FOUR

Thursday Lunch

“THE 2013 RAINBOW GULCH old-vine Zinfandel,” announced Manion Sturgis, “decanted and ready to pour.”

They were sitting at a garden table, beneath a green umbrella. The autumn vineyard glowed. The aromas of grilled meats and mesquite smoke rose from the barbecue pit, where two chefs were preparing lunch. And the wine awaited.

Manion nodded to a waitress and watched her fill the big Reidel glasses, like a proud parent watching a child hit a baseball or play a sonata. “Our finest growth. Old vines, dating back to the Gold Rush.”

“These grapes actually grow at Rainbow Gulch?” asked Peter.

“Above it, on the flatland that drains into the gulch. When I bought the place ten years ago, the vines were overgrown and forgotten.”

“I can’t wait to see them,” said Evangeline.

“We’ll go out there after we eat,” said Manion Sturgis.

“I’ve seen everything else,” she said. “Cellar, tasting room, restaurant. They even have a Gold Rush museum, Peter, with a big lump of gold found down in the gulch.”

“And your opinion?” Manion asked her.

She raised her wineglass. “This is why I love my job.”

Peter had not seen her so relaxed in a long time. Wine-tasting at midday could do that. And wine cellars could be dark and romantic. But he wasn’t hitting the “jealous button,” not yet.

Manion said, “‘Make your vocation your vacation.’ Twain’s best quote.”

“Twain felt the magic in these foothills,” said Wild Bill Donnelly. “They inspired him.”

Manion swirled the wine in his glass. “Or maybe it was Amador County Zin that inspired him.”

“You sound like a commercial,” said Peter. “We’ll sell no wine till Twain says it’s time.”

Evangeline said, “Just taste and enjoy, Peter.”

“Yes,” added Manion. “Forget Napa and Sonoma and the hot drive from dusty old Broke Neck.”

Peter sipped and said, “All is forgotten,” because this was one of the best Zins he had ever tasted. He hated to flatter Manion Sturgis, but he had to.

And Manion flattered easily. “We’re making something rare here, Fallon. More European. Lower Brix. Still around fourteen percent alcohol but subtler, smoother, more elegant, a term that people don’t usually apply to Zinfandel.”

Then the meal arrived: three artfully arranged baby-back ribs, dry-rubbed, a pepper-jack cheese polenta, grilled asparagus … a bite of rib, a taste of polenta, a swallow of Rainbow Gulch zin and … no more calls. They had a winner. Peter was smart enough to know that when food and wine worked this well and the setting was this pretty, you stopped analyzing and enjoyed.

Wild Bill purred like a cat, a big, white-haired, red-faced Irish cat.

“Enjoying the meal, Mr. Donnelly?” asked Manion Sturgis.

“I’d agree with Ms. Carrington that this is why I love my job, if I had a job. But now I’m just a retired detective reading thrillers and enjoying the view.”

Evangeline said, “What did you detect around Broke Neck?”

“We were exploring,” said Peter, “not detecting.”

Evangeline said, “You weren’t making him drive all over without a plan, were you?”

Wild Bill sipped the wine. “I know about looking at things without a plan, just looking, not really knowing what I’m looking for … or at. Detectives do it all the time.”

“That’s why we’d love to look at Rainbow Gulch,” said Peter.

*   *   *

AFTER LUNCH, THEY HEADED out in a six-passenger electric cart, the kind airports used to ferry old ladies, except this one had a nice hard top to keep off the sun. Manion took the wheel, and they sped past rows of vines that etched the landscape north of the main complex.

Peter rode next to Sturgis and enjoyed California wine country in October, with the grapes harvested, the vines fulfilled, the leaves turning in the soft sun. Over the hum of the motor, he said, “We were reading about Rainbow Gulch on the ride down.”

“In a guidebook?” asked Manion.

“In ‘The Spencer Journal.’ I have three of his notebooks now.”

“Three?” said Manion. “You’re doing well.”

“I didn’t find them. My son did.”

From the middle seat, Evangeline said, “LJ is doing such a good job, I’m wondering why he asked you to come out here.”

“You mean you’re wondering what you’re really looking for?” asked Manion.

“Do you know something we don’t?” asked Peter.

“I bet you’ve heard about the bags of Chinese gold,” said Manion. “Some people think they’re buried someplace around here.”

There it was again, thought Peter. Another echo from Spencer and Flynn and ancient Ah-Toy: “‘the Chinese gold of Broke Neck, the first trickle from the lost river of gold.’”

“Have you read about this Chinese gold in the journal?” Evangeline asked Peter.

“Spencer’s met some Chinese,” said Peter. “He thinks they may be finding more gold than they let on.”

“Legends from the past,” said Manion. “The future is what interests me. And the future is up there.” Up where the trail ended, the land dropped into a ravine, then rose to a range of rolling brown hillsides.

Manion stopped the cart, and they got out amidst the gnarled, brown grapevines. “Rainbow Gulch. Tomorrow’s best wines from yesterday’s best vines.”

“How many acres?” asked Evangeline.

“Just four of the old vines.” Manion gestured around him. “Zins love the heat. We have heat. Zins love volcanic soil. We have plenty of that. And old vines make the best wines. These may be the oldest vines in California.” He looked at Evangeline. “Are you writing this down.”

“I’m remembering every word,” she said.

Peter thought he heard an extra something in her tone, as if she was as taken with the winemaker as she was with the wine.

