by Nikki Tate
“Where do you expect us to stay?”
The clerk shrugged. “Ain’t no bedchambers anywhere in town. Ships arrive near every day with too many to put up. Maybe you can pitch a tent outside town?”
“A tent! I should think not. Surely you must have a spare room somewhere.”
“Sir, I have men sleeping in the stable out back —”
“Damn it all, man—“Mr. Emerson banged his fist on the counter. “I am willing to pay good money for a place to sleep. I intend to leave a fair amount of money in this fine town and it behooves you to fulfill your role as —”
We never heard what Mr. Emerson felt the clerk’s role to be, because at that moment another man emerged through a door behind the clerk and muttered something in his ear. The clerk mopped his brow with a kerchief already darkened with sweat and said, “We may be able to help you after all.”
Mr. Emerson rocked back on his heels and gave his mustache a satisfied stroke. “I should hope so.”
“The owner of the hotel has just informed me that we have opened the billiard room.”
“The billiard room? What interest is that to me? I have no desire to play billiards. Or do you mean we are to wait there until a bed-chamber is ready?”
“What I mean is, you are to proceed to the billiard room, where you may unroll your blankets and sleep on the floor.”
“Sleep on the floor?” Mr. Emerson shouted out the very thought in my mind!
Sleeping in a dimly lit tent was bad enough, but the thought of bedding down with total strangers in a hotel billiard hall was downright terrifying. Despite the warm day and the press of people around me, I felt chilled. How on earth was I going to keep my disguise if I had to share a room with who knew how many others? I closed my eyes. Had I made a terrible mistake?
“Payment in advance, of course,” the clerk said. I was shocked to hear that a place under a billiard table cost more than the posted value of a bedchamber.
“Sir,” I said, thinking quickly. “Bart and I can sleep in a tent. No need to spend so much— “I sensed Bart turning to stare at me, but I ignored him, watching Mr. Emerson’s hand rise in the air as if to bat away my suggestion.
“Nonsense,” Mr. Emerson declared. “No employee of mine will be deprived of the finest accommodation available.”
His words sounded noble enough, but the red tint above his collar made me think he wasn’t at all happy about having to pay. I should have kept my mouth shut.
But he’d made such a show of looking after us, he could hardly change his mind. The lineup behind us was long, and doubtless there would be men more than willing to pay for any accommodation that included a roof and a dry floor.
Chapter 4
We were the first to find places in the billiard room, but it wasn’t long before we had company. Men brought boxes of dry goods, tins, shovels, pickaxes, canvas tents, water buckets, gold pans and even two dogs, big surly brutes who planted themselves beside one fellow’s supplies and growled whenever anyone looked in their direction.
As soon as we had staked out our places near the back of the room, Mr. Emerson said, “Boys—we have work to do.”
All afternoon we trailed behind Mr. Emerson, gathering the supplies we needed for our trip north to Antler Creek. The first eight hundred miles had been easy, but we still had several hundred more to travel. Judging by the talk among the men, each mile would be difficult.
“I ain’t never seen such horse-killing country,” one man said.
“They can’t get a road built soon enough,” remarked another, who had spent the winter in Fort Victoria but who was keen to return to the diggings now that the weather was better.
“Gold is as plentiful in the Cariboo as it is anywhere,” said another, and the men crowded around to hear more about how much money could be earned each day by anyone willing to make the journey north.
We listened to the warnings, true enough, but what we heard were the promises of incredible wealth.
Mr. Emerson seemed above both kinds of stories and somehow appeared to know both the dangers and the promises better than those who had experienced them firsthand. In fact, Mr. Emerson knew everyone’s business better than they did. He shouted at merchants for their high prices. “Unreasonable! How can you expect a man to pay so much for tobacco?”
“You’ll pay more at Antler Creek” was the ready answer, and Mr. Emerson had no choice but to buy as much as he could afford and we could carry.
