THREE

Thursday Morning

“BROKE NECK WAS ABOUT six miles from the Sturgis vineyard,” said Peter.

“You mean it’s gone?” asked Evangeline.

“Most of those camps just disappeared when the gold played out.” Peter put his finger and thumb on his iPad and swiped so the satellite image zoomed in. “There’s the Miwok River, where Spencer found gold washing dishes.” He drew his finger south-southwest across the screen. “And there’s the Sturgis vineyard.”

She studied the screen and said, “You’re coming with me, then?”

“Sturgis invited me. Wouldn’t want to disappoint him.”

“I’d rather have you along than have him hitting on me.”

“He’ll hit on you anyway. But I need to see that country for myself.”

They were in the Nob Hill Club, the hotel’s downstairs restaurant. Peter wished they served breakfast in the Top of the Mark. Twenty-six bucks wouldn’t be so bad for the buffet—coffee, pastries, lox, bagels, yogurt, “assorted” juices—if you got a great view along with it. But San Francisco was a high-priced town. It always had been. Peter didn’t need an old Gold Rush journal to remind him of that. So he spread cream cheese on his bagel, layered on the lox, added a few capers, and … heaven.

Evangeline had just come down. She was wearing jeans, cowboy boots, a blue silk shirt, and a suede sport coat. Perfect for vineyard walking. Her hair looked blow-dry bouncy. But she seemed a bit groggy.

She had taken coffee and a croissant from the buffet. That’s all. That this made them the most expensive coffee and croissant since the Gold Rush was not something Peter pointed out. Sarcasm, like comedy, was all about timing. And with Evangeline, the best timing was after she’d had her first cup. When he asked her how she slept, he did not even add, “in your separate bed.”

“Exhausted enough to fall asleep right off. Agitated enough to wake up at four.”

“Jet lag.”

“A travel writer knows how to power-sleep through jet lag. You stay up all day and go to bed on local time. But if your after-dinner stroll includes angry Chinese locals and tong-boy Robin Hoods, it might be hard to get back to sleep once you wake up.”

“Wine-tasting will be more fun. No Chinese gangsters in Amador County.”

“And no Chinese girlfriends introducing you to pissed-off relatives.”

“I thought you didn’t do sarcasm in the morning.”

“That came out wrong.” She took a sip of coffee. “I like Mary, like her a lot. But a lot happened yesterday. A lot of moving parts to fit together. Like the ancient Ah-Toy telling tall tales to Mary’s grandmother about bags of gold—”

“Or rivers of it.”

“—then Ah-Toy pops up in Spencer’s journal.”

“Did you finish it?”

“I read myself back to sleep. Got to the part where they’re going up the river.”

“They’re going up the river, and my son asks me to go with the flow.” Peter ate the last of his bagel. “Upstream in 1849, upstream today.”

“And I thought you were coming because you’re jealous.”

“I am.” He drained his coffee. “I’m also planning a side trip.”

“Side trip?”

“Field research.”

Her cell phone vibrated. “It’s the driver. He’s outside.”

*   *   *

IN THE LOBBY, PETER noticed that woman again, the one with the red hair and the blue pantsuit.

He stopped and looked right at her. She was scrolling through her phone. He supposed that if she’d wanted to disguise herself, she could have been reading another newspaper. Much easier to hide behind. So he should not have been so suspicious, but he stood for a moment in the middle of the Mark Hopkins lobby—small but as ornate as a Versailles sitting room—and her eyes met his.

The message in hers: total disinterest.

Evangeline tugged Peter’s arm and pointed through the front door. A guy in a chauffeur’s jacket and cap was standing by a big black SUV. He was holding a sign: “Ms. Carrington/Manion Gold Vineyards.”

At the same moment, the concierge called, “Ms. Ryan—”

The redheaded woman put away her phone and made for the concierge’s desk as he bragged about the theater tickets he had just scored for her.

Peter whispered to Evangeline, “She was in Portsmouth Square last night.”

“I didn’t notice her, and the red hair is pretty hard to miss.”

“She was wearing a hat. But the sunglasses—”

“She’s not wearing sunglasses now.”

“She put them on yesterday when she followed us out of the hotel. Then she made a call. Probably bringing in somebody else to follow us, like the guy who jumped onto the cable car after us.”

Evangeline gave her a longer look. “You also said she was carrying yesterday. But that jacket is cut to fit. So, no shades, no sidearm. Do you think she’s taking today off?”

“By hanging in a hotel lobby?”

“It’s a nice lobby. You can stay here and watch the world go by and score a few theater tickets.” The heels of Evangeline’s boots tick-tocked across the marble floor. “Or you can come with me. Your choice.”

Peter was going. He had a plan. He’d stay with it and keep a clear eye. He threw one more look over his shoulder and followed Evangeline out.

Larry Kwan, the chauffeur, was a middle-aged guy with a wide face, a friendly manner, and a roll of belly fat that made him look like he didn’t sweat the small stuff. He drove a black Cadillac Escalade with tinted windows, black leather interior, and high clearance for going off-road in the vineyards.

“Welcome aboard, folks. You’ll find bottles of water in the cup holders. Good to stay hydrated when you’re wine-tasting. We’ll be there in two hours and change. Going against the traffic all the way.”

Peter took the front seat, Evangeline stretched out in the middle row. They were the only passengers.

Peter glanced in the side mirror as they pulled away.

Objects may be closer than they appear. But there didn’t seem to be any objects following them down California Street. That was good. And if anybody tried to hit-and-run this big SUV, they wouldn’t be running anywhere.

So he decided to sit back and enjoy the ride.

Larry Kwan said he was excited to be driving to Amador, courtesy of Manion Sturgis. He had done some driving for Sturgis before, he said, but Kwan’s Wine Tours usually headed for Napa or Sonoma. “High-end tours for high-end drinkers and classy bachelorette parties.”

“Classy?” said Evangeline.

“Where the girls only get a little drunk and nobody throws up in the way-back.”

“That explains the nice new-car smell,” she said.

Larry Kwan looked at Peter. “Your wife is funny.”

“She’s not my wife.”

*   *   *

THEY CROSSED THE BAY Bridge, took Route 80 through Berkeley, cleared the tolls at the Carquinez Straights, and headed inland.

A little over an hour later, they sped through Sacramento.

Peter had been there for a book show once. And of course, he had toured Sutter’s Fort, all whitewashed and shining and dwarfed by the hospital next door. It had reminded him of other historical sites, like the Old State House in Boston or the Alamo in San Antonio, tiny places in the modern world that were enormous in the mythology of America.

And he knew they were headed into the heartland of American myth, a place of unfettered freedom, of get-rich-quickdom, of dreamers who did and doers who dreamed, of no man better than another because of his name, his schooling, his father or mother … a place of second chances, and third, fourth, and fifth chances, too, because no one failed in this land of myth. They just quit trying. That was California in 1849 and California today.

Even speeding out of Sacramento’s suburbs and running across an open range of yellow-brown grass at 75 mph, Peter could see Spencer and Flynn sitting down to eat peach pie under a clump of trees. He could see forty-niners on rutted trails where superhighways now ran. He could see guys like Mark Hopkins, imagining the wealth of empire as they snapped at their reins and urged their mules up the hill. Sometimes, the modern world just faded away for Peter Fallon, and the past emerged like a parallel universe. Then he remembered that the past did not have big Michelins, AC, or Vivaldi on the Bose speakers. Best leave the parallel universe … parallel.

Soon the road was rising into piney woods, rising gradually and steadily toward the Sierra.

At a place called Shingle Springs, Larry turned onto Mother Lode Drive and followed that to the Golden Chain Highway, Route 49, two lanes, north-south, connecting all the quiet hamlets, villages, and strip malls that once had been Gold Rush boomtowns.

Larry said that if not for Peter’s side trip, he would have taken Route 16 out of Sacramento, a more southerly route, since the Sturgis winery was down near Sutter Creek, “But like they say, six of one, half a mile of another.”

“Don’t you mean ‘half a dozen’?” asked Evangeline.

“I spend my days coming up with new ways to say things about wine. So I like to play with clichés. Keeps me sharp.”

“Old wine in new bottles?” said Peter.

“Cliché,” answered Larry.

“Touché,” said Evangeline.

“That’s another one,” answered Larry.

Peter gave Evangeline a look. She laughed. They liked their driver.

Peter also liked that nothing had gotten close to them. No one had followed them from San Francisco. No one had picked them up on the freeway.

*   *   *

ABOUT SIX MILES SOUTH, in the township of El Dorado, Peter directed Larry to turn off at a convenience store with a broken Pelton wheel for decoration: Quartzite Road. (They were big on geological terms around here.)

Peter had never been here before, but he had “driven” it on Google after meeting a retired Kern County detective named William Donnelly at the Sacramento Book Fair. He had sold Donnelly first editions of Ian Fleming and John le Carré. And “Wild Bill,” as his friends called him, had become a regular customer of Fallon Antiquaria.

Google had prepared Peter for the arid landscape, the blue oak and buckeye, the eclectic three-mile stretch of houses—working spreads with barns and corrals, retirement ranches doing the long, low California contemporary thing, and here and there a rundown place, something that time and the real estate market had forgot. But Google could not do justice to the view. The road ran along the Logtown Ridge. Forty miles to the west, the buildings of Sacramento reflected the midmorning sun. And the easterly views reached across California, all the way to the snowcapped mountains at Lake Tahoe.

Peter said, “James Spencer described this view.”

“Bierstadt painted it.” Evangeline was seldom quite as moved by connections as Peter, but this time she was awestruck. “It’s the picture in the library.”

The Donnelly house was on the left, one of the newer places, a handsome ranch with a paving-stone driveway.

Jane Donnelly answered. “Why, Peter Fallon! We meet at last.” She looked at the Escalade backing out of the driveway. “Aren’t your friends coming in?”

“Previous engagement. We’ll catch up with them later.”

Jane was in her sixties and seemed happy to be there, easy in her own skin, in her own house, in gardening clothes puffing dirt. “I’d shake, but—” She held up her dirty hands and gave him a wave. Come on in.

The house turned to the east, with good reason. Everything flowed through the open sliders to the patio, the small infinity pool, and the spectacular infinity view.

Bill Donnelly was peering through a telescope. He pivoted, shook Peter’s hand, and said, “Here’s the man who helps me spend my pension on books.”

Donnelly hailed from Bakersfield, California, but he had the kind of beefy presence and tomato-red complexion that would have played well on police forces in Boston or Brooklyn, especially with that Irish name. He swung an arm, north to south, and said, “Welcome to the Mother Lode. The remnants of Broke Neck are about ten miles south, as the crow flies.” He pointed to the telescope and told Peter to have a look.

Peter squinted into the eyepiece. “What am I looking at?”

“That fourth ridge out there. The Miwok River is just beyond. It joins the Cosumnes, which flows to the flatland and into the Mokolumne, which eventually runs into the San Joaquin. The ground here is as dry as flour this time of year, but these rivers form an incredible drainage system for half of California.”

“Bill is always watching for plumes of smoke,” said Jane.

Donnelly looked up into the clear blue sky. “We should be seeing rain any week now, but until we do, every puff of smoke is a worry. Some folks down where we’re going, they started a fire about three weeks ago. Drove one of their old cars off road. The heat from the exhaust manifold set the grass on fire. Burned a thousand acres.”

“The Boyles family,” said Jane.

“They’ve been on the Miwok for a long time,” said Wild Bill, “long after the mines played out, long before the vineyards took off. They ran cattle, wrangled horses for weekend dude riders out of San Francisco—”

“Don’t forget moonshining.” Jane ducked into the house.

“Yeah, until they discovered marijuana. They grow so much weed back in those hills, anytime there’s a brush fire, half of Amador County gets high.”

Jane came out again, carrying a shoulder holster with a big silvered .44 Magnum. “If you’re going to be wandering the hills, bring this.”

Peter said, “Are the Boyles folks dangerous?”

Wild Bill laughed. “This is for the rattlesnakes.”

“Rattlesnakes?” said Peter. “That gun could kill a car.”

“Might not kill one, but it’s stopped a few. Put a round right through an engine block once. Guy behind the wheel was trying to run me over.”

Jane said, “Bill was not the best shot, but with a gun like this, close counts. So we get to enjoy our retirement together.”

*   *   *

WILD BILL DONNELLY DROVE his Chevy pickup back down to Route 49 and turned south, offering commentary all the way: “The miners would go along the ridge unless they had livestock that needed watering. Then they’d take the river route.”

“My guys had horses, but they rode along the ridge.”

“Must’ve been cavalry horses. Tougher. Most miners didn’t want to worry about horses. They wanted to be mining. So they went on foot.”

The river was on their left now. The previous winter had been snowy, so there was still good water in the Cosumnes, and the current was running fast.

Peter noticed cars parked along the road. Down in the river, guys in wetsuits were panning.

“They still find flakes,” said Wild Bill. “Sometimes nuggets.”

“You mean there’s gold that the miners missed?”

“The laws of erosion don’t change. But in 1848, you had thousands of years of gold, lying untouched. Today, if a few flakes wash out in June, they’re panned out by the Fourth of July.”

They went past ranches and corrals, then over a deep gorge where the Cosumnes turned southwest. The Gold Rush had left scars everywhere, Wild Bill said. If you could see the scars, you could imagine the face of the landscape a century and a half before.

