California Gold (2 page)

“Over here, this way.”

This way this way.
The sound whirled round and round him, the voices multiplying, echoing, confusing and frightening him more. He screamed for Pa, and swerved to the left, then right, running faster, his cracked old shoes somehow lifting him above the snow, carrying him on between cliffs of snow that formed a steadily narrowing canyon. “Pa! Pa?” he cried, and a hundred answering voices gibbered at him from all directions, the human sounds and the storm’s cry a hopeless tangle.

He heard a rumbling, felt it in his feet deep in the drifts. The rumbling grew, and the snow cliffs on both sides shuddered and began to rain down showers of white.

He ran into something solid and cried out. Snapping his head back, he saw the three hanged men. He’d run in a circle. Around the gibbet, ramparts of snow reached up to a sky he was seeing for the last time.

“Help me,” he said to the dead men as the snow cliffs burst open; great blocks of white hurtled down. “Somebody help me.”

The hanged men opened their eyes and looked down. He started to scream, but no sound would come. His mouth open, he watched tons of snow descending on him with a roar like the end of creation. Again he tried to force a scream out. Nothing. His throat was silent, dead.

But there was screaming enough. The storm screamed for him, louder, and louder, and—

His eyes flew open. The terrible sound gripped him until he sat up and his mind started to function. There was a thin scrawl of smoke along the horizon. Again the freight train signaled with its whistle, now quickly fading, the train dwindling in the west and leaving nothing but the smoke above the rolling harvested fields. He forced himself to breathe deeply; that slowed the beat of his heart.

The nightmare recurred every few months. It was as familiar as a friend, but not nearly as welcome. It was compounded of drab memories: the cold, sooty, hopeless world of the coal patch, the little village of Irish and Welsh mining families between Pottsville and Port Carbon, Pennsylvania, where his pa had raised him; and of terrifying ones: He’d been lost for half an hour in just such a snowstorm when he was sent on an errand, at age six. He hadn’t really been in danger of losing his life, but he might as well have been, so terrified was he before his pa came with a lantern to carry him home.

In the dream he always died, killed by the sunless world of his boyhood, where there was never enough food, never enough firewood, never enough in a miner’s bobtail paycheck because of all that the company deducted for rent, groceries, lamp oil, miners’ candles.

For most of those who had squandered their few years of health and vigor mining Schuylkill coal, there was never enough hope. In that respect Pa was an exception. Pa had his memories. Pa had his book. Pa had California.

He’d bequeathed all of those things to his son, who now combed a burr out of his hair and stepped over the golden leaves at the base of the tree till he was free of the shadows of the limbs and could lean his head back and let the hot autumn sunshine soak into him. It wasn’t as good as the sunshine of California, he was sure, but it was a foretaste.

His name was James Macklin Chance. Macklin was his Irish mother’s maiden name. She’d died bearing him, and perhaps his pa had always called him Mack because of his love for her, and his loss: He stood five feet, ten inches, and had a trim, hard frame developed during his years as a mine boy. Though he’d been out in the open almost constantly in recent months, he was only marginally darker man he had been the day he left Schuylkill County forever. He was still a pale easterner.

Mack had inherited his father’s straight brown hair and the hazel eyes of the mother he never knew. His beard, which he’d let grow for this journey, was distinctly lighter and redder than the hair above, and it hid a strong chin. He had a broad, likable smile when he felt like displaying it, but his early years in the mines had built a pugnacity into him too.

He relieved himself behind the tree and then hunkered over the big blue bandanna that carried his worldly goods, which consisted of a large clasp knife and the book. He wore corduroy pants and an old jacket of denim, much too heavy for this heat but necessary on the final stage of his journey. He’d set out with no money at all. The settlement after the mine accident was a princely $25, for which he’d signed a paper saying the mining company was absolved of all responsibility. Burying Pa properly had used up the entire sum.

Mack untied the bandanna and debated between the bruised apple and one of the crackers now hard as wood. He chose the cracker and then took out the book, brushing crumbs from its embossed leather cover. Inspecting each corner to make sure none was bent, he then smoothed his palm over the raised lettering, whose feel he knew by heart. The cover said:

THE EMIGRANT’S GUIDE

TO CALIFORNIA

& ITS GOLD FIELDS.

