Fool's Gold (4 page)

When they came down from the mountains, he went into San Francisco for supplies. There was a letter for her, brought round the Horn on the new Pacific Mail: Grandfather Jameson was dead and Valley Hall was hers. After a few superficial words of sympathy, Robert loaded up the mule and they set off back to the camps. There was no point, he said, in giving up now, just as they were about to make the big strike. Connecticut could wait a little longer.

She gritted her teeth and continued to cook and wash and mend for Robert, struggling to make a home for them out of the disgusting shacks and tents and lean-tos they lived in, even standing beside him, panning the soil they had dug.

She had absorbed a great deal of information from her father and the books he had left in Yerba Buena and occasionally she would venture, when they were staking a claim in virgin territory, to suggest those parts of the terrain where the easily accessible ‘placer’ gold might be. Robert invariably treated her suggestions with deep scorn and she had to endure the chagrin of seeing other, later miners, move in to ‘her’ spots and walk off with the prizes.

In the first year, when placers were rich and pickings easy, there was a deal of camaraderie among the miners, and though the shortage of women was acute, she never had anything but the most civil of treatment from the rough men of all nationalities who crowded into the foothills of the Sierras and it eased the pain of her unhappy marriage. But as the gold became harder to find and more and more men poured into the hills to find it, envy and greed, sharp practice and suspicion began to creep in. The awesome splendour of the rocky gorges and tree-covered slopes of the Sierras began to be eroded by the misery and squalor of the men who pillaged them.

The miners, always superstitious and willing to put their success, or lack of it, on any back but their own, began sarcastically to call Robert ‘Lucky Langdon’ and to regard him as an ill-omen.

*

She was stacking a barrel of pickled tongues in the front of the shop, for it was nearing the end of its life and needed to be sold if it were not to be written off as a dead loss, and studiously ignoring the lascivious comments of two miners lounging in the doorway, when she saw Kai out of the corner of her eye.

Before she could straighten her aching back and speak, Missus Carson shot out of the shadows, a broom held before her as if she would sweep him back out on to the sidewalks.

‘Git outa here, you heathen! Don’t serve no furriners in here. You git along to Chinatown, along with the rest of your kind!’

‘I have the order for Tresco supplies,’ said Chen Kai, hands together, bowing courteously, but not too low.

‘Want we should throw’m out, lady?’ asked one of the loungers, a rough, heavily bearded man who looked as if he had missed out on the pre-celebration bath even the dirtiest miner generally took as soon as he got into town. ‘Or shall we just cut off his pig-tail, huh?’

Kai did not wear his hair in a pigtail, but cut as much in the Western style as thick, straight black hair could be. Apart from his straw hat, his clothes were entirely the same as those of any Westerner.

Missus Carson was nobody’s fool. The mention of Tresco had worked on her like a charm, exactly as Alicia had known it would.

‘Tresco? Whyever didn’t you say so before?’ she snapped. Then she turned on the miners. ‘Dratted men! Git outa here if’n you ain’t buyin’ anythin’!’ she ordered. ‘And you, mister,’ she turned on Chen Kai-Tsu, ‘give the girl your order. And mind it’s collected by tonight — don’t hold with no Sabbath opening!’

It didn’t take too long to give the order and Kai allowed ‘the girl’ to make suggestions here and there. To placate her mistress, who, in between serving the other customers, hovered attentively at the other end of the counter, she tried to persuade him to take a few sides of bacon.

‘Thank you, missee, no bacon. We have bacon already to use. Next time we buy bacon.’

‘Very well.’ She had to turn away to hide a smile. ‘The order will be ready for collection any time after three.’

‘Thank you, missee. I will be here then.’

A bow to Missus Carson in the shadows and he was gone.

