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

by William Martin

  Peter reached the limo and dove onto a rear-facing jump seat.

  LJ jumped in after, right onto Peter, with the door slamming behind them.

  And bang! A shot hit the window on the right side, starring the glass.

  Someone shouted, “Go! Go! Go!”

  And bang! The limo slammed into a second bike as it flew off the hillside. No stopping for that hit-and-run. They burned rubber up the street, scraping bottom on the crest of the hill, grabbing some air, shooting across Hyde, onto the famous stretch of Lombard with all the wild S-curves.

  The car slammed left, then right, then left, then right, hitting the curbs on both sides, throwing Peter and his son back and forth and then …

  … they got to Leavenworth and the ride smoothed.

  That was when Peter could finally look up.

  Waving in front of his face was a champagne bottle.

  Wonton Willie said, “Tonight, we drinkin’ Dom Pérignon.”

  * * *

  IT COOLED QUICKLY IN the Sierra foothills, so Manion and Evangeline ate in the dining room of Manion Gold, at the A-table by the fireplace.

  A fine crowd had followed the mountain roads from Jackson and Fiddletown, Columbia and Calaveras, couples and families, foliage tourists who stayed in little guesthouses, Tahoe-bound travelers planning to jump off early for the run up Route 88, all filling the place with high Friday night spirits.

  California modern was the theme: a wall of glass looking out on the illuminated vineyards, an open kitchen with a roaring grill, stainless-and-glass décor with redwood accents. The piano stayed quiet, just the right cool jazz tone. And the food was delicious: Braised lamb shanks. Rainbow Gulch zin. Truffled baked macaroni for soaking up the wine. Salad from greens grown right outside the door.

  Evangeline took a taste of lamb and said, “This was a set-up.”

  “Heavy fog in San Francisco, I swear. I just hope I haven’t gotten you into trouble with Peter. Although”—he leaned forward—“it’s great to spend time with you like this.”

  Evangeline changed the subject. “Crowded on a Friday night, but on Tuesdays?’

  “We’re closed for dinner, Mondays through Wednesdays. But if we make Amador another Napa, well…”

  “Stiff competition.”

  “Our wine is as good. We have more history. Route 88 runs right up to Carson Pass, where the wagon trains came through, and 49 goes down to the giant Sequoia grove at Calaveras. Few places as beautiful.” He clinked her glass. “Few women as beautiful.”

  She liked that, but not enough to take it seriously. “You’re working too hard.”

  “You mean if I back off, I might have a chance?”

  “Talk about wine, not the effect of my strong Yankee bone structure on your—”

  “On my what?”

  She shook her head and cut the meat off the lamb shank.…

  She was surprised that they still had plenty to talk about.

  After the crème brûlée, he offered to walk her out to the little guest cottage, a few hundred feet back of the big house. The path wound through California palms and evergreens, past a gazebo where they had weddings, into an area displaying more Gold Rush artifacts, big stuff like a Pelton wheel, a Long Tom, an old miner’s tipcart …

  The full moon threw their shadows ahead of them. The little guesthouse was already lit from within like a greeting card. And a move was imminent. She knew it. But she had decided there would be no full-on-the-mouth kiss.

  Then Manion stopped in front of a huge, heavy, iron nozzle, about six feet long, propped nicely for visitors to study. He said, “Do you know what that is?”

  “No, but it’s very symbolic.”

  “That tool caused a lot of damage in California.”

  “Tools shaped like that often do.”

  “I’m serious. It’s a monitor, the nozzle of a hydraulic mining hose. They ran water through these things from a great height, delivering enough pressure to knock a man over at two hundred feet. They could cut away whole hillsides in an afternoon to get at ancient riverbeds. You can still see scars all over the Mother Lode. But not here.” Manion looked up at the moon and out at the vineyard. “This land was saved. But if they thought there was gold here today, they’d do anything to get it.”

  “Who’s they?”

  “They.” Manion made a wave of his hand. “Whoever they are, out there. The ones who destroy. The ones who don’t care what they take and what they break. They.”

  And she asked a question that suddenly seemed pertinent. “Do they think there’s gold here … or do they know there’s gold here?”

