Calico Palace (15 page)

“To Honolulu?” asked Ted.

“Not at first. I went to New York. I didn’t have any trouble finding work, I have a talent for cards. I was a dealer at Norman Lamont’s card parlor—I’ve told Kendra about him. But New York was too close to Philadelphia. Men who knew the family would drop into Norman’s to play, and they recognized me, and they talked, and the family was embarrassed as much as ever. I decided I’d better go a long way off. Norman wanted me to move to New Orleans when he did, but I thought I should go even farther. I really didn’t dislike my family. I was sorry for them, keeping their heads in mothballs. I thought the greatest kindness I could do them would be to get out of the country and out of their lives. So, here I am.”

Marny looked around.

“My friends, I’m light-minded and trifling, and my character is not worth a damn, but I like what I’m doing and I like all of you. I like you much better than I liked the people I used to know in the halls of learning. And I hope you like me. Do you?”

“Yes ma’am,” Pocket said firmly. “I like you.”

“I like you too,” said Ted.

For a moment Kendra said nothing, then she spoke thoughtfully.

“Marny, I like you better than if you were the kind of mistreated girl I thought you were. You knew what you wanted to do and you did it, all the way. I don’t like halfway people. I like people who have courage.”

“Thank you, dear,” said Marny. “If you mean guts, why don’t you say so?”

“Guts,” said Kendra.

T
HIS WAS THE TWENTY-NINTH
of April. On the second of May, a week out of San Francisco, they saw the Sacramento River twinkling behind the tangle of trees and vines along its bank. Through the tangle they caught distant glimpses of the high white walls of Sutter’s Fort. But between themselves and the fort lay the river, and clouds of mosquitoes swarming upon them so fiercely that they wished they had never heard of gold. This was another reason why Ning had told them not to travel by water. He knew that in spring the mosquitoes on the Sacramento were a greater plague than all the Abs and runaway sailors in California.

Here on the river bank Ning received his first surprise of the journey. Mr. Sutter had a dugout canoe to bring visitors across, but Ning had warned the men that they would have to cut logs and make a raft to carry the wagons. But hardly had they begun to unpack their tools when they heard shouts from the water, and saw coming to meet them a raft moved by poles and a cable stretched from the opposite bank. On the raft were two sturdy bearded fellows, pointing upstream. Following their direction Ning found the place where they had tied the cable on this side.

The men sprang ashore. Between slaps at mosquitoes they said their names were Bates and Cunningham. They were Mormons from New York, and had come out on the same vessel that had brought the rest of the Mormon colony to San Francisco. Bates and Cunningham wanted to go gold hunting, but lacked money to buy supplies, so had chosen to earn it by ferrying other gold hunters across the river.

“Fine idea,” said Ning. “I guess we’ll have to unload the wagons?”

“Right,” Bates agreed. “They’ll be too heavy to take over unless they’re empty.”

“Well, let’s get busy, boys,” said Ning. “Bates, you can help with our wagon, and you, Cunningham, give a hand to Delbert there.”

The men set to work, and Ning spoke to Kendra. “I’m gonta send you and Marny over on the first crossing,” he told her, “with Pocket and one of the Blackbeards to stand guard. You can start dinner. But look out for the dinner hunters. Don’t give away a bean.”

“I understand, Ning. I won’t give away a bean.”

He nodded approvingly. “You know how to take orders. You’re a good traveler, Miss Kendra.”

Oh, she liked being here, liked hearing herself called a good traveler. And as if she had needed anything more to make her happy, all of a sudden a sharp wind came out of the north and blew the mosquitoes downstream.

Carefully holding her skirt with one hand and Cunningham’s elbow with the other, Kendra stepped from the river bank to the raft. After her came Marny, with Pocket and Blackbeard. The crossing, though teetery, was short and safe. As she stepped ashore Kendra felt her heart bump with excitement. About three miles away, she could see the most famous structure in California, Sutter’s Fort. And coming to greet them was a group of horsemen led by the great Johann Augustus Sutter himself, the most magnificent humbug who ever crossed the western mountains.