Below this was the author’s name, T. Fowler Haines, and a date, 1848.

The book measured six inches by three, and was half an inch thick. Mack opened it to the title page and smiled as if meeting an old friend.
BASED UPON PERSONAL EYE-WITNESS EXPERIENCES OF THE AUTHOR. AND PUBLISHED AT NEW YORK CITY BY THE CASH BROS. PRINTING CO. PRICE 15 CENTS (WITH MAP).
Now leafing through the little book his father had carried all the way to California and back again, his eye touched on a favorite line.

The El Dorado of the early voyagers to America has been discovered at last, giving riches to some, and new hope to all.

His pa had believed that all his life, even though he was one of the thousands of failed Argonauts who came home with nothing but memories of a golden land of sunshine and promise. Mack believed it too, and now that his pa’s accident had set him free of responsibility—he’d never had any loyalty to the mine company, or to the cheerless cold land in which it bled its victims of their strength and hope—he was on his way to prove the words of the remote and godlike T. Fowler Haines. In California, he’d never be cold again, or poor.

Mack once more brushed off the book, considered whether the upper right corner might be slightly bent—it was not—and then tied up the bandanna and resumed his walk west through Union County, Iowa, as the morning wore away.

A half hour later he came on two farm boys rolling around and punching each other in the dirt. He jumped in and pulled off the one on top, a stern light in his hazel eyes.

“You let him alone.”

“Ain’t none of your business,” the bigger boy said. “He’s my brother.”

“I don’t care—you’re a whole head taller.”

“What gives you any right to butt in?”

“Why,” Mack said with a touch of a smile, “I just like to stand up for the underdog when he can’t stand up for himself. It’s something my pa taught me.” Then he lost the smile as he pointed his index finger near the bigger one’s face. “So you pay attention to what I say. Don’t let me catch you bullying again.”

“Yes, sir, awright,” said the bigger one, now less sure of himself.

“Is there a town anyplace close?”

“Three miles on,” said the smaller boy.

“Good. I have to find some work so I can buy some food.”

The frame building, the depot of Macedon, Iowa, baked in the midday heat. Rails polished to a dazzle by the sun ran away east and west through the vast fertile prairies, where silos and barns broke the horizon. Mack stepped up into the shade at the east end of the trackside platform, drawn by the sound of a loud, whiny voice. He’d been scrutinizing Macedon’s main street around on the other side when he heard the man’s singsong speech, or rather, just a tantalizing snatch of it:

“…never a better time to explore the wonders of California.”

The man sheltering in the shade of the platform was old. Actually he was about forty, but to Mack, who was eighteen, that was old. He wore a plaid frock coat, stand-up paper collar, cravat of peacock blue and green, and a derby. Shirt and collar studs winked like little gold nuggets. Mack saw the flash, not the cheapness.
When I’m rich I’ll dress like that.

The man had set up a folding stand to hold some pamphlets. As Mack drifted closer, he noticed a poster tacked to the depot wall.

“FOR HEALTH—WEALTH—RECREATION”

SEE

CALIFORNIA

NOW!!

EXCURSION FARES

WILL
NEVER
BE LOWER!

The lecturer was swinging his finger in the air and saying, “And so, my friends…” His audience of three jowly farmers in straw hats and bib overalls and the mother of two little girls in ancient gingham sunbonnets didn’t exactly look like friends. “…do not believe what you may have been told by the envious or the ignorant. Citizens of California have the best of us. Far from living in some kind of rude exile, they enjoy, in fact, the finest climate, the most fertile soil, the loveliest skies, the mildest winters, the most healthful surroundings in the entire United States of America.”

Mack had no trouble believing that. He’d heard similar statements from his pa, and had read them in the pages of T. Fowler Haines.

“And now that the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroad companies have reduced excursion fares to an all-time low, you cannot afford to pass up the opportunity to visit the Golden State, perhaps to discover your new home and—who knows?—the kind of wealth that has drawn the bold and courageous to California ever since the days when the homebound Manila galleons visited her shores, Sir Francis Drake sailed her coastline, and the hardy Spanish conquistadors roamed her valleys and mountain ranges in search of treasure. Step up, my good friends. I have the fare schedules and all pertinent information right here.”

