Calico Palace (42 page)

Spring was here and the weather was clearing. As she planted her window boxes Kendra could look down the hill and see the deserted hulks rocking on the water. Nearly every day she saw more vessels come in, and at last, on the first of May, she saw the
California
get out. After two heartbreaking months, Captain Forbes was taking his steamer back to the Isthmus. Like the captain of the
Oregon
he was paying his men extravagant wages, but his vessel was moving.

The
California
carried nineteen thousand ounces of gold, to be sent across the Isthmus and taken to the Mint. She also carried several homebound passengers. Most of these were army officers, including Lieutenants Morse and Vernon, both of whom had been assigned to posts in the United States. The lieutenants had called to say goodby to Kendra. They said they were sorry to part with her, but they could not conceal their delight at getting away from the weary drudgery that had been all they had known in San Francisco. Also aboard the
California
was the wife of General Persifer Smith. Mrs. Smith’s elegant maid had run off to the gold fields with a man she had married on two days’ acquaintance, and Mrs. Smith herself wanted no more trials.

While the steamers left a host of empty vessels behind them, by this time not all of these were still on the water. Men like Dwight Carson were buying the best, and turning them into the structures that everybody needed but nobody could build. With a few workmen the builders could get, they dragged the vessels to the beach. Here, after a little carpentry, the vessels became rooming houses, warehouses, restaurants, saloons, and every other sort of “building” needed by the people crowding into town. And men like Dwight Carson were getting rich.

The carpenters who rebuilt the ships got their pay every evening in gold dust. Whether or not they came back to work in the morning usually depended on how lucky they were at the gambling spots. As the night came down, the streets around the plaza blazed with light and shook with noise. The light poured through the cloth walls of Marny’s Calico Palace and other calico palaces like it, so much light that it looked as if the whole street were on fire. Nearly every one of these places had a band, and the musicians played whatever tune they chose and played it as loud as they could, so that a dozen different tunes were always blaring over the plaza together. The men must have liked it, for every night they clustered around the card tables with pokes of gold in their hands.

Rosabel, trying to play real music on her piano, said the discord was driving her mad. Marny, dealing her cards, was not troubled at all. Marny could not tell good music from bad; besides, her power of concentration was such that she hardly heard it. She stood by her table, her eyes and her mind and her beautiful hands concerned only with her cards. Men tried to talk to her. This disturbed the players, but if Marny heard the talk she rarely noticed it. If a man became obnoxious she gave a signal to whichever Blackbeard was on guard near her table, and he hustled the sinner outside. The Calico Palace was the most orderly gambling spot on Kearny Street, and Marny and her friends intended to keep it so.

Once in a while she said something, but her words were few and terse. When a croaker stood at her elbow, complaining about the country, the climate, and his own general discontent, Marny went on shuffling and dealing without giving him a glance. She had heard croakers before. They were men who had come to California expecting to see lumps of gold lying about on the ground, to be gathered with no more trouble than picking flowers. When they found that gold digging meant work they decided they had been lured here and cheated, and they loudly said so.

The bettors told the croaker to move on. He did not move, but went on croaking. San Francisco was a big sham. Dirty and cold and full of fleas. He was here and all the ships were stuck in the bay and he couldn’t get out and he wished he was dead. “Hear what I say?” he demanded. “This place is a big cheat. You’re all a lot of big cheats. Liars and robbers and no-goods—”

Marny lifted her hand in the signal to Blackbeard. As he reached her she indicated the croaker, still grumbling at her side.

“This guest,” she said clearly, “is not welcome.” She turned her eyes back to the gamblers. “Place your bets, gentlemen.”

They laughed approvingly. A moment later the croaker found himself in the street.

It was not always so easy. One fellow planted himself by Marny’s table and began making obscene remarks which he thought were clever. The other men told him to shut up, but he was too fond of his own wit to do so. For several minutes Marny paid him no attention. At length, tired of being ignored, the man gave her a pinch. The card in her hand, which should have been dealt face down, fell on the table face up and spoiled the deal. Marny got mad.

