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

by William Martin

  Flynn grabbed Brizz by the shoulders, pulled him off Janiva, sent him stumbling back with a look of shock on his hairy face and a white dick standing stiff and wet. He drove the Bowie knife so deep into Brizz’s belly that it came out his back.

  Muggs turned to run, but Dooling drove the hammer claw right into the top of his skull. Muggs sank to his knees, stood and stumbled forward, then collapsed with the hammer in his head.

  The one on the companionway steps—he looked about sixteen—stood frozen in shock.

  Flynn tried to pull the knife out of Brizz, who was still twisting and struggling and squirting blood, but the knife would not budge. So Flynn shouted at me, “Shoot him.”

  And for a moment, I hesitated.

  He was a boy. He raised his hand, cried, “No!”

  Then Janiva sat up and looked at me fiercely and said, “Kill him.”

  And I did. I went up straight and hard, and before he could turn, I put a bullet under his rib cage. It came out his back and cut his spine, because his legs collapsed and his young body flopped down the steps like a sack of clams.

  Another voice cried down from above, “Oi, what’s goin’ on? Did you fuckers shoot her before I fucked her?”

  Fucked her? Another one? He would get no hesitation, no mercy. As he came down, I went up, shot him once, chased him out onto the deck, and shot him again.

  Dawn covered the sky. Fire covered the dawn. And blood covered the Proud Pilgrim.

  * * *

  BY NOW, JANIVA WAS standing, trembling. She seemed not to notice the dead bodies. Trub and McLaws, Brizz and the boy. She was saying, “Seven barrels for six men. That’s what I had. Seven for six. One shot should have killed them all.”

  “Don’t worry, darlin’,” said Flynn, wiping the blade on the shirttail of the dead boy. “Big gun like that, sometimes, it ain’t so accurate. Ain’t that right, Matt?”

  “Right for sure. You done good, missus.”

  She looked around at the mess of blood and gore and said, “It stinks in here.”

  I tried to lead her back to the captain’s cabin. But she pulled away, smoothed the front of her dress as if it would make everything all right. “It’s time for breakfast.” She started forward, to the caboose.

  I reached out to her again, and she screamed, “Don’t touch me! Do not touch me.” But there was no anger on her face, no fear, just a cold, affectless stare, the expression I had seen that day in the Arbella Club, when I announced I was leaving.

  Flynn said to her, “Let me cook, darlin’. You go back to your cabin and rest.”

  “Yes,” said Matt Dooling. “We’ll protect you.”

  After a moment, I reached out again, though I did not touch her, and she allowed me to lead her to the stern, to our Bower of Bliss, which felt as violated as she.

  While the city burned beyond the windows, we three tried to comfort her. We gave her brandy. We had some ourselves. We made coffee, too. We brought her hot water and cloths from the ship’s store so that she could clean herself. Then she retreated to the captain’s private necessary in the gallery on the larboard side, a single-holed seat dropping straight into the sea. There, she spent twenty minutes, behind a louver.

  Flynn, Dooling, and I sat at the table, watched the flames leaping on the hill between the waterfront and Portsmouth Square, and debated our next move.

  Finally, I said, “We go to the law. We take Brannan. We plead self-defense.”

  And from behind the louver I heard her voice, cool and rational. “We do nothing of the sort.” Then she emerged, hair pinned, dress smoothed, the front of the bodice covered with a clean white apron, and powder makeup, which I did not know she possessed, covering the bruise under her eye.

  She poured another brandy, and brought the glass to her mouth. Though she could hide the bruise, she could not hide the shaking hand. But after a swallow, she said, “Seven barrels and only one man went down. I grabbed for the pistol on the table, but—”

  “We’ll plead self-defense,” I said. “No shame—”

  “No,” she said softly, then furiously, “No! I never want to speak of this again. I never want to answer a question. And they will ask. Six dead men? How many raped you? How many times? Two? Three? Why are there six dead men? How did they get aboard? Were they invited? Where was your husband? Where were his friends? Weren’t some of these men in his employ? And six dead? Why did you kill them all? And wasn’t the Irishman a whoremonger? Could it be that the men were confused, or were you one of his girls? Couldn’t you just—just—no. No!” She looked out at the burning city.

