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

by William Martin

  “I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.”

  “Christine Ryan seems to be letting this play out as if we’re all bugs in an experiment.”

  “Undercover bugs,” said LJ.

  “As long as no one steps on us.” Peter wrapped an arm around his son’s shoulders and pivoted him back toward the elevator. “Stay close, kid.”

  “Go easy on Jack Cutler, Dad. He’s scared.”

  “Sure.” Peter did not add that he was scared, too.

  * * *

  PETER HOPPED IN NEXT to Larry Kwan and said, “Anybody following you?”

  “Nope, and I been watchin’. No blue SUVs, no cable cars, no rickshaws, nothing.” Larry pulled into the Mission Street traffic and started talking. “You know, I Googled Peter Fallon, and I have to say, you’re big-time. Rare books … Revere tea sets … Lincoln diaries … And you sure do get into a lot of trouble for a historian.”

  Peter patted the dashboard. “That’s why I like riding in an armored Escalade.”

  Larry laughed. “The Escalade’s armored, but I’m not.”

  “I have one rule in life, Larry. If somebody pulls a gun, run.”

  “Nice rhyme. Like, ‘If you go for the history, you may get a mystery.’”

  “Sometimes it happens that way.”

  “So, are you going to tell me what our history-mystery is this time?”

  Peter decided to trust Larry. He needed friends, and Larry had bought in. “A Gold Rush journal, stolen from right there.” Peter pointed to the puce-and-white California Historical Society, half a block up the street.

  And as if it was just popping into his head, Larry said, “Hey, remember, I told you I went out to Amador a few times before?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I picked up somebody at that society about a year ago and drove them out to Manion Gold Vineyards.”

  “One person? For a tasting?”

  “I don’t know if they were tasting, but Manion Sturgis called, asked me to pick up a lady, right there.”

  “Who was she?”

  “Oh, hell, what was her name?” Larry was distracted by the lefts and rights, the stops and goes, the beepings and creepings that led to the Bay Bridge. Then they were merging and swinging west, with downtown on their left, all those enormous buildings sitting on the landfill of Yerba Buena Cove, ancient graveyard of the Gold Rush fleet.

  “Try to think,” said Peter.

  “I am. But when I drive across the Bay Bridge, I think about driving.”

  They shot through the tunnel on Yerba Buena Island and onto the new section of bridge, rebuilt for billions to withstand the “Big One,” the San Andreas quake lurking out there somewhere, maybe tomorrow, maybe in a century, a massive shake to dwarf the Richter-scale bomb of 1906.

  Once they were rolling through Oakland, Larry said, “OK. No more lane changes. Now I can think. But I don’t think I can remember her name. I can remember wines and vintages from fifteen years ago, but names? Not so much.”

  Peter said, “It was just one person, though?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did she carry anything?”

  “I don’t remember. I drove her out. And—”

  “Was anybody else at this lunch?”

  Larry snapped a finger. So he remembered something else. “Her mother. Yeah. We stopped to pick up her mother on one of the back roads in Amador.”

  “Was this woman’s name Meg Miller?”

  “The mother?”

  “No. The one you picked up at the historical society.”

  “Nah, no, but—”

  “Did she have a tattoo?”

  “Maybe on her ass. But I didn’t see it.”

  As they sped up Route 80, Peter went to the historical society website and read Larry the names of everyone on the masthead.

  Larry didn’t recognize any of them.

  But there was something here. Sometimes things happened because of research, sometimes because of dumb luck, but however they happened …

  He sent Evangeline a text. He told her to ask Manion about a visit from someone from the California Historical Society a year ago. Then he added, “You’ll need something to talk about over breakfast. Larry Kwan on the way. Me, too.”

  * * *

  EVANGELINE WAS SITTING ON the porch of the guest cottage when her phone pinged.

  It was around nine o’clock, so the sun was up full, warming nicely. She had her hands wrapped around her coffee cup and was admiring the way the light sculpted the landscape rolling south from Rainbow Gulch and bending gracefully southwest, out where one of the brown hills seemed to redirect the golden river of grapevines.