And carry we did, until our backs and legs ached and we had a mountain of gear. “Careful you don’t knock that over, Joe,” Mr. Emerson said as I crawled into the space between our piles of dry goods and the fat leg of the billiard table. “Might be the last time we see you!”
It wasn’t a large space, but I busied myself rearranging sacks and boxes so I was partially hidden from all sides. When it finally felt safe enough, I lay down and pulled my blanket over me. I wasn’t the only one trying to make a comfortable nest in the crowded room. The sounds of men coughing and grunting as they shifted the packages were reassuring. I slowed my breathing and tried to relax. Nobody could see me behind my wall of dried potatoes, tinned beans and sacks of sugar. My few moments of peace lasted only until Bart crawled under the billiard table. “Do you suppose we’ll find any gold?” he whispered as he shifted and squirmed, trying to get comfortable on the hard floor.
“Sure— “I stopped, realizing that I had forgotten to pitch my voice low. I started again. “I suppose we will or what’s the point of going?” My heart skipped. It was no good to relax, even for a moment. To let my guard slip, even with Bart, was too dangerous.
“What will you do with your share?” he asked.
I didn’t have to think about that for too long. “Buy a farm. Run cattle. Raise good horses.” I could have added, get married to a good man. Have a lot of children. A big family was in my plans, but those were plans I couldn’t talk about if I wanted to avoid difficult questions about sweethearts. “What about you?”
Bart rolled over onto his back and put his arms behind his head. “I’d like to buy me a hotel in San Francisco. A big fancy one where folks sleep in real beds.”
I laughed. “I’ll be your first guest!”
Bed or no, I slept like a log until early the next morning, when Mr. Emerson nudged me in the side with the toe of his boot. “Git on up, boys. We got work to do.”
The next two days were spent lining up to buy more supplies, hauling goods back to the hotel and repacking our bundles. If Mr. Emerson saw us rest for even a moment, he soon found some errand for us to run while he strutted about self-importantly.
Once we had procured the last of our needed supplies, we spent the better part of two days making several trips back and forth over the four miles to Esquimalt, hauling our goods to the docks. Then at last we boarded a steamer bound for New Westminster, the capital city of British Columbia, some eighty miles distant near the mouth of the mighty Fraser River.
“Mama—look!”
A girl not much younger than I pointed at something over the rail as the ship cut through the water. I could not tear my eyes away from the girl and her mother, the dark worm of jealousy eating at my heart. The wind tugged at the three of us, pulling us together, and I moved my lips in an imagined conversation.
“Ma’am—you look a great deal like my dear mother, God rest her soul. I believe you must be the sister about whom she spoke so fondly.” In this dreamy state I turned my gaze to the girl and muttered under my breath, “You must be my cousin —”
This impossible thought made my bottom lip quiver. My mother had been an only child. I had no cousins. My brothers, the only family I knew of, had abandoned me.
“She’s right pretty, ain’t she?”
I jumped and swiped the back of my hand across my cheek. I hadn’t heard Bart coming up behind me. I felt a blush rise in my face as I realized his meaning.
Bart punched me in the arm and then danced back out of reach. “Why, Joe is sweet on the young
lady!”
The woman bent down, said something, and then mother and daughter moved away, skirts swishing, bonnets tugged this way and that by the stiff breeze.
“I ain’t sweet on nobody!” I turned and stalked off. How long ago it seemed that I wore a long dress. What would Ma have thought about her only daughter dressed in boys’ clothes, heading for the Fraser River and the goldfields beyond? Would she have been angry? Proud? Disappointed?
I could hardly stand to think about it. I wanted to tear out those memories and throw them overboard so they could not spring forth unbidden to torment me. A lump rose in my throat, and I swallowed hard to push it away. I would never know what Ma or Pa might have thought. I could only hope they might smile down upon me from Heaven and that they might guide my journey. Weakness and tears could not help me now.
“Joe!” I heard Bart running behind me. “I didn’t mean no harm. I —”
He stopped when he saw my face.
“She reminded me of someone,” I mumbled. “The woman, I mean.”