  After a time, as the truth of what we had done sank in, I said, “We still need to answer for their bodies.”

  She said, “Let the crabs eat them.”

  And Michael Flynn, who had been uncharacteristically quiet, said, “You know, she’s right.”

  “I know I will not suffer another indignity,” she said.

  Flynn asked Dooling, “Can you lend us that strong arm a while longer?”

  Matt Dooling nodded and made a fist.

  “Good,” said Flynn. “If we can row an anchor about a hundred yards, we’ll turn something bad into good. We’ll sink the Proud Pilgrim with all six bodies.”

  “And claim a water lot,” I added.

  * * *

  SAN FRANCISCO BURNED UNTIL eleven o’clock that morning.

  The fire consumed everything from Kearny down to Montgomery, from Clay to Washington. It jumped Portsmouth Square and started burning up the hill, but John Geary, the strong-browed young man whose appointment as U.S. postmaster had positioned him to win the city’s first mayoral election, ordered the destruction of all buildings on Dupont, thereby creating a firebreak. It was easy because some of the buildings were made of canvas, and others had been thrown up in a few days. Now they were all gone, making room for another round, bigger, better, stronger, perhaps built of brick.

  But the Brannan warehouse survived. So did all our goods, which would now leap in price. Once we could swallow down the horror of what had happened on the Proud Pilgrim, we would be in business for as long as we wanted.

  By afternoon, we had carried the six bodies deep into the ship, chained them along the keel, and closed the hatches of the orlop deck. I tried not to look at the faces. I tried not to consider the lives. We had done what needed to be done. Even the boy had earned his fate. I felt better once the bodies were out of sight. But while we could wash the blood from the decks, we could never wash it from our souls.

  I told Janiva to stay in the cabin while we did this dirty work. I told her to read the Bible or Shakespeare. She chose MacBeth. She said that she admired the backbone of that fierce, flawed wife. I admired hers.

  Later, Michael made beef stew, and we ate, though none of us had much appetite.

  As night came on, we moved the last of the shovels off the ship. It took five trips in the rowboat. We loaded half of them onto a cart. And while Matt Dooling waited on the wharf with the other half, Flynn and I brought the cart to Brannan’s warehouse. The night fog had rolled in. The smell of smoke hung thick and wet.

  Brannan was doing an inventory, re-pricing while the city smoldered. I told him that it would be best if he sold all our shovels in San Francisco. As I had not heard from Hopkins in Sacramento, and as Brannan had done such a loyal job of protecting our goods, I would honor the price I had given him on all the other shovels. And our partnership grew stronger.

  Then, as we were leaving, I saw Wei Chin. I was not certain at first. He was hunkered in a shadow in an alley across the street. He pulled back at the sight of me.

  I did not think that Flynn noticed him, so I said that I had left something behind, that he should continue down to the wharf. Then I stepped into the shadow and looked into the eyes of the Chinaman, filled with fear and defiance.

  Yes, he and the others had been in the crowd of Chinese we had passed during the fire. He had been watching the Brannan warehouse ever since, hoping to see me. He said he had brought hi
s people to San Francisco, and here they would stay. Then he asked about Flynn. “Does he come to stay?”

  And a voice cut through the darkness. “I come to find Mei-Ling.” Flynn had not been fooled. He was never fooled. He knew I had seen something, so he doubled back.

  Chin looked at him. “She no see you.”

  “Why not?”

  “She marry. She marry Jon-Ling.”

  “The one with the restaurant?” I said.

  Chin nodded. “She no love white man. Too much trouble white man. No white man for brother. No white Irish man. No peppermint. She never want see you.”

  Flynn blustered and threatened and said he would follow Chin back to wherever they were living or spy on the restaurant until he saw her.

  Chin, with cold calm, said he would kill the Irishman if he interfered with Mei-Ling’s marriage to a man of business, one of the Celestial leaders of the town.

  And for one of the few times that I knew him, Michael Flynn took no for an answer.