  She loved a quiet morning coming in fresh and clean, even if her underwear wasn’t. She was in such a good mood, she didn’t bother to text Peter the big “F-U” for that “over breakfast” remark.

  But breakfast was coming, too. Up the garden path, past the picnic tables, through the outdoor display of Gold Rush rockers and sluices and monitor nozzles, two tasting-room workers were carrying trays, led by Manion Sturgis, in jeans, white shirt, and yellow sweater draped over his shoulders like a late-in-life prepster.

  Trying too hard again.

  But she was enjoying the pampering … the helicopters, the meals, the little discoveries in this fairy-tale world of wine, the undisturbed night in the sweet little cottage, with nothing but the adventures of James Spencer to keep her company. She had to admit that it all tempted her … a retreat in the California hills, a refuge from the passage of time, an oasis overseen by a man who had sanded off all his hard edges.

  Peter always told her that hard edges were part of his appeal.

  So why had she and Peter continued to swing toward each other, then away, toward, then away, across all the years since they reconnected? Why couldn’t they settle down and do it? Just get married and move in together?

  She had always been the one more reluctant. She had always been the one constantly moving, constantly pitching editors on stories of new and exotic places. And her love of New York over Boston was a good excuse to keep them lovers at long-range.

  But there was something deeper. She was past the age to have children. She would not live on through another generation. So she traveled. Even if she had not carved a place for herself in the shrinking world of travel magazining, she would have traveled. To see how other people lived and to live something different right along with them, she traveled. To taste all the tastes, hear all the sounds, see all the colors, she traveled. To live, she traveled. Then she went home and wrote about it all. Then she traveled again. And she read a lot, because reading was a kind of travel, too, as real as taking to the road.

  And for some people, having an affair was also a kind of travel. With all the excitement, drama, and inevitable pain, an affair let you live another life, if only for a short time. It let you escape whatever it was about yourself that kept you running, let you see someone else’s horizon and, maybe, someone else’s heart.

  Evangeline liked to think she was happy with who she was, running from nothing, comfortable with the long-range deal that she and Peter had worked out. But there were so many lives to live, so many futures to embrace, and so little time to gather it all in. Maybe that was why she had kissed Manion Sturgis the night before. But she had locked the door of the cottage and spent the night alone.

  Now, as Manion came up the pathway, she let herself wonder.

  “Huevos rancheros and a sparkling Chardonnay from my brother’s vineyard,” he announced. “We don’t make sparkling. But this retails at twelve ninety-five. Good for mimosas.”

  She leaned back, stretched, and said, “I’d love a mimosa.”

  The servers left them alone with their breakfast. And for yet another meal, Evangeline and Manion Sturgis did not run out of things to talk about.

  But before she brought up the vineyard visit of a woman from the California Historical Society, Evangeline caught the glint of a windshield down the hill. A blue Ford
Explorer was turning off the main road into the parking lot.

  “That’s funny,” said Manion.

  “What?”

  “Larry Kwan drives an Escalade.” He poured her another mimosa, as if he thought nothing more of it.

  Evangeline sipped hers and asked Peter’s question.

  “A woman from the California Historical Society?” said Manion. “A year ago? I’d have to think about that.” Just then, his cell phone buzzed. He said, “It’s the office. I told them I did not want to be disturbed.” He answered: “What?”

  And Evangeline saw something new cross his face. Shock. Surprise. Fear.

  He said, “On their way? Up here? But—no, no. No police.”

  A golf cart was following the path that breakfast had taken.

  A black guy in a dark suit was driving. A white guy in a dark suit was riding shotgun. Both wore sunglasses. Both looked about as big as the guest cottage.

  Riding in the rear seat was a smaller Asian man in an expensive suit and tie.

  The golf cart pulled up. The white guy got off and extended a hand so the Asian man could step off gracefully.

  Manion Sturgis said, “Good morning, Mr. Lum.”

  “A pleasure to see you again, Mr. Sturgis.” Lum spoke with, of all things, a BBC British accent, learned perhaps in Hong Kong. He looked at Evangeline. “And a pleasure to meet the lovely lady. Mr. Barber told me all about you.”