‘Pretty much time you spent on that Chinee,’ grumbled the storekeeper, aggrieved that she had had to serve the few miners who had come in herself, when she knew full well that half of them only came in to look the girl over. ‘Few enough young women about, even now Sacramento’s so settled,’ her brother had observed. ‘Attractive wench like her, bound to bring ‘em in, just to look at her, and if you can’t sell to them once they’re in, you’re not the woman I took ye for, Millie! Aye, one our rivals can’t match, that one.’

Missus Carson had agreed, even rooting out one of the blouses she had foolishly bought in early on in the business. It was old-fashioned, of course, but so was the girl. Perversely, that only seemed to increase her attraction. The blouse was only loaned, like the large holland apron with which the girl protected her skirt in the front shop and the storerooms out back. After all, who knew how long she might stay? She could remember the time when a woman could bury her husband one day and marry the chief mourner the next. Not quite so frantic now, of course, but the shortage of unattached women was still acute. With twelve men to every woman, even the worst fright or shrew could have her pick; for a handsome and still youthful woman, even a widow with a young child, the choice was more like a hundred.

‘Too much time, ma’am?’ queried Alicia, raising her eyebrows. ‘I’m sorry, I must have been mistaken. I thought you were eager for the Tresco account, and it seemed to me that a little encouragement and assistance might bear fruit in the future.’

‘Don’t she talk beautiful?’ came a voice from the doorway. ‘Cain’t never hear enough of it.’ It was Ned Sullivan, a huge bear of a man who ran the saloon and the miners’ stores. More intelligent than either his sister or his brother-in-law, he was the driving force behind the enterprise. He made no secret of his admiration for Alicia, but he was more open than Carson and never attempted to take advantage of his position. He was loud-mouthed and uncouth, but she respected him for his politeness towards her.

‘An’ that’s sense she’s talking there, so ‘tis,’ he boomed. ‘You were sour enough when Hopkins took the Vincent account, weren’t you? Well, if’n you don’t want the other big ranches to go to them, you got to butter ‘em up a bit. Time’s gone now when you could pick and choose who you served and when, times when miners would offer you bags of gold to sell them the last loaf of bread instead of some other poor starving devil. Gold’s runnin’ out, Millie, leastways for the small miner. Now it’s all the companies and the ranches, thass where you got to look for business. An’ there’s not many others besides us and Hopkins can hold big enough stocks. And, tarnation, if’n Tresco chooses to send a Chinee or a three-headed black man in to buy, then them’s the ones you got to butter up some. Ain’t that so, sweetheart?’ He turned to Alicia for her support.

He was right, but she doubted that many would see his point of view. California had floated for almost six years now on a sea of gold and most of the State’s inhabitants saw no reason why they should not continue to do so. But the placer gold, the easily accessible gold found on river-banks, or in old river beds and sand bars, had almost all been dug out and only the seams that ran deep into the mountains still remained. Only the big mining companies could get at this with hydraulic mining, washing the mountains away with jets of high-powered water that came out of the flumes so fast they could kill a man. The day of the prospector was coming to an end, but few were willing to believe it so long as there were still unexpected discoveries. While one miner could still make his fortune by a lucky find, so, they believed, could all of them.

‘And no matter what happens to the gold, there’ll always be a call for a bottle or two of whiskey and a pretty girl!’ he chuckled. ‘How about it, eh, girl? You could do well in the saloon, much better than in here. Why not just come through for a few hours each evening, since you’re so short on money? Always tips and extras to be picked up.’

‘Thank you, but no.’

‘If you’re worried about the kid, well, dammit, you and her could move in here. Millie’s got plenty of rooms, and then I guess you’d rest easier. Aw, c’mon, why not give it a try?’ He had the grace to smile as she shook her head. ‘Ah, well, if you’ve set your mind against it … Pity. Great pity. I’m that desperate for new faces in there since Mollie and Jennie left, and you’d be a prime attraction.’

Chapter Four

Until she was nineteen, she’d never thought she could be an attraction to anyone.