On an open hillside, a foot-high ridge of dirt ran at a carefully pitched slope: the Michigan Ditch, carrying water from the upper Cosumnes downstream fifteen miles to Michigan Bar. Wild Bill explained that some miners, who couldn’t make it prospecting, started ditching and “got rich from water instead of gold.”

Then he pointed out bone-dry gulches, like vertical cuts on the hillsides. Along the edges of any gulch, hillocks covered in straw grass sprouted trees and bushes. “Looks like they’ve been there forever, right?”

“But?”

“Those are tailing piles. If miners saw a dry gulch where rainwater or flash flood had caused erosion, they’d start digging. If they found gold, they kept digging, turning over, sifting, leaving piles of dirt that became part of the landscape.”

After a few miles, they arrived at a strip of businesses in the town of Plymouth. Donnelly turned east onto the Fiddletown Road, with signs for well-known vineyards … Renwood, Deaver, Terra d’Oro, Easton. But they weren’t stopping to taste.

A few miles more brought them to Miwok Road. It meandered southeast through country dotted with clusters of oak standing stark and dark on the dried-out hillsides, a lonely house here, a vineyard patch there, and livestock grazing everywhere. All the while, off to their right, sometimes visible in the baking sunlight, sometimes buried in a fold of earth or lost behind a line of trees, flowed the Miwok, as it had when Spencer and Flynn rode this way almost a hundred and seventy years before.

Then Wild Bill turned southeast again, onto little single-lane side road marked with a few mailboxes. Another quarter mile brought them to a dirt road running directly south. It had a closed chain-link gate and two signs: PRIVATE PROPERTY KEEP OUT and BEWARE OF THE DOG.

“The Boyles’ land. They own a thousand acres south of the river.” Wild Bill kept on another quarter mile, then slowed and pulled onto a patch of dry grass surrounded mostly by … nothing. “Welcome to Broke Neck.”

Peter got out, threw his sport coat in the backseat, and drank it all in.

Down the gentle slope, through the trees, lay the riverbed, about forty feet wide. A stream of water—decent for the end of dry season—rolled over the rocks. Grass and shrubs greened the bank and grew along the damp edges. On the uphill side of the road, a two-car garage stood on a stone foundation. Behind it, the land rose to a dusty corral that formed the front yard of a little redwood-board ranch house. Two horses were nodding under an old oak tree by the road.

Peter absorbed the heat and the quiet. But it was more than quiet. It was silence. No road sounds, no airplanes, none of the hum of the modern world.

“Doesn’t look like much now,” said Wild Bill, “but it was a whole town once. We think the garage is built on the foundation of the Broke Neck store. And those stones you’re kicking at, they’re the foundation of the Abbott Express Office.”

“Are there photographs?” asked Peter. “Daguerreotypes?”

“Not of Broke Neck. It came and went too quickly, like most of these places.”

They walked down toward the river. It was cooler under the trees. At the edge of the water, Peter listened to its gentle whoosh.

Wild Bill said, “You can see it, can’t you?”

“See it?”

“Hundreds of miners working claims, with shovels and pans and rockers. Scraping, cursing, splashing, joshing, maybe fighting.”

Peter knew that he had found a kindred spirit.

“They didn’t quite understand the geology,” said Wild Bill, “but they knew the gold was along the riverbeds, in the sandbars and under the rocks.”

Peter squinted upstream. “Spencer writes that they camped the first night near a big boulder, about a mile above the town.”

“Can’t see that far. The river bends, and the trees and understory are too thick. But … what exactly are you looking for?”

Peter almost never admitted this truth, but he had the feeling that a retired detective might understand. “I don’t really know.”

And he liked Wild Bill Donnelly’s answer: “So we just keep looking.”

“As long as you look someplace else.” The woman’s voice was so startling that Wild Bill’s hand went into his windbreaker.

“Easy there, big fella,” she said. “I’m not armed.”

She was about fifty-five and as sun-dried as the landscape. She wore faded jeans and cowboy boots, but they were no affectation. This straight-up, stringy woman looked like she could spend the morning mucking stables, then go into the house and do a little online bond trading just for fun.

Wild Bill introduced himself and Peter as historians.

She said, “Historians, hunh?”

“From Boston,” said Peter.

“Must be hard, being a historian if you can’t read.”

Peter said, “I think we missed a sign.”

“A ‘No Trespassing’ sign.” She gestured back up the hill. “So, what are you really? Gold guys? Wine guys? Cops?”

“Retired cop,” said Wild Bill. “Now a book collector.”

She looked at Peter. “You a book collector, too?”

“He sells them,” said Wild Bill, “to me.”

“I’ve been called a wine guy, too,” added Peter.

“Well, if you’re looking to buy a riverfront vineyard, this isn’t it. No volcanic soils on this bank. And the valley’s too deep. You want more sun. So you want to look up high.”

“Actually, we’re looking for—”

Wild Bill interrupted Peter. “Is that your house up there, Ms.—”

“O’Hara. The name’s right on the gate. Ginny O’Hara. But you knew that before you came out here. Public record. So is my property assessment. So you knew that, too. But I’m not selling the land on this side of the river, no matter how many bullshit artists come around saying they’re historians … from Boston.”

Just then, they heard a high-revving motor whining over the hill on the other side of the river. A four-by-four ATV appeared at the bald crest about a hundred yards above the bank.

Wild Bill Donnelly stiffened, like a well-trained dog sensing danger.

From this distance, all they could tell was that the driver was as big as the grizzly that James Spencer had written about.

Ginny O’Hara shouted up to him, “Did you send these two?”

The guy said nothing. He spat, revved the engine, and sped away. Point made. Stay on your own side of the river.

Wild Bill said, “That’s Buster, right?”

“Don’t pretend you don’t know him. Or his mother. If Buster is buzzing around, Mother Marti is usually up on the other side of the hill somewhere.”

Peter watched Buster disappear. Then he said to Ginny O’Hara, “We really are who we say we are.”

“You mean you weren’t sent by the Boyles bunch because they want to buy my land, because they smell big money coming into our forgotten little valley?”

Wild Bill said, “We saw plenty of ‘for sale’ signs. Ranchland offered as vineyard. Vineyard offered as ranchland. Folks who’d like to sell and can’t. Why would your land be so special?”

“It isn’t. Lots of folks think making a living from the land might be easy, or at least maybe romantic. Never has been. Never will be.”

“Who wants yours?” asked Peter.

“Folks who think there’s still gold here. And there are more of them every day.”

“Like who?” asked Wild Bill.

“Start with that Jack Cutler guy. If he sent you, it’s a fool’s errand.”

“Jack Cutler?” Peter tried not to sound surprised at mention of his future in-law.

“He calls himself a geologist. Just a glorified prospector. Wanted to do core samples on my land. I said no way. Bad enough we have the Emery Mine trying to start up again. I don’t need people digging holes and starting fires and getting my livestock all riled up.”

Peter said, “What’s the Emery Mine?”

Ginny O’Hara looked at Wild Bill. “He does it better than you.”

“He wouldn’t know the Emery Mine from a rare book.”

Peter pulled out a business card and handed it to her. She took it, turned on her heels, and headed up the bank. “Drive him by the Emery Mine. Then he’ll know.”

“Thanks for your time,” said Peter.

“You’re welcome. Don’t come back.”

*   *   *

FROM THERE, THEY DROVE a mile upstream, with a swath of blackened trees and burned grass spreading to their right, on the south side of the river.

“This is where they had that fire I was telling you about,” said Wild Bill.

As they rounded a bend, Peter looked down and said, “There’s the rock!”

“What rock?”

“The rock where Spencer says they camped the first night. Pull over.”

The road was closer to the river here, about fifty feet above the bank, which dropped more sharply. On the north side, it was sunburned but not blackened, because the fire had not jumped the stream.

They got out, and Peter said, “See it? About thirty feet up on the other bank? The big rock?”

Wild Bill said, “This is the first time in decades you can really see that rock from here, thanks to the fire.”

“It looks like a big skull.” Peter took a picture with his iPhone. Then he looked along the bank and tried to figure out where Spencer would have washed dishes that first night. Probably a straight drop from the rock. So he photographed that. Then he asked, “Do you see mining evidence?”

“Tailings everywhere. On both sides.”

Peter looked at the piles forty or fifty feet downstream, where the river widened a bit and seemed to settle. “That was where Spencer saw the Chinese camp.”

Peter had a hunch that he would want to know more about that rock and all that might have gone on around it. So he plotted a quick river crossing, then he did it.

“Hey!” cried Wild Bill Donnelly. “That’s Boyles’ property.”

“I’ll only be a minute.” A few hops. Rock to rock. Big rocks. Then a jump, and he landed on the opposite bank, feet as dry as the ground. But his next step brought a sharp crack and an explosion of dirt at his feet.

Wild Bill pulled his .44 and ducked behind a tree.

Peter heard it again, the sound of a small-caliber high-velocity rifle, an AR-15, maybe. Another shot kicked up the dust to his right. And another struck to the left.

“Stand still!” shouted Wild Bill.

“And let him shoot me?”

Then came three, four, five shots, ripping through the trees above them.

“Now run.”

Peter stumbled into the stream, tripped, slipped in the knee-deep water, smacked his shin on a rock. Two more shots struck on his left and right, bracketing him perfectly, sending up splashes and ricocheting off the rocks.

“Come on,” said Wild Bill from the other side. “You’ll be all right.”

So Peter stumbled and splashed back to the bank, scrambled over the last few boulders, and dove behind a tree. “Jesus Christ. I’m soaked. Who the hell—”

“Sun’s out. You’ll dry in no time.” Wild Bill looked up the hillside, into the trees higher up, all blackened from the fire. Then he stepped out and fired his .44 once into the air. “That’s just to let him know we got his message.”

A moment later, they heard the ATV whining away.

Peter straightened up. “‘Stand still. Run. Stop. Now run really fast.’ Very confusing when someone’s shooting at you.”

“Calm yourself, Book Man. That was just a demonstration.”

“Of what?”

“The Boyles’ commitment to their ‘No Trespassing’ sign. Or to scaring off competition for the O’Hara place. Buster probably figures that if he takes a few shots at us, we may decide we don’t want to buy.”

“We don’t.”

“He doesn’t know that.” Wild Bill Donnelly headed up the slope. “Seen enough?”

“For now. Do we file a report?”

“About what?”

“Being shot at.”

“Can we identify the shooter?”

“You just said it was Buster Boyles.”

“Can’t say for sure. And if we’re planning to keep trespassing around here, we may not want to raise any red flags with the Amador County Sheriff’s Office.”

Peter followed Wild Bill back up to the Chevy pickup. “Good advice, but—”

“Thirty years of law enforcement talking.”

*   *   *

THE ROAD MEANDERED ANOTHER mile through a mostly deserted landscape, in some places heavily treed, in others open and empty. Then they came to a spot where the river turned sharply below them. Wild Bill stopped and said, “There’s evidence down there of miners who came in and built a stone-and-log dam. Tried to control all the water right where the Miwok turned.”

“Probably pissed off the downstreamers.”

“Damn right. There’s also evidence that the downstreamers blew up the dam. But when they did, they exposed a gravel bank in the side of the ravine, just loaded with gold. All kinds of stories like that in this country.”

Wild Bill took a dirt road to the left that led up to the top of a hill and a chain-link fence enclosing a rusted twenty-foot steel tower. A sign on the fence said KEEP OUT.

“Why are we here?” asked Peter.

“For history. You’ve seen riverside tailings. You’ve seen dam builders. You’ve seen the Michigan Ditch. You need to see hard-rock deep-hole mining. When they put up head frames and dug holes down a mile, it all changed. Big money came in. Hundreds of men took a wage and went into the ground every day. And the gold-bearing rock came up.”

“For how long?”

“This place played out in the 1930s, others stopped running in 1942, when Roosevelt closed the mines as a wartime measure. Most of them never reopened.” Wild Bill pulled back a cut in the chain-link and gestured for Peter to step through. “Have a look down that shaft.”

Peter felt like an explorer who had come upon an ancient Mayan city in the jungle. The ghosts were still here. But the sounds of machinery running above the mine shafts had been replaced by the almost spectral silence of these California hills.

“There’s still gold down there,” said Wild Bill. “Gold everywhere, if you believe the geologists. They say that the forty-niners only got about twenty percent of it. The low-hanging fruit.”

“Is that why everyone around here is so twitchy? Because there’s still a lot of gold out there?”

“Gold always makes people twitchy.”

Wild Bill led Peter to the far side of the enclosure, through another break in the chain-link, to the edge of the hill and a panoramic view to the south. They could see two more head frames, and the Miwok flickering and glinting, still doing the work that water had been doing since it first flowed through these foothills.

“After it rains,” said Wild Bill, “this’ll all be as green as Ireland.”

Peter looked back to their last stop, above the bend where the dam had been. “When you hear a story of an explosion opening a vein by accident, do you ever think that stories about lost rivers of gold could be true?”

“Lost rivers?”

“And maybe lost bags, and a seven-part journal that could be the treasure map?”

“Sounds like a lot of myth to me, but sometimes, myths have an element of truth.” Wild Bill swept his arm across the scene. “Stories from one end of this country to the other. But if the wrong story gets out, well, people like Ginny O’Hara don’t want to see this country overrun again. That’s really why they’re so twitchy.”

Peter pointed southwest, to a plateau and a large, flat building, like a warehouse, about three miles away. “Are they the ones overrunning it?”

