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

by William Martin

  “Don’t do us any favors,” said Marti.

  “Not a favor, a deal. You wave good-bye, we stay out of your business.” Wild Bill holstered his .44.

  Marti Boyles gestured for her sons to lower their guns. Then she said, “You bastards remember, we know where you live. Get out, but tell that bitch across the way, that Ginny O’Hara, tell her and her friend Sturgis and that old fuckin’ hippie from Sausalito that the answer is ‘no.’ We ain’t sellin’ to anyone. No to them, no to the Chinks, no to anybody else.”

  And Peter Fallon almost kissed that grouchy old woman. She had just connected dots all over the place, with a single long, squawked, sarcastic sentence. Ginny O’Hara, whose daughter may have stolen the transcription, was in cahoots with Manion Sturgis and … Sarah Bliss? Strange, strange allies. He said, “If the Asian investors visit—”

  “They won’t stay for long,” said Buster.

  “Nobody fucks with a woman who has three armed sons,” said Marti. “Now get.”

  * * *

  AS PETER, WILD BILL, and Jack Cutler climbed the other side of the bank, Larry Kwan shouted, “You guys like my toy?”

  Cutler said, “I want one.”

  And Peter’s phone pinged. A text. It came from Ginny O’Hara and made him very glad that he had given her his card. It read: “Sturgis has the journal.”

  So, she had changed her mind before Peter tried to change it for her.

  Larry Kwan asked, “Where to, boss?”

  Peter said, “Manion Gold Vineyards, as scheduled.” Then he forwarded Ginny O’Hara’s text to Evangeline, adding, “Ask Manion, where is it?”

  * * *

  AN HOUR LATER, PETER Fallon was holding the transcribed “Journal of James Spencer.” And his hands were perspiring.

  It had sheepskin leather covers, marbled end papers, and inside, long sheets of careful handwriting, the steady work of an old man who had less and less to do with his business, so he could concentrate more and more on his Palmer Method loops and dips.

  “This is what we’ve been looking for the whole time,” said Peter. Then he gave Manion Sturgis the best withering, sidelong glare he could muster. He almost hurt his eyes, he withered so hard.

  But Manion wasn’t having it. He said, “You can take the boy out of Boston, but you can’t take that Boston stink-eye out of the boy.”

  “You could have made this easier on all of us,” answered Peter.

  He, Wild Bill, and Jack Cutler had joined Sturgis and Evangeline on the veranda of the little guest cottage, while Larry Kwan flew his drone around the vineyard. A pot of coffee and a plate of scones sat on the table. Only Cutler was eating.

  Manion Sturgis said, “This thing has never been about bags of Chinese gold under a rock. Cutler knows … with his core sampling augur and his cheap metal detector.”

  “Mine’s not cheap,” said Cutler.

  “And that’s not an explanation.” Peter held his glare.

  Sturgis glared right back. “This has always been about protecting our countryside from mining.”

  “Protecting it?” Wild Bill laughed. “But Amador County is built on mining.”

  “Not today,” answered Sturgis. “Sarah Bliss and her husband agree on general principle. That’s why they opposed reconstructing the journal. And Ginny O’Hara has always agreed. That’s why she had her daughter remove the journal from the historical society. When Cutler called about it—”

  Peter looked at Cutler. “You?”

  Cutler took a bite of croissant. “In my business, research precedes field work. The story of the Proud Pilgrim got my attention, just like it got the attention of old Maryanne Rogers.”

  “But,” said Manion, “Cutler had already gotten our attention out here in Amador. We knew what he was after. Dumb luck that Ginny’s daughter, Kim Hally, fielded his call to the library. She told him the journal could not be located.”

  Cutler shook his head, stuffed another croissant. “And I believed her.”

  “I might, too,” said Peter, “because documents disappear in the best of libraries.”

  “The next day, Kim Hally walked out the door with the transcription, and brought it to her mother, who gave it to me,” said Sturgis as proudly as if he had planned the whole thing. “Simple, clean, elegant.”

  “You took the journal to protect the land?” said Evangeline.

  “To keep it open, quiet, and productive,” said Sturgis, “because we produce something that matters here. But Kou’s company, backed by Chinese money, dirty money, laundered money, whatever kind of money—”

  “Are you sure it’s all Chinese?” asked Peter.