Manion Sturgis kept talking: “They’ll try to tell you that Napa Cabernet is the California grape. But it’s Zinfandel, sibling of the Primitivo, offspring of the Croatian grape, Crljenak Kaśtelanski, planted right here by thirsty Gold Rushers in ground that defined the Golden State. You feel the soul of the country in every grape. You taste California history in every sip.”

“The terroir,” said Evangeline. “You taste the terroir.”

And you feel the passion, thought Peter. He never faulted passion, even in someone he didn’t like. Manion was passionate about his wine, like Peter about history. And for the second time that day, Peter felt history all around him. Rainbow Gulch looked like an open-air theater where the actors had played the matinee, then stepped out for dinner before the evening performance.

The hillsides sloped into the ravine, all covered in dry yellow straw grass, scattered over with brush, blue oak, and buckeye. A natural gutter dropped from the vineyard plateau and still carried off the rains of a thousand years. Rocks and stones along the bottom marked the path of a stream that would flow again the next time it rained. And silence hovered above it all, deepened by the sound of a turkey buzzard flap-flap-flapping overhead.

But Peter saw miners working their claims, cooking their food, lining up to have their clothes washed by the only woman within miles. He saw shacks and tents and covered wagons. In some of them, men were weighing out their gold. In others, they were dying of dysentery. And across the ravine, up on the bald hilltop, a wrought-iron fence marked the graveyard where Spencer and Flynn had buried Hiram Wilson.

“Tailings everywhere,” said Wild Bill.

“Tailings?” Evangeline had missed the earlier lesson.

Wild Bill pointed out the grass-covered hummocks lining the gulch.

Manion said, “I’ve been told that those piles still hold gold today.”

“Why don’t you get it?” asked Evangeline.

“I’m not letting anyone come onto my land for placer mining or drift mining or heap leach mining, either, dumping pulverized rocks and dirt onto a rubber sheet, then sprinkling it with cyanide.”

“Cyanide?” Evangeline wrote that down.

“Good for attracting gold,” said Manion, “but not for improving the terroir.”

“I can see the reviews now,” said Peter. “A great old-vine Zin, with hints of spice and the nutty almond nose of a well-blended cyanide solution.”

“Very funny,” said Manion. “But if I ever allow heap-leaching here, I’ll get bad reviews for the wine and the worst reviews for my life.”

Evangeline said, “I think you love this vineyard more than your ex-wives.”

“My ex-wives were as useless as the lump of gold on display in the tasting room … soft, inanimate, no practical application, nothing more than nourishment for the vanity of human wishes. Flashy women and flashy metals. Not like … not like this.”

For some guys, thought Peter, why did arriving at self-knowledge always sound like self-congratulation?

“What did Warren Buffet say?” asked Wild Bill. “Something about how we spend our lives digging gold out of holes in the ground called mines, just to put it into holes in the ground called vaults. Better to do something useful with our energies.”

“I like your friend, Fallon. He gets it.” Manion pulled a bottle of Rainbow Gulch Zinfandel from the basket on the back of the cart. “So he wins a prize. Real California gold … the grape, grown with love, refined with care, appreciated like a lover.”

“What I don’t get,” said Peter, “is why you won’t help us with the journal.”

“Even after seeing all this? After tasting the wine? If you spread legends about bags of Chinese gold, you’ll have people crawling all over this land, all over again.”

So, thought Peter, Manion Sturgis had read a section of this journal.

“Besides”—Manion pointed to the northeast—“just beyond those hills, the Emery Mine is getting back into operation. They’ll bring trouble enough.”

“And you mean to protect your vineyard?” said Wild Bill.

“I mean to protect my land,” said Manion. “That’s a story as old as the West.”

*   *   *

PETER DIDN’T WANT TO talk about Manion Sturgis in front of Larry Kwan, who had already established his credentials as a talker and was probably a full-fledged gossip, too, especially when it came to gossip about big names in winemaking. Peter really didn’t want to talk about Sturgis at all. So, on the ride home, he talked about the Sturgis wines.

And Larry knew what he was talking about. He also knew the wine-country driving rule: “Swirl and spit, baby. Swirl and spit. You can’t drive the drinkers if you’re drinking yourself. But you won’t know where to drive them until you’ve drunk what they’re drinking in the places you’re driving them to.”

Evangeline laughed. “Can I quote you?”

“Just spell it right: Larry Kwan’s Wine Country Tours.”

“Guaranteed,” she said.

“Maybe I’ll team up with your detective friend for a new tour. History and wine.”

“You know the wine,” said Peter. “I’ll bet you know the history, too.”

“You have to if you want to know the wine. I’ll show you.”

They were taking Route 16 back to Sacramento, two lanes, undivided, with a 60 mph speed limit. After about ten minutes of gentle descent, Larry pulled off into a little roadside lot with a marker. “Welcome to Michigan Bar, westernmost of the Gold Rush sites, hardly noticed now but a boom town in the 1850s. The Cosumnes River runs about a mile to the north. But it never carried enough water, so they dammed the flow back in the foothills—”

“And dug the Michigan Ditch some fifteen or twenty miles.” Peter recited his lesson from earlier.

“Very good,” said Larry.

“Ditch?” said Evangeline. “For what?”

Larry explained: “In 1852, a guy figured out the quickest way to get at gold in gravel banks was to wash away the hillsides with high-pressure hoses, wash everything into long sluices lined with mercury, which attracts gold. Every few days, they’d clean the riffles, drop it all into a big still, boil it off, and get molten gold at the bottom. Hydraulic mining.”

The land on either side of Route 16 was a moonscape of buttes, cuts, dips, and escarpments. It could have been sculpted by nature over millennia. But hydraulickers had spent less than a generation ravishing this virgin countryside … all for gold.