  “No one knows anything.”

  “But a lot of people think that Spencer knew something, right? So they’re trying to find the journal, and you don’t want anyone to know any more than they do now.”

  “This is sacred ground, Evangeline. Ground I’ve been given to protect. I thank God for that chance.” He took both of her hands in his. “And I thank you for understanding.”

  Oh, Lord, she thought, he was playing vulnerable again. That could be sexier than all the smooth in the world.

  So she said, “Do you have an internet password in the guesthouse? I want to scan the journal pages from your brother and send them to Peter.”

  “Internet? Peter? I’m showing you my soul, and this is your answer?”

  “I’m sorry, Manion.” She kissed him on the cheek.

  And he kissed her on the mouth. Not hard or aggressive. But enough …

  She pulled back, looked into his eyes in the moonlight, looked for something, and said, “Just this once.” She wrapped a hand around his neck and pulled him toward her and kissed him like a lover.

  She wasn’t sure why she did it. But she did it. And before he could pull her toward him, she was pulling away, catching her breath. The first words she could think of were, “The password?”

  He looked at her as if to say, You can’t be serious. Instead, he said, “You’ll find everything in the cottage.” Then he went off into the night.

  * * *

  “WHAT?” WONTON WILLIE FLASHED the gold tooth. “You think I have safe house in some crummy Chinatown basement, with all old grandpas and grandmas playing mah-jongg upstair and cigarette smoke floatin’ down?”

  They were on the eighteenth floor of a luxury high-rise on Mission Street, a block from the California Historical Society. Two bedrooms, nice furniture, in-your-face view of the Bay Bridge.

  Mary Ching Cutler was waiting for them. She was sitting on the sofa, surfing the internet, when they got off the elevator. She gave LJ a hug. “I ordered from In-N-Out.”

  “My California dream,” said Peter.

  “Mine, too,” said Willie. “Better than dim sum.”

  In the limo, LJ had given his father the backstory: He first met Willie four years earlier, as a young lawyer doing summer work in the public defender’s office. He helped two of Willie’s boys, in trouble for extorting a coin-op laundry. Ever since, Willie had kept a back channel open.

  “And now, we all in the same boat,” said Willie. “We all know each other business. I even know what you thinkin’, Dad. Do Willie know about Feds?”

  “Well, do you?” asked Peter.

  “Hell yeah. Like I tell you.” Willie walked over and waved his hand from one side of the vista to the other. “This Willie’s town. I know everything. Feds watchin’ me, Michael Kou, Mr. Lum. But they always watchin’ someone.”

  Peter was watching the stream of headlights and taillights crossing the Bay. As safe houses went, this one was pretty nice, but he didn’t think it was particularly safe. Eighteenth floor, no back door, access only through elevators.

  “You know why I save you, hey?”

  “You like my Boston accent?” said Peter.

  “Because you still on the case for Willie. We got two day before big sit-down. You still goin’ after Chinese gold. And that’s what wins this fight.” Willie looked over his shoulder. “Ain’t that right, LJ?”


  LJ nodded and told Willie, “Dad thinks he knows where it is.”

  “And tomorrow,” said Peter, “I will go and get it.”

  “I like you father. He make a good soldier.” Willie turned to Peter. “And you son, maybe secret agent, hey, ’cause nobody know just what his game is.”

  “What’s your game,” asked Peter.

  “Like I tell you, I here to make Chinatown peoples happy and give Dai-lo nice gift, so he know who on his side. Mr. Lum want Michael Kou to run San Francisco. Smart boy, Kou. But book smart. Not like me. Not street smart. Streets tougher than books.”

  “So those were Lum’s guys chasing us?” asked Peter.

  Willie said, “Lum or Kou. Lum fly in from Hong Kong, do business, fly out again. When he want to scare somebody, like today in LJ apartment, he use tough guys from LA. Not San Francisco, or my boys know. Right, boys?”

  Peter looked at Mullet Man and Wraparound, who were standing in the corners with their arms folded. Mullet Man nodded. Wraparound chewed on his toothpick.