“That’s the Emery Mine. They used to give tours. But a few years ago, new ownership came in. Gold prices were rising so they were starting operations again. It’s not open to the public any longer, but maybe we can get a tour. I’m a stockholder. I bought ten thousand shares a while back.”

“Big investment.”

“It’s a gold start-up. Cost me a thousand bucks at a dime a share.”

*   *   *

THE MAIN HEAD TOWER for the Emery Mine was about a hundred feet back of the parking lot, near a huge work shed that housed stamping equipment and vehicles. An open pit held a small pond of waste water. And nothing seemed to be happening.

A dozen cars baked on the tarmac. A minivan or two, a few sedans, half a dozen pickups, and one blue Ford Explorer SUV.

Wild Bill pulled his pickup in near the SUV. As they got out, a guy sitting in the SUV—black guy, dark glasses, black suit—looked them over. And he must have seen something he didn’t like, because he jumped out.

Wild Bill whispered to Peter, “He knows I’m carrying. Keep walking.”

“Hey!” The guy started to follow them.

Then the door of the office swung open and two men were walking toward them from the other direction, walking fast, looking irritated.

One was a big guy, like a linebacker—white, dark glasses, black suit, another hard-assed security type with a bulge under his jacket.

But security for whom?

The other guy, obviously. He was smaller, Asian, better suit, brighter fabric, blue with lighter blue windowpane. And a little triangular lapel pin.

Maybe the white guy noticed the bulge under Donnelly’s windbreaker, too, or the double take that Peter did when they passed, because he stepped quickly in front of his man and put a hand inside his jacket.

And for a moment, they all stood there, facing each other down, five guys in sunglasses, some silvered, some wraparounds, and Peter’s Cary Grant tortoiseshells. They looked like five bugs, different species.

Wild Bill said with an innocent grin, “Do you gents know if they’re giving tours today?”

“Ask inside,” said the white guy.

The Asian may have noticed something familiar about Peter, as Peter did about him, but nothing registered behind the dark glasses. Then the two guards led their boss to the SUV, keeping a protective wall of muscle around him until they got him into the backseat and sped away.

Peter said, “I know that guy from somewhere, the one they were guarding.”

Wild Bill raised an eyebrow. “I’m not gonna say it.”

“If my girlfriend was here, she’d call the P.C. police on you.”

*   *   *

INSIDE, PETER FELT AIR conditioning. He liked it. Eighty degrees in October was just … wrong, even in the Sierra foothills. Reception area was clean and neat: new file cabinets, two desks. A good first impression meant optimism. But on a whiteboard on the wall, in blue marker: Today’s Stock Price, 0.15.

A woman looked up from her desk. Her face said, “Now what?” as if it hadn’t been a good day and they weren’t about to make it any better. She wore a gold golf shirt and khaki trousers. The shirt had the words, EMERY MINE embroidered and beneath, her name: COLLEEN MALONEY. She listened to Wild Bill’s spiel and gave the “Boston Historian” a once-over. “No more public tours. Insurance issue.”

“I’m a stockholder,” said Wild Bill. “On that basis, perhaps—”

Colleen raised a finger and made a call.

A man in his forties emerged from the hall beyond the glass doors. A little paunchy, combed over, wearing the same uniform. His name: Jimmy Maloney. So a family operation. Jimmy was smiling like an emoji.

Wild Bill extended his hand and said, “Hello, Jimmy.”

For a moment, the emoji changed to confusion. Jimmy’s eyes shifted as if he was trying to place this big red-faced guy. Then he glanced down at his shirt and laughed. “Jimmy Maloney, Community Relations Officer. Can I help you gents?”

Another explanation from Wild Bill Donnelly.

Smiling emoji back in place, Jimmy said it again: tours no longer available. “Insurance issue, you see.”

“But my friend here has come all the way from Boston.”

“Even if we could, the mine manager, who could authorize it, well, he was just—” Jimmy stopped himself before he said more.

Just what? wondered Peter. Laid off? Fired?

“We had to shut the tours down once we began the permit process,” said Jimmy.

Peter asked, “Is that what you told those guys who just left?”

“Excuse me?”

“The guys who were just here. They didn’t look too happy. Are they stockholders, too, disappointed that they couldn’t get a tour?”

The emoji kept smiling. “I wasn’t in their meeting. But … you’re a historian?”

Wild Bill Donnelly said, “He’s interested in gold mining history.”

“Well, I can give you our prospectus.” He waved them through the doors.

Jimmy Maloney’s office was first on the left. Loud voices were coming from the last office on the right. Beyond, a sign on a swinging door read, HARD HAT AREA.

Peter and Wild Bill stepped into the windowless cubicle. On the walls were historical pictures of the mine, a whiteboard with a schedule.

Wild Bill kept talking: “This used to be a great take. Anytime I had visitors, I brought them here. We’d all get in carts, go down into the ground, feel the heat. See the veins of gold-bearing quartz. It gave you new respect for mining work.”

Jimmy Maloney went to his computer and called up a 3-D image of the mine. “The main shaft reaches four thousand feet, with a dozen others running off of it. Once we pump it out—groundwater fills those deep holes very quickly—we plan to bring three shafts back on line. With a good ore-to-rock ratio, we can be profitable at—”

That was when another guy came in. “Jimmy, you’re wanted down the hall. Sorry, gents.” The name on his gold shirt said DON BRAVO. He was a big guy with a broad chest and a dark brow. Hard to tell if he was scowling or just looking.

Jimmy’s face fell off, as if he was about to lose his job and knew it. He said, “Sure thing, sir,” and introduced Mr. Bravo, head of mill security.

Mr. Bravo’s eyes went to the bulge under Wild Bill’s windbreaker. He said, “Now, who are you and what do you want?”

Wild Bill told the truth: local stockholder and Boston historian.

Don Bravo gave him a “don’t bullshit me” look.

Peter pulled out his business card and shoved it into Bravo’s hand. He gave one to Jimmy Maloney, too. “Look me up on the internet. And thanks for your time.”

*   *   *

FIVE MINUTES LATER, THEY were driving west again, toward Highway 49.

Wild Bill said to Peter, “I wish you’d stop giving out your business card.”

“Why?”

“As you say, people are very twitchy here in Amador County. First Ginny O’Hara, then the Boyles—”

“They didn’t get a card.”

“Something dicey. That Emery Mine spent years getting the permits, satisfying the California DEP over water purification, tailings disposal, and so on, and now … the guys in the other offices were reaming each other out.”

“About what?

“I heard them talking about the Chinese, the Chinese money, the—”

“Bags and rivers of Chinese gold?”

Wild Bill chuckled. “Lots of Chinese money coming into international gold funds. Chinese government has instructed banks to support gold exploration and production. They offer low-interest loans. They employ agents to buy into good-looking gold investments around the globe. Could be that Emery is backed by a Hong Kong bank. And the big investors aren’t happy. So somebody just got fired.”

“So we got a conflict between the locals and Chinese … again?”

“Except now, the Chinese have the power, because they know the golden rule.”

“He who has the gold makes the rules.”

They arrived at the intersection of the Miwok Road and Highway 49.

Wild Bill Donnelly gave a look around.

Peter said, “You have the light.”

“Just making sure nobody’s tailing us. Guys who move with heavy security don’t always play nice. And maybe that Don Bravo guy called the boys in the blue SUV.” Then Wild Bill turned south. Nobody appeared to be following.

As they passed the turn for Highway 88, Peter took out his iPhone.

A text from Evangeline: “Vineyard table set with places for you and your friend. 12:30. Wonderful wines. Come quick, or I may move in.”

She’s been tasting, he thought. She’s half-lit. She should have had a bigger breakfast.

He tapped, “On our way,” and asked Wild Bill, “How long to Manion Gold?”

“Fifteen minutes.”

Peter added that, sent the text, and said, “I hope you like Zinfandel.”

“Almost as much as signed first editions of Robert Ludlum.”

“If you help me to reconstruct this journal, I’ll see that you get one.”

Then Peter texted his son: “More Chinese involvement, at higher levels? More talk of Cutler Exploration at Broke Neck? Upheaval at Emery Mine? More to explain.”

Immediately, a text came back. “More tonight. Dinner with Cutler chief investor, Michael Kou. Maybe Cutler, too. Hunan Garden House, 7:30. Before then, read attachment. Just arrived from Montana branch of Spencer family. Three down, four to go.”

Peter had questions, but they could wait. He texted: “You’re doing good research without me.”

LJ answered: “Had good teacher. And the will names most of the heirs. More a matter of persuasion than research.”

“Who’s left?”

“Manion Sturgis and Sarah Bliss. Maybe Manion’s bro, George, the other winemaker.”

“And number seven?”

“That’s where you come in. Maybe the Sturgis sister in L.A. Not sure yet.”

“Answers expected tonight.”

“Answers delivered. But work on Manion, and try his Zinfandel.”

Peter clicked off the texting function, then clicked to “The Journal of James Spencer—Notebook #3.” He asked Donnelly, “Want to hear some of it?”

“Sure.”

So, as they wound through the country where the story unfolded, Peter read aloud.

The Journal of James Spencer—Notebook #3

August 10, 1849
Gold Fever

Before the sun had cleared the treetops, we knew: I had washed our dishes in a gravel bank that rendered a spoonful of gold for every shovelful of dirt we turned.

By eight o’clock, we had learned how to placer mine, a process as repetitive and exhausting as working a loom in a Lowell mill: Dig, dump, clear. Crouch, dip, swirl. Bounce, dip, swirl. Dip, swirl, swirl. And do it all day long.

Dig gravel from the bank or from under the rocks, in the bends and the bars where the river slows and the sediment drops. Dump the gravel into the pan. Clear the rocks and then the stones. Crouch by the river and dip the pan. Swirl away the lighter sands. Bounce to bring out the blackest sands. Then dip and swirl, dip and swirl, down and down, down to the bottom and the beautiful gold, for the only thing heavier than black sand is gold.

By ten o’clock, Michael Flynn was suffering a high-grade case of gold fever, which caused him to work faster and ever faster, filling and swirling, dipping and bouncing, never stopping, seldom breathing, and talking less than ever before.

If it is true that life is no more than an accumulation of dreams and memories, then Flynn that morning was seeing a bright dream burn away his harshest memories … all because of gold. He dreamed of going back to Boston, the city that welcomed him with NO IRISH NEED APPLY. He imagined squiring beautiful women, downing champagne and oysters, living on Beacon Hill. And the more color he saw in his pan, the brighter grew his dream, the faster moved his hands, the hotter burned his brainpan.

Gold fever may kill in time, but like the hallucinations of a febrile man, it may also clarify his vision before death overtakes him. He knows that gold—so beautiful, so indestructible, so rare—has value and utility. But so, he may tell himself, does iron. And from iron, he can fashion a nail. Then he can build a house. From gold, however, he can fashion a future. So dig fast, dip deep, bounce hard, and swirl and swirl and swirl again.

Every holy Bostonian assembling in the snow aboard the William Winter, every unholy soul inhaling the greed-fog of San Francisco, every know-it-all sailing up the Sacramento, every one of them had suffered symptoms of this affliction. Else, they would not have left civilization in the first place. But no man comes down with a killing case of gold fever until he turns his own dirt and finds wealth by the work of his own hand, as we did that first day.

*   *   *

AROUND NOON, CLETIS ANNOUNCED that this was the “richest damn dirt since Jesus threw the Jews out the temple.”

“What do we do next?” asked Flynn.

“We remember what I said.” Cletis had warned us that if we found gold, we should not cry out or dance a jig or shout loud hallelujahs to heaven. “We keep this quiet, ’cause word’ll spread soon enough, and them smelly miners down the road’ll come crawlin’ all over this hillside like ticks on a curly-haired dog. They’ll stake claims and put up tents and dig holes to shit in, and we won’t be able to do nothin’ about it. Better if it’s just us and them yammerin’ Chinks across the river.”

We staked three claims, following the laws of Broke Neck. One ran along the river, one on the flatland directly above the bank, ten by ten, and one above that, at the base of the big skull-shaped rock, five by twenty. Cletis said, “A big rock makes the water swirl and slosh and drop whatever it’s carryin’.”

He put a shovel at one corner of his claim, drove sticks to mark the others. “So long as we leave our tools to show we’re workin’ at least one day a week, nobody can touch this claim. Miner’s Law.”

I asked Cletis about claim jumpers.

“A year ago, when I got discharged and come prospectin’, nobody worried about claim jumpers. But more folks arrivin’ every day now. And more folks means less gold. And when there’s less of somethin’ folks want, it brings out the bad in a lot of ’em. That’s a natural law. So there’s more claim jumpin’. But Miner’s Law still holds.”

“Do you think that those Chinks know Miner’s Law?” asked Flynn.

“If they don’t, we’ll teach ’em.” Cletis studied the six small men squatting and swirling on the other bank. “But I don’t guess they’d be so stupid as to go stealin’ from such stalwart Christian sons of bitches as us.”

*   *   *

OUR DAY ENDED WITH a take of twenty ounces and total exhaustion. To those who say that I was “soft,” one of those silk-stocking boys who never dirtied his hands until he got to California, I would answer that Flynn knew physical labor as well as any man, and he was more drained than I.

We had not the energy to do anything but eat our bacon and beans and share swallows from the jug of whiskey that Flynn had bought at Sutter’s.

Then I staggered down the slope to wash my face in the river that flowed toward the last light silvering the August sky and glimmering like oil on the water. I knelt, dipped my red and yellow-paisley neckerchief, and saw a shadow.

Not ten feet away stood one of the Chinamen.