I didn’t have to say anything else. Bart understood the way the face of a woman could conjure memories of a mother long gone.
After that, if he caught me looking at the mother and daughter he didn’t say anything. And for my part, I took great care not to lose myself in thoughts of my past.
Chapter 5
By nightfall we had arrived in New Westminster, a collection of wooden buildings strung out along one broad street. Our search for a room proved fruitless—in New Westminster not even a place underneath a billiard table could be found.
“Best erect a tent, lads,” Mr. Emerson said, his pudgy hands cupped around the bowl of his pipe. Bart and I set to work, but before we were quite finished, the clouds opened and soon we were soaked through.
“Hurry, boys,” Mr. Emerson said, puffing on his pipe. Rather than help, he took shelter in a saloon doorway.
“How long do you suppose before he goes inside?” Bart asked, struggling to lift a sack of flour onto the top of a wooden box.
“Not long,” I said, tipping my head toward the now empty doorway. I swung my arms to try to warm up.
We wasted no time in pulling out our bed-rolls. Bart slipped outside to relieve himself. Back inside the tent, he rubbed his hands together and hopped up and down. Teeth chattering, he tugged off his soaked shirt and dug through his bag until he found another that was a little drier.
“You ain’t going to sleep in that?” he asked, nodding in my direction. Like Bart, I was wet as a dog that’s chased ducks into the pond.
“No. Course not,” I said, though I was stricken with the horrifying vision of stripping off my wet shirt in front of him. I had developed a certain talent at turning my back and changing quick as a wink, but in such close quarters, it was tricky to do something as simple as change a wet shirt without being seen. And recently, even my skinny body was starting to show curves in places no boy had them. I hunched my shoulders and thought fast. “I ain’t been outside yet,” I said.
Wrapped up in his blanket, Bart disappeared completely.
Another blast of rain pelted the tent. Waiting for a break in the downpour, I found a dry shirt and laid it on my blanket.
Pulling on my coat, I slipped outside, jogged a little way behind the last row of houses to find a quiet place to squat and relieve myself, and then sprinted back to the tent.
In the near darkness, the lump that was Bart had stopped shivering.
I hung my coat over a barrel and pulled the blanket around me. Awkward though it was, I struggled out of my wet shirt and into the dry one, all the while staying securely wrapped up. If Bart asked what I was doing, I would tell him I was too chilled to change without the blanket around me. Maybe Bart was too busy trying to stay warm himself or maybe he was already asleep, but he didn’t say anything and I soon burrowed deep into my blankets and concentrated on nothing more than warming up.
Near everything we owned was wet, and we slept very little as streams of water dripped through the canvas tent on all sides. Bundled in our increasingly soggy blankets, Bart and I rolled from one side of the tent to the other in search of dry ground.
Mr. Emerson was oblivious to the miserable weather. When he staggered into the tent in the wee hours of the morning, the stink of whiskey and tobacco was thick on his breath. He did little more than tug a blanket around his shoulders and his hat down over his eyes. Propped against a crate of tools, he fell into a drunken sleep and didn’t awaken again until Bart and I had loaded most of our supplies onto the Colonel Moody, the riverboat bound for Port Douglas by way of the Fraser River.
I was pleased that Mr. Emerson had decided to splurge on the riverboat fare. Like every-one said, it wouldn’t be long before we would come to the end of the road, so to speak. Riverboats could only go so far before rapids made it necessary to continue by foot.
For a day and a night, we traveled like kings, a role Mr. Emerson seemed happy to play.
“Magnificent,” Mr. Emerson declared on a regular basis during the first hours on the river. Despite the thick head and swollen eyes caused by his late night of whiskey drinking, he felt compelled to share his observations with anyone who would listen. “That there is Mount Baker,” he declared, waving his unlit pipe toward a snow-capped peak to the south of us. “In United States territory.”
Bart and I weren’t the only ones to breathe a sigh of relief when Mr. Emerson pulled his hat down over his face and fell asleep in a sheltered place against the cabin wall.
