Railroad

by Graham Masterton

  He was rowed out to the Pacific mail steamer California by a toothless ferryman in a wildly fraying straw hat. The ship lay at anchor in the dull morning mist, the flag of the Union hanging from her stern, her two masts empty of sails, and a stain of black smoke rising from her funnel. Collis’s skiff was brought under her lee, bobbing like a toy boat up against the side of a cast-iron bathtub, and a rope was thrown down, which the ferryman enthusiastically wound in.

  Collis paid for the ferry, a quarter, and climbed the swaying ladder up the black-varnished side of the ship. His luggage was hoisted aboard, and he was directed by a steward with a face like an old walnut down towards his shared cabin. There were dozens more cabins and cots on the California than there had been on the Virginia, but she was still crowded, mostly with salesmen and fortune hunters and ladies in stained and crumpled dresses who looked as if they had suffered quite enough of steamships and railroads.

  While he was still below, unpacking his shaving things, Collis heard the anchor rattle up, and the steam engines begin to turn over. He went to the porthole and looked out at Panama City, cluttered on its curved promontory, and he could just make out the roof of the hospital.

  ‘Dear God,’ he said, under his breath. Then he went back to his bag, and took out his nightshirt, his tortoise-shell comb, and his travelling clock.

  Chapter 5

  The paddle-steamer California passed through the Golden Gate on the morning of 21 September 1857, a month and a week after Collis had sailed out of New York harbour. The fog made the bay seem silvery and haunted, like the lake which dying Norse heroes had to pass across to reach Valhalla; and when the California started to protest mournfully with her foghorn, and when dozens of rotting and abandoned ships came mysteriously into view, still riding at anchor where their owners had left them years and years ago, rising and falling with ocean swell, Collis was almost convinced that they had reached the end of the world, the final graveyard of dreams and ambitions. For the first time since he had bought his ticket from the steamship office in New York, he felt a twinge of real apprehension. He knew from Andrew Hunt that San Francisco was less than comfortable; that it was populated by thieves, opportunists, and speculators; but at the very least he had expected to see a sunny, welcoming bay, with people waving and shouting. At the very least, he had expected some kind of rough-cut jollity. Instead, under this pall of pearly grey, ghostly and muffled, the California paddled her way past makeshift warehouses, tumbledown shacks, and half-collapsed jetties; and although the wharves and the landing stages were bustling with longshoremen and expressmen and men banging at crates with hammers and mallets, they seemed to be going about their daily business with a preoccupied grimness that was unmoved by the arrival of another steamship.

  Eventually, with a last honk, the California slowed, and turned, and nudged her way into Broadway Wharf, the landing stage at the foot of Telegraph Hill. The engines were stilled and the steamer drifted gradually inshore, until her hull bumped against the wharf’s wooden supports.

  Collis stood straight and looked through the fog at the dim hills of San Francisco. They were patchworked with shanties, sheds, and tents, and the fog was made thicker still by the haze from hundreds of cooking fires. In what looked like the downtown district, he could make out a cluster of more respectable-looking frame buildings and adobes, and brick-built banks and hotels. But to a man from New York, who was accustomed to the sophisticated jostling of omnibuses and private carriages between tree-lined avenues and shady parks and rows of solid brownstones, San Francisco looked like a decorative rubbish dump, a higgledy-piggledy collection of iron, secondhand timber, and ship’s canvas, in and out of which a population of extraordinary fierceness rushed and rampaged in oxcarts and on horses and on foot, shouting at the tops of their voices and wearing the sorriest display of hats that Collis had ever seen in his life.

  To the west, towards the Presidio, the hills appeared to be more pleasantly wooded, but beyond the smoke and the fog and the shanties Collis could make out nothing more than bald sandy peaks and scrubby trees.

  The wharf below him was tumultuously crowded with merchants and longshoremen and hotel agents, and the noise of shouting and hammering and whistling was deafening. Collis hadn’t expected a hero’s welcome. After all, those San Franciscans who hadn’t struggled across the plains and mountains of America by horse or wagon train had made the same 5450-mile voyage and crossed the isthmus of Panama just as he had. But he would have thought a modest cheer and a handshake might have been fitting instead of this avaricious hubbub. Almost the entire population of San Francisco seemed to be swarming like a colony of termites, ready to overrun the ship as soon as the gangplank was down and pillage everything that wasn’t firmly screwed to the deck.