Larry opened the liftgate of the Escalade and pulled out a shiny black drone and said, “One of my kids set this up for me. Very smart boy, applying to Caltech. A drone with a camera connected to my laptop.”

Peter and Evangeline watched the screen. Larry drove the drone up and out in an ever-widening arc that revealed patterns in the topography, otherworldly and beautiful now, but evidence of staggering destruction more than a century and a half before.

Peter said, “They sure did make a mess.”

Evangeline was awestruck. “Manion is right.”

“About what?” said Larry.

“Nothing like this should ever happen again.”

*   *   *

AFTER THAT, PETER AND Evangeline snoozed. Midday wine mixed with jet lag. They slept from Sacramento all the way to the bridge across the Carquinez Straits, where the traffic went from bad to Bay Area terrible.

Forty-five minutes later, as they inched through a FasTrak gate on the Bay Bridge, Larry Kwan said, “That’s funny.”

“What?” asked Peter.

“I got a midnight-blue Ford Explorer about five cars back.”

Peter looked behind him.

“A blue Explorer followed us down Highway 49 onto 16. That was half the reason I pulled over at Michigan Bar, to see if he’d go by.”

“Did he?” Peter realized that he had let down his guard altogether after lunch.

“Yeah. But … you think he’s following us?”

“Why?” Peter did not want to give up anything. “Another tour operator wants to learn your secrets?”

“I don’t know. But if he follows us into the city, I might have to go all Steve McQueen on his ass.”

And yes, the Ford followed them off the downtown exit, right onto Fremont.

As the afternoon traffic inched toward Market Street, Larry said, “Maybe we lose him here, right in the heart of Old San Francisco.”

Evangeline said, “Hey, listen, Mr. Bullitt—”

Willie gave the big Escalade a goose and rode the bumper in front of him right across the intersection, with the light turning red behind him. He sped two blocks on Front Street, hung a left on California, drove right up to the rear of a cable car lurching up the hill, and slammed on his brakes.

“That went well,” said Evangeline.

Peter looked through the back windscreen as the blue SUV swung round the corner and came toward them with two or three cars in between.

Evangeline said, “Can’t you pass the cable car?”

“I got a better idea.”

They came up to the light on Grant Street, known to the Gold Rushers as Dupont, the main thoroughfare through Chinatown. The cable car ground to a stop, so Larry Kwan threw the Escalade into park and popped out.

“Not a better idea,” said Peter. “Not even a good one.”

As quickly as that happened, the Explorer turned left and disappeared. That’s what it looked like. Just disappeared into the middle of the block and—gone.

Before the light changed, Larry was back in the driver’s seat. “They went down Quincy, a skinny damn alley. We’ll never catch them.”

“Probably for the best,” said Peter.

“You got any idea who they were?” asked Larry.

Peter shook his head. Larry did not need to know that the SUV matched the one in the parking lot of the Emery Mine that morning. The Asian guy and his bodyguards? Had they tracked Peter around the Mother Lode all afternoon? Why?

A few more blocks uphill and they were pulling into the Mark Hopkins turnaround, a graceful circle that covered half the footprint of the fabled property, all in brick as nicely laid as a Beacon Hill patio.

Peter offered a tip, but Larry refused. “Just say the name of my company in your article. And if you need more driving, call me. I live over in Emeryville. I can be here in no time. And this Escalade is armored, in case you didn’t know.”

“Armored,” said Peter. “Why?”

“So I can drive diplomats, businessmen, big deals. You’re in good hands with Larry Kwan.”

“Good to know.” Peter got out, took Evangeline’s arm, and whispered, “Someone is watching us.”

“Maybe it’s because I’m so gorgeous.”

“Is that what Manion said?”

“Jealous. I like that.” She went in ahead of him.

He watched her go up the stairs and said, “You’re playing me. I’m wondering who in the hell is following us, and why, and you are actually playing me. Either that or you’re still feeling the wine and those big Manion eyes following every step you took.”

*   *   *

LJ SENT HIS FATHER an email before dinner: “Our guest will be Michael Kou, 39. Berkeley B-School. Phi Beta Kappa. Venture capital guy, lots of commodities, drug research. Invested in Cutler Gold Exploration in 2015. Many connections. But Jack Cutler not coming.”

LJ and Michael Kou were waiting in a booth when Peter and Evangeline arrived. Howard Ching had set them up with Tsingtaos, pork fried dumplings, fried wontons.

And answers? Would Michael Kou set them up with those?

He looked about ten years younger than he was, thought Evangeline, and very sharp in a gray suit, silver tie, white shirt.

“Nice to meet you,” said Peter. “I’m disappointed that your partner isn’t here.”

“So am I,” said Michal Kou. “But Jack Cutler has a core sampling job up in Placerville. And core sampling keeps geologists in business. Can’t turn down work.”

“Maybe he’s looking for buried bags of Chinese gold.” Peter decided to toss out the Manion Sturgis rumor right at the start.

LJ laughed, but Evangeline thought he seemed nervous. His eyes kept shifting to the young Chinese guys in the corner booth, half a dozen of them, talking loud, cracking jokes, living large.

Michael Kou, however, kept his eyes on Peter and said in a flat monotone, “Chinese gold?”

If the wise guy who called himself Wonton Willie defined colorful, thought Evangeline, Michael Kou was Chinatown’s Prince of Bland.

Peter said to his son, “Remember when I used to ask you what you learned in school every day? I’d ask you to tell me one new thing?”

LJ nodded.