Sutter was forty-five years old, a man of blustering charm. He had a fine curling beard, and thick dark hair balding back from his forehead. His clothes were impressive: black suit and white linen shirt, wide blue silk cravat tied with a flourish, boots gleaming, heavy gold watch chain looped across his middle. A forceful man, hearty with other men, courtly with women, Sutter usually smelled of brandy and he loved to talk.

Pocket had told Kendra and Marny a good deal about him. Sutter came from Switzerland, and had reached California nine years ago. His pockets were empty but visions of grandeur filled his head. The Mexican government gave him a grant of wilderness (some people said ten thousand acres, some said fifty thousand). Here he built his fort, the start of a kingdom where he meant to be king.

Beyond this, nobody knew much about him, for though he spoke four languages and talked about himself in all of them, he was seldom entirely sober and his yarns had a bubbly sound. He came, he said, of a noble Swiss family, but had had to flee his native land because of his liberal ideas. (This puzzled those of his hearers who were familiar with Switzerland. They said they had never heard of any man’s being expelled from that free country merely for speaking his mind.)

After countless adventures and hairbreadth escapes (which he loved to describe) Sutter said he had joined the guard of King Charles of France. In defense of his new country he had fought many battles and received many wounds (he would gladly show the scars). But misfortune still pursued him. A revolution dethroned King Charles, and again, said Sutter, he had had to seek a new homeland. After more heroic exploits he had at last reached California. And now he was happy to see his friends coming into the country around the fort. It they wanted to look for gold in the mountains he was glad to have them do so.

This last, Pocket had said, was flubdub. The fact was that when the sawmill workers found something they thought was gold, Sutter had sent one of his clerks to Colonel Mason, military governor of California, trying to claim the find for himself. As the gold had been found on public land, Colonel Mason said he had no authority to give it to Sutter nor anybody else. The clerk then came to San Francisco and showed the gold around, until he finally found a man who believed him and they went back to the hills to dig for themselves. (The clerk’s name was Bennett, and Kendra learned later that he was the “crackbrain” Morse and Vernon had told her about the day she arrived.)

Never mind Sutter, said Pocket, let him talk. He enjoyed it and you couldn’t stop him anyway. If he liked to imagine the gold seekers were there by his permission, what harm was it? He stood to make a lot of money as they came by the fort and spent gold dust there.

Riding with two of his henchmen on either side of him, before he was near enough to start talking Sutter pulled off his hat and waved. As he recognized Pocket, he loudly welcomed him back. He was noisily glad to meet Blackbeard, and to Marny and Kendra he bowed low, exclaiming that it was a joy to greet such lovely ladies. Hiram swam their horses over the river, and he and the Mormons went back on the raft, while Sutter, talking with all his might, led the girls and their escorts into the primitive splendor of his domain.

They had seen already that the Sacramento River flowed south. Now they saw that another river, called the American, came down from the hills and flowed into the Sacramento almost at a right angle. In the corner where the two rivers met stood Sutter’s Fort, placed far enough from the banks to be safe in times of flood.

Sutter had marked off a rectangle five hundred feet long and a hundred and fifty feet wide, and around it he had set up a high whitewashed brick wall three feet thick. Inside this wall he had built a second. The space between the walls was roofed, and divided into rooms used as living quarters for the guardsmen and shops for the workers.

The main entrance was wide enough to admit a covered wagon. However, it was not easy to get inside if Sutter did not want you there. Along the outer wall cannon pointed in all directions, and the entrance gates were so vast that it took several men to move them. At two corners were watchtowers, from which the guardsmen could see anybody who came by land or water. Pocket whispered to the girls that underneath one of these towers was a dungeon where Sutter locked up any man who misbehaved. The dungeon was dark and damp, but its real horror was several million fleas. After a few hours among the fleas the toughest wrongdoer was yelling that if they would let him out he would be good as long as he lived.

Inside the walls was a well, and storehouses stocked with food and guns. Here also was a tall two-story house, headquarters of Sutter himself, where he received his guests and issued his orders.