  Something came over him for days after that. He stopped smiling. He stopped talking. He stopped making light of serious matters and waxing serious about trivial things. And I knew that he had more than mere lust for the Chinese girl named Mei-Ling.

  * * *

  I MUST RECORD ONE more thing about that terrible day, illustrative of the deep wellspring of strength in Janiva Toler Spencer.

  Torn by the horrors of the dawn, she rolled to me late in the night and told me to love her. She did not ask, nor did she seduce. She spoke bluntly, as if telling me that it was a necessary task. After all she had gone through? I hesitated. So she said, “If something more comes of this, we will always believe it is your child.” I admired her bravery even more. And somehow, we affirmed our life together.

  May 8, 1850

  Good-bye, Proud Pilgrim

  In the succeeding days, Janiva did not smile and seldom spoke. But if she had a task, she went to it willingly. Prepare coffee. Wash her “rape dress.” Repeat the process of procreation with her husband. Sink the Proud Pilgrim.

  We waited for the morning when the tide took flood at four o’clock, then we got to work. While Flynn and Dooling rowed the kedging anchor to a spot about two hundred feet away, we detached the main anchor and let slip the Proud Pilgrim.

  We had the help of Wei Chin and Little Ng in this. They did not know our exact purpose, only that we needed muscle. Chin said they would provide it, if Flynn would promise not to see his sister again. And Flynn agreed. I asked him why, and he said, “So your wife never has to answer a bad question about a terrible thing.”

  Yes, I thought, he was a true friend.

  With the tide running, Wei Chin, Little Ng, Janiva, and I wrapped hands around the capstan bars and waited for Flynn to sing out, a signal that the kedging anchor had taken hold. When the first lines of “The Wild Colonial Boy” rose from the darkness, we threw our strength forward and began to crank. By six o’clock, we had accomplished the amazing task of kedging the eight-hundred-ton vessel into a spot directly in line with the end of the Clay Street Wharf. Whoever laid claim to the mud beneath her keel would now have to contend with us.

  Then I told the Chinese to leave.

  Chin said, “You no want us to see blood?”

  “What blood?”

  “Blood everywhere, James Spencer.” He tapped his nose. “Get nothing without spill blood. This ship make you rich where you sink it. I be rich, too. Spill blood, too, if need. Spill blood to make good place for Chinese.”

  Flynn, who had come back aboard, must now have felt the weight of his promise, for he said, “I love your sister, Sam Who. I can make a good place for her right now, if she’ll have me, if you’ll let me.”

  “Stay away, Irish. If you my friend, stay away,” said Chin. Then he and Little Ng went over the side.

  While Matt Dooling rowed the Chinese and my silent wife ashore, Flynn and I went below and lifted the hatches of the orlop deck, then dropped down into the cramped space beneath. Our torches did little to burn away the stench of rotting flesh but were a great weapon in warding off the swarm of rats that scurried everywhere, except for those still feasting on the bodies of the six men we had killed.

  Flynn to the bow and I to the stern, we hunched and crab-walked through the bilge. With chisels and six-pound hammers borrowed from Dooling’s tool bag, we set to cutting the boards close by the keel.

  As water seeped in, the rats started squealing and darting and slithering around my legs. I waved the torch to ward them off, and for an instant, saw the half-eaten face of Trub McLaws in the light. Goddamn him, I thought, for what he had done to my wife and for what he had made me do to him.

  I hammered harder and faster until I had opened a six-by-six-inch hole. When I struck the final blow and knocked the square of plank free, a column of water fountained up.

  An instant later, Flynn shouted, “Get out, Jamie. Get out now.”

  I lifted myself through that hatch, but Flynn was not following. I stopped, waited, listened to the rush of water and the noise of the rats. Was he so despondent that he would stay and drown with them, mourning Mei-Ling? A moment after that thought crossed my mind, he emerged, holding a pouch of gold dust. He said it belonged to Trub. But now it belonged to him. The old Flynn was not gone altogether.

  By full sunrise, the Proud Pilgrim had sunk into twenty feet of water, masts and upper works still visible at low tide, hull sitting on a bottom that would one day be worth a fortune.