Whatever could be done with a pack of cards, Marny could do. The gamblers had never seen her use a card as a weapon, but they saw it now. Her green eyes snapped up toward the man’s face. With a lightning-quick movement she tossed a card, so sharply that the corner of it struck him like a knife, and blood began to trickle from a cut just below his eyebrow.

With a yell, the man clapped his hand over his stinging eye. The gamblers laughed with joy and Marny gave the signal. As Blackbeard took out the offender one of the players picked up the card, dirtied now with a heel mark, and handed it to her. With a smile of thanks Marny swept up the rest of the cards and handed them to the other Blackbeard. He gave her a new deck, she shuffled and dealt again. “Sorry for the ruckus,” she said evenly. “Place your bets, gentlemen.”

Kendra heard about these episodes, from the talk at Chase and Fenway’s or from Marny herself. Now and then she met Marny in the store; oftener, Marny walked up the hill and told her about the doings in town.

As she listened, Kendra felt twinges of envy. Her own life was so protected. This was how it should have been, she knew; a woman who was going to have a baby had no business taking part in the lusty rowdiness of the plaza. Loren was giving her exactly what he thought she wanted, which was exactly what she should have wanted—safety, ease, sheltering. Loren liked Marny, but he felt no interest in the razzle-dazzle of Kearny Street and it never crossed his mind that Kendra might feel any.

Still, Kendra was happier than she had been since last summer at Shiny Gulch, and she was glad about the baby. She told Marny, “I never dreamed I would love a baby so much before I even saw it.”

Marny looked around Kendra’s parlor. The ships had brought furniture and curtains, rugs and silver and glass, and Kendra had them all. “Your baby will start life in luxury,” said Marny. “I don’t believe there’s another woman in San Francisco who lives as well as you do. I know I don’t. If we ever get our new building—” She shrugged.

“Is there any chance of starting it soon?” Kendra asked.

“I doubt it. Dwight Carson is doing the best he can, but—” She shrugged again.

They heard laughter from the kitchen, where Serena was entertaining Marny’s escorts, Troy Blackbeard and Lolo and baby Zack. The Blackbeards liked to escort Marny on these visits because Kendra always had something good to eat on hand and they got a treat at the kitchen table. As Troy and Lolo had been married by one of the ministers who arrived on the
California,
they were now a respectable pair and Serena enjoyed their company.

Marny said it was time for her to go down the hill and get ready for her evening at the card table. When she had left, Kendra went into the kitchen to prepare a dessert for dinner, dried apricots stewed with citron and raisins.

While they sat at table that evening, Loren told her a launch from the placer country had brought Chase and Fenway’s packing boys, Bert, Al, and Foxy. The boys were in the same state as so many others coming back from the hills, rich with gold and sick with scurvy. Foxy had staggered into the store this morning, begging for lime juice at any price. He said the other two were even sicker than he was. Loren and Ralph Watson, carrying bottles of lime juice, had gone with him to the lodging where the boys were paying high prices to lie in dirt and misery.

Loren said the place was a bug-ridden flophouse. Not even a house, he corrected himself; it was merely a canvas roof supported by four walls so badly put together that light came in between the planks. Along the walls were shelves, each shelf about three feet above the one below it, and each man had a space of about six feet on a shelf.

He said half the men lying on the shelves were drunk, the rest were groaning with scurvy and other illnesses they had brought back from the hills of gold.

Kendra shivered. “What did you do?”

“We gave them the lime juice,” said Loren, “and we brought the boys’ gold back to the store and put it in the safe. They’ll be all right after a few days of wholesome food.”

“Are they finished with the mines?”

“They certainly are,” Loren answered. “The three of them say with one voice they never want to see a placer again. They want to come back to work in the store. And they can, we need them.”

“Where will they live? You can’t let them stay in a place like that.”

“Of course not. We’ll set up three army cots in one of the rooms over the store. Not luxurious, but better than what the boys have now.”

Kendra felt a nip of guilt. She told Loren about the time she had bought potatoes and dried peas from Foxy because he wanted to go farther up in the hills with no provisions but jerky and hardtack. “I should have warned him about scurvy,” she said.

But in Loren’s eyes Kendra never did wrong. “My dear girl,” he urged, “you know perfectly well he had heard that before. If you hadn’t bought his vegetables he’d have sold them to somebody else.”