  “Did he tell you I am not selling?” Manion Sturgis gestured at Lum to have a seat.

  “I am here to make a new offer.” Mr. Lum was as smooth as his suit.

  “I’ve told you, there’s no amount of money that will induce me to sell this land.”

  Lum looked at Evangeline. “The two of you could travel far and wide on what I am prepared to offer. First class everywhere.”

  Evangeline did not correct Mr. Lum’s assumptions about their relationship. It was none of his business. He did not seem that interested, anyway.

  Manion said, “I travel first class as it is.”

  “I do not propose to buy the whole property. Just the mineral rights.” Mr. Lum opened the folder he was carrying. He had none of that clichéd Asian inscrutability. No gamesmanship. No dance. He pointed to a figure. “Our research shows that ten years ago, you paid five hundred thousand dollars to your family estate for this land, including patented mineral rights.”

  Manion said, “I bought a vineyard that lay dormant since Prohibition. I revived it. I worked with the oldest vines in California, out at the edge of the gulch. I grafted other varieties. I worked miracles here. Why would I sell the mineral rights so you could exploit them and, no matter how careful you might be, damage this wonderful valley?”

  Mr. Lum fingered his triangle lapel pin. “There will be no damage. We will engage in drift mining, working from the other side of Rainbow Gulch.”

  “Jack Cutler owns that land.”

  “Leave Cutler to me.” Mr. Lum’s half smile fell off. “This is a special offer, a final offer. It will please men on both sides of the Pacific if you accept.”

  Evangeline looked over at the two bodyguards. The black guy was staring out at the vineyard. The white guy was studying his phone.

  Lum said to Sturgis, “Your land is now assessed at five million dollars. High for this county, but we will give you six, with surface rights remaining in your possession.”

  “I’d rather turn it over to the Mother Lode Land Trust.”

  “I would not grant conservation or agricultural easements here. We think there’s gold under this ground, Mr. Sturgis. It is my job to make the best deal for it.” He looked at Evangeline. “Do you have any opinions?”

  “I like it as it is,” she said.

  “Then enjoy it.” He stood and put a paper on the table. “Sierra Rock wants to own it by the end of this weekend. We are also purchasing land along the Miwok, owned by the Boyles Family and the O’Hara Family.”

  “Sierra Rock owns the Emery Mine. It’s right in the middle of all those properties. What else do they need?” said Sturgis.

  “Diversification. Different kinds of gold require different kinds of ownership.” Mr. Lum got back onto the golf cart. “I will see you tomorrow.”

  * * *

  IN A LITTLE OVER two hours Larry Kwan delivered Peter Fallon to Placerville, the crossroads of gold country.

  Route 50 slowed here to a traffic-light crawl. If you stayed on it, you’d soon be climbing toward Lake Tahoe. A left onto 49 sent you toward Sutter’s Mill and the deepening valleys and rising slopes of the northern mines. A right took you into the dry, gentle countryside of the southern mines, dotted with towns like Angels Camp, Calaveras, and Sutter’s Creek.

  Placerville had been born as Old Dry Diggins, a place with gold in all the gulches but barely a trickle of water to wash it. So miners hauled the dirt to the only creek, which was bone dry for half the year. After they hanged three desperadoes in the center of town, they started calling it Hangtown. But respectability had turned it to Placerville.

  Google’s early photos showed dense-packed ramshackle cabins, a miserable damn place like the hundreds of others that sprang up during the Gold Rush. Most of them had disappeared, but Placerville still stood at the crossroads. Modern images showed a thriving Main Street with the feel of an Old West town. Add parking places instead of hitching posts, a Shell station, Jimboy’s Tacos, banks, a used bookstore, and restaurants, and you had all the comforts.

  Cutler Gold Exploration was on a side street, a little building with a plate-glass front and five parking spaces, three occupied by a pickup, a compressor, and a trailer holding a Bobcat front-end loader.

  Peter went up to the window and peered in: two desks, Cutler sitting behind one, deep in the shadows. Motionless. Drunk? Asleep? Dead?