  Willie’s phone chimed. He looked and said, “Burgers comin’ up. Double Double Animal Style. You like? Animal fries, too, hey.”

  “I like,” said Peter. “Whenever I’m in California.”

  Willie laughed. “Sometime, you gotta have a hamburger.”

  Mullet Man headed for the door. Wraparound went into the kitchen for beer.

  “But I don’t save you to eat no hamburger, Mr. Treasure Hunter Man.” Willie came over to Peter. “I save you to find Chinese gold. When I give gold to Mr. Lum, everybody happy, even Mary Ching father.”

  “Don’t do us any favors,” said Mary, who was still scrolling on her iPad, feigning disinterest in all of this, perhaps as a defense against it.

  “Get the gold, leave a good impression, squeeze Michael Kou out.” Peter could not believe that Willie was in the dark about the deeper issue, the river of gold.

  As the burgers arrived, distracting Willie, LJ whispered to his father, “Play along.”

  Wraparound brought in beers and handed them out. Everyone sat on the big sectional sofa, facing the floor-to-ceilings.

  Willie said, “So where the gold?”

  Peter said, “If I told you, I’d have to kill you.”

  “Kill?” Willie scowled. His burger quivered in front of him, dripping juice.

  “Gotcha,” said Peter. “A joke.”

  LJ muttered, “Old joke, seldom funny.”

  But Willie laughed. It would never do for the big man to miss the joke. He asked, “You need ride to get to gold?”

  “Ride? No. A big deal like you attracts too much attention,” said Peter.

  Willie seemed to like that. “True. True. You do like you do.”

  Mary said, “He means that you should do it your way. He’s giving you permission. He’s a real gentleman.”

  Willie said, “Yeah, yeah. I no care how you do it, but I want Chinese gold. You get, give me, we all okay. After that, I look out for your son and girlfriend all time.”

  “I got friends,” said Peter, thinking of Wild Bill Donnelly’s .44 Magnum and Larry Kwan’s bulletproof winery wagon. “My guy can carry the three of us in comfort.”

  Willie took a big bite of his hamburger and said, “What three?”

  Peter gestured to himself, his son, and Mary.

  Willie shook his head. “Oh, no. Mary like it here. She like view. She like Wi-Fi.” He looked at Mary. “Real fast, hey?”

  “Like lightning,” she said.

  “And she like how she order anything she want from anywhere in San Francisco and we go get it for her. But she stay here till I get Chinese gold.”

  That changed things, thought Peter.

  His phone pinged in his pocket. He had a look.

  Evangeline wrote, “Door locked. Guesthouse quiet. New journal pages scanned and sent from George Sturgis, who appears to be an innocent bystander to whatever is going on. Read this. Read about the Proud Pilgrim.”

  The Journal of James Spencer—Notebook #6

  April 3, 1850

  Janiva and the Proud Pilgrim

  I could not sleep on the overnight boat.

  I paced the deck, gazed into the blackness, felt every slam of the giant piston, and wondered … what had driven Janiva to San Francisco?

  And when I was not thinking about her, I saw Cletis, urging us to go, assuring us that he could brazen his way out of anything. I lamented now that I had not told him how much I appreciated what he had done for us, that I had not offered him a good word to light his way into the overarching darkness, or off to the stars, or up to whatever heavenly place he imagined in his fractured interpretations of Scripture.

  My plan had been to get to San Francisco and board the first Boston-bound vessel. I had little doubt but that Hodges would come after me, despite the sacrifices of Cletis and Rodrigo Vargas and the bravely sworn (though perjured) testimony of the Emerys. Far better to face Hodges at home, in a court with rules of evidence, where witnesses would be few and defense attorneys more skilled than noose-makers.

  Of course, they might get to Flynn first. Sloate would gladly shoot him in the back. Or Trask would claim maritime law and hang him. Or they might scoop up Wei Chin and his family at the Chinese camp. Still, I should have been proceeding as if they were coming after me … until I read Janiva’s letter, then read it again and again.

