“About what?”
“About the beautiful bay, the big chance we get here. Do you stop and think?”
“Not enough,” I admitted, then I turned him back to the subject.
That morning, at about five o’clock, as the eastern sky brightened, he looked from Long Wharf over at Howison Pier, and he saw them, Flynn and the Chinese girl, walking arm in arm to the end.
“I hear them talking. I see them kissing. I watch. They hug. They kiss. Very nice. I think, I wish I had nice Croatian girl for to hug and kiss.”
Seeing their pre-dawn embrace had touched something in him, as it would in any man, especially a lonely man far from home. He said, “You have woman?”
“I have a wife.”
“Nice.” He got back to the story. “Then come whistle of steamboat. Overnight from Sacramento puffing around Yerba Buena Island, headed for Howison Pier. But Chinese girl step back. Whistle blow again. She step back more. Your friend reach out to her, but whistle blow again, and poof! She turn and run. Your friend go after, but he limp. Hard for him to move.”
“Limp?” That surprised me. “Was he hurt?”
“Limp very bad. He try to follow. But she go. He call to her. I can hear him call her name. ‘Mei, Mei.’ But she running, like afraid, then gone. So he look around, like maybe he don’t know what to do. Stay. Go. What? I feel very bad. Then he just limp off the dock. I think maybe I go over, say hello, but time to make the coffee.”
* * *
I LOOKED FOR TWO hours more. I tracked droplets of blood that led into the mud off Howison Pier. I visited the grog shops along the water. I watched the crowds collecting for the steamers. Around eleven, once the boats were all gone, I headed back to Market Street. As I approached our warehouse, I heard Matt Dooling’s hammer ringing, so he was in his shop, but I sensed something else, something out of place. I stopped and peered through our office window.
Janiva was at her desk, fidgeting with papers, pen, and the positioning of her inkwell. And she was no fidget. I stepped in and saw Hilly Deane leaning against the interior door between our office and Dooling’s shop. He was chewing a toothpick and chatting so amiably, it was as if he hoped to make a tryst with my wife. His canvas duster was tucked back around the grips of his pistols, as if he hoped they would impress her if his chatter failed. He gave me the merest shifting of the eyes and said, “Mornin’.”
I asked him what he wanted, no niceties observed.
“Mr. Deering said you wasn’t very friendly. Right from childhood.”
“He wasn’t too friendly himself.”
“Damn good to me. Taught me to shoot. Taught me how to act after I lost my folks to cholera on the Gaws’ wagon train. Taught me a lot.” He rested his hands on the grips of his pistols. “But that Irishman killed Mr. Deering, and before that—”
I noticed Janiva move her foot to cover something on the floor. Blood.
“—somebody killed Moses Gaw to save the Irishman from hangin’. And David Gaw, he died from fever after losin’ his arm. The Gaws was damn good to me, too.”
“I heard it was a bear killed Moses Gaw. Now … what do you want?”
“Just bringin’ a reminder from Mr. Hodges. We want the Irishman tonight. No better way to impress a woman than to hang the man who killed her lover. And Mr. Hodges, he’s sweet on that Knapik woman, up there at French Corral.”
I said, “I thought he married Gaw’s daughter.”
Hilly Deane just laughed, as if that could never have happened. Then he tipped his hat to Janiva and left, white duster fluttering behind him like a priest’s cape.
Janiva seemed to release a great gust of breath. She moved her foot to reveal a trail of blood running from the desk to the warehouse door at the back of the office.
* * *
MICHAEL FLYNN LAY ON the floor, behind a piano crate, in the far corner of the warehouse. He was propped up on his saddlebags, holding the Walker Colt. He said, “Is that little shit gone?”
Janiva came up behind me and said, “His leg is broken.”
“Not at all it isn’t. Just fractured a bit.” Flynn tried to laugh at his troubles. “A big pistol ball can do that. Who thought Jon-Ling would be carryin’ a Colt Dragoon when he caught me on top of his wife?”
I said, “Jon-Ling did this?”
“I tried to wrestle the gun away, and we both went through a window, a second-floor window. At least the Chinaman broke me fall, along with his neck, almost the way it happened in New York that time.”