“Well, I learned three things today. One: Broke Neck is a ghost town surrounded by a lot of very touchy locals, some of whom have strong opinions about Jack Cutler. Two: the Emery Mine has a lot of very touchy staffers, especially after a visit from a scowling Chinese businessman who looked very familiar. And three: Manion Sturgis grows very good wine on the edge of an old gold field where legend has it that there’s buried bags of Chinese gold.”

“Chinese gold?” said Michael Kou again, as if testing the words in his head.

“That’s four things,” said Evangeline.

“Three and a corollary,” said Peter.

“So you don’t have to learn anything else for two days, Dad.” LJ tried a joke.

“What I want to learn,” said Peter, “is how Cutler Gold Exploration fits into this. Or why a guy with a Berkeley MBA would invest in the unpredictable gold business when there are better bets all over the Bay Area.”

“I like the romance of gold, the adventure of it,” said Michael Kou.

“You don’t seem like a romantic,” said Evangeline.

“Don’t let the gray suit fool you.” Michael Kou smiled. “If I’d been around in 1849, I would have sailed for San Francisco with all the other Celestials. But today—”

“Today, you have three kinds of gold miners,” LJ jumped in. “The hobbyist, like the mom-and-pop prospector who might belong to a mining club that owns a stretch of riverbank, or the guy who just pulls up at the side of a road and starts placer mining.”

“You mean, like, panning?” asked Evangeline.

“Yeah. Placer means ‘sandbar’ in Spanish,” said LJ. “You dig into a sandbar, put the sand into a pan, and start washing.”

“I thought the placer gold was panned out a long time ago,” said Evangeline.

“Most of it was. But every flake counts. Gold is that scarce. In all of human history, we have only mined 160,000 tons of it, just enough, given its amazing density, to fill two Olympic-sized swimming pools.”

“That’s all?” said Evangeline.

“That’s all,” said LJ. “Panning today is like fishing. You might catch a big striper. More likely, you’ll get skunked. You do it for fun.”

“Fun I get,” said Evangeline. “But—”

“Then you have what are called ‘juniors,’” said LJ. “Professionals. Businessmen.”

Michael Kou added, “The pros know that eighty percent of the gold is still out there in the Mother Lode, but most of it is too dispersed to make it economically feasible to mine. If gold prices go up, however, the juniors get attention. They’ve been out in the field, researching, identifying formations, core sampling, buying claims.”

“What constitutes a major?” asked Peter.

LJ said, “A big corporation like Barrick or Newmont. They trade on the Toronto exchange, where most gold stocks get sold. They have real equity valuation, high capitalization, layers of management, all the bells and whistles.”

“Like Emery?” said Peter.

“Technically, Emery is a junior,” said Kou, “with a low stock price but big dreams and proven reserves.”

“Worth fifteen cents as of this afternoon,” said Peter.

“If gold prices rise, watch that stock,” said Kou. “Emery could go through the roof. A buyout would make a lot of small-time investors happy.”

“From what we learned in Chinatown last night,” said Peter, “a certain small-time geologist made some Chinese investors very unhappy not too long ago.”

“You mean Jack Cutler? That stuff about him burning investors?” Michael Kou dipped a wonton in sweet sauce and popped it into his mouth. “They should’ve read the prospectus.”

LJ explained: “Cutler is a loner, a wildcatter, drilling test holes, exploring, selling his services to juniors or acting as one himself. Invest with a guy like him, the risks are enormous. So are the rewards.”

“That’s why I partnered with him,” added Michael Kou.

“Cramer put it best on CNBC,” said LJ. “Majors are Big Pharma. Juniors are research labs, looking for the next Viagra. You could add that my future father-in-law is a mad scientist with a lab in his garage.”

“Right,” said Michael Kou. “Sometimes it’s science that makes us money. Sometimes it’s dumb luck. Sometimes it’s legends about bags of Chinese gold that bring investors to an area like Broke Neck, but legends bring cash, and cash means working capital.”

“Have you read these legends in, say, the Spencer Journal?” asked Peter.

“I’ve heard of the journal,” answered Michael Kou, perhaps a bit too innocently, “and the legends.”

“I’ll bet you have.” Peter detected a moment of … something … that passed between LJ and this smooth businessman. They had been tag-teaming the conversation, finishing each other’s thoughts like longtime associates. But there was a twinge of tension.

Then LJ said, “Whatever a lost journal may tell us, any geologist will tell you there are undiscovered ore bodies out there, worth mining in 1849 or tomorrow morning.”

“Finding one of them is a junior’s dream,” said Michael Kou, “But seasoned investors at a place like the Emery Mine live with the reality of fluctuating gold prices and wait. When prices rise enough to pay for operations and for lawyers to wrangle the California regulations—”

“Is Asian money running Emery?” asked Peter.

“Asian?” said Michael Kou, again a bit too innocently.

Peter and Evangeline both felt another little twinge of tension.

Michael Kou said, “Money is money, whether it’s from Hong Kong or Iowa. Investors want profit. And the greater the risk, the greater the reward. The Emery Mine is risky. But the work of Cutler and others tells us that there’s still gold there, in proven hard-rock reserves and—” Kou glanced at LJ, as if to ask if he should say more.

LJ finished the sentence. “—in other forms as well.”

“Exactly,” said Michael Kou. “So I wouldn’t be surprised if you saw Asian investors, Canadian gold firms … even Donald Trump.”

That brought a laugh from LJ, a big, broad laugh of the kind that Peter seldom heard from his son, who always held things close.

*   *   *

JUST THEN, THE FRONT door swung open. Wonton Willie was making a big entrance … flashing in like he owned the place.

