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

by William Martin

  His name was Nathan Knapik. He come from Europe someplace, come to California on a wagon train with his wife. He done some prospecting, but seeing as how men liked looking at his wife, a round-faced yellow-haired girl who could cook up a sausage called kill-bassa and mix it with cabbage and carry a man right up to heaven, well, he decided to set up an eatin’ tent, like the Emerys done in Broke Neck.

  Me and a lot of other men went there to eat but stayed to look at the missus, named Anna. And I visisted so regular that the mister offered me a job. He studied geology in Europe, so he knew about old volcanic flows in California and how they covered rivers from way back when Adam and Eve was naked as jaybirds. To find these rivers, he looked for layers of gravel in the sides of hills or in dry gulches. Just like Rainbow Gulch.

  Now, he’d already tried drift mining, where you dig sideways into the hill, with timbers and planks, shoring up as you go and praying that the mountain don’t collapse on you. He’d also gone coyote holing, where two men dig straight down till they reach gravel, then send it up by the bucket. And he knew the thing to use was water.

  There’s plentiful water up here and companies digging trenches and building flumes everywhere to deliver flow for “ground sluicing,” which is glorified ditch-digging, at which nobody’s better at than the Irish. So he offered me a salary and all the mining knowledge I could pick up, which I reckoned was better than picking up gold.

  Ground sluicers dig v-shaped trenches through “the overburden,” down toward the gravel. Then they run water, which widens that V and deepens it fast. Arses get broke shoveling the loose gravel into sluices below. Big boulders crush fingers and toes. Skin gets so wet it curdles. But you wash a lot of gravel a lot faster than we ever did, even with a flutter wheel.

  Now, things was working fine ’til one evening, I look along the ridge as I’m going in to supper, and guess who I see? Hodges and that rat Sloate and a skinny, yellow-haired feller in a white duster called Hilly Deane.

  Hodges come into the eatin’ tent in his black suit, and the important goddamn bulk of him just about filled it. Sloate stood behind him, eying the eaters, which included me, who kept his head down and his hat pulled low. Musta been a hundred men—twenty working for Knapik, the rest just hungry, smelly miners—all hunched over their bowls or gazing like lonely deer at Anna Knapik. Whilst I et, I tried to hear the talk. Seems Hodges had bought the water rights thereabouts, and he was doubling the price on a miner’s inch. Knapik could pay or cut Hodges in for half his profits.

  I wanted to warn Knapik. But Sloate had his Walker, and that Hilly Deane stood there all shifty-eyed and twitchy-fingered, like a second Sloate. And … you know, someday, somebody’ll have to shoot that Sloate. But not me, not that night. I was outgunned. So I give a last look at Anna’s blond hair, all patched to the sides of her face with work sweat, and I packed me things and left for Marysville, where I heard the placers were givin’ a good yield.

  Here the main body of the letter ended. But there was more, written on a different kind of paper, written in pencil, written in greater haste and thus harder to read:

  I have one more thing to tell, but keep it quiet:

  Knapik made his deal with Hodges, and things went so well that Hodges left Sloate in charge and headed back to the Miwok with Hilly Deane. Then Knapik got himself shot in his own outhouse. His wife found him the next morning with his breeches at his ankles and a bullet hole in his forehead, dead as the wooden seat.

  This news come to me from a woman who worked in Knapik’s tent. Said she couldn’t stand it, once Knapik was gone, how Sloate come sniffing around the cooking women day and night. (That Sloate’ll put his pecker wherever he finds a friendly hole, male or female.) I figured he must have killed Knapik so the Sagamores could take over and that pretty widow would go up for grabs. So, considering that her husband had treated me so well, I decided I owed her a visit.

  Got there early one morning, an hour before sun-up.

  Knapiks’ cabin was about forty feet from the edge of the sluice trench. I tethered me horse in the trees and took cover in that wet trench, just downwind of the outhouse. But there wasn’t much stink. The air smelled of bread. Anna made bread every day, and even with the sides of the cook tent down, that smell was heaven.