“You never did finish that story,” I said.
“You need a doctor, Michael,” said Janiva.
“No doctors.” Flynn was perspiring and ash-colored. “The leg hurts like hell, but I can hobble. Bullet went through and through, just chipped the bone. Still and all, some sawbones might try to take me whole damn leg off. They love doin’ that, you know.”
Matt Dooling came in with a medical kit. He had cotton lint to pack the wound, an outer dressing to wrap it, some kind of salve, and scissors.
“You a doctor, Matt?” asked Flynn.
“I can doctor a horse. And you ain’t much more than the ass of a horse, so—”
Flynn tried to laugh. Then he locked his eyes on the scissors. “What’s them for?”
“Cuttin’ away torn flesh,” said Dooling. “Helps the healin’.”
Flynn rolled his eyes to Janiva. “Do you have a bit of whiskey?”
“I have brandy. I’ll go get it.” And she scurried off.
As Dooling worked, Flynn asked, “How do they figure to get me onto the wharf?”
“You heard him? So you know you’re in trouble. You have Chin angry. You have the Committee of Vigilance to worry about if they decide to hang a man for killing a Chinaman. And you have Hodges.”
“Three aces in a marked deck,” said Flynn.
Janiva returned with a bottle. Flynn took a drink, then Matt Dooling grabbed the bottle and poured a shot onto Flynn’s leg.
Flynn cried out in pain “What did you do that for? Wastin’ good brandy?”
“Damn fool to leave dirt around a wound like that,” said the blacksmith.
And yes, the bullet had gone in the back of the calf and clipped the shinbone going out. You could see pieces of it, white and teeming, like insects nibbling. Dooling wrapped his big hands around the leg and, with his thumbs, manipulated. “If we seal it, then splint it, you might have a chance. I’ll be right back.” Then he went into his shop.
And Janiva went to meet a customer, leaving me alone with my friend.
Flynn shook his head. He knew the predicament he was in. “Promise me you won’t let them take me leg off, Jamie. A man’s no good without a leg.”
“Don’t worry.” I took the brandy bottle and sloshed down a swallow. Then I said, “Was it worth it? Taking another man’s wife?”
“Worth it?” Flynn laughed. “Was it worth it to you to have Janiva wrapped around you on the Proud Pilgrim, even when you knew them Australians was somewhere forward, horned-up and jealous as cuckolds?”
“You’ve got me there.”
“Damn right, but … ah, Jamie, we’re nothin’ without love, are we? Even old Cletis knew that. Why else would he come back that day, with young Rodrigo? He knew. He always knew, even if he never loved anyone.”
I said, “I think he loved us.”
Flynn snatched the bottle and downed another swallow. “All the gold in the world ain’t enough if you got no one to share it with. I been chasin’ a river of it, but I been dreamin’ of Mei-Ling, dreamin’ of havin’ her by me side, the two of us lookin’ out on Rainbow Gulch.”
“It’s a fine dream, Michael.” But I knew it would never come true.
We patched his wound as best we could. Matt Dooling brought two metal rods for a splint and fashioned a crutch, too. Then we pulled the crate away from the wall to make more room for Flynn behind it. We brought him some bedding and barricaded him with a second piano crate, which Janiva had saved, because in a city where
materials were scarce, a big crate had many uses. And we told him to rest.
* * *
THEN JANIVA AND I spent an hour in the outer office, meeting customers, doing business, acting as if all was well, all the while wondering what to do with Flynn. If he had killed Jon-Ling, would he be arrested? Would anyone even care? Chinamen were in general not so valued as white men, here or in gold country or even in China.
But around noon, we had a surprising visitor: Mei-Ling herself, dressed as she had been every day in the Mother Lode, in men’s clothes, with a stiff-brimmed straw hat pulled low. She came in by Dooling’s blacksmith shop, and he brought her through the adjoining door. She shocked us first by her presence, then by her insistence that we were hiding Michael Flynn and by her demand to see him.
I gave Janiva the eye and told Mei-Ling, “I heard that he took passage on one of the Sacramento boats.”