The salesman displayed a handful of pamphlets. One farmer leaned over and spat tobacco on the rails. “Too gol-damn far to go. And what for? To be scalped by Injuns or shot by road agents? No thanks.” He left.

“Sir—gentlemen—that is a completely unenlightened and unrealistic—”

The salesman stopped. The other farmers were following the first. Then the mother shooed her sunbonneted daughters around the corner after they’d helped themselves to pamphlets. The man watched the girls skip past an old spaniel that lay scratching its fleas in the dust. “Well, I don’t suppose those young ladies will be forking out hard cash for train tickets anytime soon. Jesus, what a hick burg.” He swept the pamphlets into an open case and started to fold his stand.

Mack stepped forward. “I’d like one of those.”

The salesman fanned himself with his derby. “Son, I’m hired by the Central Pacific to travel around and drum up paying passengers. You don’t look like you could pay for a ride to the nearest privy.”

Mack gave him a level stare. “I can’t. But I like to read everything I can about California. That’s where I’m headed.”

“Is that so?”

Mack nodded.

The man rolled his tongue under his lip. “Then you’re smarter than the idiots around here.” He gestured west. “Greatest land boom in California history—and a cheap way to get there and take advantage of it—and they don’t give a goddamn. Maybe they’re not so stupid up in Des Moines.”

He flipped a pamphlet at Mack. The cover was a glorious lithograph of a California sunrise over grape arbors and stacked shocks of wheat, with patriotic bunting depicted at the corners, and a grizzly bear strolling in the background.

“Thanks for this,” Mack said, slipping the pamphlet into the book, which caught the man’s interest.

“What’s that?”

“A Gold Rush guidebook.”

The salesman wiggled his fingers and Mack reluctantly handed it to him. The man licked a thumb to turn the pages.

“Be careful of that,” Mack said. “My pa gave it to me. He carried it all the way to the diggings.”

“Oh, he lives in California, does he?”

“No, Pennsylvania. That is, he did till July—he’s dead now. He came back when he didn’t find any gold.”

“Not many did,” the man said, now plucking out the tacks that held his poster to the depot wall. Toward the bottom, garish type urged:

SEE!

ORANGE GROVES & OTHER NATURAL WONDERS
!

REAL ESTATE & BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES
!

NEW TOWNS FOR RETIREMENT & VACATION
!

The glorious promises rolled up out of sight. “And most of those who did,” the man continued, “pissed their wealth away on women or cheap spirits or games of chance. In my opinion, my boy, the gold in California’s creeks and rivers is pyrites. That’s fool’s gold.”

“I know.”

“But do you know this—the real gold out there is in the land.” He cast a melancholy eye on the burnished horizon. “Richest, sweetest country a man ever rested his eyes upon.”

“I’ve read that. And there’s no snow.”

“That’s true enough. Unless you live in the Sierras, I suppose.”

“Not me,” Mack declared. “I’m going to make my way in San Francisco. They call it the Athens of the West.”

Amused, the man said, “Mighty ambitious. Tell me something. How do you propose to get all the way out there?”

“Same way I got this far. Hitch a ride when I can, walk when I can’t.”

A board at the end of the platform creaked and a glum middle-aged man with a metal badge on his vest stepped around the corner and folded his arms, eyeing Mack, who was distracted by the salesman’s explosive exclamation:

“Walk?”

In the hot stillness he heard Pa say, “The Argonauts knew of the wonders, the bounties, the incredible
possibilities
of California—the wealth waiting to be taken, the freedom to take it with no one to gainsay your methods. Men with that vision wanted to reach California so badly, they sold everything to buy wagons or steerage tickets around the Horn. Those with nothing to sell—I was one—they walked. I saw the prairies black with walkers to California…”

“Yes, sir. A lot of people walked all the way in ’49 and ’50,” Mack said.

The salesman laughed, not scornfully so much as with pity. “Son, you’re crazy.”