  Sturgis said, “Who do you think Sierra Rock really is? You’ve been to the Emery operation. You saw Lum making everyone nervous. Evangeline told me the whole story.”

  Peter swallowed his jealousy and said to her, “What else did you tell him?”

  She said, “I told him to come up with Spencer’s journal or I’d never speak to him again. Keep taking that tone with me, and I may never speak to you again, either.”

  Wild Bill refreshed everyone’s cup, just to do a little distracting.

  Manion Sturgis said, “If Sierra Rock gets the Emery operation going, they’ll do hard rock mining. They’ll haul up quartz, pulverize it, heap-leach it right on the property. The sound of the rolling mill will echo all across the countryside. And if they control the surrounding lands, where the ancient Miwok is supposed to run—”

  “Discontinuously,” said Jack Cutler.

  “—they can drift mine. Run side shafts into gravel banks. Bring men, trucks, noise. I won’t let them get at gravels beneath the vines that have been growing on this plateau—”

  “Ancient riverbed,” Cutler corrected.

  Peter said, “Cutler, you are being a pain in the ass.”

  “It’s my nature,” said Cutler.

  “—for a century and a half.” Manion Sturgis finished his thought.

  Peter flipped through the journal. “What did you learn from this that you didn’t know before?”

  “We learned that myths aren’t truths,” answered Sturgis. “But dreams never die.”

  Evangeline nodded. She liked the sound of that, liked how it was phrased.

  But Peter missed the poetry. He was thinking about the practicalities. He said, “This has to go back, you know. I can’t tell you what it’s worth, but Kim Hally is guilty of grand theft. You and Ginny O’Hara are guilty of receiving stolen property.”

  “But this”—Manion Sturgis gestured to the vine-covered landscape—“the productivity of it, the beauty, the quiet, this has to be protected, no matter the cost.”

  As if to make the point, a turkey buzzard came flap-flap-flapping over. They all stopped and looked up. They actually could hear the wings.

  Evangeline said, “That’s a fine inspiration.”

  Peter watched her, the way she was looking at Manion, to see if she inclined herself toward him or touched his arm. But she did not change her posture in any way.

  So Peter said, “I’ve returned materials to libraries anonymously before. I can probably do it now. But why would Ginny O’Hara choose this morning to tell me about this?”

  “Because you asked,” said Evangeline. “You figured it out and she was busted.”

  “No,” said Sturgis. “Because Sierra Rock is here this weekend, pushing to buy us all out, so they’ll own the proven reserves at the Emery Mine and all the twists and turns of the ancient Miwok, too. They’ll do what they have to and get signatures on P&S agreements on my land, Ginny’s, the Boyles’, even Cutler’s here.”

  Just then, they heard gunfire off in the distance.

  “Sounds like the Boyles are shooting at targets,” said Manion Sturgis.

  “Or maybe at Mr. Lum,” said Wild Bill.

  Above them, Larry Kwan’s little drone growled and buzzed off toward the sound.

  “I never liked those Boyles people too much,” said Cutler. “But I’m glad they’re ready
to shoot first and ask questions later when the Triad comes around.”

  “Which the Triad will continue to do,” said Wild Bill, “until this is over.”

  “And it won’t be over,” said Manion Sturgis, “until you find the original of Notebook Seven. Otherwise the requirements of the will are not met, and the Spencer estate remains in escrow. That’s what Attorney Barber would tell you. And that’s fine by me. I hate the idea of breaking that grand old house into its component parts.”

  Just then, Peter’s phone pinged. A text from LJ: “They hit Willie an hour ago. Willie and Mullet Man. Wraparound disappeared. We’re still in safe house. Next move?”

  Peter looked at the others. “We need to get to San Francisco right away. I hear there’s a helicopter.”

  “It comes with its own pilot,” said Manion, “but it only carries three passengers.”

  Wild Bill glanced at Peter’s phone and said, “You may need me and Mr. Magnum and my SFPD connections.”

  “Okay,” said Peter. “It’s me, Wild Bill, and who else?”

