all left late the night before, played out, disappointed, and fearful of the Miner’s Council.

  Hodges did not believe this, either, and said that he had dispatched Sloate to find Flynn. The Chinese he did not care so much about. He could round them up anytime.

  George Emery had corroborated Cletis with more believable lies: “Spencer came through about ten o’clock last night. He bought provisions and said he was headed for San Francisco. The Chinese came through a while later.”

  Pat Emery said the same, and who did not trust a woman who could make such a fine beef stew?

  “And all the while,” said one of these overheard miners, “a feller in black clothes and crumpled top hat was tyin’ nooses to pass the time, like a woman knittin’.”

  I continued to listen with growing trepidation for the fate of my friend.

  Hodges had his men carry the corpse of lawyer Tom Lyons into the saloon and showed the hole in his side, then the .45 caliber bullet they dug out of it. Hodges said to Cletis, “That’s a ball from a Kentucky Long Rifle. Not many men in this district have such a weapon. But you do. You shot me, and Lyons, and three others. Moses Gaw is dead from the bear attack. His brother is dyin’ from fever after you put a ball through his elbow. You did that, didn’t you?”

  Cletis did not lie. Yes. He had shot David Gaw. So saith the Lord.

  Hodges told him that if he confessed to everything, they would go easy on the Chinese and his pardners. So, as a last gesture of friendship for us, that is what Cletis Smith did.

  They hanged him from the same tree where they hanged Maria two nights before.

  As the backtracker described it, “The old boy took a final chaw of tobacco, thanked the Emerys for being good friends, and swung off into space.”

  I could not finish my meal. I paid and hurried for the riverfront, more determined than ever to make it as quickly as I could to San Francisco and thence to Boston.

  But something made me stop at Abbott’s Sacramento office. If there was mail bound for me in Broke Neck, I might catch it. And a letter was waiting. It came from Janiva. My heart leapt, then fell, then leapt again.

  Dear James,

  I have accomplished something amazing. I am in San Francisco! By the time you read this, I will have been here more than a week. You will find me in the harbor, aboard the ship Proud Pilgrim …

  Good Lord.

  Without reading the rest of it, I ran for the boat.

  SIX

  Friday Night

  PETER FALLON FELT LIKE he had lived it … or dreamed it … or drunk so much marijuana tea that he hallucinated it. But he knew those guys now. He had looked into their eyes … and maybe their souls. And … oh, man, why did they have to hang Cletis?

  He was glad that Spencer didn’t see it.

  But was Janiva really waiting for Spencer in San Francisco? And Flynn, riding north with Sloate on his tail? Did he get away? Did he turn and kill Sloate? Did he find that river of gold? And what about the Chinese? This much was certain: if their gold was still buried, Peter Fallon knew exactly where it was, and he was going to go and get it. And …

  How long had he been reading? He looked through the slider at the fog and said, “Wow.”

  “Great stuff, eh?” said Sarah Bliss.

  “Spencer sure learns a lot about himself up in those hills.”

  “I meant the tea.” Sarah was puttering in the kitchen area.

  Brother B. was snoozing in his chair, which Sarah had turned again to the slider, so that he would be looking out on the water when he awoke.

  She invited Peter to stay for dinner. “I’m making a nice quinona with tofu chunks.”

  Tofu chunks? Even if he didn’t have plans, Peter would have declined.

  “We’re vegans,” she said. “No food with a face. It’s the ethical thing to do.”

  “Oysters and clams may disagree.”

  “Aren’t you hungry? Munchies, you know…”

  Brother B. raised his head. “THC bonds to the olfactory bulb and makes everything smell better, taste better, too. That’s why you get munchies.”

  Peter was getting hungry, but he had to go. He gestured to the pages. “Let me take these. Then we’ll be close to ending this.”

  “You’ll end nothing.” She dropped the pot on the stove. “You’
ll just cause more trouble.”

  “By telling a story of Gold Rush prejudice and the Foreign Miner’s Tax?”

  “Always blame the immigrants,” said Sarah. “A story as old as humans.”

  Brother B. looked up and said, “They dropped the tax, then revived it a few years later, but only on the Chinese. Easy to pick on the yellow folks. California collected on them for a lot of years.”

  “But this journal shows the Chinese fighting back.” Peter thought that might appeal to these two Sixties relics.

  Wrong. Sarah swept her arm at all the pictures on the walls. “We’ve spent our lives fighting back … against racism, sexism, the Vietnam War, the draft, the big corporations that sucked our blood in sixty-eight and the bigger corporations that are sucking our bone marrow today. We have enough stories to tell.”

  “So you’ve sided with Manion Sturgis. But the only thing he ever grew besides a grape was a hedge … as in hedge fund.”

  “The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” said Sarah.

  “When the earth asked him, he gave the right answer,” said Brother B. “What’s your choice? A vine or a mine?”

  “Nice rhyme,” said Peter. “But he grows Zinfandel, a wine for grilled meats.”

  “Now you’re just messing with us.” Sarah chuckled. She could take a joke. But she still wouldn’t let him take the journal. And she wouldn’t admit that she had ever read any other part of it.

  “We’d rather contest the will,” said Brother B. “I will be filing a motion on Monday to have this codicil struck.”

  * * *

  EVANGELINE HAD DONE IT.

  That’s what she was thinking. She had brought the Sturgis brothers together to discuss their work, their rivalry, and the wonderful world of wine. A hell of a story … at least for the people who read Travel and Lifestyle Magazine.