When his head slumped forward and the snores began, Bart and I slipped away and joined a group of younger men who watched the water splash over and off the great paddle wheel as it pushed the boat steadily up the river.
“How far away is Douglas?” I heard one man ask another.
“Twenty hours out from New Westminster,” an-other answered. “The Colonel Moody’s the fastest boat on the river. My guess would be we’ve got sixteen hours to go.”
“Want to look around?” Bart asked.
I nodded and we explored the Colonel Moody from one end to the other. The most exciting place was on the forward deck where a group of men gathered in a half-circle around a dice game.
“Dice?” one of them asked as we stopped to see how the game was going.
“I’d like to play,” Bart said as he squatted beside the other men. “If you remind me of the rules.”
“What’ve you got?”
Bart dug in one of his pockets and pulled out a few copper pennies. From another pocket he tugged a crumpled kerchief. I had seen Bart play this game before. He pretended to be a poor orphan who hardly knew how to play. I hid a grin. There was no need to tip the men off.
“I got a little more money,” Bart said, “but not so much as I want to give it to the likes of you.”
“That’s hardly worth bothering with— “said a man with a face as slack and pale as a dead man’s. “But what of it—we ain’t got nothin’ better to do than take what you have to offer us! And you?”
He looked at me and shot a thick stream of tobacco juice past my knee.
“No sir, I don’t have much. Ask again when we travel back down the river.”
“You’ll be a rich man then, will you?” the pale man asked.
I shrugged. Why else would I be on this boat? Why would any of us be here if it weren’t for the gold that lay ahead, ready for the collecting?
“You’d be better off to take a chance with your pennies here—like your friend.”
“Throw then, Black. We ain’t got all day.”
The man with the pale face rolled the dice between the palms of his hands. He closed his eyes, cupped the dice in his hands, and blew a puff of tobacco breath between his thumbs.
“Mary, watch over me,” Black said, and he rolled.
Four hours later, Bart had parlayed his four pennies into nearly five dollars. I badly wanted to leave but couldn’t—it seemed like every man on board had crowded around the game.
“Black, you wo
n’t have enough left to stake a claim, never mind feed yourself!”
“Shut your gob, Williams. You don’t know what you’re harping on about!”
“Two bits the boy don’t win the next one!” Williams countered, and several voices answered with “Three he does!”
After each roll of the dice, money changed hands, and the piles in front of the main players grew and shrank. Knees pressing into my back and boots planted either side of my backside meant I couldn’t put my hands down or move without being stepped on.
“That’s it!” Bart finally said when he had won nearly a whole dollar more.
“Coward!” Black said. “Play again!” Black stood square in front of Bart, one hand on his chest.
Bart said nothing as he dropped the coins into the leather pouch on his belt.
“I said, play again.”
“Maybe tomorrow,” Bart mumbled.
Black’s hand closed on Bart’s shirt and pulled him close.
“Boys shouldn’t play games with men if they ain’t ready to lose.”
“Black—you’ll get another chance at the boy. Here—have some of this,” Williams said, his hand on Black’s arm.
A bottle passed between them, and Black lifted it to his mouth.
Bart seemed stuck to his place, so I grabbed his arm and pulled him away. “Hungry?” I asked.
That got him moving. “Sure am,” he replied.
The men parted to let us pass, and then the shouts and jeers started up again.
“Who is man enough to step up and play?” Black asked. “And don’t think you can walk away like that boy. I’m happy to have men, real men at the table—but cowards! They ain’t got no place —”
The rush of wind as we came around the wall of the cabin drowned out his ranting, and we made our way back to where we had left our things. Mr. Emerson was nowhere to be found.
“Wonder where he is?” Bart said.
“Can’t have gone far. Boat’s not that big.” But neither of us made a move to find him.
We pulled a loaf of bread and a lump of hard white cheese from our packages. “May as well stay right here with our things,” Bart said.