  Evangeline said, “You can be a bull in a china shop, Peter. You might need a delicate touch.”

  Peter said to Manion, “Is that OK with you?”

  Evangeline stood. “No need to ask him.” Then she told Manion, “Call the helo.”

  Peter texted LJ: “Sit tight. On our way. Do not have Chinese gold. Do have journal transcription.” SEND. Then he put the completed journal into its archival box and said, “I’ll be taking this with me.”

  * * *

  THE KEY WAS SOMEWHERE in these last pages. It had to be. That’s what Peter Fallon was thinking as the helicopter rose over the irrigated vines and the brown, baked landscape, because nothing he had read in the first six notebooks was enough to trigger “a new gold rush.”

  He began to flip, then read aloud to Evangeline and Wild Bill.

  But the last section did not unfold day-by-day. Once Spencer gave up the Boston Transcript gig, he stopped keeping a detailed record of his days. The 1906 rewrite covered broader spans of time, a longer perspective. Rather than an impatient youth discovering who he was in a violent new world, Peter sensed the old man, experienced, observant, melancholy, reflecting as he rewrote.…

  The Journal of James Spencer—Notebook #7

  September, 1850

  The Sea Captain

  In a moment of weakness, Janiva admitted that she wanted to go home.

  It was not because she feared Samuel Hodges or Nathan Trask, whose expected vengeance kept me vigilant, nor because she missed her family, as any young woman would, nor because the soul-deadening horror of that awful night had destroyed her natural optimism and for weeks had rendered her all but mute.

  To understand, one needed to spend a summer on this peninsula.

  In New England, July fills us with a sense that we may live forever. August reminds us to enjoy life’s gifts, for all is fleeting. September brings the gentle wisdom of old age. But San Francisco saves its most miserable days for summer, which may provoke homesickness in even the hardest of hearts.

  A cold ocean rolls through the Golden Gate. A valley hot as hellfire lies beyond the eastern hills. And as with all of nature, one thing balances the other. When the inland heat rises, cold air rushes in. Thus is born the wind that brings the fog that chills the wind that brings the fog … in a cycle as regular as the tides.

  Add to the weather our weekly earthquakes—some small, some large—and any of them enough to shake the deepest sleeper awake. Add to the earthquakes the relentless tension of living in a tinderbox town where any errant flame or ill-intentioned looter might start the next conflagration. And anyone might be tempted to leave.

  But Janiva was made of stronger stuff. Her time of weakness came and went. She knew that fall would bring warmer winds. She knew what we were making here. And she showed, as the weeks went by, that she was like her new home. With every assault, every insult, every arson fire in our city or upon her soul, she committed to building again, bigger, better, stronger.

  Five weeks after the May fire, another conflagration consumed three hundred buildings and an astonishing five million dollars in property. But we were unscathed, having moved our goods into our new warehouse at the edge of the city, on Market at Dupont. And as with earlier fires, those who built things or sold the tools to build with or owned the land to build upon enjoyed the boon of prices rising ever higher. Those who had a steady flow of goods, even manufactured seventeen thousand miles and seven months away, were best positioned to bring civilization and stability to a city that now numbered twenty-five thousand souls, with thousands more passing on to the diggings every week.

  But like any city, we needed cheap labor. So we looked to the Chinese, who came on ships from Canton, drawn by the myths of Gum Saan and driven by the upheavals of their ancient land, or on foot from the diggings, driven by prejudice and drawn by a growing community of their own kind. But from wherever they came, they worked. No race was so industrious or so clannish, and both qualities we appreciated.

  Chinese women like Ah-Toy provided an essential service to the mostly male population. Chinese laborers who hammered nails, dug ditches, and did a thousand backbreaking tasks brought honor to the most menial job. And Chinese cooks knew of herbs and spices to tenderize the tough roosters running through our streets or flavorize the stringy cattle driven up the peninsula, thereby enriching us all, thrice daily.

  So Mayor Geary decreed a ceremony to honor our Chinese. On a bright August day, a platform was raised at the plaza in Portsmouth Square, before the old adobe city hall, and a great assemblage of citizens ascended, including the Brannans, Reese Shipton and his wife, Sally, U.S. Vice-Consul Woodworth, and all the ministers of San Francisco.