  May 15, 1850

  Good News

  We live now in the St. Francis Hotel. We exchanged the water rights we claimed with the Proud Pilgrim for a piece of land on Market Street, at the edge of town, where Dupont runs in. We will build a warehouse there and a business, too. It is a good deal.

  And this evening Janiva gave me news that we had prayed for. Yes, we pray regularly, having joined the new Congregational Church. And what we prayed for we have been given: Her monthlies have arrived. We will never wonder who fathers our first child. For the first time in ten days, a glimmer of smile has appeared on her face. And so I write my last dispatch for the Boston Transcript:

  A new James Spencer emerges from the cocoon of the callow young Sagamore, one of a hundred such who sailed through the Golden Gate just nine months ago.

  The Sagamores have dispersed, like birds before the hurricane. Some still work the Miwok, where the mining is good and the water flows fast. Others wander, still searching. Some are happy. Others, heads hung, make for home. And sadly, some have now passed to another plain.

  The only truth we can offer is that in California, opportunity abounds. But it is an unforgiving place. Hard work is essential, but good fortune trumps labor. Life can be beautiful or it can be brutal, but it is seldom fair.

  As for me, I have seen the elephant. I have seen beauty and brutality on the shores of this bay, and out on the browning plains, and along the rivers that drain the beckoning hills. So I will now set about civilizing this place, creating a new order, where the fickle mistress of fortune will give way to a caring and reliable mother.

  I thank God that in this purpose, I have a true helpmate, Janiva Toler, daughter of Joshua of the Toler Ropewalks. We are business partners, shipping goods from Boston for wholesale in the city where, we are told, more cash and gold are in circulation than anywhere else in America. We are also life partners, man and wife. I apologize to any for whom this news is a shock, but our American distances are great, so we must live the adventure of life as it unfolds before us. And be assured that our prospects are bright.

  As for my old partner, Michael Flynn has heard stories of an actual lake of gold near the headwaters of the Yuba River. He says that there may lie the great source of the Mother Lode, the strike to make all others pale. A general migration has begun in that direction, and he has joined it. I will miss his friendship, as I miss the mentorship of Samuel Hodges and the companionship of so many I sailed with and so many I met in the gold country.

  I wish them
all Godspeed and good luck. And never fear word of another San Francisco fire, for each time it burns, we build it back up, bigger, better, stronger.

  SEVEN

  Saturday Morning

  “FIFTY DOLLARS A SHOVEL.” Peter Fallon stepped onto the elevator after his son. “About sixteen hundred bucks in today’s dollars.”

  LJ pressed G. “I keep telling you, Dad, San Francisco is an expensive town.”

  Mary was still in the apartment, alternately scrolling through Facebook, then staring out at the bright day and the light weekend traffic on the Bay Bridge. Wraparound was guarding the door.

  LJ said, “Do you think we should be going out to Amador?”

  “Willie wants the bags of gold. We satisfy Willie, while we keep looking for the real prize, the last chapter of the journal.”

  “So the bags of gold are the bridge?”

  “I don’t know, but finding them will get Willie off our back.”

  In the lobby, the desk manager gave them a look, then went back to thumbing his phone. Probably on Willie’s payroll, too. Like all big cities, San Francisco could be a very small town.

  Through the plate-glass windows, they saw Larry Kwan, waiting beside his Escalade.

  Peter told his son, “You’re not coming.”

  “What?”

  “Bill Donnelly has a big gun. Jack Cutler has a metal detector. And Larry Kwan can talk a dog off a meat wagon, so I won’t be bored on the drive.”

  “But I got you into this, Dad.”

  “I’m glad I can help.”

  “You make it sound like you’re having fun.”

  “There’s fun, then there’s fulfillment. I thought I taught you that.”

  “Fulfillment, as long as you don’t get killed,” LJ said.

  “So in the interests of fulfillment and keeping us all alive, stay by a computer. I may need research. And stay close to Mary, in case Willie or his boys get fresh.”

  “It’s not Willie I worry about,” said LJ.

  Peter looked up the street and down. “I don’t see any FBI surveillance teams.”