Some diners—mostly tourists who didn’t know enough—glanced up, then went back to their dry-cooked shrimp or crispy orange beef. But Chinese diners watched, some surreptitiously, some nervously, a few submissively, with a little smile or a nod, as if to ask, Now what? Or to say, I’m a civilian, so play nice.

Whenever a Tong tough guy walked into a restaurant, especially a guy like Willie, the people who knew about local power struggles knew enough to be nervous. Was something up? Something going down? Would there be gunplay? It wouldn’t be the first time.

Wonton surveyed the room, noticed Peter and Evangeline, and ambled over, with Wraparound and Mullet Man at his heels, all smooth, all smiles, all attitude in his dark shades and black-on-black outfit. He said, “Can’t get enough of Chinatown, hey?”

Evangeline said, “I’m writing about it.” If she felt threatened, she always called forth the power of the press. Nobody messed with the press, even if her hard-hitting article would run in Travel & Lifestyle magazine.

“What you writin’ ’bout?” Willie pulled off his shades. “Chinese gold?”

“There it is again,” said Peter to LJ.

LJ said nothing, showed nothing.

“I’m writing about Chinese food,” said Evangeline.

“Yeah,” said Peter. “In a Chinese restaurant, you write about Chinese food.”

“That’s where I get my nickname, hey, from Chinese food. But when you write about it, don’t put no hyphen in Wonton.” Willie looked at his boys. “Chronicle crime writer, he put a hyphen in my name.”

“What’s a hyphen?” asked Mullet Man.

“Don’t know, but he only do it one time.” Willie laughed. So all of them laughed.

Peter stood, and Wraparound took a step. Peter suspected he was still angry after Evangeline’s Mace threat the night before.

Willie put up a hand. Relax, boys.

Peter nodded. Yeah, relax, boys. “Want to join us, Willie? Maybe we’ll talk about—oh, I don’t know—Cutler Gold Exploration.”

“See … you are talkin’ ’bout Chinese gold.” Willie wagged a finger in Peter’s face. “You can’t fool Willie. But my friends are waitin’. They don’t order without Willie. You and me, we sit down real soon, Mr. Boston. I tell you all about Jack Cutler and what he cost Chinatown peoples. Ain’t that right, Michael Kou?”

Kou said nothing, showed nothing, though his eyes shifted to a table nearby, where two older Chinese men ate quietly. One of them had an ankle holster. The other was wearing a loose windbreaker with the Racing Form in the pocket and a shoulder holster under the arm.

Willie leaned down and whispered to Michael Kou, loud enough for everyone to hear, “I watch out for my own. That why Chinatown peoples like me. I don’t fuck nobody.” Then he gave his boys a flick of the finger—follow me—and headed for the circular booth in the corner, where the others slid out to give him the best seat, back to the wall, surveying the room. Loud voices and big laughs followed.

Evangeline said, “Are we the only ones who don’t know about this Chinese gold?”

“That’s not why Willie’s here,” said LJ.

“You mean, he’s just hungry?” said Evangeline.

“Maybe,” said Michael Kou. “Or maybe marking turf … or maybe a target.”

“Target?” said Evangeline.

“Sometimes,” said LJ, “Chinese gangs bring a hit man from out of town—”

“Right.” Michael scanned the restaurant. “They bring him to a place like this to show him the target. Someone in here might be an assassin, someone eating hoi-sin chicken, pretending to mind his own business. Maybe Willie just marked someone.”

“One of us?” Peter sat again.

Evangeline took the can of Mace from her purse and put it on the seat beside her.

“Or,” said Peter, “one of the guys over there talking about horse racing. They look like two grandfathers. But they’re both carrying.”

“I’m a powerful man,” said Kou, without a hint of arrogance. “They are my bodyguards.”

“Since when do venture capital guys need bodyguards?” asked Evangeline.

“Since I got interested in something that interests Wonton Willie,” answered Kou.

“The Chinese gold?” said Peter.

“Or the Spencer Journal?” said Evangeline.

“Some people think Willie already has the journal,” said Michael Kou. “They think he stole it from the California Historical Society.”

“Didn’t the society make a copy?” asked Evangeline.

“It was one of those items they hadn’t gotten around to digitizing yet,” said LJ.

Peter was not surprised. “That happens a lot in big libraries.”

LJ added, “When they opened the archive box about nine months ago, the journal was gone.”

Peter leaned across the table and looked hard at his son and Michael Kou. “This is about more than a journal or a mythical bag of gold. And what happened last night in Portsmouth Square is tied into it. So is the hit-and-running of Maryanne Rogers. But how?”

LJ and Michael Kou looked at each other.

“Don’t all talk at once,” said Peter.

Michael said, “Exploration is an inexact science. Cutler’s ventures have lost money for small investors. They’ve lost me and my big investors money, too. He dreams of finding bags of gold and paying off his debts to the locals, so he can regain respect in the community. He married a Chinese woman, don’t forget.”

“And fathered a lovely daughter,” said Evangeline.

LJ smiled, as if to say he appreciated that.

Evangeline appreciated the smile.

But Peter still had his eyes on Kou. “What do you dream of?”

“Something bigger, Mr. Fallon. Much bigger.”

Peter wished he had asked his question another way.

*   *   *

SOMEHOW, DESPITE THE TENSION and that filling vineyard lunch, Peter and Evangeline managed to eat their way through another Chinese feast.

And when Wonton Willie and his boys left in another big flurry, the whole place seemed to breathe a little easier.