The Langdons had left the northern fields and arrived in San Francisco en route for the southern mines. It was her birthday, and almost two years since she had married Robert. The town had changed beyond recognition in that time; the little fishing village was now a roistering, rowdy, good-time town. Unlike the miners with pay dirt to spend — and the streets were full of them — they had difficulty finding a room they could afford. Not for them the night on the town, the restaurant, one of the flourishing new theatres. Robert, apparently oblivious to the date, left her behind in the scruffy rooming house while he went to see a man ‘about some business’.

‘Brought his woman with him, did he?’ she asked unwisely, wrinkling her nose at the stink of whiskey and cheap perfume clouding him on his return. ‘Or did you finish your business early?’

‘Thass right,’ he slurred. ‘Bought myself a woman. Whaddya think abou’ tha’, eh?’

She shrugged. ‘I trust you had a successful evening.’

‘Successful! You laughing at me?’

‘No, I —’

‘Met up with Fisher, I did. Thought I’d get even with him over that trouble at Little Rich Bar.’

Alicia shivered. She’d taken against Fisher from their very first encounter. He had staked a claim near them at Little Rich Bar up at Hangtown, in the very dry ravine that she had suggested on their arrival, and which Robert, naturally, had turned down with open scorn. Within a week, Fisher had dug out a fortune while the Langdons had made barely enough to buy food for the mule. Far from treating her with the respect the other men gave her, Fisher was forever leering at her, making suggestive remarks and trying to catch her alone. He would often come up behind her when she was washing clothes in the stream and just stand there, thumbs hooked into his pants pockets, licking his full lips and stripping her with his hot, greedy eyes.

‘And did you?’

‘Challenged him. Three card monte.’

Her heart sank. Robert had not the stomach for a gambler.

‘I’d have won, too,’ he boasted, ‘‘cept he put Vasquez up against me. All the greasers are good at three card monte.’

‘Then why did you play?’

He looked at her shiftily. ‘Matter of honour,’ he said, slurring his words.

‘Honour? You! Oh God, how much did you lose?’

He shrugged. ‘Everything.’

‘The last of the gold?’ she shouted angrily. ‘You’ve lost it all? Oh, how
could
you, you fool!’

She paid dearly for her outburst, for he had drunk too much to contain his impotent rage and lashed out at her with his fists. For once she didn’t scream as his knuckles smacked into her flesh, throwing her against the wall. Her last thought as she fell to the floor was that she would bear it no longer.

The next morning when he awoke, heavy-eyed and fuzzy-headed, she was sitting quietly by the door, her meagre belongings packed in a small bundle, holding a piece of blood-stained linen to her forehead.

‘I’m leaving you Robert,’ she said softly. ‘I can’t go on like this.’

‘And what does your ladyship intend to live on, pray?’ he sneered.

‘I shall go back to Connecticut,’ she said calmly through swollen lips.

‘And what will you use for the passage money? Shirt buttons?’

‘Give me the directions of the lawyer. I’m taking out a loan against Valley Hall.’

He struggled out of bed and crossed the room to loom over her. ‘Won’t take you as far as the harbour,’ he laughed mirthlessly. ‘I sold Valley Hall last fall. The last of the estate followed the gold last evening. Fisher has it all now. An’ y’know what? Lusts after you, does Fisher.’ He nodded his head foolishly. ‘Asked me to throw you in with the stake, but more fool me, I had qualms. Told him he’d have to wait till I’m gone. Then she’s all yours, I said. Fair and square. God knows why; I’d have been well rid of you.’

*

After that, they’d gone south, to Sonora, the town that the Mexicans from Sonora State had set up to supply the mines along the Southern tributaries, the Merced, Tuolumne, Mokelumne. Their luck did not improve, but at least Alicia had company, for the Mexicans had brought their wives and mistresses with them, which had attracted other miners with women to settle there.

It was a colourful little town, retaining some of the wild beauty that was being eroded further north. Surrounded still by trees, the town was a mixture of adobe mud-baked buildings and tents hung with gaudy silks and flags, brightly dyed shawls or multi-coloured Mexican blankets known as
zarapes
.

