California Gold (14 page)

Mack craned on tiptoe and saw the man who was obviously Murphy, a young hulk with a yellow beard and a white gut hanging over his tights. Rivers of red ran all over his face. He had his gloves up, waving them feebly to defend himself, and he threw a sluggish punch. It lazed by the neatly parted hair of Mr. Corbett, whom Mack recognized as the same polite, blue-eyed teller who’d taken his deposit at Wells, Fargo. Corbett wore blue calf-high boots with laces, and tights to match. He looked trim, whippet-lean, as he bounced around the stained mats.

“Finish him off, Jim, this is a goddamn bore,” a man said, generating applause and whistles. Murphy eyed the unfriendly crowd and spat a white gob that landed on Corbett’s tights, not accidentally. The young bank teller reddened and smacked his gloves together twice, his only display of emotion.

Corbett’s handler, a little bald man with hairy ears, cried, “Fight or step down, Murphy.”

“Yes, come on,” Corbett said, bobbing and shifting with an amazing lightness.

Murphy’s head lowered, his dull dark eyes murderous. Someone called a comment to Corbett, who looked briefly in that direction, and Murphy hit him below the waist.

Partisans screamed foul. First Corbett reeled away, with Murphy snuffling and smirking, but then he snapped back, rapped his gloves together once more, and danced in. He stung Murphy with one, two, three blows to the head. Murphy went, “Auugh,” staggering backward. He tried to roundhouse Corbett with his right but Corbett wasn’t there; he was moving left. Murphy crossed with his left but Corbett had only been feinting. He streaked under Murphy’s guard and punished his middle with three more punches. Murphy exhaled, a gaseous sound. His eyes lost focus. Corbett brought his right fist up with a light, airy motion. But the
crunch
in the sudden silence made Mack and everyone else wince.

Murphy was out on his feet; a yellow drool leaked over his lower lip. Someone rapped a hammer on a ship’s bell, and seconds later, Murphy was dragged off the mats by his heels, a blood-soaked towel hiding his face.

Corbett donned a robe and toweled off his hair while the banty fellow, Billy Lee Delaney, paraded before the crowd. “Awright, gents, anyone else care to go a round or two with Gentleman Jim?”

There were some jests, coarse remarks, friendly snickers. But no takers.

“Anyone? Awww—no one?”

Mack raised his hand.

“Sympathies to you, lad,” said a man nearby. “Like to gimme the name of next of kin?” Laughter.

Mack’s heartbeat quickened as he stepped on the mat. Looking down, he saw drops of Murphy’s blood gleaming in the sunshine. Jim Corbett was slipping out of his robe. Over his shoulder, he gave the new challenger a swift, dismissive glance. Then he looked again.

He strode forward with a smile and raised a glove. “Wells, Fargo.”

“You helped me with my deposit. Chance is my name.”

“Jim Corbett.” They were about the same age, and something warmed between them there in the bright Sunday air that smelled of sea and fish. Corbett looked him up and down, and not with disapproval.

“Shirt off,” Delaney barked. Mack peeled it off and dropped it. Delaney held up gloves one at a time. Mack thrust his hands in and Delaney quickly laced each one. “To your corners,” he said with a slashing gesture, then a wink at his protégé. To Mack: “Don’t worry, son, I’ll stop it if it gets too bad.”

Corbett smiled from his corner, a little more cool now as he appraised Mack professionally. Delaney hit the ship’s bell. Hitching up his blue tights, Corbett came out with the grace and speed of someone executing a waltz step double-time.

Mack squared up his fists as he’d seen Fairbanks do that night at the Odd Fellows Hall. He never saw Corbett’s first punch whiz through his guard, but he felt it slam against his jaw. His eyes blurred. Corbett skipped away.

Somehow he couldn’t catch the young fighter. Corbett was too clever and nimble. Finally Mack did corner him, and wound up a ferocious punch and hurled it. Corbett sidestepped easily and Mack’s glove merely flicked his ear. Corbett acknowledged the hit with a good-natured blink. Then he sprang away.

By the end of five minutes, Corbett had opened a cut above Mack’s left eye and badly bruised his face. Mack’s brief popularity as a new challenger was over. Cries of “Another dud” and “Send him down, Jimmy” mingled with boos. Mack stubbornly kept his fists up and stood his ground, shuffling his feet but hardly moving while Corbett got through his guard again and again, punishing his eyes, his jaw, his chest. Corbett’s gloves seemed to fly by themselves. He almost looked regretful.