“All the same,” said Kendra, “I’m going to help those boys get well. Dr. Rollins says dried fruit helps scurvy, and we have plenty of that. I’ll make some pies and send them down by Ralph.”

“Do you feel strong enough for the extra work?” he asked anxiously.

“Oh yes, I feel fine. And the doctor says the best thing I can do for myself is keep active.”

“Then make the pies.” He smiled fondly at her across the table. “You are a most thoughtful person.”

He began to praise her concoction of apricots stewed with citron and raisins. For the thousandth time Kendra asked herself—Why can’t I fall in love with him? He’s the finest man I’ve ever known and he loves me more than anybody else ever loved me. Yet I like him but I don’t love him. I can’t and I don’t.

Loren was right about the packing boys; they were young and hardy, and after a few days of good food they were up and ready to work. Kendra saw Foxy in the store one morning when she had walked down with Loren to choose foodstuffs. Loren had gone into the office with Mr. Chase, and Kendra sat by the counter waiting till he was free to escort her home. Mr. Fenway was selling a pick and shovel to a would-be miner, and around the stove a group of croakers sat smoking and voicing the usual complaints.

Foxy came out of the storeroom, bringing packages to be stacked on the shelves behind the counter. Seeing Kendra, he leaned over the counter to speak to her.

“Say, Mrs. Par—Mrs. Shields,” said Foxy, “it sure was nice of you to send us boys all that good eating. I guess we never had thought about how important it was, good eating.”

“Are you well now?” she asked. “All three of you?”

“Oh yes ma’am, we’re fine. But I tell you, nobody’ll catch me going up to those mines again. Hardest work I ever did, all that digging, and in the winter was it cold! Snowed so hard that the passes were blocked and we couldn’t get down to Sacramento, and we had nothing to sleep in but a lean-to, and nothing fit to eat—no ma’am, I’ve had my lesson. And scurvy! When you get scurvy your joints swell up and hurt, and your mouth gets all raw inside—I tell you, it’s not worth the gold. We lived through it, but not everybody did. Quite a lot of men died up there last winter. Oh, and that reminds me—you remember that fellow Delbert? The one that used to go around with Marny?”

Kendra gave a start. It had been a long time since she had heard Marny mention Delbert’s name. She wondered how Marny felt about him now.

It was not likely that Foxy knew anything about Delbert’s theft of Marny’s gold. All he knew was that Delbert and some others had gone looking for the Big Lump. Kendra asked, “What about him, Foxy?”

Foxy rested his elbows on the counter. His ugly buck-toothed face was sober, but at the same time eager with the eagerness of one who has news to tell. “Delbert’s dead, Mrs. Shields. I guess I ought to tell Marny. I’ll go over to the Calico Palace one evening soon, and tell her.”

Kendra felt no grief for Delbert. She wondered if Marny would feel any. “What happened to him?” she asked.

Foxy spoke importantly. “Well ma’am, it was kind of funny. I don’t mean funny to be laughed at,” he apologized quickly, “I mean
strange
—sort of—” Foxy fumbled through his limited stock of words. “What I mean is, you know Delbert and some other fellows went looking for the Big Lump—”

Kendra felt a sudden tenseness. She heard Mr. Fenway giving directions to a pair of new arrivals who had come in to ask where they could board a launch for Sacramento. “Go on, Foxy,” she said.

“It happened not far from where we were,” said Foxy, “so we heard all about it. Delbert and his partners had a big quarrel. I don’t know what about, but they all got mad. They were standing close to a creek and one of the other men gave Delbert a punch and Delbert fell into the water. It wasn’t a big creek, not over his head, but he couldn’t seem to get up and make his way out. Couple of the men jumped in to help him—nobody had meant to kill him, I guess—but Delbert was down in the water and by the time they dragged him out it was too late. And then they found out why he couldn’t get up when he fell. They found he was wearing a sort of shirt under his clothes, a leather shirt with strap-down pockets—and Mrs. Shields, those pockets were
stuffed
with gold. You never saw so much. Hundreds of ounces. And the gold weighed him down. Once he fell into the water he couldn’t push himself up—do you see?”