Calico Palace (41 page)

He saw men and women lying in helpless groups on the ground, dying of dirt and bad food and tropical diseases. Nobody could tell him how many had died and how many more were sick. Some of the Americans had left, to re-make the dreadful Isthmus crossing and go home. Others, afraid to try the crossing again, said they would take any vessel going anywhere if only they could get off the Isthmus.

“The poor man,” said Rosabel, “didn’t know what to do. I bet he wished he’d stayed home.”

The others agreed with her. “But what
did
he do?” asked Kendra.

They said the captain had handled the problem about as well as anybody could have. After a day or two of utter bewilderment—for which nobody could blame him—he announced his decision. The officials of the steamboat line approved, and General Smith promised the authority of the army to help him enforce it.

The captain said that in common humanity he had to rescue as many of these people as his vessel could carry. She could not carry them all. He said he would take them in the order in which they had the right to come aboard. Those who had first right to take the steamer were those who held through tickets to San Francisco on the steamboat line, tickets they had bought at an office of the line in the United States.

The men from Peru would have to get off. They objected so violently that the sailors had to pick them up and carry them to the boats that would take them ashore. Once the steamer was empty, the captain said the passengers would come aboard in order of their precedence. First he would take the military personnel, the officers of the steamboat line, and the men who had been sent out to fill government posts. Next, the men and women who held the through tickets. They could come aboard in the order in which their tickets were dated, until there was not room on the steamer for one passenger more.

This meant that after the officials, the first to board would be the four clergymen and the businessmen who had bought their tickets in New York. Next would be the merry throng who had boarded the
Falcon
at New Orleans.

Now went up cries of pious fury.

Among the people who had reached the Isthmus by steamers later than the
Falcon,
or by vessels not belonging to the steamboat fine at all, there were some worthless fellows and more than one adventuress. But there were also men of good connections and even two or three respectable married couples. That they should be left behind while the captain stuffed his boat with gamblers and barmaids, with Blossom and her flower garden—they said it was unthinkable. It was wicked. It was an affront to the morals of men and the virtue of women. It was a threat to the American home. And if they ever got back to their own country they were going to take the whole thing to court.

Captain Forbes shut his mouth tight and shook his head. The officers of the steamboat line stood firmly behind him. They were responsible for people who held tickets on boats of the line. They were not responsible for people who had flocked to the Isthmus by other means, hoping the Lord would open a way for them to go farther.

“Ah!” said Marny. “I’m beginning—to understand.” She spoke slowly, awesomely. “I see—why Norman was so smart.”

She looked at Norman with eyes aglow. He smiled back at her. Well pleased with himself, he accepted her admiration as no more than his due.

“Right,” Rosabel said laughing. “Because now, the most precious object on the Isthmus was not a diamond necklace nor even a bag of money. It was a ticket to San Francisco. They were willing to pay anything. I mean
anything.
And Norman had been buying tickets. From people who quit at Cruces, from other people who gave up and started back from Panama City.”

“Weren’t you afraid,” asked Archwood, “that somebody would kill you to get a ticket?”

“Of course,” said Norman. “But everybody who had a ticket, or a bunch of tickets, was afraid of the same thing, so we stuck together.”

He explained that several other gamblers had followed his example and bought tickets from people who wanted to turn back. Norman and some of his old friends from New Orleans formed a club. For safety, four of them came to sleep in the room Norman occupied with Rosabel; others established themselves in the courtyard of the house. They were all armed, and two of them were always awake and on guard. The family who lived in the house could do nothing about them. By this time the natives were so bewildered that they were almost stupefied. They had never known the world contained such people as were now pouring into Panama, people who were so active or who made so much noise or were so determined to get their own way. The Panamanians longed for the good old days, and sighed when the Yankees told them the good old days were gone forever.

The gambling club began doing a brilliant business. The men pooled their funds and bought every ticket they could get, stateroom or steerage, often at two or three times the original cost. Some of the tickets they raffled, others they sold outright at fantastic prices. People bought the tickets with their last gold and silver coins, agreeing to take any sort of accommodation as long as they could get aboard the steamer. Several men paid twice the normal cost of a first-class stateroom to be allowed to sleep on a coil of rope on the deck of the
California.