  He remembered Andrew Hunt’s cautioning words, and he elbowed his way forward through the passengers lining the rail, and found his trunk. He stood by it, and even when a portly roofing salesman stepped backward on to his foot, he determined to remain by it at all costs.

  At last, the gangplank was dropped to the wharf with a resonant bang, and before any of the passengers had the chance to step on to it, a feverish crowd of men in beaver hats and checkered vests and shapeless tailcoats came arguing and pushing and scrambling on to the steamer’s deck and collared each of the passengers in turn to see if he had any cargo on board the California he wanted to part with – any dry goods, perfumes, haberdashery, digging tools, or liquor. Most of these men carried a small sack of gold dust, which they waved in front of the startled passengers’ noses, or poured out into the palms of their hands, glittering and yellow, to tempt the unwary into making a quick sale. What most of the greenhorns hadn’t had time to understand was that a case of beans out here was worth more than gold dust, and that any luxury items like soap or perfume could fetch a fortune among the ladies of South Park, or the prostitutes in the centre of town.

  Dragging his trunk, and shouldering people out of his way, Collis eventually managed to disembark, and he found himself standing on the wharf among a crowd of curious bystanders, bearded sailors, Chinese in pigtails, Chileans in drooping sombreros, and scores of that particular variety of hardbitten, juice-spitting settler which San Francisco’s shantytown sported in great abundance, and who could all have been brothers or cousins of the same man – a man with a sallow suntan, a prickly chin and moustache, a red washed-out shirt and baggy-assed breeches, a knocked-in hat, and an endless line in cussing. Collis was to run into this man again and again, in every saloon, on every upturned barrel, in every whorehouse, or standing in line at the post office for a letter that usually never showed up. He was the pioneer who had never quite made it, the forty-niner who hadn’t come out to prospect for gold until ’51, the storekeeper who had gambled away all his stores, the loser.

  A short Mexican in a fringed sombrero and a soiled shirt led a sagging horse and a small wagon through the crowds, buttonholing anybody who looked like a passenger. Eventually he made his way through to Collis and asked: ‘Hotel, señor? I take your trunk.’

  ‘Not just now,’ answered Collis. ‘Listen – do you know of a man named Andrew Hunt? He runs a food business?’

  The Mexican wiped his nose with the back of his hand, sniffed, and thought about that. ‘I know Señor Munt, in the livery-stables business. How’s he? Any good?’

  ‘No, it’s Hunt I want, not Munt.’

  Another man standing nearby with a walrus moustache and a baggy black suit said: ‘I know a fellow called Hunt. Fat fellow, with a stutter? Runs a store on Kearny, up by Market.’

  ‘That’s not him,’ said Collis.

  The man in the baggy black suit looked offended. ‘What do you mean, it ain’t him? His name’s Hunt, ain’t it? Goddam Easterners.’ He stalked off, grumbling.

  The Mexican went off, too, still leading his horse and cart. He spoke to one passenger after another, until Collis saw him cajoling the Pearsons, a pale-faced New England family to whom Collis had briefly spoken on the ship. There
was a short discussion, and then the Mexican started to load the Pearsons’ baggage on to his wagon. Collis heard him promise to meet them outside of the Yerba Hotel, ‘in quick fandango time, huh?’ Personally, Collis wouldn’t have laid money on the Pearsons’ chances of actually finding the Mexican or their baggage there when they arrived.

  He pushed his way across to the father of the family, a onetime school teacher who wore wire-rimmed eyeglasses and grey suits of notable tiredness, and said, ‘If I were you, Mr Pearson, I’d ride along with him, unless you want to lose your bags.’

  Mrs Pearson, in a grey bonnet, her nose as unbecoming as a frigate bird’s, blinked. ‘Do you really think so?’

  Collis nodded. ‘That’s what I think. It’s the way these people make themselves a living, scavenging off people like you.’

  Mr Pearson called, ‘Hold on a minute, fellow!’

  The Mexican was already climbing up on to the makeshift seat on the front of his cart. He waved reassuringly.