Then Evangeline recognized a guy in the corner. She had noticed him earlier, sitting alone, eating a bowl of lo-mein noodles and reading a Chinese language newspaper. When Willie left, this guy got up, put on his Giants cap, and went out right after him.

So Evangeline asked Peter for his phone and scrolled to the selfie Peter had taken on the cable car the day before, the accidental photobomb and … was it the same guy, the one from the airport baggage claim, too? She couldn’t tell.

The only other sign of trouble came when the front door opened and in walked Uncle Charlie, the angry investor from Portsmouth Square. But he didn’t stay. A bag of takeout was waiting for him. He paid, glanced into the dining room, and left.

Peter was glad of that. He sensed that LJ was, too.

Michael Kou grabbed the check. Peter let him pay. It might be the only thing they got out of him. But what Peter got was the sight of something dangling from the key fob that came out of Michael’s pocket when he pulled out his wallet, a kind of unfinished triangle.

Peter gestured to it. “What’s that, some kind of smart-guy society?”

Michael Kou looked up from the bill. “What? Oh, just an old Chinese organization. Hong Kong businessmen.” He signed the bill, and they were done. He clearly knew how to brush off a question he didn’t like.

Out on the street, Michael Kou flagged a cab on Washington Street and jumped in.

LJ went to get in the other side, but Peter grabbed him by the elbow. “The man at the Emery Mine today, the Asian guy. He looked familiar. I just made him.”

“Made him?” said Evangeline, who homed right in on this little exchange.

“You mean like in the detective novels?” asked LJ. “You recognized him?”

“You know how?” said Peter. “He had a lapel pin like Michael Kou’s key ring, and I’d seen him somewhere else.”

LJ gave Peter that look again, a little embarrassed, a little apologetic, a little like a twelve-year-old. “At the Arbella Club?”

“He was leaving as I arrived. He looked pissed off then, pissed off this afternoon.”

“Are you in danger?” whispered Evangeline to LJ.

“No more than I can handle.”

“Are we?” she asked.

“You’re civilians. You’re okay. And you can go home if you want. I’ll understand.”

“Go home?” said Evangeline. “Hell no. I have an article to write.”

“But what does that mean? Civilians?” asked Peter.

“It means to keep doing what you’re good at. Helping to reconstruct this journal. If that’s all you do, you’ll stay out of trouble.”

“You seem to be doing a good job with the journal yourself,” said Evangeline.

LJ gave a nervous glance toward the taxi, where Kou was absorbed in his iPhone. Then he whispered, “I have to schmooze a little more. And—oh, shit.”

The front door of the Lucky Li Laundromat was banging open, and an old man was stalking across the street, shouting, “I tellin’ you now, for last time.”

“Good evening, Uncle Charlie.” LJ spoke politely to the old man, no matter how unhappy he was to see him.

“Don’t give me that. I mad at you. Chinatown no good for you. Get Mary and go.”

“Thank you, Uncle Charlie,” said LJ. “I appreciate your words, but—”

The window of the cab went down and Michael Kou said, “Tell that crazy old man you’re in a hurry.”

“Fuck you, too, Michael Kou,” said Uncle Charlie, then he waved a finger under LJ’s nose. “No buts. That what I say to you and your father. Just go. Go.” Uncle Charlie waved his finger in Peter’s face, too, then pivoted, and went back to the Laundromat.

As the cab sped away with LJ and Michael Kou, Evangeline said, “I fear that our careful young lawyer has gotten in over his head.”

“I may have to do more than what I’m good at to get him back onto dry land.”

“But you’re good at so many things.”

“As many as Manion Sturgis?”

“Well, you can drink wine. But can you make it?”

“Touché.”

“Cliché.”

They thought about having a chat with Uncle Charlie, but he had already disappeared from the Laundromat, as if into thin air. So they decided to work off the big meals with a walk back to the hotel.

*   *   *

AT MASON, THEY TURNED up the hill, as steep as a pitched roof, a dark stretch of apartments and precariously parked cars that led to a San Francisco landmark, the great illuminated American flag fluttering atop the Mark Hopkins Hotel.

Peter took a breath and said, “If you can talk in normal tones while engaged in aerobics, like climbing a hill, you’re in good shape. So keep talking.”

She was breathing more heavily, too, even though she ran three miles every other day. “Your son and his friend talked a lot, but they didn’t say a damn thing.”

“LJ usually plays it close, but he’s scared—”

“Who do you think is watching him?”

“The same people watching us, leaving me phone messages to watch out for hit-and-runs.”

“Phone messages? And you didn’t tell me?”

Peter shrugged. “I try not to raise red flags.”

“Maybe they’re the same people who sent an assassin into the restaurant tonight.” She looked over her shoulder, as if he might be following them.

“Assassin?” said Peter. “Now that’s a red flag.”

“I think it was the same guy I saw at the baggage carousel yesterday, who also followed us on the cable car. He was in the restaurant. He liked lo mein.”

“So that’s why you wanted my phone?”

“Yes, but the picture on the cable car isn’t definitive, so maybe—”

“Maybe he might not be an assassin.”

“But somebody’s watching us.”

“So we’d better be careful.” Peter liked it when she said “us.”

Before they crossed California Street, they looked in every direction for fast-moving vehicles, cars without headlights, or white panel trucks, the kind that might still be in the hit-and-run business. Then they crossed in front of a cable car and strolled into the turnaround at the Mark Hopkins.

Peter stopped and looked up at the big fluttering flag. “If someone is watching us, how about we show them how well we dance?”

“Dance?” There was an idea she liked and didn’t like at the same time.