The blows landed faster, sharp leathery smacks. Finally Mack rebelled against the pain, throwing a right that Corbett didn’t quite dodge, and the crowd roared with surprise as Gentleman Jim skated back on his heels, nearly toppling. Billy Delaney pushed him from behind to save the moment.

Corbett’s face now showed a grudging respect. But not for long. He bore in, determined, and Mack, dazed and hurting, virtually stood there, taking it, blow after blow, till the ship’s bell rang.

To Mack’s astonishment, he heard some scattered applause for his performance. Corbett snagged a towel for him. “I’ve fought worse. A lot worse. You have a killer right hand but you don’t know how to control it. You don’t know how to bob and feint. I had the same problems till Mr. Watson took me on. What’s your name again?”

“Mack Chance.”

“Well, you’re not bad.”

“I’d like to be a lot better.”

“Serious?”

Mack nodded.

“All right, drop around to the Olympic Club at six any Tuesday, Thursday, or Saturday. We’ll go into the arena. I need strong sparring partners.”

Mack’s puffy eyes glinted with excitement. “I’ll be there.”

“I’ll expect you,” Corbett said with a crisp nod and a warm Celtic smile.

Mack didn’t get to the Olympic Club immediately, because he found a job with the municipal street department. It wasn’t very stimulating, but it paid his meager rent.

After about a week, his supervisor sent him up to the lofty eminence of Nob Hill. Here the City’s rich had built mansions even more splendid and spectacular than those at South Park and Rincon Hill. The wind-scoured summit overlooked the financial district, and Mack gazed in awe at wooden castles hurling Gothic towers and spires at the sky in disorderly splendor.

He shoveled dirt from his handcart into a six-inch chuckhole near the corner of California and Mason streets, hardly able to keep his mind on his work for looking at the houses and envying their inhabitants. He didn’t know which belonged to whom, but he did know that all four of the Big Four had built residences on Nob Hill, each of the tycoons flinging out more money than the last to please his wife and embarrass the wives of the others. Flood, the Nevada silver king, and other millionaires lived up here too. The cream.

Mack took his tamp and began compacting the dirt in the hole. On the side of the hill facing Oakland, a car of the California Street Cable Railroad clanged its bell coming up. That was the line whose construction had been promoted by Governor Stanford, Nellie said. When he moved up to Nob Hill his bulk made walking to and from home arduous.

Scarcely any other noises disturbed the hushed morning at this rarefied height. Someone rattled milk bottles at an unseen back door. Someone whipped a beater against a rug in an unseen backyard. That was all until a fringed buggy came up the hill from Powell Street and stopped near Mack, who paused to lean on his shovel like any good municipal employee.

In the rear of the buggy sat a handsome older couple, both with the starry look of willing victims. In the front seat, a sharply dressed gentleman put his patent-leather boot on the footboard and pointed his whip.

“I couldn’t recommend a better section than this for your new home. Nob Hill is the most exclusive residential address in America.”

“Where did they get such an odd name—
Nob
?” the woman asked.

“The great moguls of India, the nabobs. They didn’t build small either. I must warn you, folks—there are only a few lots left. And the prices are sky high.”

“Oh, that’s not a worry,” the woman trilled. “Mr. Sineheimer sold the corset factory in Chicago for a lot of money. I mean an enormous amount of money.” Her bragging on his behalf made the stoic Mr. Sineheimer inflate and preen.

“Certainly,” the broker said with an automatic smile.

“That’s why I could sell you any lot up here and assure you of a superb investment. However, if you do build, you can’t get away without servants. Plenty of servants.”

“I’d like that,” said the mogul’s wife. Mr. Sineheimer had no opinion.

While Mack observed all this, a middle-aged woman in plain and proper black came out of the enormous mansion on the southwest corner of California and Powell and walked up the hill to Mason. Mack figured she was a servant going on an errand. As she started to cross diagonally through the intersection toward the mansion on the opposite corner, the broker flicked his whip over his bay horse to set the buggy in motion. The woman, peering into her reticule, glanced up belatedly and saw the rattling rig bearing down.

“Get out of the way, woman,” the broker shouted, waving his whip. The woman stepped back but dropped her reticule in the street. She would have been safe had she let it lie; instead, she lunged for it.