She and Robert led increasingly estranged lives but the fact that she continued to share his roof — or canvas — when he was in Sonora protected her from other, unwanted attentions. As long as she was seen to be associated with ‘Lucky Langdon’, the most foolhardy and boastful buck would steer clear, for fear the ill-fortune might rub off.

She made a modest living helping Angelina, the fat Mexican woman who ran the cookhouse. The food was not as bad as in the advance camps, where even those miners ‘digging up the lumps’ had to settle for appalling food because there was simply nothing else available. At least in Sonora one of the Mexicans would occasionally take a day off to hunt venison or game. Now and then there would be a cow from Southern California or a nearby ranch and that would mean fresh beef, but usually it was pork. Alicia learned how to cook pork, pickled or cured but mostly fried, as that was about all it was good for. They fried it for breakfast and supper, boiled it with the beans and soaked bread in the grease and then fried that.

‘I’ve lived on swine till I grunt and squeal’ ran one popular miner’s song, and Alicia found herself in heartfelt agreement. She often thought back to the early days when the carcasses of the Longhorn cattle, slaughtered and stripped of their hides and fat for tallow, had been left to rot in the sun on the shores of San Francisco Bay. What they could have done with only half that wasted meat!

In Angelina’s busy
cantina
, Alicia learnt how to make sourdough bread, flapjacks and hotcakes, and she and Angelina cultivated a little truck garden out back so that the miners — and their cooks — had some vegetables and fruit and managed to avoid the land scurvy that struck down so many.

Alicia’s twentieth birthday passed unnoticed. With decent food her thin frame filled out with womanly curves and she alone seemed unaware that she had blossomed from gawky girlhood into a glowingly attractive young woman. She was not happy, but she had learnt to come to terms with her situation. She saw Robert only rarely, usually only when he needed supplies. She had learnt not to try to hold back any of the money she had scrimped and saved: he was stronger than she and would take it anyway. Better to give it him with a smile than have him wrest it from her and give her a black eye or a split lip in the process.

*

Someone was watching her.

It was a sensation she had become accustomed to, working with Angelina in the
cantina
. Usually it was the miners, who seasoned their gaze with a kind word or a joke, but sometimes it was the men who passed through the mining camps with the travelling whorehouses, the ‘hell-on-wheels’ that traipsed from camp to camp, parting the miners from their hard-earned cash — and often their health as well. Not one passed through without the man in charge trying to tempt her away from the
cantina
with the offer of untold wealth — and a pretty dress.

It was late afternoon, and she was taking advantage of a momentary lull in the tide of Carson’s customers to make up an order to go up to Folsom on the new Sacramento Valley Railroad. As she turned to lift a box of candles down off the shelf, she looked across covertly out of the corner of her eye.

She nearly dropped the candles. Neatly attired in a jacket and smart waistcoat suitable for a visit to town, Colonel Cornish stood in the doorway, hat in hand, looking at her with frank admiration.

She took a deep breath to subdue the rising tide of panic and forced herself to serve the next miner who had lounged through from the saloon.

She looked again as she gave Jedediah Barrett his change. The rancher was still there.

‘Thank’ee, Miss’ Owens.’ Jedediah touched his hat as he scooped up his supplies.

Fortunate that she had thought to change her name! Emboldened, she looked again at the Colonel and saw not a trace of recognition. But of course there was little resemblance between the smiling shop assistant and the worn-out wreck of a woman who had presented herself at Tresco. The broad sun hat had shaded her face then and the halfway decent clothes she wore now made a difference. She could consign the worn, sad and ragged figure of Mrs Langdon to the past.

‘Can I be of assistance, sir?’ she asked, purposely lifting her voice to change its timbre.