“There’s dancing every night at the Top of the Mark. And we’ve been dancing around each other for quite a while. Let’s see how it feels to dance together again.”

But … she was still committed to separate beds. And though she hadn’t told him, she was seeing Sturgis again tomorrow. And dancing at the Top of the Mark was just too damn romantic. Of course, Peter had been doing the right things so far … giving her space, cracking jokes, letting her find her way into another case, which always excited her, whether she wanted to admit it or not. And it was the Top of the Mark. So maybe—

The doorman came down the steps and opened the door of an idling black limo.

Peter didn’t think anything of it until a familiar voice said, “Let’s go for ride.”

They both turned to see Wonton Willie leaning out of the limo. “My cousin own. He say, ‘You know big-time lady writer? We give tour. Maybe she give limo company nice write-up.’”

Evangeline looked at Peter and whispered, “No fucking way.”

“Nice talk for a big-time lady writer,” said Peter out of the corner of his mouth, then he tried to see into the front seat, but it was too dark.

“Come on,” said Willie. “It’ll be fun.”

The doorman made a gesture, inviting them to step in.

Peter said, “Big-time lady writer has a deadline.”

“Wrong choice of words,” she whispered. “Just say, ‘I have some work to finish.’”

Wonton extended his hand. “Finish work later.”

She slipped her arm around Peter’s. A gentle tug, a few steps, and they’d be in the hotel, safe.

“Relax,” said Willie in a lower voice, so that the doorman could pretend not to hear. “If I want to kill you, you be dead already.”

“How can a girl resist an invitation like that?” said Evangeline.

“Just keep Mace in pocketbook, hey.” Willie waved his hand.

Peter decided they should play along. So he nudged Evangeline into the car.

She dropped into the rear seat, as far from Willie as she could get. Then she pulled down the armrest.

Peter climbed into the jump seat facing Willie. But before he said a word, he glanced into the front. Just a driver—unfamiliar, not one of Willie’s regular “boys.”

Willie said, “So, where you like to go?”

“Someplace safe,” said Evangeline.

“You safe right here. My cousin best driver in San Francisco. Car got bulletproof glass, armored door panels, puncture-proof tires. Don’t even need seat belt.”

So Peter stopped looking for his.

Willie said to the driver, “Go down to Market, then Embarcadero, then bring ’em up Powell. Nice views up Powell.” He turned to Evangeline. “You like the nice views?”

“I wish I brought my camera.” She peered out the smoked glass window.

Willie pointed to the little bar where the left rear door would have been, if the limo hadn’t been tricked out like a high-end party chariot. “Drink? I got Cristal.”

Before Evangeline could make a crack about the drug dealer’s champagne of choice, Peter asked, “Is it open?”

“Popped and chilled, hey.” Willie pulled the clear bottle out of the ice, produced three flutes from his armrest, poured, and toasted, “To my new partners.”

If it hadn’t been Cristal, Peter might have done a spit-take. “Partners?”

Willie smiled, so that his gold-rimmed tooth glinted. “Drink your drink.”

The limo dropped down California Street. Late at night there wasn’t much traffic. So they reached Market in no time, with the Ferry Building directly in front of them. Then they turned along the waterfront.

“You like my town?” asked Willie.

“I liked it even before you took possession,” said Evangeline.

“When did that happen, exactly?” asked Peter.

“When the Feds took down Wo Hop To. Everybody scramblin’ now to see who goes up. Well, Willie and his tong goin’ up. You know what the ‘tong’ mean?”

“Meeting hall,” said Peter.

Willie laughed, impressed. He said to Evangeline, “You boyfriend real smart, like his son, hey.”

“Like his son.”

“Tong also mean ‘social group.’ That’s what me and my boys are. Social group. Sometime tongs do things so people get what they want … some gambling, some drink … maybe some girls. All nice and social. And if you need protection, you no trust SFPD. You come to your own. Been that way since the Chinese come to Gum Saan, right?”

Gum Saan. Gold Mountain. Peter thought of Wei Chin, Mr. Sam Who, and wondered if he had needed a tong … or if he formed his own.

“Do we need protection?” asked Evangeline.

That’s why Peter liked having her along. She always asked the blunt question.

“Maybe,” said Willie. “You no pay me tribute, I no happy. I got to pay, too.”

“We all have our bosses,” said Peter.

“Who’s yours?” Evangeline asked Willie.

“Dai-lo.”

“Dai-lo?” she asked.

“Big Brother, from Hong Kong,” said Willie. “Triad boss.”

“Triad? What’s that?” asked Evangeline.

“Chinese organized crime,” said Peter. “Heaven, Earth, and Man. The three elements of the universe, operating in synergy for the good of all. The Triad.”

“Their symbol is triangle,” said Willie.

Like Michael Kou’s key fob? thought Peter. The other guy’s lapel pin?

“Poetic, hey?” said Willie. “It also stand for Trust, Loyalty, Honor. Those important, too.”

Peter said, “The Chinese are a very poetic people, even the ones engaging in extortion, money laundering, drug trafficking, human trafficking, and prostitution.”

“Now why you want say that?” Willie scowled with almost theatrical anger, feigning insult. “You talk me down, I no pour you no more Cristal.”

Peter held out his glass, as if he sensed that Willie was blustering for show.

Willie grinned and poured. “You know, a lot of guys want to take control in San Francisco. We got big power vacuum. And sometime civilian get caught up, and if you do bad to Triad, no can of Mace gonna help you.”

Peter continued to act as if he had heard all this before, from much tougher guys, even if he hadn’t. “Does the Dai-lo want the gold journal?”