  Then, just after a rooster crowed, I saw Sloate. And damn me but didn’t he come out of Knapik’s cabin, just as if he spent the night. He was holding up his breeches with one hand and carrying his Walker with the other, ready to shoot any snakes he found curled up in the outhouse. But halfway across the clearing, he stopped like he smelled something other than fresh bread or stale shit. Then he come all suspicious-like toward the trench.

  And I done it. I popped up and pulled the trigger, but all I heard was a “snap” because I’d let the loads get too much moisture. A misfire, which surprised the hell out of me.

  Sloate, just as surprised, looked at me and me gun and said, “You! You worthless Irish bastard.”

  But men who hold their dicks with their right hand usually hold up their breeches with the same hand. So he had the Walker in his left hand. So I knew his aim would be off when he pointed at me and told me to get on me knees. “Down where you belong.”

  So I cocked again. And he shot at me, but I was right. The bullet flew by. Then he let go his breeches to change gun hands. And whilst he was doing that, I walked up to him and killed that son of a bitch with a bullet right into his black heart.

  Then the damnedest thing happened. Anna Knapik come to her cabin door in a white nightgown, like an angel in the rising sun. She saw me. Then she saw Sloate, with his pants down around his ankles and his blood sluicing toward the trench, and … she screamed. Damn me, but he was her man, her lover, and I’d killed him.

  As I rode away, I kept hearing her scream and scream. Once I was in the clear, I took to wondering about love and lust and how they get all mixed up in folks. And that got me to thinking about another woman who took a protector instead of a lover. Mei-Ling. Do you ever see her? Is she happy? Tell her I asked for her. And tell Janiva I asked for her, too, because Jamie, you are a lucky man.

  So Flynn had never given up his dream of the Chinese girl. I feared that he and his unbridled Irish desires would someday soon be the cause of fresh trouble.

  But my concerns faded as the anniversary of the first May fire approached. The Sydney Ducks had been bragging it about that they might “celebrate” with another fire and follow that with some old-fashioned looting. And sure enough, on the very night, a fire destroyed eighteen blocks and two thousand buildings, a staggering loss of $12,000,000. It started around 11:00 in a paint store on the south side of Portsmouth Square and burned for 10 hours. But once again, our Market Street location saved us.

  Anger simmered for weeks across San Francisco. Men talked of solving our problems once and for all. And in June, Sam Brannan published an article in the Alta California, calling for a new citizens’ committee of safety: “Desperate diseases require desperate remedies, and though the remedies may not be in strict accordance with law, the time has come that we must be a law unto ourselves!” I was reading this when my door open. I expected Brannan, come to enlist me in his cause. Instead, something thudded onto my desk, something gleaming, oiled, and enormous: a Walker Colt.

  Then the leather visor of a familiar old hat appeared over the top of my paper and Michael Flynn gave me a grin. “I would have brought you Sloate’s head, but I didn’t have time to take it off his shoulders.”

  “You always said that somebody would have to shoot that bastard.”

  “I’m glad it was me.”

  My old friend had come back. My heart filled with joy at the sight of him. I leapt up, embraced him as I had never embraced a man before.

  Then he held me at arm’s length, and said, “I found my river of gold.”

  “At Rainbow Gulch?”

  “I ain’t done any prospecting yet. But it’s there. I know it.”

  “When did you get to town?”
<
br />   “Last night.” He gave a wink. “Had a grand dinner in the Canton House.”

  That was our first sour moment. I said, “Have you been sniffing around Mei-Ling?”

  And straight away, he changed the subject. “How’s Janiva?”

  “Stronger every day.” I did not tell our happy news. I would let her have the pleasure. “Come for dinner. You’ll see.”

  Then he patted the saddlebags slung over his shoulder and said that he was carrying a bottle of wine he had promised to deliver.

  “Wine? You’ll have to explain that.”

  “On the way.”

  We stepped out and turned toward the water. It was one of those early summer days that men remember when they wish themselves boys again: warm, balmy, hopeful, a fine day to walk across a city that never ceased to grow. Off to our left, the burnt district was rebuilding, almost as if it was routine. All the debris was rolling down to the landfill, while fresh lumber and pre-made houses came off the ships and climbed the hill. Hammers rang, and men shouted, and the din of rebirth filled the air.