I jumped up, startled. He stepped back, startled.

For a moment, we stared across the stream at each other’s shadows, men who had traveled far from opposite compass points to this new land, this alien place, this gold country in the gloaming.

His hair had been razored back, giving him a high forehead. A long braid curled down his back. And his baggy trousers and gown-like shirt made his silhouette appear square and solid, not to be trifled with.

I said, “Good evening,” in a gentle manner, as I would to a skittish dog or a small child, since I did not believe he would understand the words themselves.

He shocked me by saying, “A beautiful sunset.”

Yes. The Chinaman could speak English. But he did not stay to chat. He said something to another Chinaman who came out of the bushes nearby, and together they scurried back downstream to their little camp.

August 11–16, 1849
Blisters

Every day came in clear and cloudless, with heat rising into the afternoon, then receding toward a cool evening. There was a comforting predictability to it all, but a profound monotony, too.

In the mornings, I warmed my hands around a mug of bitter coffee, brewed from beans that Cletis had bought for the outrageous sum of $4 a pound, put through his grinder, and roasted in his cast-iron frying pan. Then I wrapped my hands with cotton strips cut from one of my shirts to cover the blisters on my palms. Then I got to work. But no matter how I protected them, by day’s end, my hands were so bloody and raw that I could barely curl my fingers around a pencil.

Each night, however, I wrote. Writing was my reason for being here, and in truth, my reason for being. I hoped to produce a dispatch for Sam Batchelder every two weeks and a letter a week for Janiva. But on some nights, I fell asleep before writing a word.

*   *   *

ALL THAT WEEK, WE concentrated on the claim just below the big rock, so heavy with gold, going so deep into the bank, that we might all get rich on that claim alone. But to “wash” the gravel, we had to carry water from the river or carry gravel to the water.

We had decided it was more efficient to carry the gravel, and I was elected, since my blisters were too painful to swing a shovel. Cletis made a yoke for my shoulders, allowing me to carry two buckets at once. Flynn’s gold fever broke, for no man could sustain the intensity that gripped him the first day. Cletis, steady Cletis, seemed never to change the pace at which he walked or talked or worked, which was a good lesson for us younger men. And thus, with Flynn and Cletis digging and filling or crouching and washing, with me beating a path between them, we got on.

Then, late on the 16th, the English-speaking Chinaman came along the opposite bank and stood, looking over at us.

Flynn said, “What’s he thinkin’?”

“Don’t know,” said Cletis. “But he better not be thinkin’ him and his friends can stake claims on this side.” He grabbed his blunderbuss and stalked down the bank.

The Chinaman took a step back, but he did not run.

Cletis said, “No crossee river. You hear?”

The Chinaman just looked at him.

Cletis swept the gun up and down the bank. “White men only, this side.”

The other Chinamen were watching, though none moved. They reminded me of frightened rabbits, hoping that if they went motionless, the predator would not see them.

But the bold one kept his eyes on Cletis, who said, “Stay your side, we friends.”

“Friends?” The Chinaman sounded more puzzled than pleased, as if he did not understand the meaning of the word … or perhaps the possibility of it.

“Just … just … stay over there.” Cletis came back up the slope. “Don’t want him gettin’ ideas. Don’t want him leavin’, either. Them Chinks are like a painted sign for white miners … Nothin’ here. Better diggin’s elsewhere. Best keep movin’.”

August 17, 1849
Visitors

In the late afternoon, Drinkin’ Dan Fleener and his partner came up from town. They stopped on the road and watched the Chinamen for a bit. Then they walked down the slope toward Flynn, who was swirling his pan at the river’s edge.

Cletis put down his shovel and whispered to me, “Tell ’em nothin’.” Then he gave them both a big, “Howdy, boys!”

Drinkin’ Dan squinted through his one eye. His partner limped on a bad leg. Together, they made a formidable man, one that no grizzly or claim jumper would challenge—not one with a nose, anyway—in that the partner, John McGinty, also known as Stinkin’ McGinty, was the most odiferous man I had ever encountered. His stench foretold him in a way that the common smell of sweating male bodies did not. He could make eyes water. He could make toes curl. Get too close and the ammonia wafting off of him just might make you gag.

Drinkin’ Dan shouted, “You boys makin’ money?”

“Workin’ our arses off is what we are,” said Michael Flynn.

“Ask ’em, do they got anything to drink?” said McGinty.

Cletis laughed. “Drinkin’ Dan gets a drinkin’ partner. Reckon that makes sense. But we drunk all the whiskey. Got some coffee, though. Brewed it up this mornin’.”

I wondered why Cletis offered them coffee if he wanted to be rid of them. Then he said, “Or we could ask the Chinks for tea,” thereby drawing their attention to our neighbors.

Drinkin’ Dan rolled his eye downstream. “You drink tea with Chinks?”

McGinty kicked at the dirt. “Ain’t no gold where there’s Chinks.”

Just then, the English-speaking Chinaman came along the bank. He was carrying a steaming pot of … something.

Cletis whispered to me, “What the hell is this?”

The Chinaman ignored Cletis and offered me the pot. “Tea. Hot tea. Tea for eat.”

“Eat?” said Cletis. “What the—”

The Chinaman made a gesture to his mouth. “Deal. Make tea for eat. No?”

I knew what the Chinaman was up to, so I went back to our tent and fetched about eight inches of beef jerky, one of the more unpleasant things I had ever chewed. (I never honored the consumption of beef jerky with the word “eat” because I never ate it, only ground it on my molars until the taste of it killed my appetite. Then I spat out the remains.)

Returning to the riverbank, I stepped rock to rock and met the Chinaman halfway. As he extended the pot, I looked into his eyes. This was the first time that we had faced each other in full daylight.

He was in his twenties and handsome for his race, with eyes that did not deviate or defer but met mine straight on, except when he winked, as if to say, “play along.” That surprised me almost as much as his skin, which was more sun-browned than yellow. He took the jerky, bowed, and backed away. “Good deal. Good jerky. Good tea for good jerky.”

I turned the pot in the direction of our visitors. “Tea?”

“Chink tea? Made by Chinks minin’ here?” McGinty spat. “Got to be better diggin’s upstream.”

“And better drinkin’, too,” said Drinkin’ Dan.

McGinty turned and went limping up the slope toward the road.

Drinkin’ Dan said to us, “McGinty’s my pard. I have to stay with him.”

“Come by anytime,” said Cletis. “But if you bring that feller again, see he takes a dunk in the river first.”

“Good luck,” said Drinkin’ Dan. “And be damn careful when you go for a piss at night. Got us a big grizzly sow up in these hills with two new cubs. Not somethin’ you want to meet with your dick in your hands.”

Cletis said, “Maybe the bear likes the taste of Chink.”

Drinkin’ Dan laughed and waved and followed his partner.

After they were out of earshot, Cletis said to us, “Well, that Chink’s a bold one, steppin’ into white man’s talk like that.”

From the opposite bank, the Chinaman said, “Drink tea. Give back pot.”

“Yep, as bold as the ball sack on a big horny bull,” said Cletis.

“But you know,” said Flynn, “I could do with a bit of tea. After whiskey, it’s the Irish national drink.”

“After whiskey,” said Cletis, “the Irish national drink is more whiskey.”

Flynn sipped the tea, rolled it around in his mouth. “Different. Strong. Nice.”

He offered it to Cletis, who looked at it, then at Flynn, and counted, “Eight … nine … ten.”

I asked what he was counting for.

“To make sure it ain’t poisoned. If I can count to ten and he ain’t keeled over, then—”

“You drink my tea,” said the Chinaman, “they think we friends. So they go. Good for you, ’cause you no want more white miner. Good for me, ’cause I no want, either.”

Flynn chuckled. He was quick to admire any man who showed a sharp sense of the world and the wit to react to it. He said, “There’s one sly little Celestial, for you.”

The Chinaman gave a bow of the head. He may even have smiled.

Cletis took the tea pot and drank. Then he offered it to me. “It’s all right.”

It was more than all right. Tea with herbs and a scent of clove. Delicious.

The Chinaman backed away.

Flynn said to us, “I’m thinkin’ those Chinks found somethin’ over there on that claim that the white miners missed.”

“If the whites find out,” said Cletis, “they’re like to run the Chinks right off.”

The Chinaman did not let on that he heard any of this. He just kept backing away.

I called after him. “What’s your name?”

“Chin. Wei Chin.”

“I’m Spencer. This is Flynn and Cletis.”

“Don’t be tellin’ him our damn names,” said Cletis.

August 18, 1849
Routine

We worked the hillside claim, filling buckets with dirt, carrying them down to the river, or the other way round. As my blisters were toughening into callus, we changed positions often, so no man exhausted any one set of muscles. Better to wear them all out equally. One man dug, one carried, one washed. At noon, we stopped for hardtack and a swallow of water. Then we worked until sunset. In the evening, we cooked bacon and beans. And Cletis insisted that we go into the woods and collect berries, roots, and wild mustard greens that we boiled into a soup.

“A fine feast,” said Flynn that night. “It ain’t the Arbella Club, but it’ll do.”

Cletis bit off a chaw, settled back against the big rock, and spat tobacco into the dust. “Too many fellers get the glint of gold in their eye, they forget everything else, even their bellies.”

We were pulling twenty ounces a day, so we all had the glint and ever-expanding pouches that we kept buried under the big rock.

“May the glint never go,” said Flynn.

“It’ll go if we get the scurvy,” answered Cletis. “That’s why I have you boys pickin’ green trash and such. Feller I knew, never et a green thing for six months. Scurvy snuck up on him like an Injun in the dark. First he started losin’ his energy. Then his skin got all spots. Then his legs took to swellin’ … when I found him, his teeth was fallin’ out. Knew right off what it was. Bought some limes off a Mexican farmer, give him the juice. Saved his life.”

“Lime juice. That’s why God made grog,” said Flynn. “A fine drink and good for you, too. Not so good as Irish whiskey, but—”

“Speakin’ of Irish whiskey…” Cletis upended our jug. “Time for that trip into Broke Neck.” Then he asked me how much coin I had.

“About two hundred in ten-dollar Gold Eagles.”

Cletis said we should spend the coin first. “As soon as we start payin’ with fresh dust, folks’ll start askin’ about our claim. Then we’ll get neighbors, sure enough.”

“Let’s hope the Chinks stay, then. But”—Flynn looked at the campfire across the river—“I sure don’t like ’em watchin’ us.”

“They watchin’ now?” asked Cletis.

Two Chinese shadows were moving on the bank. One was coming out of the bushes.

Flynn got up and walked halfway down to the river’s edge.

“What are they doin?” called Cletis.

“Can’t tell.” Flynn watched their shadows gliding toward the light of their own campfire. “But I swear, one moves like a girl. Maybe they were after more than an evenin’ stroll.”

“You been away from females too long.” Cletis scratched one foot on the other. “Best thing about gettin’ old, you don’t dream so much about tastin’ salty-sweet snatch.”

“Speakin’ of which,” Flynn said, “you should see Jamie’s Boston gal. Pretty enough to make a priest dream of—” Flynn saw the look that I shot at him, and he shrugged, as if to apologize. “Dreamed of her meself a few times.”

“You dream of my Janiva?” I said. “What kind of dreams?”

Cletis laughed. “When a man has a good-lookin’ woman runnin’ through his brain? He dreams the only dream you can grab hold of with one hand in the dark. Ain’t that right, there, Galway Bay?”

I ignored that and kept my eyes on Flynn, who said, “Didn’t tell you, Jamie. Didn’t want you hittin’ me with a shovel if I started talkin’ in me sleep, but she’s worth a dream or two, for sure.”

“Dream about one of your own,” I said.

Cletis pulled on his boots. “Might as well dream of a featherbed and a fine steak and a jug full of whiskey, too. At least we can do somethin’ about the whiskey. Harvard and me, we’ll go into town and refill the jug and mail that gal of his a letter.”

“What about me?” asked Flynn. “I need to buy more peppermints. If I can’t have a girl to kiss, at least I’ll have somethin’ sweet in me mouth.”

“I’ll buy ’em if they got ’em,” said Cletis. “In the meanwhile, you keep an eye on them Chinks. See if one of ’em squats to pee. If he does, well, maybe he is a she.”

“Chinks squat to do everything,” said Flynn.

“Then watch close.” Cletis stood. “And watch for them bears.”

“Don’t be startin’ with talk about bears again.”

“It’s their country, too,” said Cletis, “And I seen piles of fresh scat up on the ridge. That big sow smells food, she might come lookin’ for some Irish stew.”

*   *   *

WE WALKED THE MILE into town leading the burro. The canvas sides of the tents had been raised, so lantern light filled the street, and the squeal of a squeeze-box annoyed the air. We tied the burro in front of the general store. And it was then that Cletis noticed the sign, Emery’s Emporium, No Kredit. He said, “I’ll be damned. Didn’t see that the first time we come through.” Then he shouted, “Hey, George!” and hopped through the door.

Emery’s Emporium was not much larger than a Broke Neck claim, but what a collection of shovels, pans, sacks, jars, tins, boxes, and sundry cans was packed into that space. And what a crowd of miners was doing business.

Cletis pushed up to the counter and called out to a skinny piece of old rawhide named George Emery. The two greeted each other like brothers, then Cletis introduced me to “one of my oldest army friends. One of the smartest, too, considerin’ how fine he’s set himself up. A fine store, and … how’s that fine young wife, George?”

