Gold (10 page)

He pulled the window open, stepped out onto
the portico, dropped his boots over the side, lowered himself over the edge until he hung by his
hands. He let go, landing with a thud on the hard
earth. Brushing himself off he found his boots and
walked across the lawn toward the woods. He did
not look back.

When three of the Yancey brothers rode up to
the Sutton place early the next morning, they
found the overseer, Amos Beckworth, in charge
and Betsy Sutton confined to her room. King had ridden off hours before. He had taken two slaves,
the half-brothers Joshua and Jed. Where they had
gone, Amos Beckworth had no idea.

When, ten days later, Dwight Yancey tracked
King to the Charleston townhouse of a Sutton
second cousin, he learned that King and his two
slaves had been at sea for two days.

Bound for
California.

CHAPTER SEVEN

When the Empire Hotel—W.W. Rhynne and
P. Buttle-Jones, Proprietors—opened in Hang
town, California in the spring of 1849, one of the
greatest mass migrations since the Crusades was
underway.

Over a year before, on January 24, 1848,
James Marshall had made his daily inspection of
the sawmill he was building for John Sutter on the
south fork of the American River. He walked to the race, the channel carrying water to the mill
wheel.

“
I went down as usual,” he told reporters later,
“and after shutting off the water from the race I
stepped into it, near the lower end, and there
upon the rock about six inches beneath the water
I discovered the gold. I pick up one or two pieces
and examined them attentively. I then tried a
piece between two rocks and found that it could be beaten into a different shape but not broken.”

Sutter tried to keep the find secret until the
mill was completed but he failed. As word of the dis
covery spread down the coast to San Francisco, to
the capital at Monterey and to Los Angeles, it
was greeted at first with skepticism, then mild interest, then with wild excitement.

Slips carried the first of the gold to ports on the
Pacific. Mexicans by the thousands, many of them experienced miners, trekked north. Hawaiians and
South Americans boarded ships bound for San
Francisco. They became the Argonauts, named
for the shipmates of the mythical Jason who sailed
on the Argo in search of the Golden Fleece.

Word was slower reaching the
United States.
Not until President Folk’s message to Congress
in December did gold fever erupt with full force.
But when it did, there was no surcease. Workmen quit their jobs, doctors closed their practices, and
farmers put aside their plows in the rush to the
West.

The Empire Hotel, two stories of pine logs
roofed with cedar shingles, was Hangtown’s new
est and largest building. It boasted a porch with a balcony on its top. It had six windows in the front alone, two of them paned with glass. The down
stairs, other than a hallway designated the lobby,
was one huge room housing the saloon and gambling hall; the hotel rooms were all on the second
floor. Next to the saloon in an attached building was the store.

“
The miners come in,” Pamela said, her voice
sharp with irritation, “they look at our merchandise, they handle it, but they don’t buy it.”

“
They will,” Rhynne told her. “They’re testing the water before jumping in.”

Pamela dabbed at her nose with her handker
chief. “You told me we’d clear two thousand dol
lars a month,” she said. “We’ll be lucky to clear
two cents.”

Rhynne gave her a calculating glance.
“Have
you been taking your medicine?”

Pamela looked toward the other end of the
store, where Selena toyed with her hair in front of
a mirror nailed to the wall. Lowering her voice,
she said, “As a matter of fact, no. I’ve been out of
it since two days ago.”

Their eyes met. She tried to keep her gaze level
under Rhynne’s sardonic stare, but could not.
How was she to go on? Her entire body ached. She
had to force herself to eat food that nauseated her.

“
Laudanum, isn’t it?” Rhynne asked.

Pamela nodded, then sneezed.

“I’ll see what I can do,” he told her. Again she
glanced toward Selena. Had she overheard?

“
Pamela, be of good cheer,” Rhynne said in a
louder voice. “The winter’s over, spring’s upon us.
‘Whither is fled your visionary gleam? Where is it now, the glory and the dream?’’

“
I think I’d appreciate more customers and less
Wordsworth.” Pamela tried to smile. “I don’t
know why I’m so melancholy of late. The rains, I
suppose, and this never-ending muck.”

“
The rains are over, the mud... He broke off. "What’s this,
Pamela?” Rhynne, who had been testing the
scales, held up one of the weights.

“
The man who sold me the scales called it an
Indian weight.”

Rhynne opened the back door and hurled the weight up the rain-gullied hill behind the store.
“I’ll not abide it,” he stormed. “Paying a man half what his gold’s worth simply because he’s an In
dian.”

Selena watched Rhynne return, slamming the
door. She pulled her golden curls out over her
shoulders, finally fastening a large blue bow in the
back. All day she’d had a strange feeling that
something was about to happen, yet nothing had and she was restless.

“
Harry Varner uses Indian weights,” she
pointed out to Rhynne. “I’ve seen him.” Varner
ran Varner’s Grocery, Hangtown’s first and only other general store.