She studied us both, looking for signs of deceit, and said, “If you see him, tell him … tell him I love him. But tell him I no go with him. Tell him my brother too angry. Tell him my brother kill him now.”
“And what of your husband?” I asked, as if I knew nothing.
“My brother say to tell anyone Jon-Ling jump out window. They say why, I say Jon-Ling have young wife but he old. Never say Flynn make fuck with me.”
“Good of your brother,” said Janiva.
Mei-Ling looked down at the floor and wiped a tear from her eye.
And Janiva understood, because she took Mei-Ling by the hand and led her into the warehouse, to Flynn’s hiding place.
I did not follow. Let them have their moment. Let them embrace, say good-bye, pledge eternal love, or—
Janiva came rushing back, more angry than surprised, and said, “He’s gone.”
* * *
JANIVA COULD NOT HOLD down her evening meal. The tensions of the day were too great. And she feared that the night would be no better. I knew, every time she looked at me, that her stomach tightened and squeezed the baby, because I had determined to meet Samuel Hodges. I would tell him that Flynn had disappeared, and if I told him the truth, perhaps he might put profits ahead of revenge, steam for Sacramento, and leave us in peace.
Janiva did not want me to go. But once it became clear that she could not dissuade me, she took the Nock gun from the closet, checked the primes on all seven barrels, and said, “Then I’ll go with you. We made this baby together. We’ll protect its future together.”
I insisted that the way to protect our baby was to stay close, stay safe.
She answered with a dark look from under her dark brow.
I went to my chair and picked up Installment IV of David Copperfield. She sat in hers with Installment VI. This is what amounted to an argument between us. Quiet page-flipping, cold silence. I was going and she was not. Or she was coming and bringing the Nock gun. Which would it be? The answer lay not in Dickens.
Then, just after ten o’clock, the bell rang at the Monumental Firehouse. Two fast rings, then a minute’s silence. Then two, then a minute.
The Committee of Vigilance had found their example. I prayed it was not Flynn.
I told Janiva that I had to answer that summons, or it would go badly for me among the important men of the town.
And she said the right thing. “For that, you must go.”
“For the baby, you must stay.” I grabbed the Nock gun, went onto the landing, and fired it into the air. Seven barrels erupted. The recoil almost threw me down the stairs. As a rain of shot came skittering back to earth, I took the flint and threw it into the night, so she would have no weapon.
Drawn by the thunderous report, Matt Dooling appeared at the bottom of the stairs. I gave him the gun and said, “See that she stays put.”
* * *
APPROACHING BRANNAN’S WAREHOUSE ON Sansome and Bush, I saw a crowd gathering under the streetlamps and torches. Somebody said that a certain Sydney Duck was “in for it now,” having robbed a shipping office and absconded with a safe. “The whole damn safe!” said another man in amazement. “Then he tried to steal a rowboat to get on to Sydney Town. But they caught him and beat him. Now they’re goin’ to try him and hang him.”
I should have been taking my place in this tribunal of the mob, as I had promised both Janiva and Sam Brannan I would. But here was the moment to confront Samuel Hodges, when so many henchmen for law and good order were swirling around the waterfront, providing me protection by their angry presence.
So I headed to Clay Street and turned onto the wharf. I hurried past the grog shops that were still doing business, no matter the noise of the clanging bell and the roaring of the crowd a few blocks away. I strode past a new hotel rising on the site of the old Niantic, past food sheds and storehouses, deeper into the darkness, toward the shadowed mass of the steamboat at the end of the wharf.
Hodges and Hilly Deane were waiting, as if they had anticipated that I would come early, or that the Monumental bell would draw me out.
At my approach, their shadows separated. Hodges, in black, limped to the end, making himself a silhouette against the moonlit waters of the bay. Hilly Deane, easier to see in his canvas duster, crossed to the opposite piling, so that he was on my left and the big steamboat was on my right. A yellow shaft of light fell dimly from the pilothouse window. The huge engine vented once, like an exhalation. But no passengers or dockhands were about. It was plain that Hodges had no intention of leaving until morning.
His voice leaped from the shadow under his hat brim. “I knew you’d come, James. Always doing the right thing. Your father taught you well.”
“I’m learning to appreciate him.”