“Back in Sacramento, doin’ my buyin’ off the ships,” said Emery, whose beard was as gray as Cletis Smith’s but trimmed and combed, as if to complement his clean shirt and leather shopkeeper’s apron.

“Be careful someone don’t try to buy her,” said Cletis. “She’s worth her weight.”

As Cletis and Emery began to jabber, I held up the jug.

Emery said, “No spirits sold here, son. Nothin’ against them. Just need room for things that miners need, like navy beans and shovels.”

Cletis told me to try the saloon. “And don’t pay more than two Eagles.”

“Go see the Scotsman,” said Emery. “Grouchy Pete McDougall. Tell him I sent you.”

I said, “Thanks for the referral.”

Emery gave me a quizzical look. “The what?”

Cletis explained, “Smart young feller. Went to Harvard. Smart but awful dumb.”

“A lot like that comin’ into this country,” said Emery. “Educated fools, I call ’em.”

Ignoring that, I headed first for Abbott’s Assay and Express Office to send my dispatches. Mr. Abbott eyed me warily. He looked to be about forty and had the cleanest hands I had seen in gold country, with nails neatly trimmed and polished as if to proclaim that he spent no time turning over rocks or shoveling gravel. His business was the weighing and measuring of gold and the delivering of dispatches and letters.

On the table in front of him were arrayed a set of scales and weights, a pistol, and a ledger book. A big black safe hulked in the corner. He had written prices on a chalkboard: Assays, one ounce. Letters carried to San Francisco, $5, mailed from SF, $5. Gold shipped east, 10% commission.

I paid with two ten-dollar Gold Eagles and asked how long it would take to get my dispatch and letter to Boston.

Abbott promised that his rider would have the letters in San Francisco within two days. He made no promises, however, as to the schedule of the mail steamer California. “We do what we can and trust to God for the rest.” This was the first time in this country that I had heard a man mention God as if he actually believed in him.

I thanked him and promised more business. That elicited Abbott’s first smile.

*   *   *

THEN I TOOK MY jug to Grouchy Pete’s, a huge tent fashioned from sail canvas (a common commodity, given all the abandoned ships in California) with a floor fashioned from wooden planks that may once have been deckboards.

The bar was a pair of long planks supported on upturned barrels. Behind it were more barrels, set on sawhorses, with spigots in the bungholes and words scrawled on each barrel, to be taken on faith: Whiskey. Rum. Brandy. Opposite the bar, a dozen or more drinkers lounged, perched, and flopped, some on the floor, others on benches and chairs arranged in configurations best suited for the sharing of jugs and rumors. And over in the far corner, at a round table, six men were playing cards.

A few drinkers gave me a glance, and I thought I might see a Sagamore or two. But in the greasy lantern light, I recognized no one. So I set the jug down.

The barkeep wore a sweat-stained beaver hat and carried an Ethan Allen six-shot pepperbox pistol in a holster at his belt. Considering the popularity of the liquor in the barrels behind him, it was no surprise that he greeted new customers with a suspicious squint and a glimpse of his gun.

I said, “I’m lookin’ for Grouchy Pete.”

“He’s nae lookin’ for you.”

“George Emery sent me.”

“Who in the name of Christ cares?” I heard the accent of the Scottish Highland.

I said, “Even if you aren’t Pete, you sure are grouchy.”

He pointed to the jug. “You want to fill that?”

“It’s empty, ain’t it?” I was learning that sarcasm should be met with sarcasm, aggression with aggression, and men said “ain’t” for “isn’t.”

“Don’t be smart with me,” he said. “You want to fill it, show some dust. One ounce and a quarter.” He pointed to the scale at the end of the bar.

Instead, I pulled two Gold Eagles from my pocket. Twenty American dollars.

They improved his attitude considerably. He said, “What’s your drink?”

“Whiskey.”

“Ain’t you the feller with the old soldier and the Irishman, workin’ a claim across from those Chinks?”

I said that I was.

He held up a coin. “And you’re payin’ with your seed money?”

“I’m paying.” I did not look away or tell too much or act intimidated. “Paying is what counts, ain’t it?” Another ain’t for emphasis.

“Aye.” He swept the jug from the bar and put it under a spigot, then he turned back to me. “Dinna you fellers figure it out when you saw Chinks? You’ll nae find gold where there’s Chinks.”

“We’re learning,” I said.

“Movin’ on soon, then?”

I shrugged. Cletis might have had a better answer but I had never been a good liar, which my father had said would be both a blessing and a curse.…

I waited, staring straight ahead, feigning lack of interest in idle chatter until I heard a voice behind me. “So … the traitor of the Sagamores.”

I did not turn.

Grouchy Pete looked up from the spigot and said, “Trader? You dinna say you were tradin’. What are you tradin’?”

I just shook my head. “Nothing.”

He looked beyond me at whoever was standing there, then seemed to lose interest, as if he had heard everything and did not care too much about any of it.

I waited until he put the full jug on the bar, picked it up, told him to keep the change on account, then turned to face two Sagamores who had found their way to Broke Neck, after all: Hiram Wilson and Scrawny Selwin Gore. They did not look as if they had prospered. Wilson had lost a front tooth. Selwin wobbled and smelled of whiskey.

Selwin said, “Hodges told us, if we saw you, we should give you a message.”

“Yes?” I held myself very still.

“He marks you a traitor for leaving,” said Wilson.

“But you left,” I said.

“Not in the dead of night,” answered Selwin. “Not before Hodges gave us the say-so.”

“And here you are.” I changed the subject: “Have you struck pay dirt?”

Selwin elbowed Wilson. “He’s learned the lingo already. Pay dirt, he asks.”

Wilson—a little older, a little slower, a schoolmaster who had perhaps controlled his classes a little better—said, “We tried three places, pulled out a few ounces, but—”

I wanted to be done with them, so I said as I stepped out the door, “Don’t get discouraged, boys. It’s only been two weeks.”

But I sensed them following me across the street. Then I heard the sound of a hammer clicking and a cylinder clacking into place. This caused me some concern, but I kept walking. As I reached our burro in front of Emery’s, I noticed Cletis stepping out of the store with a sack on his shoulder. He saw me, saw them, and went straight back inside.

Hiram Wilson, of Brookline, Massachusetts, once the shaper of young minds, stood in the middle of a dusty street in a plank-and-canvas mining camp and held a pistol with far less confidence than he might have held a ruler. He was not even pointing it. The ground appeared to be his target. He said, “I’m sorry, Spencer, but Hodges said if we saw you and held you and got word to him, he would not forget it.”

“He’s proud of his memory,” I said.

Selwin said, “Get to it, Hiram. Put the gun on him. We’ll bring him to Hodges—”

“We don’t even know where Hodges is,” said Wilson.

“Bring him to Hodges and maybe he’ll give us another horse, so we can—”

From out of the corner of my eye, I saw Cletis Smith. Then a shovel whizzed past my ear and struck Hiram Wilson flat in the face.

The schoolmaster went down. The gun went off. The bullet struck the ground.

And as fast as the muzzle flash, Cletis was cocking the shovel at Selwin. “Whoever bothers my pardner bothers me. You botherin’?”

Selwin said, “Your pardner is not to be trusted.”

“I trust him,” said Cletis.

Wilson rolled onto all fours. He wiped the blood from his nose, then wiped tears from his eyes. “I’m … I’m sorry, Spencer. I’m not made for this. Not for any of it. Not for gold mining. Not for partnering with a shipboard tee-totaller who takes to whiskey at the first sign of trouble. Not for—”

“A man’s got a right to a drink,” said Selwin, “’specially if there’s no gold.”

Cletis picked up Hiram’s pistol, dumped the percussion caps into the street, then handed it back to him. “If you ain’t made for it, best get on home.”

“Don’t be listenin’ to him.” Selwin dragged Hiram up by the armpits.

Hiram shoved the pistol into his belt. Then he wiped more blood from his face.

Cletis said, “Saloon’s right behind you. Looks like you could both use a swaller.” Then he told me to buy my friends a drink.

Like the country itself, Cletis was a strange mixture of violence and kindness, of brutality and beauty. I had seen it with Señor Vargas. I saw it now. If he told me to buy a drink for two men he had just beaten with a shovel, I would. I pulled a coin from my pocket and flipped it to Hiram.

He said that he would not forget me, and he did not mean it as a threat. Then he grabbed Scrawny by the elbow and dragged him back toward Grouchy Pete’s.

Cletis asked me, “Are they likely to follow us?”

“They might. They’re lost. They’re wandering.”

“We’ll watch out, then. Fellers like that are best sent on their way.”

August 19, 1849
The Specter of Samuel Hodges

I did not sleep well. I could not erase from my mind the image of those two broken Bostonians. The dissolution of the Sagamores had put Wilson and Gore in a bad patch, and they had failed their first test. They had met disappointment and could not overcome it. Would they pass the second, learn from failure, and go home?

I half expected to find them at our campfire when I awakened.

I got up and scanned the riverbank. The Chinese were already at work. Flynn and Cletis were still asleep after an extra measure from the new jug.

No Hiram or Scrawny. No Samuel Hodges, either.

But Hodges was out there somewhere. Maybe he had gone to the northern mines, as planned. Maybe he and his loyal men were heading south. But he was out there, feeding his resentments, still dreaming of empire and unfulfilled ambition, still furious that the writer he brought to immortalize his deeds had deserted him for the company of an Irish waiter.

Peter Fallon skimmed through the next few weeks.

Spencer, Flynn, and Cletis Smith built a lean-to roof against the big skull-shaped rock and named their claim after the shape.

Other miners staked claims nearby and worked for a while. Some were friendly, others envious, a few resentful, because “placer mining, like life, proved to be unfair.” One miner might find a pocket of gold to work for a week, while another scraped ground not twenty feet away and found nothing.

But Flynn, Spencer, and Cletis kept working, digging steadily in their hundred-square-foot plots, pulling out gold every day.

Then, one morning …

September 20, 1849
A Surprising Proposal

The aroma of tea awoke me. Tea?

I grabbed my pistol and stepped out of the tent.

Chin was squatting by our campfire, warming a pot. He stood when he saw me and said, “I help.”

“Help? How?”

“Dig more gold.”

Flynn and Cletis both crawled out a moment later.

Cletis said, “More gold?”

“Tea, first.” Chin offered Cletis the cup. “Then gold.”

Cletis scratched his behind through his breeches and took the tea, as if to signal his interest.

Michael Flynn pulled on his boots and joined us, too.

“Now,” said Cletis, dropping onto a log by the fire, “what’s a Chink know about placer minin’ that we don’t?”

“No call me ‘Chink,’ maybe I tell,” said Chin.

Cletis sucked in a gulp of air to deliver a stream of insults.

But I stopped him with a question for our visitor: “First, maybe you tell us where you learned English.”

“From holy men in black robes,” said Chin. “They come China. Tell about white man-god, Christ.”

“Missionaries,” I said.

“Jesuits,” said Flynn.

“They taught him good,” said Cletis.

“He learned good,” said Flynn. “Now he come to California to prove how good.”

“I come California to escape. I am Sam He Hui—”

“Sam Who?” asked Cletis.

“Sam He Hui. Secret society. Fight Manchu rulers. Manchu kill many, but I escape. I come with Uncle Bao, Friendly Liu, and three cousin, Ng-goh, the big brother, Little Ng, who play flute, and Littler Ng. We come to Gum Saan.”

“What’s that?” asked Flynn.

“Gold Mountain. Chinee call all this”—he gestured around him—“Gum Saan. We sail on Yankee ship. Work on Yankee ship. In San Francisco, we jump Yankee ship.”

“You ain’t the first.” Flynn laughed. He always laughed easily.

Cletis looked up at the sun and said, “We’re burnin’ daylight, Sam Who. So … how you mean to help us? And why?”

“I watch every day you.”

“Pretty bold about it, too,” said Cletis.

“You carry dirt down to water and water up to dirt. I make for you to raise water.” Chin drew a circle in the air with his finger.

“A wheel?” Cletis hooted. “You want to build a flutter wheel?”

“Flutter?” said Chin.

“That’s what it’s called in these parts,” said Cletis. “Flutter wheel. Chinese wheel … if you don’t know what it’s called, maybe you don’t know how to build one.”

“I build one in China to water rice. I build one here. Then maybe you build Long Tom.”

“What’s that?” asked Flynn.

“A trough with a screen called a riddle,” said Cletis. “The riddle catches the heavy junk, lets the little stuff drop onto a run of sheet metal poked with holes called riffles. The riffles catch the gold. Works good, but it needs a steady stream of water.”

“That’s the what,” said Flynn. “Now, give us the why. Why build it for us and not your pardners over there, squattin’ like women in the cold water?”

“What we build for us, white men knock down.”

Flynn sipped his tea and nodded. “That’s for fuckin’ sure.”

“So I build for you.” Chin stood. “But you pay.”

“Pay?” Cletis bit off a chaw of tobacco. “How much?”

“Even share. One fourth.” Chin held up his fingers for one and four.

Cletis stood. “Get back across the river. We’re in dangerous enough country as it is, just talkin’ to you. If it ever gets out that—”

“Pay money for brain. I look. I think. I know. But”—Chin rolled his eyes—“if you know what to call wheel, maybe you know how to build.”

“You are tryin’ me, Mr. Sam Who.” Which meant that Cletis did not know how to build a flutter wheel and was as annoyed at his own ignorance as he was at the Chinaman.

I said, “You haven’t answered the second question. Why us?”