  March 28, 1850

  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 aboard the ship Proud Pilgrim, anchored in the Bay. I have secured a commitment from Ames and Company of Easton and bought 2,000 shovels, with the promise of a partnership. Mr. Slawsby, of Brannan & Co., comes to the ship every day and offers to buy them all. But I will enter into no agreement until you appear. There is more to tell, but I will leave it for our meeting. Please hurry.

  Your Love, Janiva

  In six weeks, San Francisco had expanded and solidified, like some confection left to set in the sun. It seemed now as if there were twice as many ships, twice as many buildings, and the population had doubled since August. I was told that it might double again by the end of the year.

  And every time the city burned, they built it back up again, bigger, better, stronger. New wharfs reached out over the tide flats. Old wharfs reached toward the ships. And all of them advanced to the steady beat of steam-powered pile-drivers and men pounding nails. Meanwhile work gangs were hauling logs to build docks at right angles to the wharfs, so that tipcart drivers could fill behind them with sand from the hills and ballast from the abandoned ships. And as some created new land, others were throwing up storehouses, saloons, and gimcrack firetrap hotels. And every day, ships brought even more houses, pre-built in the East to hammer up as soon as there was land to set them on.

  The Proud Pilgrim lay at anchor two hundred yards from the end of the Clay Street Wharf. A rowboat was leaving as mine arrived. A passenger was grousing about the way “that damned woman” did business.

  Did he mean Janiva? I would not be surprised.

  Stepping aboard, I was met by a man at a table. Before him lay an array of weapons: two Colts, a pepperbox, a Bowie knife. He said, in a grating English accent, “Name and purchase. Foodstuffs at the bow. Manufactures at the stern. Gold dust only.”

  I glanced forward: another table, another big man, another harsh accent.

  Then I heard a female voice coming from the stern, from a table by the aft deck house, where half a dozen men clustered over a woman, either to gawk or do business. I could not quite tell as I could not quite see her, but I knew that voice, confident and smart. And I knew that silhouette, trim and serenely motionless.

  I smoothed the red and yellow-paisley silk neckerchief that I had put on for our meeting and stepped toward her.

  The man at the table almost knocked it over, he jumped up so quickly. “Did you hear what I said, mate? You go nowhere on my ship without statin’ you
r name.”

  I had learned from Cletis Smith to answer a challenge with one of my own. So I said, “Are you the captain? And if you’re not, why should I give you my name?”

  The man picked up the Bowie knife. His face was sunburned, except where scars held it together with jagged white lines. He stood a head taller than I and seemed twice as wide, now that he was on his feet. He said, “State your name or step back.”

  Challenge met, turf marked, I consented: “My name is James Spencer.”

  He lowered the knife. “So you’d be the one she’s waitin’ for?”

  “The very one.” And here I had a choice. I could threaten this man who threatened me with the tip of his knife, threaten him with a bullet if he ever brandished a blade in front of me again. Or, I could conciliate. “You guard the ship well, sir. I thank you for being so assiduous in seeing to the safety of Miss Toler and the Proud Pilgrim.”

  He gave me a squint. “So what? So ass—”

  “So assiduous. It means so dedicated. Thank you for being so dedicated.” I also remembered Cletis’s warnings about showing off my book learning.

  “She said you was a smart one. Too damn smart. Well, here’s the rule of the—”

  “Is that James Spencer that I hear?” Janiva was pushing back from her table.

  “Miss Toler.” I headed aft, paying no further mind to the gatekeeper.

  Janiva gestured for the others to give me room, and as they parted, the vision of my dreams appeared. She wore a prim crimson dress of gingham with a white collar, a gray shawl, and a broad-brimmed straw hat that made her look almost girlish. Her posture and tone were as formal as if we were meeting at a Boston cotillion. But from beneath the yellow brim, her eyes met mine, and she smiled.

  Yes, she had done something more extraordinary than I could ever have imagined. And she was proud of herself. I could tell. Seeing her like this, holding the center of this circle of businessmen, in the bright San Francisco sun, I was proud of her, too.

  Then she offered her hand.

  I feared taking it, feared the merest touch of her after so long apart, feared that it might cause me to respond as I had when I thought about her on lonely nights in the high country. But I reached out and said, “Welcome to California.”