Outside the walls they could see Sutter’s spreading empire. The air smelled of animals and liquor and people, and rang with noise—shouts of men and lowing of cattle, bang of hammers and creak of wheels, and now and then a shot as some fellow tried his gun. Here they saw the beginnings of a town: trading posts and scattered dwellings, where children scampered and women in sunbonnets hung out clothes or cooked over outdoor fires. Farther out, stretching into shadowy distance toward the mountains, they saw Sutter’s wheatfields. Tending the fields were Abs, bossed by a mounted troop of their own tribal chiefs. These chiefs had brought in the fieldhands and now kept them from running away. They were rewarded by being dressed in many-colored “uniforms,” called by the title of “capitano,” and given food and squaws in abundance. Sutter, said Pocket, got more work out of the Abs than any other landowner in California.

After making terms with Sutter, Pocket led them to a camping place near the American River. While Kendra made her cook-fire Pocket brought water, and went to Sutter’s storehouses to buy grain for the horses and vegetables for Kendra’s beef stew. Having thus spent enough money to make them really welcome, Pocket left Blackbeard to guard the horses and the simmering kettle, while Pocket himself stuffed another bandana or two into his pockets and took the girls to see Smith and Brannan’s store, where he used to work.

The store was a good-sized structure with a trading room and a storeroom. Pocket introduced the clerk in charge, a friend of his named Gene Spencer, one of the Mormons who had come out from New York. Leaving Gene to tell Pocket what had been going on in his absence, Marny and Kendra walked around.

The front room was like that of Chase and Fenway’s, except that it displayed far more goods. The shelves behind the counter were crammed almost to the cracking point, and the space in front was so full of barrels and boxes that there was hardly room to move. Holding their skirts close around them to avoid snags, Kendra and Marny made their way to the storeroom. Here they stopped and stared.

The front room had been crowded, but this room was almost literally
stuffed.
Merchandise was hung from the ceiling, piled on the shelves, stacked in every foot of space on the floor. They saw hams and beef and tobacco, flour and whiskey and salt fish and pickles, coffee and cornmeal and bacon and beans; pots and pans and wooden bowls, picks and shovels and crowbars, knives, matches, horn spoons, men’s boots and shirts and breeches, saddles and blankets and guns and bullet molds. As they turned from the storeroom door Gene Spencer broke off his chat with Pocket and gave them a teasing grin, as if he already knew what they were going to say. They said it.

“This place,” said Marny, “reminds me of Pocket’s pockets.”

“Who on earth,” exclaimed Kendra, “is going to
buy
all this?”

Gene chuckled. He was an agreeable young man, with a more sophisticated air than most of the others around Sutter’s Fort. “The men from San Francisco, Mrs. Parks,” he told her, “on their way to look for gold.”

“Do you really think there’ll be so many?” she demurred. “We’ve just come from San Francisco. They talk about gold there, but—Pocket will tell you—hardly anybody thinks it’s important.”

Gene smiled sagely. “They will.”

“I think maybe he’s right, ma’am,” Pocket said in his slow gentle way. “Gene, tell the ladies what you were telling me.”

Gene explained. They knew that Smith’s partner, the Mormon leader Sam Brannan, had left San Francisco some weeks ago. He had said he was coming up to Sutter’s Fort on business. His business was, that he had heard those rumors of gold and wanted to find out if they were true. They were.

So Mr. Brannan had rushed about the country, buying everything he could find that would be useful to men in the mountains. When the store was so full that it would hardly hold another bag of beans, he had started back to San Francisco. He was on his way now. When he got there he was going to announce the news of gold. He would announce it so loudly and so vigorously that every living soul in town would hear and be impressed, and men would start for the hills.

And here at the entrance to the gold fields they would find his trading post, ready to sell them what they needed to buy. Sam Brannan knew there were other ways to get gold besides scraping the earth for it.

They listened with mingled amusement and admiration. Marny asked Pocket what he was going to do now. “Will you get your old job back,” she said, “or go on with us?”

“I’ll go on with you, Miss Marny,” he answered. “We were lucky to get started when we did.”

Kendra spoke to Gene Spencer. “Aren’t you coming up to the hills at all, Mr. Spencer?”

“Oh yes, Mrs. Parks, later, when Mr. Brannan gets back. For the present—” he laughed candidly—“I’m being pretty well paid to stay where I am. Already, business is good.” Glancing from her to Marny and then to Pocket, he asked, “Shall I show them, Pocket?”