  ‘Don’t worry, señor. I see you double-quick at the Yerba Hotel. You don’t worry about nothing.’

  Collis jostled his way around to the front of the cart and held the horse’s reins. ‘You’re not going anyplace, not without this gentleman.’

  The Mexican looked at him suspiciously. ‘What’s it to you, señor?’

  ‘It isn’t anything,’ said Collis. ‘It’s just that you’re not leaving this wharf without this gentleman sitting alongside of you.’

  The Mexican tugged at his untidy moustache. ‘My horse, it’s weak,’ he said. ‘You understand that? It’s too weak for all this baggage, and me, and this gentleman.’

  ‘It doesn’t look weak to me,’ retorted Collis. ‘In any case, if you’re concerned about your horse’s health, why don’t you lead it, and let the gentleman sit up on the seat?’

  ‘That’s not possible,’ said the Mexican stubbornly.

  ‘Give me a good reason why not.’

  ‘I don’t have to give you no reason. You get out of my way.’

  Collis held the horse’s reins tighter. The horse shied a little, but the Mexican was held fast until Collis decided to release him.

  ‘You take your hands off my horse,’ demanded the Mexican.

  Collis shook his head. ‘Just as soon as you let this gentleman ride alongside of you, but not before.’

  ‘I don’t do that. Nobody rides with me.’

  ‘Then unload that baggage off that heap of a wagon right now, before I break your jaw.’

  The Mexican waited for a moment, tense, chewing at his lip. Already an interested crowd had begun to collect and they were watching Collis and the Mexican with enormous amusement. Then without warning, the Mexican shouted, ‘Hi! Get up there! Hi! Hi! Hi!’ and snapped his whip across his horse’s back.

  Collis was ready for him. He dragged fiercely at the reins, and the horse screamed and lost its balance on the boards of the wharf. As the crowd scattered, the wagon overturned with a thunderous crash, and the Pearsons’ baggage was spilled everywhere. The Mexican tried to jump for safety, but he caught his knee on the side of the toppling wagon and was knocked backward. The crowd cheered. They enjoyed a fight, whoever won.

  The Pearsons, flustered and pink with embarrassment, collected up their bags and their trunks. The Mexican climbed to his feet, limping and hopping, and swearing in the names of St Catherine and St Theresa and two dozen other saints. Each curse was punctuated with a threatening gesture at Collis, but he stayed well clear as he unharnessed his nag so that it could clamber awkwardly to its feet, and righted his wagon with the noisy and enthusiastic help of the crowd.

  Mr Pearson came over and shook Collis’s hand. ‘That was most courageous of you to do that for us,’ he said. ‘I guess we nearly had ourselves taken for suckers. When we’re settled, you must come around for a Sunday dinner. Just leave your address at the post office, and we’ll get in touch.’

  Collis dusted the sleeves of his coat. A boy from the crowd handed him his hat. ‘It wasn’t anything to shout about. But I was told that you have to watch your step while you’re here. Just about everything’s in short supply, except for gold, and a family’s belongings could fetch a fair price.’

  Mrs Pearson, all bonnet and beak, wrung her hands together and exclaimed, ‘You were extraordinary, that’s the only word. Extraordinary.’

  Collis took her wrinkled glove, brushed it against his lips, and smiled. ‘My pleasure, Mrs Pearson.’

  Mrs Pearson blushed and twittered and then went back to her two plain pigtailed daughters, who had been standing watching the whole proceedings with a relentless lack of interest.

  He forced his way back through the crowd to where he had left his own trunk. At first he couldn’t see it, and for one dreadful moment he thought that it had been hauled away by yet another of the Broadway Wharf parasites. But a pimply youth with a pipe in his mouth said, ‘Y’r baggage is over there, mister,’ and indicated with a jerk of his head the side of a green-painted wooden office building which stood by the jetty.

  Collis made his way over to the building; and right enough, there were his trunk and his bag, although sitting on his trunk with his legs crossed and his hat tipped over one eye was a short round-bellied man in a loud hound’s-tooth suit of ginger and green and a glaring yellow vest, a man with bulging cheeks that were as sunburned as roasted pullets, and a ginger moustache, and a small bright nose. He took off his hat as Collis approached, and waved it, but he didn’t make any effort to get up.