“I come America do business, not squat in river. I start here. Do business here.”

I looked at my calluses and flexed my sore shoulders. “I think it’s a good idea.”

Cletis gave that a juicy brown spit. “You think it’s a good idea.… And what happens when white men hear we’re pardnerin’ with Chinks? What then?”

“No tell white men. And no call me Chink.” Chin kept his voice calm, though it was certain that he had mustered all his nerve to come over here in service to his ambition. “One fourth or you all day carry dirt to water, water to dirt.”

“Your friends … will they help?” I asked.

“If I say.”

“Even the woman?” asked Flynn.

“Woman?” Chin’s eyes narrowed. “No woman. No Chinee woman in Gum Saan.”

“If you say so.” Flynn looked over at the Chinese camp, where two men in stiff straw hats were squatting and panning.

Cletis leaned close to him. “White miners get awful touchy when foreigners are doin’ better. Can’t say what they’ll do if they find out it’s Chinks doin’ better. Might set this whole damn riverbank on fire.”

“They might,” said Michael Flynn, “but I don’t much appreciate fellers tellin’ me who I can work with and who I can’t.” Flynn squinted through the campfire smoke at Chin. “So … will you take a tenth? A tenth is worth it. A fourth is too much.”

Cletis Smith lifted a leg and farted.

Chin gave Cletis a glare and said, “I build for one-sixth, but he no do that again.”

“That might be hard,” Cletis said, “considerin’ all the beans we eat around here.”

“One-eighth,” I said. “Split the difference. It’s the best we can do.”

And Chin agreed.

Flynn finished his tea and said, “So damn the bully boys. Let’s build a wheel.”

September 30, 1849
A dispatch

Mr. Jack Abbott was quickly becoming my friend. Letters and dispatches, posted regularly, payment in shiny Gold Eagles … those made me one of his best customers and therefore one of his friends.

In the letter, I told Janiva how much I missed her. I did not tell her that my longing was as much physical as emotional. I did not think she would understand the need that came upon men, sometimes at dawn, sometimes before sleep. I told her instead that I dreamed of embracing her. I told her that I still wore her neckerchief. I did not tell her that her fragrance remained in the fabric, a faint but real presence, and sometimes I held it to my face to bring back the memory of her and the sensation of her, too. Instead, I told her yet again that no matter the pain of our separation, it was best that she had stayed in Boston. To inhabit this universe of greed, ambition, elation, and frustration, in tents that stunk of butt sweat and bean-farts, on claims that broiled in the sun and puffed dust into the desiccated air, this was not something that a woman should be asked to endure.

And in the dispatch for the Transcript, I told the truth about the Chinamen:

If you could leave your Boston parlors and by some magic fly through the air to the far edge of our continent, you would be pleased to see what we have done on this gentle slope, at the place we call Big Skull Rock.

We—Cletis Smith of Kentucky, Michael Flynn of Galway, and Yr. Ob’t. Correspondent—have applied one of the basic principles of New England, that water in motion is a transformative force, able to change the contours of the landscape and the economies of men. With the help of our neighbor, Mr. Wei Chin of Manchu, China, we have built a device similar to the water wheels that irrigate the rice paddies of his native land.

We bought planks from the saw pit in Fiddletown, nails and rope from Emery’s Emporium, fittings and sheet metal from the blacksmith in Quartztown (at a cost of $3 a pound for 12 pounds). And we invested a weeks’ worth of our own perspiration to construct a “wheel” that is actually two wooden hexagons joined together by three-foot paddles at each angle.

As the current drives the wheel, a wooden box attached to the downstream side of each paddle scoops water to a height of eight feet and dumps it into a trough that feeds a sluice connected to something called a Long Tom, thereby delivering a steady flow of water. We then dump gravel into the upper end of the Long Tom and sift gold at the bottom.

We built the wheel on the north bank, burying its moorings on either side of a pool that, even in late summer, is still hip-deep and well-served by the current. Then we tied ropes from the wheel to the horses on the south bank. Smith gave the count and, with a mighty shout, urged the horses to pull. Meanwhile, on the north bank, Flynn and I and Chin worked levers to lift the top of the ten-foot wheel off ground.

Up, up slowly, but up and up and then … it stopped rising. We groaned. The horses strained. But the wheel hung suspended until Chin called to the other Chinese. These “Celestials” provoke curiosity by their peculiar dress and clannish habits and are admired for their industriousness, but they are generally timid, for not all white miners approve of them. Still, two strong young Chinamen, the brothers Ng-goh and Little Ng, came running, put their weight on the levers, and the wheel began moving again.

But we did not want it to move too quickly, lest it topple onto the other bank and shatter. So Flynn and I dropped our levers, leapt to the counter lines, and exerted guiding pressure, thereby letting the wheel settle and drop—with mathematical precision, may I say—into the cradle.

Then we stood in silence, waiting for the water to do its work. But the wheel did not move. So Flynn plunged into the river, grabbed one of the spokes, and pushed a paddle down. The current grabbed, the hub groaned, and our invention began to turn.

A cry of joy arose from both sides of the river, from Cletis Smith, from Flynn and me and Mr. Chin, and yes, from all the Chinese.

The first scoop dipped down and swung up and dumped, just as we had intended. But as the trough at the top of the sluice was not yet built, the sparkling silver water cascaded onto Flynn’s head. He whooped like an Indian, pulled off his hat, looked up so that the next scoop poured onto his face, and cried, “I am baptized again, Lord, in a flowin’ river of gold!”

Within two days, we had doubled our “take.” Our deal with Mr. Chin had paid a fine dividend. So we will be staying at Big Skull Rock.

Yr. Ob’t. Correspondent,

The Argonaut

October 4, 1849
Chinese Speculations

Our flutter wheel turned and thumped in the steady current. Sometimes, miners going by would stop to admire it. Some would decide to prospect nearby. Most stayed a few days but were quick to leave because of the Chinese, who kept heads down and backs bent, on a claim that white men had abandoned. Others decided that we had found and claimed the perfect turn in the river, where gold had been dropping for as long as water had been flowing, and it was useless to look nearby.

And in that, they were right, because we found gold day after day, while Michael Flynn talked and talked. On this day, he talked about how well we had built, about what a good idea it was to hire “Sam Who,” about how easily the job went. “But when they cheered the raisin’ of the wheel, did you not hear a high voice on one of them?”

I admitted that I had not.

“The smallest one. The one called Littler Ng.” Flynn looked downstream. “The one comin’ down to the river now, movin’ with them little girlie steps.”

And it was true. The smallest one had a short, mincing gait more appropriate to a subservient female than a male, even a Chinese male

Cletis chuckled. “I swear, Galway, you need a woman ’fore you try to fuck my sorrel mare.”

October 6, 1849
A Gift

It was dusk. I was writing by the campfire. Cletis was already snoring.

Michael Flynn was acting bored, frustrated, something. He got up and wandered down to the river. Half an hour later, he scurried back, crouched beside me, and with the firelight flickering in his eyes, he said, “I was right.”

“About what?”

“He’s a she. Littler Ng is a Chinese girl.”

“How can you tell?”

“I waited in the bushes till Chin come along. Then he waved the all-clear to Littler Ng. Then he—I mean she—ducked into the bushes, right in front of me and squatted. Prettiest little ass that ever shone in the moonlight, and, well, that’s why Chin stands there every night. He’s standin’ guard. She’s his girl … or his sister.”

“Sister,” came the voice from the darkness. Chin stepped into the firelight and into our conversation. “I bring her Gum Saan to save her. Manchu would make her concubine.”

“There’s folks here,” said Flynn, “might try to do the same.”

Chin approached us. “You no tell, I take no more money. Wheel done. Payment done. You promise keep secret.”

Flynn looked at me. “I guess he trusts us.”

Chin said, “No choice. But you bother sister, I tell Miner’s Council you pay Chinee to build wheel. They no like.”

“We’ll promise,” I said.

“So long as you tell us her name,” added Flynn.

Chin studied Flynn, as if he thought that giving her name would be a violation of her. The fire crackled. A gang of coyotes woofed and howled somewhere in the night. And through clenched teeth, Chin said, “Mei-Ling.”

Flynn said the name and said it again, almost whispering it the second time, and he pronounced it a good name. Then he went into the tent and got the bag of peppermints Cletis had bought for him at Emery’s. He tore off a corner of the paper and wrapped three candy drops in it, then tied it with a twist to make a bag. “Give this to Mei-Ling. Tell her it’s from an admirer.”

Chin looked at Flynn, then at the peppermints, perhaps imagining where such small gifts might lead. Then he took them and turned back into the darkness.

“Now we know why he built the wheel for us,” said Flynn. “To keep us quiet.”

October 7, 1849
Sabbath Visitors

Sunday in gold country is a day of rest. But as there are no churches, few preachers, and even fewer ladies, keeping holy the California Sabbath entails card-playing, jug-passing, small talk, big talk, loud talk, louder talk, and singing at the top of your lungs. And sometimes it includes a round of stomp-foot dancing, with men drawing lots to determine who leads and who follows. On a California Sabbath, you will hear little talk of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and their God but much about Mammon and his.

I was writing. Cletis was mending socks. Flynn was studying the Chinese, who worked on the Sabbath as if they understood how little time they might have before white miners drove them off, or as Cletis suggested, simply because they were heathens.

Around ten o’clock, I felt a wave of nostalgia. It was not something that bothered me except in my quieter hours. “Back home,” I said, “the bell of the Park Street Church would be tolling just about now.”

“Aye,” said Flynn, “and I’d hear it in the dirty damn Hightower House. If me bed was empty, I’d hear the voice of me dear sainted mother sayin’, ‘Michael, get out to Mass and say a prayer for me.’ But if I woke up next to a female, I might slide her nightgown up to her hips, and slip meself in there, and—”

“For a feller who grew up under the sign of the Catholic cross, you sure are a randy—” Cletis stopped in mid-sentence.

Five mounted men turned off the road and descended the bank toward our wheel.

Flynn whispered to Cletis, “You want your blunderbuss?”

“Nope. Whatever this is, we’ll brazen our way out of it. Talk and smiles.” He pulled on his boots. “I’ll do the talkin’. You boys do the smilin’.”

They all had the look of miners—stringy, sunburned, long-haired. Two we recognized—Drinkin’ Dan and Stinkin’ McGinty.

The leader, in a white duster and a beaver hat, dismounted and apologized for coming onto our claim. “My name is Micah Broadback, late of New Orleans.”

An ironic name, I thought, for a man so skinny.

“And me and the boys here, Jonas and Edgar Johnson, and—I believe you know McGinty and Drinkin’ Dan—we been asked to talk to you about this here wheel.”

“You the Miner’s Council?” asked Cletis.

“Duly elected last May in Grouchy Pete’s”

Cletis looked up at the wheel like a painter proud of his picture. “So … what about it?”

“Well, sir, the flow is gettin’ pretty low downstream. Some boys think this wheel is cuttin’ into it. We’re here to ask you, gentleman-like, to shut ’er down.”

“Shut ’er down?” cried Michael Flynn. “Now, listen here—”

“Don’t mind Galway Bay. He’s one of them short-fused Irishmen.” Cletis made a gesture to Flynn—calm down—but he kept a smile for Broadback. “Now, considerin’ how dry it is, your flow got more to do with the weather than our wheel.”

“Besides”—Flynn put his hands on his hips—“if miners go upstream and take the water away from us, we ain’t got a word to say about it.”

“We ain’t askin’ you to quit minin’,” said Broadback. “It’s just that … you boys found a spot where the river decided to drop a lot of gold, and you got all the water, too.”

“Could be the two things are related,” said Flynn.

“Or maybe we’re just smart,” I said.

Cletis shot me an angry look. In this country, it was all right to be smart but you did not remind people of how smart.

“Maybe the smart thing,” said McGinty, “was gettin’ into business with Chinks.”

Cletis took a step forward. “Who’s sayin’ we’re in business with Chinks?”

Broadback put up his hands. “It ain’t been said out loud. But the Johnsons—” Broadback gestured to the brothers, who had remained on their horses, saying nothing, looking stupid—“they’re sailors. They been to China. They seen wheels like this.”

“Wheels is wheels,” said Michael Flynn.

“White men’s wheels is round,” said Edgar, “but this here’s what you call a hexagon.”

“Yeah,” added Jonas. “That’s a … a Chinese shape.”

So they were as stupid as they appeared.

Flynn pushed his hat onto the back of his head and chuckled. “You know, boys, a man would almost think you’re serious.”

“They are,” said McGinty, whom I was beginning to dislike for more than his smell. “It don’t set too good when fellers is doin’ straight-up business with Chinks.”

“Well, I’m serious, too,” answered Flynn. “A serious fuckin’ feller I am, and if me or me pardners decides to do business with Chinks, Niggers, or Miwok Injuns, we—”

Cletis interrupted whatever was coming next, directing himself to Broadback, age and reason to age and reason. “What would you like for us to do?”

“Stop the wheel,” said Broadback. “Give us better flow downstream.”

“All right. We’ll do it,” said Cletis.

Flynn and I both looked at him as if he had lost his mind.

Then Cletis added, “In exactly one week.”

“We was hopin’ for a bit sooner,” said Micah.

“Now, friend, there ain’t nothin’ the Miner’s Council can do except ask. Upstream men got upstream rights. Still and all, we want to be friends. So we’ll shut ’er down in one week. But we spent a lot of time buildin’ it. We need to get somethin’ back.” Through the whole speech, Cletis kept smiling, as if to signal his best intentions.