The Monumental bell clanged twice.
Hodges said, “The Committee of Vigilance is vigilant tonight.”
“There are vigilant men everywhere tonight,” I answered.
“So there are.” Hodges looked up at the steamer. “Do you like it? Eighty feet long, broad in the beam, shallow in the draft. We’ll move cargo and passengers, provide gambling and women. Imagine a fleet of them, James, running on all the inland rivers. But for a fleet, I would need partners. Trusted partners, like you.”
Another offer of alliance, no matter what had gone before. I was tempted. Perhaps extending my hand might calm his anger, soften his hate, make things better for me, for Flynn, for the future of my young family, even for the Chinese. But in the Mother Lode, his hate had appeared as a tool or a means to an end. Now it burned hot and pure for Michael Flynn.
I heard footsteps coming along the wharf.
Hodges looked past me. “Ah, my new associates.”
I glanced over my shoulder: a white suit and a top hat with a shiny vest, Becker and Bunche, bad and worse.
Hilly said to them, “Where are the girls?”
“Disappeared, the bitches,” said Becker.
“Must think San Francisco is better for sellin’ cooch,” said Bunche.
And I knew, if Hodges was accommodating these pomaded killers, I could have no dealings with him. I said, “An empire built on cards and whores, Samuel? What will they say back in the Arbella Club?”
“We won’t know, unless you tell our story for the readers of Boston.”
So there it was. He wanted me to fulfill my role as hagiographer, so that Bostonians would see what they had lost when they blocked the rise of Samuel Hodges.
I said, “I’m afraid that this country has revealed too many truths about you, Samuel. The readers of Boston might be surprised.”
“Then to hell with them.” Hodges took a step toward me. “Let us breed Hodges money to the Spencer line right here in California. We’ll watch the dollars multiply. We’ll change the minds of all the Boston bankers and countinghouse crooks who wanted men like us to dance to their jig, all because of where we landed on life’s ladder.”
“Men like us?”
“Both blocked from fulfilling our dreams by men like your father.”
Becker and Bunche were closer now. I could smell the whiskey-and
-cigar stink of them. I was just about surrounded.
“Take the deal,” said Hilly Deane. “Throw in with new Americans. Throw in with men who know that the future belongs to those who grab it.”
I said to Hodges, “You’ve taught him well.”
Hodges said, “I taught Sloate. Sloate taught Hilly. But the lesson is plain.”
I tried to gauge my best course out of this. I realized that I should have heeded my wife and stayed away. But here I was. I decided that if talk failed, I could jump for one of the rowboats tethered to the wharf.
The big steam engine gave another mighty exhalation.
Hodges said, “Make the choice, James. Friends forever, or enemies for life.”
“Just give us Flynn.” Hilly Deane put his hands on the grips of his pistols.
“He has a debt to pay,” said Hodges.
“He has lots of debts to pay,” said Becker.
But I said nothing to any of them.
So Hodges tugged at his vest and spat into the water, as if he had talked enough. “You won’t give me Flynn. You won’t invest. You won’t write my story, which could be ours together. You’re not a real friend in any way, James. I’ve been as patient as I can be.”
The Monumental bell clanged again, and I said, “I need to join the Committee.”
Hodges said, “Are you planning to tell them about the Proud Pilgrim?”
Hilly Deane looked out into the water. “Tide’s droppin’.”
Then from somewhere near the other end of the wharf came a burst of female laughter, and two women began to sing in high, dry-gear voices. My first horrified thought was that Janiva had followed me to play some diversionary game. But it was not her voice screeching the song that I had first heard in the Arbella Club. “There was a wild colonial boy!”
Becker said, “So the bitches came back. Both drunk.”
“Singin’ them fuckin’ Irish songs again.” Bunche looked at Hilly. “We told ’em if they sang them songs again, they had to suck us off. Both of us. Hilly, you want—”
But Hilly must have sensed something else happening, because he was already pulling when the canvas came flapping off a rowboat tied up at my left. A dark figure sat up in the boat, and the flash of the Walker Colt lit the night, sending Hilly Dean spinning into the water.
Bound for Gold--A Peter Fallon Novel of the California Gold Rush Page 55