At last, on the first day of February, 1849, the
California
steamed away from Panama. She was so stuffed with human beings that she had little more than standing room aboard, but she left behind six thousand more people who wanted to go to San Francisco.

Her voyage took four weeks. It was about as dreadful a voyage as any vessel ever made. Food was scant, water was rationed by the cupful. The passengers were crowded like beans in a basket. They were so wretched that everybody hated everybody else. They snarled and quarreled all day long.

“We couldn’t move,” said Rosabel, “without bumping into each other. And when we tried to sleep other people kept stumbling over us. I thought, if only I could get
out,
and walk around a little—”

“Couldn’t you get off at all?” asked Marny. “Didn’t the boat stop anywhere for water?”

“Why yes,” said Rosabel, “at a place called Mazatlan, and again at Monterey. The army people got off, but most of us were scared to. We had to take our tickets with us, because we couldn’t come back on board without showing them, and by this time the gold news had spread around and everybody in the world wanted to go to San Francisco. We were afraid somebody would knock us down in the street and take our tickets. So we stayed on board and suffered.”

“But now you’re here,” said Marny, “and you can come right over to the Calico Palace.”

Norman’s shrewd black eyes met the eager green eyes of Marny and he began to laugh. Looking around at the others he said,

“She hasn’t changed a bit. When she wants to do something she wants to do it right
now.
What was it you used to say, Marny? Vivimus—”

Marny laughed too, but she stood up and began to put on her bonnet, which she had hung on the back of a chair. “Dum vivimus vivamus,” she returned. “Which means in plain United States English, we won’t live forever so let’s get busy.”

N
ORMAN GOT BUSY. HE
was an enterprising man, and anyway, there was nothing else he could do.

When he first looked around him Norman said frankly that he did not like this town and did not think much of Marny’s Calico Palace. Norman had spent his life in civilized cities. He was used to card parlors with mirrors and carpets and crystal chandeliers and paintings of beautiful women. While he had known that San Francisco was a frontier village, he had not imagined such a flapping hodgepodge of tents and shanties and cloth houses, set on such bleak windswept hills. Like other men who came to San Francisco in 1849, when he actually saw the fabled city of gold Norman had a shock of dismay.

But he was here, and Norman was not a man who gave up easily. Unlike Archwood, Norman was not looking for adventure. He was looking for gold, and there was more gold in this rag city than in any other city in the world. He told Marny he would join her in the Calico Palace.

“I came here planning to stay at least a year,” said Norman, “and I’m not going back without giving the place a try.”

Marny flicked him a glance from her leaf-green eyes. “Norman dear,” she said, “it may be a long time before you
can
go back, even if you want to.”

She led him to a window and pointed to the empty vessels swinging in the bay.

“Do you think,” she asked, “that the crew of the
California
is any more noble than those other crews?” The steamer had been in port only two or three days, but she spoke with confidence. “I’m a cool gambler, Norman, but it doesn’t take any courage for me to bet you a hundred dollars that there is not one man aboard the
California
now.”

Marny lost her bet. There was one man aboard the
California.
Exactly one. He was an engineer, who had been persuaded by Captain Forbes to stay aboard at exorbitant pay and take care of the engines. As for the rest of that sturdy crew who had brought the steamer through the Straits of Magellan and up the west coast of the two Americas, every man of them had deserted to the gold fields.

Norman accepted Marny’s hundred dollars. Also, with shrewd good humor, he accepted the Calico Palace with its canvas walls and red cloth hangings, and said he would do his best. And Norman’s best, like Marny’s, was very good indeed.

Before long, Norman and Rosabel were as well known in the Calico Palace as Marny herself. Norman dealt cards and Rosabel provided music. She played first on a guitar, but when a British vessel came in with pianos, the Calico Palace bought one of the first for Rosabel. She played with skill. Rosabel might be a waif, but she was a clever waif and she had a genuine talent for music.