  Flynn was in his usual expansive mood. “When I got down to Rainbow Gulch, I went by the little graveyard where we buried the schoolteacher, that Hiram feller.”

  “I remember.”

  “Scrawny Selwin’s name is on a grave, too. Heard somebody shot him when we couldn’t deliver water.”

  We both agreed, it was a hard country, but there was little we could do after the fight at the dam. We had not taken money from the Rainbow Gulch miners, just promises. Scrawny might have asked for more, which might have cost him his life.

  “At least him and the others have a good view for eternity.” Flynn stopped in mid-stride, as if suddenly enveloped by a cloud as black as the one that swamped us at Cape Horn. “If I die before you, Jamie, promise you’ll bury me there.”

  Yes, death sometimes came as an unexpected guest, but certain men had a way of inviting it even when living life to the top. And for all his love of it, Flynn always seemed to walk a knife ridge with life on one side and death on the other. But of course, I promised, then laughed.

  And as quickly as it came, the dark mood was gone, and Flynn was striding again. “Anyway, there was a few miners down in the ravine, pannin’, scratchin’, turnin’ over tailin’s, goin’ nowhere and gettin’ nothin’. Amazin’ how fast some strikes peter out.”

  “But the wine?” I said.

  “Across the ravine, on the flatland beyond, I seen rows of grapes.”

  “I remember from last year.”

  “They was a pair of brothers, by the name Gasparich. They come for gold, but they knew grapes, and when they saw that soil, they knew they could grow what they call Kastelanski grapes.” He pulled a bottle from his saddlebag. “And by damn but here’s the first of the wine.”

  Wine was one of the few subjects I actually wanted to learn that my father had taken the time to teach. So I knew that such a young bottling, from such young grapes, would be sharp and acidic. But someone would drink it. In San Francisco, there was always someone who would drink anything.

  Flynn said the Gasparich brothers did not stake a claim. They just started planting. “And guess who owned the land? The Vargas family. It was part of their land grant. Señor Vargas’s son didn’t have much fight left. So he sold for a dime on the dollar. Figured some Yankee lawyer might get it otherwise.”

  “Too many lawyers in California already,” I said.

  “That’s for fuckin’ sure. Too many lawyers and too much civilization.”

  We went along Sansome and turned onto Long Wharf, which was lined with huts and warehouses and piles of goods, and we followed a cloud of swirling gulls to a corrugated metal shed about halfway out. It had a white-splattered roof, courtesy of the gulls, and a simple sign: COFFEE STAND. Men crowded the counter, and the aroma of roasted beans was enough to make a man drunk, but Coffee Stand sold more than coffee. On a charcoal fire in the back, great slabs of halibut and neat little sand dabs sizzled, while California crabs steamed away in a cast-iron kettle.

  Flynn called to a burly, dark-browed man sweating at the grill, “I’m looking for Nikola Budrovich.”

  “Who you?”

  Flynn held up the bottle. “I have a gift from his cousins.”

  When Budrovich heard the name “Gasparich,” he handed off the grill duties, came around, and accepted the wine with great reverence.

  Like his relatives at Rainbow Gulch, Budrovich and his partners had decided there were better ways to make money in California than panning for gold, though it surely appeared that they were working as hard as men could behind that counter. (In truth, when they sold to another Croatian immigrant named Tadich years later, their hard work had made them wealthy men.)

  * * *

  AFTER WE ENJOYED THEIR fare and drank some young wine, sweet and raw as grape juice, Flynn and I walked to the end of the wharf and looked back at the city.

  “Ah, Jamie, you can burn it a dozen times, and it still keeps boomin’.”

  “I do love it, Michael.”

  “Yes, but”—he turned and peered into the water—“it won’t be long before the landfill reaches the Proud Pilgrim. If somebody goes below at low tide to scavenge, it could bring some hard questions.”

  I assured him the hulk was always covered. “But we should have told the authorities that day.”

  “We done the right thing by Janiva, sinkin’ that ship, feedin’ them bastards to the crabs.”