‘Collecting the provisions for Tresco,’ he said with an attractive smile. ‘No hurry.’ He cast his eye over the list she had drawn up with Chen Kai and added a few items for his own use. ‘And there’s a quantity of ale and spirits from Sullivan. And the oil.’

She came out from behind the counter to go into the stores.

‘Don’t stir,’ he bade her easily. ‘The boy will bring the bills through.’

As he spoke, a lad of about fifteen brought through a sheaf of papers with Sullivan’s barely legible scrawl wildly all over it. Cornish bent forward to help her decipher it, so that she could price up the items — something Sullivan always left to the front shop — and she took the opportunity to have a good look at him.

He had a rather long oval face with fine features that might once, in his youth, have been delicate, but which now simply gave a balance to the lines etched on his face. His hair was a dark brown that verged on black and his eyes were a curious shade of green, very penetrating. He was clean-shaven and his wide mouth above the pointed chin could, she guessed, as easily thin in fury as smile. The hand moving over the bills was long and slim, but his shoulders were rather hunched, throwing his body out of line.

She realised she was staring. ‘Cash or account?’ she asked hastily.

‘I’d as soon pay cash,’ he said, drawing out a purse full of double eagles. ‘And if there’s anything on account for Tresco run up over the last year while — while I was away?’

‘I’ll check before you come in again,’ she promised. ‘Next month, I guess.’ A whole month before she would see Kai again.

‘Oh, I don’t know about that,’ he grinned. ‘Sacramento has improved so much since I was last here, wild horses won’t stop me coming in at least once a week.’

Alicia’s astonishment was mirrored in the open-mouthed expression of the young lad.

‘Wagon’s — uh — all loaded up, Colonel,’ he stammered. ‘Ready — when you are.’

The Colonel flashed her a lop-sided grin, bowed briefly to her, and was gone.

*

The Colonel cursed fluently as the horses were backed in and hitched to the wagon.

‘Hold them steady!’ he snapped at Manuel.

‘They’re very fresh!’ the boy replied mildly.

‘And I’m being sour for no cause,’ grinned the older man, ruffling the lad’s hair as he hitched them up. ‘I’m sorry, Manuel.’

‘It pains?’ queried the lad, cocking a knowing eyebrow in his dark, mobile face.

The man shrugged fatalistically and, as if to deny it, vaulted easily, one-handed, up on to the buckboard, settled himself and drove off.

With a conscious effort, he smoothed the frown between his eyes and rested his left arm on his knee, feeling the relief course through every vein, through every nerve in his body.

Yes, it pained. With every movement of a finger, with every shrug of a shoulder, it pained. He thought he had learned to live with it, but there were some days when he cursed himself for not having let them take it off and be done, days when he could cheerfully have picked up the axe and finished the surgeon’s work for him.

Today was one of those days. But not as bad as the day they had buried Jem. With only Manuel, Pedro and Kerhouan on the ranch — he did not count the minister, of course — he had insisted on bearing his part in carrying the coffin and as a consequence had jarred his bad arm most villainously. Just one more element of disaster on that disastrous day.

He had been, he knew, very short with Jo Chen’s woman: after all, she had come in all good faith, on the strength of the letter from Jem. He had tried to salve his conscience with the money, but the obstinate female had sent it back again with a message that she had kept ‘only as much as was justified for the inconvenience of the wasted journey’.

‘For God’s sake, man!’ he had shouted at Jo Chen. ‘I can well afford it! And she — with that child to feed …’

‘To have insisted would have been to offend her deeply, Corr-onel. She has found employment and can support herself and the child.’

He shrugged. ‘In her situation, that kind of pride can prove costly.’

He had done all he could to offset any harm Jem’s actions might have caused and his conscience was clear. He turned his mind back to Tresco and building the new house for Pedro and his future wife. The new hands he had hired on would all be out at Tresco in the next few days. He’d set Jo Chen to clearing up the old barn for a bunkhouse. Maybe Pedro’s girl could be persuaded to cook up some fresh bread for them …