  ‘Good morning!’ he said.

  ‘Good morning,’ answered Collis. ‘I guess I ought to thank you for keeping your eye on my trunk.’

  ‘Not my eye, my ass.’ The fat man smiled. ‘Anybody can whip anything from under your eye, but from under your ass is a different matter.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Collis, slightly perplexed, ‘I suppose you’re right.’

  The man stretched out a short arm, and they shook hands.

  ‘I heard you talking on the wharf, asking after Andy Hunt,’ he said. ‘My name’s Charles Tucker. I own a store out in Sacramento. Andy Hunt and me, we’re good friends. I’m here buying foodstuffs today, and hardware. I must say I like your style, mister.’

  ‘My name’s Collis Edmonds, out of New York,’ said Collis.

  ‘That’s right. Andy talked about you. Said you stayed with some lady who was sick of the yellow jack. Did she peg out?’

  ‘No, no, she survived it,’ Collis told him. ‘I guess it couldn’t have been too bad an attack. I didn’t catch it myself, either.’

  ‘Well, so I see,’ said Charles Tucker, returning his brown derby hat to his gingery head. He suddenly looked somewhere over Collis’s shoulder and yelled, in a high rasping voice: ‘Wang-Pu! Make sure you collar all of that linen they’ve got aboard! I don’t want no ifs and buts! The whole goddam shebang!’

  Collis turned around. He couldn’t see anyone in the scrum of the wharf that Charles Tucker could have been yelling to, but his voice had been so penetrating that Wang-Pu could have heard him from down in the California’s lower hold.

  ‘You look to be a gentleman,’ he remarked to Collis, turning back as if nothing had happened. ‘How are you fixed for capital?’

  ‘Very poorly, I’m afraid. My appearance is about all I have. My father’s bank went down the drain last month, and I had a couple of gambling debts outstanding. Not to mention a rather awkward problem with a young lady of ill repute.’

  ‘Well, don’t you worry about none of that,’ said Charles. ‘Put all that behind you. There isn’t a body in this whole city who hasn’t left some embarrassing little heap of squat behind in the East. The main thing is that you’re a gentleman; and as long as you’re prepared to play on that fact, you’ll get along fine.’

  ‘That was about the meat of what Andrew told me on the ship,’ said Collis.

  ‘It was sound advice,’ said Charles. ‘Do you want a cigar? I’m just trying to think what you should do now, how you should get yourself started.
Gambling, you said? Are you a gambling man?’

  ‘I have been known to stake a bet or so.’ Collis smiled.

  ‘How much money do you actually have?’

  Collis had never been asked a question like that before, so bluntly. He hesitated, almost stammered, and then said, ‘Well – about a hundred and fifty. Maybe a few cents less. Why?’

  ‘You’re going to need stake money, that’s why. A hundred and fifty will do you for beginners, but if you need to borrow some, I’ll gladly oblige. I like your style, if you see what I mean. You’re a gentleman. There aren’t too many of those in San Francisco. There’s those that call themselves gentlemen, like the Society of California Pioneers, which means everyone who came here before January 1, 1848. But not many of those are gentlemen in the sense that Eastern folk define it. Mind you, it’s worth having a few friends among ’em, and I can introduce you here and there.’

  ‘That’s very generous of you,’ said Collis.

  ‘No, it’s not generous at all,’ retorted Charles. He took out his worn leather cigar case, offered a cigar to Collis, bit the end off his own cigar, and spat it out on to the wharf. He produced matches and they lit up.

  ‘I’ll tell you why it isn’t generous,’ added Charles. ‘It isn’t generous because I want something from you in return. Once you’ve gotten yourself settled here, I’d like you to work for me. I like your style. You’ll give my business a bit of class, and you’re tough, too.’

  Collis suppressed a cough. Charles Tucker’s cigars were exceedingly strong, and apart from that he hadn’t eaten since dinner last night, a scrappy end-of-the-voyage meal of beef hash and potatoes. He was suddenly aware of how tired he was, too.

  ‘Do you know of anyplace cheap I could stay?’ he asked Charles. ‘I think the first thing I could use is a bath and a couple of hours’ sleep.’