Broadback gazed up at the wheel. “Sure is a fine-lookin’ piece of work.”

“Chinks is good builders,” said McGinty.

“Yep,” said one of the brothers. “In China, they got a wall a thousand miles long.”

Cletis offered his hand to Broadback. “One week?”

And the time was set. One week.

McGinty looked over at the Chinese, who had not even raised their heads. “We can’t stop the wheel, but we can get them to movin’. Bad enough we got Greasers all over the diggin’s. Don’t need Chinks, too.” And McGinty, who up until then had shown little commitment to anything but whiskey, felt strongly enough about the Chinese that he reached for his gun.

But Broadback grabbed his hand and held the arm as the gun came free. “We move ’em off here, they may come down to where we’re workin’. Let ’em be. Let ’em clean up somebody’s abandoned claim. That’s best for all concerned.”

“Yes, sir,” added Cletis, “you boys just trust us to keep an eye on ’em. If they get too uppity, we’ll drive ’em off ourselves.”

As soon as the Miner’s Council had gone, Flynn turned to Cletis, “Why in hell did you agree?”

“A little agreein’ beats a lot of fightin’. And we ain’t givin’ up much.”

“We ain’t … aren’t?” I said.

Cletis looked up at the sky. “Rains’ll come soon. River’ll rise faster than beer piss in a chamber pot, and run so fast, it’ll sweep them Chinks all the way to the Bay, ’less they put off their heathen ways and start prayin’ to Jesus. Won’t be able to work. Might not be able to sleep. May even start buildin’ that ark that Jesus told Moses about.”

“Noah,” I said.

“No to what? Can’t say no to winter rains,” answered Cletis, “even in California.”

I decided not to go on with the Bible class. “Rain’s better than snow.”

“Yep,” said Cletis. “But the best part for you boys, once it comes, we won’t be able to work. It’ll be time to head for the fleshpots to spend some of that gold.”

“That’ll be a happy day,” said Flynn.

We laughed, but something new had come to Big Skull Rock. Men were angry that they were not doing as well as we. In time, their anger might overflow. Would it swamp us, or the Chinese, or both?

October 9–11, 1849
Change at last

The rain began on Tuesday, just before dawn. In all my life, I had never been so happy to hear the sound of droplets pattering. It kept on and off for two days. By Thursday morning, the river was up, running just enough to make riffles on the rocks. Cletis said that now, there would be water flowing for the downstream miners, so we could run our wheel, and no one would complain.

And no one did. For most of a month, Spencer recorded only mundane activities. Soon, green shoots appeared on the brown hillsides. As Spencer wrote for the Transcript, “The approach of winter in California signifies something far different than in New England, where the earth falls into sleep, frozen and brooding. Here, the moistened ground revives, then brightens and blooms.”

November 3–7, 1849
Raining Harder

On the 3rd, the showers that had been so intermittent and gentle turned to something entirely new, a pelting, punishing all-day downpour. No one worked for four days, not even the Chinese. And the rain that fell on the 7th fell harder and faster than any before, playing its torrential music to the tune of old Niagara.

November 9, 1849
Cutting Timber

Awoke to sunshine and the sound of the Miwok roaring and huffing and hurtling over the rocks like a Boston & Worcester steam engine.

We knew by then that the California climate could turn against us like a Boston January or a disappointed woman (and her Boston father). We would need more than a lean-to for shelter, so we spent the day cutting pine logs and dragging them to a place about ten paces east of the big rock. There we would build a cabin.

The Chinese watched us for a time, then Chin came up the bank and asked us if he could “rent” our ax to begin their cabin.

“A good ax rents for two dollars a day,” said Cletis. “Buy one instead.”

Flynn said to Chin, “You got three ounces of dust? I’m headin’ into town to buy us a second ax and more peppermints. Give me three ounces, I’ll buy one for you, too.”

Chin pulled out four ounces and asked that we buy tea also, black tea.

November 10, 1849
News of a Strike

The axes arrived in the afternoon, carried through the rain by George Emery himself. He had been sold out the day before but promised a new shipment. And here it came. We were hauling and hammering and welcomed a rest. So Cletis invited Emery into our half-built cabin, bid him sit on a log in the driest corner, and poured him a mug of coffee.

Michael Flynn asked about a new strike at a place called Rainbow Gulch.

“Plenty of fellers movin’ down there,” said Emery.

“Hurtin’ your business?” asked Cletis.

“My store got a stone foundation and a wood floor and stock enough to keep me sellin’ for six weeks, no matter how bad the roads get. We got plenty of what them Rainbow Gulch miners need. And come next summer, so will you.”

“What would that be?” I asked.

“Water.”

“They don’t have water?” asked Flynn.

“Right now, they got plenty, down in the ravine that the gulch drops into. But this looks like a strike to last. Come next July, when things dry up, the only way to wash dirt down there’ll be to piss on it, unless somebody figures out how to get water in. That’s when a flutter wheel in a good-runnin’ river could mean a nice profit.”

“Run water to Rainbow Gulch?” asked Flynn. “How far?”

“About six miles southwest, as the crow flies,” said Emery. “All downhill.”

“You mean, dig a trench?” I said.

“You boys got muscles, ain’t you? And you got your Chinks. By spring, there’ll be a lot more of them.”

“A lot more of everybody,” said Cletis.

“But they ain’t exactly our Chinks,” said Flynn.

“That’s not what some fellers think,” answered Emery. “Put ’em to work diggin’ trenches. Keep ’em out of the diggin’s.”

Cletis said that we were doing well mining. “Prob’ly better than we could deliverin’ water to other miners. But let’s talk again come June.”

“A man needs to think ahead, is all,” said Emery. “It won’t be miners that make this country. It’ll be them who figure out how to give the miners what they want, get their money and spread it around, so everybody can make some, every feller who knows how to forge a horseshoe or drive a nail or barber a shave. That’s how the world works.”

And a voice from the doorway said, “In June, if this no Gum Saan, we go. No ditch dig.” Chin stood outside, with the rain dripping off his wide-brimmed straw hat.

George Emery said to Cletis, “Is that the head Chink?”

“Yep,” said Cletis. “We call him Sam Who.”

“And he speaks English?”

“Taught by the Jesuits.” Flynn waved for Chin to come in and gave him one of the axes. “As ordered. Now go build yourself a fine cabin.”

“I almost forgot.” George Emery reached into a pocket under his oilskin and pulled out a sack of tea. “You asked for this, too. Five dollars a pound.”

The Chinaman took the tea and thanked him.

George Emery stood, smoothed his rain gear to his body, and said, “Take a ride down to Rainbow Gulch. See if you don’t think we could make a profit runnin’ a trench. I’ll supply the shovels and the wood for sluicin’. You do the work. We’ll make a team. And if you go, you’ll see a few friends.”

“Friends?” I said.

“The boys who met the backside of Cletis’s shovel a few weeks ago.”

“Hiram and Scrawny?”

“Scrawnier now, so they say,” said Emery. “Plenty of gold down there. Plenty of dysentery, too. Them Boston boys got it bad, so I hear. They been askin’ for their friend from Broke Neck.”

Cletis jerked a thumb toward me. “That’d be Harvard, here.”

Emery pushed past Chin, then stopped in the door. “They say you Chinks know about herbs and medicines and such. If you know how to stop men from shittin’ till there’s nothin’ left inside ’em but white bone, you might make good money in Rainbow Gulch. Damn good money.”

After Emery left, Chin said to us, “Medicines? I no doctor. No magic priest.”

“Maybe not,” said Flynn, “but if you do some good, you might make a few more friends, earn a bit more respect in these parts.”

“Respect?” said Chin.

Cletis said, “Don’t be gettin’ his hopes up.”

November 11, 1849
Rainbow Gulch

As the next day was the Sabbath, we took Emery’s suggestion and visited Rainbow Gulch. We also brought Chin. It was bold of us, I know, but he wanted to see a bit more of the country, and he thought he might have a remedy for what ailed those loose-bowel miners.

“Bring your sister,” said Flynn. “The sight of her would cure anything.”

Chin did not even dignify that. But somehow he managed to look dignified riding our burro down the road to Broke Neck, then across the river and onto the muddy trail that ran southwest over the rolling country.

We passed many a miner along the way. Some were heading to Broke Neck in high spirits, intent on a little Sunday spending. Others trudged along, intent on nothing more than the ground in front of them, weighed down by the mud that clung more heavily to their boots with every step and sucked them deeper and deeper into their own disappointment.

Flynn offered each of them a smile, a nod, a greeting. That was why we let him lead. Quick to anger, quick to calm, convivial as the town crier, that was Michael Flynn. A much better face for our trio than a nervous Chinaman or Yr. Ob’t Correspondent, who was often accused of being too damn serious for his own good.

After about five miles, we came out of a stand of blue oak and brush on a ridge that looked across a ravine toward an open plateau.

A light rain was falling. The clouds had closed down the vistas. The ravine and the gulch draining down from the plateau appeared as nothing more than gutters running through a crowded neighborhood. Scores of tents and lean-tos hid in the shadows below us. A miasmic fog of campfire smoke trapped all the odors of this tight-packed hill-country slum, a commingling stink of stale food, unwashed bodies, and human waste. And a din rose to assail our ears, the noise of men jawing and laughing, or relaxing to music from harmonica or banjo, or moaning their Sabbath away in some deep yet undefined misery.

A hollow-eyed miner was climbing the path toward us, as if he would escape before he was swallowed by the earth.

I said, “Excuse me, friend. Is this Rainbow Gulch?”

“Not for me, it ain’t. No pretty colors here. Just another rainy day. But—” His eyes fell upon Chin. “Is he your pardner, or does he work for you?”

Chin was smart enough to keep quiet.

I said that he was my servant. “And a kind of healer.”

I expected an unfriendly response. Instead, the miner asked if I hired white men, too, because he needed a job. I said I had no more work, so he nodded and strode on.

Meanwhile, Chin had dismounted and was staring across the ravine, which was about four times as wide as deep, fifty feet down, two hundred across.

Flynn said, “What’s got your slanty Chinese eye now?”

“I look. I think.”

“What about?”

“Land. I think, why gold someplace and not other? Why gold there in … in—” He made a motion with his hand, describing the slope and the big cut in it.

“The gulch?” I said.

“Many claims along gulch. That mean much gold. But where gold come from? Wash down from flat land above? And why flat land go south then turn west, like river of grass between hills?”

Flynn looked at me. “Fair questions, Jamie.”

“Questions for another time,” I said.

And down we rode into the ravine. Here it was darker, colder. The gloom of a cloudy November day was an unassailable force, even in California. Here the stream merely trickled, despite a month of rain. I could not imagine how we might keep water coursing through it all summer, even if we could dig a trench six miles from Big Skull Rock.

We rode past tents and huts and covered wagons. Then Flynn reined his horse, startled by one of the rarest sights we had seen in gold country. Beside a wagon, a dozen men had lined up, each with a bundle of clothes under his arm. A man was taking their bundles and their gold and writing down their names. Beside him, bent over a washboard in a big metal tub, a woman—skinny, scraggly-haired, worn—did woman’s work, and men who had not washed clothes in months paid handsomely.

She glanced at Flynn. He tipped his hat. She looked down again into the suds.

Flynn turned to me. “Do you got any dirty clothes?”

“All of them,” I said.

We asked along the ravine for Wilson and Selwin until a hairy miner sitting on a tailing pile pointed to a tent about halfway up the south side. “Might find ’em there or down at the shit pit, down where the streambed straightens. That’s where all the quick-steppers try to get to ’fore they let go.”

Scrawny Selwin was sitting on a hogshead in front of his tent, his head in his hands, his body curled in on itself. He looked up as we approached, and an emotion crossed his face, but even his features seemed too exhausted to define it. He said, “You come to see the dying? Or to do some gloating?”

I dismounted and said we had come because they had asked for us.

“I didn’t. I’d never ask help from a man who took a shovel to me.” He slurred his words and smelled of shit, both dried and fresh.

But his stink was as nothing compared to the stench in the tent.

Hiram Wilson lay on a pallet. His cheeks had sunken. His eyes did not focus. His breathing came in short bursts. The air created by his exhalations and other emissions fogged the space with a hot, fetid foulness, strangely sweet, like a rotting rose head.

Chin took it all in, then stepped out.

Michael Flynn listened to Wilson and said, “That’s the death rattle.”

I said, “How can you be sure?”

“Heard that sound before, and smelled that smell, though it’s about as bad in here as—” He took off his hat and fanned the air in front of his face.

I knelt beside Hiram and said his name. He groaned and tried to speak, or so it seemed. Then his brow furrowed and he made a different sound, a liquid sound, followed by a fresh stink. Whatever the mechanism draining him of life, it was working still.

Scrawny came to the flap of the tent. “He’s been shitting for a week.”

“It looks like a lot of men around here are doing the same,” I said. “Dysentery.”

“Dysentery, diarrhea, the bloody flux … what’s it matter?” said Scrawny. “There was cholera in the wagon trains, and—aw, Jesus.” Suddenly, he doubled over and went running out of the tent.

So this was the end of the rainbow in Rainbow Gulch.

I put a hand on Hiram’s forehead and said, “Can you hear me, lad?”

Chin came back into the tent with a mug in his hand.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Black tea. Black ginger tea. Ginger good for stomach. Black tea good for … for…” He brought his hand to his belly and the region below.

“Bowels?” I said.