“
Honest Harry Varner.” Rhynne sniffed. “He’s
well-named.”

“
He frightens me, that Varner, as short as he is.
He’s always watching me with those rheumy eyes
of his.”

“
If watching you were a crime, Selena, all men
would have to be declared guilty.”

“
Men watch every woman in these god-awful
mining camps.” Pamela said.

Selena tossed her head.
“Harry Varner,” she
said, “acts as though we’re marauding Indians at
tacking his wagon train. Just because we opened this store.”

“
He probably sees us that way,” Rhynne said.

There were shouts from outside and Rhynne
went to the window as a man ran up to the door
way. “It’s here,” he cried. “It’s here. Horobin’s
wagon is here.”

“
At last.” Rhynne strode outside.

“
Mother, do you need me?” Selena asked.

“
Go ahead. I’ll stay. If I wait long enough, I
may sell something, even if it’s only a pin.”

Selena ran after Rhynne to where a wagon
pulled by two mules had been backed against the
front of the hotel. The two teamsters were attempt
ing to wrestle down a bulky, blanket-wrapped
object—a crate by its appearance—onto two planks laid from the rear of the wagon to the
porch.

“
Careful,” Rhynne shouted. “It’s the only one
of its kind in all the diggings.” The heavy object,
some five feet long and four high, tilted danger
ously, threatening to topple to the ground. Rhynne
sloshed through the mud, put his shoulder to it,
and together the three men slid it to the porch.

Rhynne stepped to the top of the porch steps
and faced the gathering crowd. “Gentlemen,” he called out, “you’re just in time for the grand un
veiling. Has anyone a knife?” A miner handed
him his Bowie knife. Rhynne slashed the ropes
and the blankets fell to the planking.

The crowd gaped.

“
Never thought I’d see the likes in Hangtown.”

“
We’re becoming right civilized.”

“
A piano!”

With one finger Rhynne picked out the opening
notes of On Top of Old Smoky. “That, gentlemen,
represents the alpha and omega of my musical
repertoire,” he said. “Can anyone here play? A
piano without a piano player is like a woman
without a man.”

A miner, tall and thin and bearded like most of the others, was shoved toward the porch. Rhynne
reached down and grasped his hand, propelling
him up the steps. The man stood in front of the
piano, tried a few chords, then struck up Blue-T
ail Fly. Selena began to sing and one by one the men sang with her, “Jimmie crack corn an’ I don’t
care. . . .”

Grinning, Rhynne turned to the two teamsters,
saying, “Inside, inside,” and they pushed the
piano toward the door, the miner walking side
ways beside it still playing it. When they’d shoved
and pulled the instrument into the saloon, Rhynne shouted, “Drinks are on the house,” which was all
the men needed to hear. They trooped past the
sign reading NO WEAPONS INSIDE, singing,
“Jimmie crack corn an’ I don’t care, Ole Massa’s
gone away. . . .”

Rhynne and Selena stood alone on the porch,
listening to the boisterous laughter inside.

“
You sing right well,” he told her quietly.

“
W.W., can I sing tonight? Now that the
piano’s here?”

“
You can as far as I’m concerned.”

“
You mean Pamela? You know she’d say no.”

“
Aren’t you of an age to make up your own
mind? I personally believe in the efficacy of presenting nay-sayers with a
fait accompli
. Once an
egg’s broken, like Humpty Dumpty it can’t be put
back together again.”

“
I’m afraid, W.W., of what Pamela would say. And what if the men don’t like my voice? Though
I suppose I should listen to you.” She nodded
toward the open window. “The piano arriving on
the very day we open. You’re a wizard.”

“
No, not a wizard. I’m lucky, have been ever
since the day I left New Orleans. When a gam
bler’s lucky he has to ride his luck until it turns
and when it turns he has to quit. If you don’t quit
then, you’re liable to go into a slide and before
you realize it, you’re through.”

“
And sometimes when a man thinks he’s lucky
he pushes that luck too far,” a man’s voice said.

They looked down and saw Harry Varner
standing with his foot on the bottom step of the
porch.

“
Harry,” Rhynne called out genially. “Drinks
are on the house. We’re celebrating the arrival of our new piano and the grand opening of the Em
pire.”

“
As you well know, I don’t imbibe.”

Standing below them, Harry Varner seemed
even shorter than his five-feet-three. A moon
faced man with bloodshot eyes, he wore red sus
penders and had the habit of hooking his thumbs
beneath them, snapping one or the other as he
talked.

“
You should, Harry,” Rhynne told him. “Might
do you good. I hold.”

“
Whisky’s the devil’s concoction.” Unsmiling,
Harry Varner stared straight at Rhynne.

I
’ve never seen him smile, Selena thought. Not
once.

“
Care to look over our premises?” Rhynne
asked.

“
I’ve seen them.”

“
Like to try your hand at monte? Or perhaps
faro’s more your style.”

“
They’re games of the devil.”