The broker wildly tugged his rein to the right, but his horse whinnied and didn’t respond to the bit. Mack bolted for the woman, who seemed confused or stupefied with fright. He rolled his shoulder against her, flinging his arms around her and hurling her back out of the path of the reckless driver.

They fell hard. Mack jabbed out his left hand, keeping himself from landing on the poor flustered little lady. Meanwhile, the broker shook his whip and the bay trotted away with him and his prospects.

“Ma’am, I’m terribly sorry, I hope I didn’t hurt you—”

“No, no,” she said, accepting his hand to stand, then brushing off. She was a small woman, dark-haired and stout. Her oval face reminded him of pictures of Queen Victoria, except for her eyes, which were round and protruded, almost pop eyes. “I thought that man would stop. He stunned me when he didn’t.”

“Sure you’re all right?”

“More wounded dignity than anything. Thank you again for your courtesy.” She appraised him quickly. “I must say, the street-repair men they send up here are usually little better than derelicts. You don’t look like that sort.”

“Only job I could get, ma’am. Doubt I’d have taken it, except that it’s outdoors.”

“You like outdoor work?”

“I do. I love the sunshine.”

“Are you a native?”

“I am now.”

With a thoughtful look, she said, “My husband keeps racehorses down at his ranch on the peninsula. He always needs alert young men as grooms and general helpers. It’s somewhat more interesting work than this, I should think. I’ll give you a note to our foreman if you’d care to investigate.”

Mack wanted to throw his iron tamp into the air but he feared it might fall back and brain his benefactor. “Yes ma’am, I would. What’s the name of the ranch?”

“Palo Alto. It’s the Stanford ranch—as in Leland Stanford. I am Jane Lathrop Stanford; the governor is my husband. Come with me, please. My home’s just down there. I’ll go over to the Crockers’ later.”

As he followed her back to the turreted house, he saw again the limping collie, the crushed mass that had been the laborer O’Malley, and felt and smelled the sticky blood on his face.

He climbed marble steps to the main entrance. Immediately inside, he found a huge round foyer and saw in the white stone floor a circle of black marble inlays, symbols strange and unfamiliar. The signs of the zodiac, Nellie told him later; she knew the house. Everyone knew the house, including those with no hope of being invited in.

A dome of amber glass seventy feet overhead cast an appropriate golden light. Mrs. Jane Stanford led him past innumerable rooms whose function he could only guess. He did identify a library, a billiard room, a music room with a grand piano. There were enough paintings, frescoes, and sculptures to furnish a museum, and a fountain splashed in a conservatory crowded with hothouse plants. In the next room he spied something even more astonishing: Sitting on the numerous branches of potted trees and shrubs were birds, motionless golden birds.

Mrs. Stanford came back because he’d stopped. “They’re metal,” she explained. “They move and sing by means of compressed air. The governor loves all things mechanical.”

Men and women in black livery trod the halls as quietly as monks and nuns. Mack counted fourteen servants before reaching a fashionably crowded room at the rear, Mrs. Stanford’s downstairs sitting room.

She invited him to enjoy the spectacular view of the City below the Powell and Pine intersection while she quickly penned the note at a drop-front desk. The opulence left him feeling like he’d done five rounds with Corbett. When she ushered him back to the sunshine, he earnestly hoped he’d thanked her—he couldn’t remember.

“Nellie isn’t here?” Mack said.

“Somewhere,” Bierce replied with a shrug. “She’s preparing herself to collapse on Market Street, from there to be conveyed into the hands of the cretins and sex fiends who staff the Receiving Hospital. A female patient swears she lost her virginity to one of them.”

It was meant as a joke, but Mack didn’t like the sound of it. Bierce poured them coffee and sat down at the cheap table. “What brings you here?”

Mack showed him the note.

“My, my. Signed by the great lady herself. Do you plan to take a job at the ranch?”

“Not sure. I saw Stanford once; I didn’t like him.”

“He’d hate to hear you say that,” replied the acidulous Mr. Bierce. Bitter Bierce, his colleagues called him. “Back in the 1860s the governor discovered politics. It carried him in and out of the statehouse and more recently into the U.S. Senate in ’85. To this day, ‘governor’ remains his favorite honorific. The old boy has an abiding desire to be loved by us common folk of California. He kept us in the Union, and all that. His passion for popularity contributed to his split with Huntington, who thinks the only way to run a railroad is to keep to yourself and be a son of a bitch.”