“In China we give. Sometime help.” Chin knelt beside Hiram Wilson and gently raised his head, then poured some tea into his mouth.

Wilson gurgled and the tea came out.

“Try again,” I said.

So Chin tipped the mug a second time to Hiram’s lips. Again the tea fountained out of his throat.

Chin stood. “No good. He die.”

“I could’ve told you that.” Scrawny was back, trembling from the exertion of shitting again after shitting all day.

And I was filled with sudden, overwhelming anger at the futility of it all, of potential wasted, of hope lost, of dreams denied, a sense far more oppressive to my mind than the stench in this pitiful tent.

I said, “You should have listened. You should have gone home in August.”

Scrawny wobbled, seemed to use all his energy holding himself up. “Home to what? Teaching arithmetic to Boston brats? We couldn’t go home … as failures.”

“Better than dying here, shitting yourself to death or drinking yourself to it.” I pushed past him and stepped out into the fresher air.

Scrawny staggered after me. “I haven’t had a drink in a week. Too sick.”

Chin followed us and handed Scrawny the tin cup of black gingered tea. “You drink this, then. Maybe help you. No help friend.”

*   *   *

WE BURIED HIRAM WILSON in the gloomy mist. We wrapped him in his excremental blanket, dug him a deep hole on the rise overlooking Rainbow Gulch, and put him into the ground. At least he was not alone. A dozen lumps of dirt marked a dozen other dreams. Some had a stone or a cross or a crudely lettered sign. Others were as anonymous as the earth itself.

I recited the Twenty-third Psalm. Scrawny Selwin turned the first shovel of dirt and shed a few tears, as much for himself as for his partner. Then we covered Hiram Wilson, tamped the dirt down, and stood for a time on that bald hillside, in the pattering rain, beneath that lowering California sky, and I considered again the waste of it.

I shook Scrawny’s hand and told him to keep drinking Chin’s tea. I thought to invite him to stay with us until he was better, though I knew that the shits could be catching. And he would not leave because, as he said, they had finally staked a claim that was producing. So he would pan and shit and shit and pan until he took enough gold from the ground that he could go home or shat enough of himself into it that he could do no more than go into it himself.

We mounted, and I noticed Chin gazing again across the ravine.

Flynn said to him, “Still lookin’? Still thinkin’?”

“Someday, I know more, then think more, then look more, then find more.”

“Well, that’ll be just grand. But as for me”—Flynn took a breath—“I’ve found enough.”

I whipped my head around. “Enough?”

“Thinkin’ that the season for gold minin’ may be just about over. Time to do some gold-spendin’ … in Sacramento, maybe, or San Francisco.”

“That might be a good idea,” said Scrawny.

I whipped around again. “What makes you say that?”

Scrawny looked down, as if embarrassed. “Hodges knows.”

“Knows what?” I asked.

“Knows you’re in Broke Neck.”

“Did you tell him?”

“No, but that blacksmith, that Matt Dooling, he came through. He said that he’d heard Hodges and the Sagamores were looking for a place to set up, and they needed a good man on the anvil. So he was headed north to find them.”

“And you told Dooling about us?”

Scrawny trembled and said he was sorry, then he doubled over again and went running for the trees. Even a man with dysentery wants a private place to shit.

If Dooling had carried news to Hodges, who could tell what might come of it? But if we spent the winter below, as Cletis had already suggested, Hodges might find that there was enough to keep him and his friends busy without ever bothering about us.

For a month, the weather varied between too rotten to travel and so nice that they just had to stay and wash a bit more dirt. Then, on December 18th, it began to rain and did not stop for five days. It grew cold, nearly New England cold. And day by day, the river rose ever higher and roared ever louder. It was time. But one more thing …

December 24, 1849
A Celebration

We could not leave Cletis on Christmas Eve, of all nights, when men most desired good fellowship. Besides, the rain had left the roads so slick that mule teams were slipping and sinking everywhere between here and San Francisco.

Christmas Eve in Broke Neck meant drinking, gambling, and laughter—all regular nighttime pursuits—to which were added celebratory gunshots to welcome the Infant Jesus. But the most memorable moment came when a bedraggled young man from Maine walked into the middle of the street and began to sing “Adeste Fideles” in a voice so pure that it seemed an angel of the Lord had found this tiny outpost on this holy night.

A man from Virginia joined in. Then a Mexican in a serape added his voice. Flynn took a swallow from his jug, announced that he had been educated by Irish priests, and slipped into the Latin himself. I could not resist, either. And before long, two dozen men were caught up in the ancient carol and thoughts of home.

Never had that song sounded more ethereal yet more assertive in the holy message it sent into the black night sky above us. We may not have found the Promised Land, but each day here heightened my sense of my own existence.

On the day after Christmas, Flynn and Spencer headed for Sacramento. Cletis stayed behind to watch the claims. Neither he nor Flynn wished to entrust their gold to Abbott Express, so Cletis kept his in the hiding place beneath Big Skull Rock and Flynn carried his to spend. Only James Spencer was willing to pay 10 percent to Abbott for assurances that the amount would be placed “on account” for him in their Boston office.

They waved to the Chinese as they left, and Michael Flynn placed a bag of peppermints on a flat rock by the river, on the Chinese side.

December 28, 1849
An Open Cesspool

We reached Sacramento after a day’s ride and took lodgings in the relative comfort of Sutter’s Fort.

And, wonder of wonders, two letters, both mailed in June, were waiting for me in the satchel of Abbott’s rider, whom we happened to meet as he was heading east.

My mother and sister wrote proudly that my seagoing dispatches had made a great splash in Boston.

Janiva wrote of how much she missed me. She said she had filled her days by studying her father’s bookkeeping operations, her nights by attending meetings of the Boston Female Antislavery Society. I reread her letter a dozen times, to assure myself there was no hint of a new beau hidden between the lines. But each time I read, she closed with a single word, “Love,” and it was as if she had whispered it in my ear.

As for Sacramento, I would not have stayed, had intelligence not reached us of disaster in San Francisco. On Christmas Eve, a fire had erupted near the waterfront and incinerated two thirds of the tents, shacks, and warehouses now proclaiming themselves the first city of the West. Even the Parker House fell in a shower of embers.

So, Sacramento it was, though it promised no pleasure. After six weeks of rain, the city had become a wallow of mud, garbage, animal guts, and human waste. Men had been in such a rush to make money here that they had neglected to dig necessaries, with what consequences for the health of the public, I could not say. Perhaps a lively epidemic of cholera would cause prices to spike and spur outhouse diggers to work.

But there was also a business opportunity: Mark Hopkins, the man we helped on the trail in August, was good to his word. He remembered us. He had retreated from Hangtown, his New England Mining and Trading Company having failed at both, and was determined instead to become a wholesaler of hardware and foodstuffs. So, while Flynn planned for San Francisco, I took a winter position in the Hopkins store.

December 31, 1849
Farewells to Friends

The side-wheel steamer Senator now ran a regular route between San Francisco and Sacramento. Laid down in Boston, she had steamed around the Horn and gone into river service in November. Ever since, she had been doing a lively business, ferrying the hopeful upstream and the despairing down, all in twelve hours rather than three days.

This morning, I accompanied Flynn to the landing, where he bought a $30 ticket and got into line with hundreds of others, including a group of Sagamores—three Brighton Bulls, worn, tired, hollow-eyed, and Matt Dooling.

Our eyes met, and I said, “I hear you’re reporting my movements to Hodges.”

“Hodges?” Dooling laughed. “I’ve had enough of that son of a bitch.”

“A point in your favor,” said Flynn.

“I wasn’t put on this earth to build his empire. He’s up the hills, tellin’ men where to stay, where to mine. When he started givin’ me orders, I told him he could treat me like an employee if he paid me like one. Otherwise, he could say ‘please.’”

I asked, “Did you tell him where we were?”

“He knew already. But it wasn’t my doin’. Never my doin’.”

I took my hand from my gun and relaxed.

Dooling pointed to the tool bag at his feet. “San Francisco’s burned to the ground. They’ll need men who know how to make nails and hinges and hardware and have the tools to do it. If not for you, my tools’d be rustin’ in Boston Harbor. And like I told you once before, I never forget a favor.”

Just then, the Senator gave three blasts, and the men at the quayside pressed forward. Had I brought my gear, I might have gone with them. But I knew that if I reached San Francisco, I might keep going. I might climb aboard the next vessel bound for Panama or Patagonia and go home. And my work here was not yet done. So I stayed at the landing and watched the big steamer churn downstream beneath a cloud of its own smoke. Then, I returned to my room at Sutter’s Fort and tried to write.

January 28, 1850
News for Boston

Herewith, the first commentary I have written for the Transcript in almost a month:

Ask me about a California winter, and I will say I prefer New England. I prefer dry cold to cool damp. I prefer snow to rain. Yes, snow falling gently on the cobblestones of Boston, snow bending the branches on the white pines of Concord, snow sending husbands and wives to cozy hearthstones of a stormy evening, snow white and pure, blanketing a world reborn when cold sunshine comes again.

California is reborn in winter, too, but in a fashion more biblical than poetic.

Whatever they may tell you of the balmy air flowing over any page of the calendar, they have not told you of the rain. They could not tell you because it is nearly impossible to describe. The gentle showers of October give way to the torrents of November and the downpours of December, and sunny days become as commas in a long, wet sentence.

Your Ob’t Correspondent, having made his way to Sacramento with the intention of wintering, took a position with a merchant named Hopkins, in the belief that it is always best to engage with the world you hope to write about. In his shop, I listened to big talkers and doomsayers alike, all commenting on the relentless rain.

They marveled at the roar of it, thrumming and thundering on Sacramento rooftops. They watched it turn the streets from ankle-deep muck to quick-mud quagmires that could swallow a mule right down to his ears. But the river would never flood, they said. There was no need for a levee, they said. The great Sacramento Valley could soak up every drop that the heavens poured down. No need to do anything but keep to business, always business. All else would take care of itself … they said.

Then, on January 8, came a deluge the like of which no one had ever seen, even in California. All day it rained, hard and harder, inches an hour, inches in minutes. Mr. Hopkins sent me home, for there would be no business on such a day. So I trudged through the mud to Sutter’s Fort, which sits on the high ground about a mile from the river.

That night, I was awakened by what sounded like distant calls for help. But strange cries at night are common in places where Gold Rushers gather to drink, gamble, and satisfy their baser desires, so I rolled back to sleep. Then, at first light, I heard cries of “Flood! Flood!” I dressed quickly and scrambled up the blockhouse steps for a view.

What I saw was enough to shock me all the way back to Boston. Sacramento lay under a sheet of dirty brown water, afloat with swimming rats and dead cats, with overloaded rowboats and empty packing crates, with all the effluence of a place that had been booming and building far too quickly for its own good.

And the water kept rising for three days more. By January 12, Sutter’s Fort was an island in a wilderness of water stretching farther than the eye could reach. No first floor in the city remained uncovered, and the water all around us moved as if pulled by a current that carried off a fortune in ruined merchandise every hour.

It was two weeks before the river finally dropped, while prices for everything began to rise.

By then, however, I was insensible to all but my own misery, as California had done to me what it has done to so many: laid me low. For nearly three weeks, I was abed, suffering from fever, ague, chills, abdominal pains, and other symptoms of dysentery.

I feared that I would end as badly as some of the men I had seen in a sad place called Rainbow Gulch. I might have but for those who brought me sustenance. Despite the meanness that I often describe here, kindness still abides on the precarious edge of the continent, and I have been the beneficiary of it.

Yr. Ob’t. Correspondent,

The Argonaut

I did not tell the whole story of my sickness. To describe it would have required that I tell of certain bloody events on the road to Broke Neck the previous August, events I preferred to forget.

After five days of confinement in the Sutter’s Fort Hotel, during which time I was barely able to reach the outhouse, a dark-skinned young man appeared in my room. As he leaned over me, he appeared, to my fevered mind, like someone I had known in another world. Harvard perhaps? But there were no such complexions at Harvard.

I propped myself on my elbows and peered at him through aching eye sockets.

He said, “Where are your friends, señor?”

I knew now that he was no classmate. He had come to rob me. I fumbled for my pistol, which I kept in a holster on the bedpost.

But he grabbed it first and asked again, “Your friends, señor, where are they?”

I said, “Who are you?”

He brought his face close to mine. “I am Rodrigo Vargas.”

Now I remembered. The last time I had seen him, tears were streaming down his face while his grandfather moaned with the pain of a broken leg. Fearing that he had come to extract revenge, I tried to lift myself off the pallet. But he put a hand on my shoulder and said, “I am here to help you.”

“Help me?”

“My grandfather visits the fort for doing business. He saw you. He remembered. Then he did not see you. So he asked. Señor Sutter said you were sick. But so many are sick here, there are not enough to help them. So my grandfather sent me to help you.”

“But—”

“He remembers that you are a merciful man.”

And Rodrigo Vargas proved Cletis Smith wrong: too much mercy would not get you killed. It might save your life. Rodrigo brought me water from a clean well on Vargas land. He brought me beef broth and lime juice. He did this almost every day.

And when he could not, a servant girl from the hacienda visited in his place. She was a pretty, birdlike thing named Maria. But always, I was cared for. When I recovered, Rodrigo said that he and his family owed me no more and the next time I crossed his land, they would tax me. If I did not pay, they would kill me.

I told him I would pay gladly because he had saved me from the miserable fate that put so many into the graveyard above Rainbow Gulch. Then I prayed for spring.…