  Peter knocked, then opened the door.

  Cutler looked up. He had not shaved, combed his hair, or changed his clothes since the day before. A double-barreled shotgun lay on the desk.

  Peter said, “What’s with the cannon?”

  “I don’t know if anyone’s told you, Peter Fallon, but this shit is getting real.”

  “Oh, they’ve told me. More than once.”

  “Did you get away over the apartment roof, once you got your shoes on?”

  Peter was still trying to figure this guy out. He did not trust him. He did not especially like him. But LJ and Mary had asked Peter to work with him, so Peter told him they needed picks, shovels, metal detector. “Shotgun, too, if you want to bring it.”

  Cutler said, “The Chinese are coming.”

  “Coming where?”

  “To the Mother Lode. To Placerville. To my fucking office.”

  As jittery as a man trying to push a wheelbarrow across a freeway, thought Peter. “Are you on something, Cutler?”

  “Caffeine. Lots of caffeine since Michael Kou called and told me to expect a visit from the Dai-lo himself, bringing a P&S on my land. I own everything between the Emery Mine and Rainbow Gulch. You know Rainbow Gulch?”

  “Manion Sturgis makes his wines on the plateau above.”

  “That’s no plateau.” Cutler scoffed, like an annoying IT guy one-upping the office Luddite. “It’s an ancient riverbed.”

  “Listen, Jack, I think I know where there’s half a million dollars in gold. You want it. I want it. If we find it, we can get Wonton Willie off our kids’ backs. Let’s focus on that.”

  “Half a million? Chump change.” Cutler tapped his computer. “Look at this.”

  Peter looked at his watch instead.

  Cutler waved him over. “Come on. It’ll just take a minute.”

  Peter stepped around the desk, stepped closer. And yeah, Cutler smelled as bad as he looked. “You must be really nervous.”

  “I’ve been nervous ever since that old lady got hit-and-run on Van Ness. But no one’s murdering me. Not without a fight.” He gestured to the shotgun.

  “But what are you fighting for? Yourself or our kids?”

  “
The truth … and my own reputation. Everything else follows from that.”

  Outside, Larry Kwan honked his horn.

  “And here’s the truth.” Cutler jabbed a finger at the screen. “U.S. Geological Survey map from 1911, compiled by a guy named Waldemar Lindgren. It shows all of California’s ancient rivers from the Tertiary Period.”

  Another honk.

  Peter looked toward the window. “We have to go.”

  “These rivers flowed west long before the Sierra rose in the east. The earth was warmer and wetter. The landscape was gentler, with low mountains that had already gone through eons of erosion. A shallow sea reached as far inland as Sacramento. But the laws of geology, physics, and hydrodynamics still pertained, so—”

  “—those rivers were already eroding gold?”

  “From the moment the quartz veins extruded into the crevices. But—”

  “—a lot can happen in sixty million years?”

  “Like the subduction of one tectonic plate under another, causing the upthrust of a mountain range, which generates heat, which generates magma, which means volcanoes.”

  “Fascinating,” said Peter, “But—”

  “There were eruptions all over this area.” Cutler gestured toward the window, as if a big vent was steaming away in the parking lot. “Volcanoes spew lava. And lava is liquid, right?”

  “Hot liquid.”

  “Which follows the path of least resistance, like water. Those eruptions sent lava right down the riverbeds. Find old lava flows or andesitic soils, you’ll often find a nice defined layer of alluvial gravel, sometimes a few feet down, sometimes hundreds.”

  “Where the ancient rivers flowed?”

  “Right. Most of those rivers were found before we were born.” He pointed at the screen. “There’s the bed of the ancient Calaveras. There’s the Yuba. They produced a steady stream of gold, back when prospectors could come across a layer of exposed gravel, run a little test, then turn a big hose onto it.”

  “Hydraulic mining?” said Peter.

  “The most environmentally destructive thing ever done in California.”

  Cutler had Peter’s attention now. The lost rivers of gold weren’t just a metaphor. They were real, but they were underground, and made of gravel, not water. Peter pointed to the tributaries of a stream that seemed to surround Broke Neck.