Loren bought another of these first pianos for Kendra. She was glad to have it, and she accepted it without the vague sense of guilt she had so often felt before Loren’s eager generosity. For now she had something to promise him in return. She was going to have a baby.

When she told him, Loren heard her with such delight as she had seldom seen before. Loren had grown up in a happy family and he missed it. San Francisco, with all its crowds, was a lonesome place. What a joy, he exclaimed, to have a family of his own!—and was Kendra all right? There was a good doctor in town, a man who had come here after years of practice among the Yankees in Valparaiso. Kendra assured Loren that she felt well, but he said it wouldn’t hurt to have Dr. Rollins make a call.

Dr. Rollins proved to be a man in his forties, agreeable and competent. He said Kendra was perfectly well. She was glad of this, not only for herself but because she did not want to be a burden during the months ahead; she wanted no flaw to mar Loren’s joy in the coming baby.

The baby made her feel more adequate than she had felt since she married Loren. Her yearning for Ted had gone, but it had left an empty space behind it. What she felt for Loren—admiration, affection, respect—did not fill that emptiness. These were not love. She knew the difference.

The doctor told her to keep lime juice on hand and drink a cupful every day when she could not get fresh vegetables. Tucked into some corner of the
California
had been packets of garden seeds, and these were now advertised for sale. Kendra inquired about them at Chase and Fenway’s. Mr. Fenway gloomily advised her that with vegetables bringing such prices as they were, a garden here in the middle of town would be stripped as soon as the green shoots came up. Very well, said Kendra, she would grow radishes and carrots in window boxes. Upstairs windows.

“Real good idea,” said Mr. Fenway. “Plant a flower or two at the front of the box. They’ll think it’s just some silly woman trying to make things pretty around here.”

He gave her a surprisingly humorous glance.

A day or two later Loren came in with a husky strong-faced man he introduced as Dwight Carson, a building contractor from Honolulu. Dwight Carson was now constructing a wharf. He had promised to put up several business buildings as soon as he could find enough men to do the work, but Loren had secured him to look at the upstairs windows and provide a carpenter to make the boxes. Kendra knew the price was outrageous, though Loren would not tell her what it was. When she asked, he only smiled and said, “Don’t worry. I can take care of my family.”

Dwight Carson proved to be a friendly fellow. He had practical sense and he knew his business, and he provided well-built window boxes, more spacious than Kendra had thought possible. And if his price was high, she could not blame him for getting rich while he could.

Dwight told her one of the buildings he had contracted for was a new Calico Palace. He said he could have started it tomorrow, but he could not get carpenters. Even when he could find men willing to take steady jobs, and when he was paying them all they asked for, some fellow would come to town with an extra big nugget and they would throw down their tools and go off to look for one like it.

Kendra sympathized. She did hope he could build the Calico Palace soon. She knew how much Marny wanted it.

On the first of April the second steamer of the line, the
Oregon,
came in from the Isthmus. By strict and clever management, she got out of the bay twelve days later.

The captain of the
Oregon,
Mr. Pearson, had been warned of what had happened to the
California
and he had vowed that it was not going to happen to him. He dropped anchor under the guns of the battleship
Ohio
and put his most unruly sailors in irons. Thus they stayed, until they and all the other men had agreed to take the steamer back to the Isthmus, at wages ten times what they had signed up for.

In spite of their promises, Captain Pearson kept his steamboat under the guns until he was ready to leave. Then the
Oregon
steamed away, carrying ten thousand ounces of gold and nineteen passengers bound for home.

The departure of the
Oregon
gave Kendra a chance to send a letter to her mother. She wrote that her marriage to Ted had proved a disappointment and had been annulled, and said she was now married to Loren Shields. She gave no details and she did not tell Eva about the baby. She would save that for her next letter. One shock at a time, she thought. She was not sure how Eva was going to like being told that she was to become a grandmother at the age of thirty-seven.