  “I suppose. But the ship you need to worry about is still afloat.” I pointed toward deeper water. “The William Winter. Trask lives aboard. He’s hanging deserters. It’s his way of bringing civilization.”

  “Like I was sayin’, Jamie, too much civilization. To hell with it. Come on back with me, up there”—Flynn jerked his thumb toward the hills—“up where the gold is, up where the stories are. Come back and see life lived large and rubbed raw. You won’t get many more chances, now that you’re settlin’ in with your pretty wife.”

  Though I tried to interrupt him, he kept talking, swept away by his vision of what had once been and could be again. “With your high-flown palaver and me dangerous presence, we’ll talk them Croatians right out of that vineyard. Then we’ll get to prospectin’, because—”

  I tried to again to interrupt but failed.

  “—there’s a bend in the land about a quarter mile back from the south rim of Rainbow Gulch.” He walked to the edge of the wharf and gazed east, as if he could see all the way to gold country. “I’m thinkin’ it’s right where the ancient river turned, right where she dropped gold enough to make us kings of the world. But—”

  “Michael—”

  “—I need a pardner. Hodges’ll kill me. But you? You’re the son he never had. Offer him your hand, and you’ll be the prodigal, come home. Then we can start in with a few coyote holes, and—”

  “Michael, Janiva is—”

  “What?”

  “I’m going to be a father. There’ll be no more running off.”

  A flicker of disappointment crossed his face, then he let out with a hoot and slapped me on the back. “Well, there’s a thing to make a man feel good, James Spencer. Good about the world. And good about life.”

  “I thought you always felt good about life.”

  “I been givin’ more thought to it, to the meanin’ of it, to the meanin’ of love … and lust, too, ever since that mornin’ I killed Sloate, only to find that he’d been shackin’ up with the wife of the one he killed. And, you know, I’m thinkin’ that while we may mix up the meanin’ of love and lust a lot of the time, a man needs someone to love, or he ain’t worth much at all.”

  “I agree.”

  “So”—he winked—“I had Mei-Ling last night. Had her like it was a dream. If I can get her away from that limp-dick husband, I’ll have her every night for the rest of me life.”

  “She’s another man’s wife, Michael. Chin won’t stand for it. And a white man taking up with a Chinese woman? This civili
zation won’t stand for it.”

  “I just said to hell with civilization, didn’t I?”

  “But where would you go?”

  “You leave that to me.” He patted the saddlebags on his shoulder.

  “What’s in there?”

  “Never you mind.” Then he started walking toward the city. Or perhaps I should say strutting. He was a creature of life, my Irish friend, explosive, expansive, unfiltered, unfettered. Even when he courted death in the bed of a Chinese beauty, he was reaching for life’s greatest gifts.

  So together we strode past the grog shops and storehouses on the wharf, past Coffee Stand, still pumping aromas of fresh roast and charcoaled fish, and I inhaled the sense of optimism and possibility everywhere around me.

  We parted on the corner of Sansome and Clay. I had an appointment with Sam Brannan. Michael Flynn wanted to visit Ah-Sing’s Apothecary and get a little ginseng tea. I told him to be careful, because Chin might kill him. He laughed, patted the bag again, and said, “You leave Chin to me, too.”

  * * *

  SAM BRANNAN WAS IN his second-floor office, gazing out at the harbor. Without turning, he said, “When does it end?”

  I glanced at Slawsby, who rolled his eyes, a warning that the boss was in a mood.

  Brannan gave Slawsby a jerk of the head, shooing him from the room. Then he told me, “They picked up another arsonist last night. He set six fires. None of them spread, thank God. They slapped him in jail, and he escaped, just like a wisp of smoke from one of his fires. I tell you, Spencer, there’s no crime in this city that a man can’t erase with a pouch of gold.”

  “But why did you want to see me?”

  “Come to the meeting tonight, at the Monumental Company Firehouse.”

  The city had many volunteer fire companies, all competing for men, money, and when fire erupted, for the water to fight it with. Brannan said he wanted to stop the fires before they began. “And the presence of a young father-to-be, a businessman, will go a long way to legitimizing a committee of vigilance.”

  “You mean I’ll bring out the polite hangmen?” I did not like being used.