  Meanwhile, a skinny old Celestial named Ah-Sing was assembling two hundred “China boys” at his apothecary on Clay Street. He comported himself like the leading Chinaman of the city, a great Mandarin who wore a fine fur mantle, a red silken hat with two tassels, and, as if to add a touch of ancient wisdom, a huge pair of spectacles, the glasses of which were about the thickness of a telescope lens. At his signal, with a cacophonous banging of drums and clanging of cymbals, and accompanied by the raucous roaring of the crowd that came to watch, the China boys paraded down Clay, around the square, and up Washington Street to the platform.

  Janiva was much impressed by the native dress, the pigtails, and the singularly picturesque appearance of these men, especially as so many of them carried colorful fans to shield their faces from the dust and wind. But we looked in vain for Wei Chin, who had promised to march with his brother-in-law, Jon-Ling … in vain, that is, until we noticed one who never took his fan from his face, as if trying to hide. We both wondered why.

  We also wondered at the peculiar effect of the sermon by our minister, Reverend Hunt, upon the China boys. He told them, as Ah-Sing translated, that though they came from a so-called “Celestial Empire,” there was a higher place, much better and bigger, and while they were “sometimes taken sick and suffered in California, then died and were seen no more, all good China boys went to that celestial place to live forever in perfect harmony.”

  This Christian vision of heaven caused the Chinese to laugh heartily, but I was not laughing, because by then I knew why Chin was hiding his face. On the other side of the crowd rose the plant-pot crown and curved brim of Nathan Trask’s hat. And his eyes were boring straight into me.

  Vengeance had arrived.

  My enjoyment of the ceremony ended as abruptly as a gunshot. It was a humbug anyway, indoctrinating heathens into childish knowledge of divine truths. Surely the ministers believed they were saving souls, but this talk of a happy afterlife was meant to make docile citizens, nothing more. After a benediction, the China Boys formed a parade to honor the American president and did it with great glee upon hearing that the president was “all the same” as their emperor. As Chinese cymbals and drums began to beat and clang again, Janiva and I paraded right out of Portsmouth Squ
are.

  * * *

  OUR OFFICE LOOKED ONTO Market Street. My desk and Janiva’s flanked a double door that led to three thousand feet of storage space, currently half-filled. A fireproof safe in the corner held our papers, gold, and specie. We lived in a small apartment above, accessed by an outside staircase. But for the dangers of looting, we might have chosen to live in the Drake. However, close to our goods was the place to be.

  I was alone at my desk when Trask’s silhouette appeared in the window. Janiva had gone upstairs to make afternoon tea, one of the soothing Boston routines that she had come to rely upon since the terrible events of May. And Matt Dooling, who kept his shop in a lean-to built onto our warehouse, must have been elsewhere, as I heard no clanging of hammer on anvil. But a man who has a Colt Dragoon for a friend is never entirely alone. And mine lay in plain sight on my desk.

  Nathan Trask pushed open the door and stood in the square of light. He carried only a length of rope coiled around his shoulder. His eye went to my pistol as my hand did, and he said, “You are in no danger, sir. Samuel Hodges has absolved you and the Chinese. The death of the old man was penalty enough.”

  “Especially since we opened a vein of gold for him.”

  “I would not have forgiven so easily.” He approached my desk.

  “Then why are you here?” I asked.

  “I want Seaman Flynn. He’s a deserter.”

  I had considered this moment for weeks. But until now, I had not thought of the appropriate lie: “I bid good-bye to him three months ago, when he boarded the California. He’s bound for Boston.”

  Trask fingered the noose. “I’ll not take kindly to learn otherwise.”

  “He took ten thousand dollars out of the Miwok. He reckoned he had enough.”

  Trask’s brow dropped below the brim of his hat. His sallow face turned a deeper shade of yellow, as if that was how salt-cured skin showed anger. Sharp lines descended from the corners of his mouth and followed stripes of gray through his beard. Black circles bagged under his eyes like bruises. He looked as if he had been absorbing all the sins of all the men he had been punishing all across California. He said, “Those drunk on gold are no better than tosspots pissing away their lives in Boston alleys. Yet here, we propose to make a society out of them.”