“Not the journal.” Willie made a wave of the hand. “Nobody give shit about old writing. Dai-lo want gold. That what you lookin’ for, right? Chinese gold bags? There been talk about Chinese gold bags long time, since Ah-Toy. You know Ah-Toy?”

“Doesn’t everyone?” said Evangeline.

Willie gave her a look, as if he was trying to decide if he really liked her or thought she was really annoying, or a little bit of both. “You know, Lady Mace, you bein’ watched to see if you get gold bags.”

“By you?” she asked.

Willie nodded.

“By a blue Ford Explorer?” Peter asked.

“I don’t know about no blue Explorer. I ride with Yee Limo.” Willie sipped his Cristal. “Only way to go. But we even watchin’ you in your hotel room, lady.”

“I’ll turn off the light when I shower, then.”

Peter liked the wisecrack. Never let them know you were creeped out.

The car turned and headed up the hill at Powell Street.

Suddenly, Willie leaned forward. “I got three day. Three day.” He pushed three fingers into Peter’s face. “Before big sit-down with Dai-lo. You give me something. I get in solid with Dai-lo, you get in solid with Wonton, your son in solid with everybody. Then we have big party when he marry Chinese girl.”

“Half,” said Peter.

“Half what?”

“Half Chinese.”

“Yeah, well, some people don’t like that. Some people don’t like she marryin’ white boy. But the world changin’, hey.”

“And if I can’t deliver in three days?” asked Peter.

“Dai-lo no happy with me. I no happy with you.” Willie sat back.

The car climbed Powell Street, turned onto Sacramento. The downtown buildings leaped up in front of them.

“You like view?” said Willie to Evangeline. Then he looked at Peter. “You help Willie, Lady Mace get apartment with great view next time she come San Francisco.”

A few more turns, and they were back in front of the hotel.

The doorman opened the door and peered in.

“We all friends now, so”—Willie made a wave—“you can leave.”

But something happened … or perhaps a dozen things happened, all at once.

Peter heard the driver say, “Oh, shit.” Then the Plexiglas separating them from the front seat slammed open.

At the same instant, the doorman went flying, struck by a guy dressed all in black, with a hoodie pulled low over a Giants cap. Then the guy shoved a pistol into the limo.

Before Peter could react, two shots exploded into Wonton Willie’s chest.

Two muzzle flashes lit the interior of the limo.

Evangeline screamed.

The gun swung in her direction.

Two more muzzle flashes. Two explosions right in Peter’s ear.

But these came from the front seat.

Willie’s cousin was more than a driver. He was a bodyguard. He put two bullets into the heart of the assassin, who dropped on the paving bricks.

Evangeline looked at Peter. He looked at her. They both looked at Wonton Willie.

After a moment, Willie gasped, then gasped again, then laughed and said, “Kevlar … wow … good fuckin’ idea to wear Kevlar.”

*   *   *

DENTS IN KEVLAR, WIND knocked from Willie, no other wounds, except for Peter’s ringing ear and Evangeline’s shattered nerves, and, of course, one Chinatown hood, dead on the turnaround in front of the world-famous Mark Hopkins Hotel.

Before SFPD got there, Willie said to Peter and Evangeline, “Tell cops truth.”

“I’ll tell them what happened,” said Evangeline.

“You here to write about Chinatown, so you talkin’ to all kinds Chinatown character.”

“Ain’t that the truth,” she said.

“Damn sure is, hey.” Willie was getting back to normal. “And you”—he looked at Peter—“you here to do work for big law firm.”

Peter said, “That’s the truth, too, hey.”

“Just leave Chinese gold out of it.”

Peter thought that would also be a good idea.

When the flashing blues appeared, Willie said, “Shit about to get real.”

“Get real?” said Evangeline.

*   *   *

DETECTIVE PATRICK NAUSEDA INTERVIEWED Peter and Evangeline, but not separately. That was good. They could keep their stories straight, and since most everything they said was true, keeping stories straight was not difficult. He was young, polite, neatly dressed, the good cop.

The bad cop was named Darcy Immerman, a compact cube of San Francisco kickass female, who got out of the unmarked cruiser with a scowl on her face, glared at everyone in the courtyard, pointed at Willie and his driver, and said, “You and you, dummy up and we go downtown. Answer nice and we do this right here.”

“Nothin’ but the truth on the hotel steps,” said Willie.

And they started the Q & A dance.

Lieutenant Nauseda kept asking questions until Detective Immerman folded her notebook. Then he said to Peter and Evangeline, “I would ask you to stay in town until our investigation is complete. If you must leave, please contact us.”

“We’re scheduled to fly back east on Monday,” said Peter.

The detective wrote that down, then gave Peter and Evangeline his card, “Call me on Sunday. I’ll let you know what we’ve decided.”

Evangeline asked him, “Are we in trouble?”

“Hard to say, ma’am. Witnesses to a gang hit. The good news is that the hit man is dead. The bad news is that the gangs are getting restless. If I were you, I’d write about something else the next time you come to San Francisco.”

*   *   *

IN THEIR ROOM, THEY dropped onto their separate beds.

“I’m exhausted,” said Evangeline. “But I don’t think sleep is in the cards without chemical assistance.”

“That dead gunman,” said Peter. “Was he the one you saw in the restaurant tonight?”

“No. But they were both wearing Giants caps.”

“Like I say, half the guys in San Francisco are wearing Giants caps.” Peter flipped the bolt on the door. “So there’s someone else out there.”

“Working for who?”

“Hard to say.” Out of habit, Peter looked at his email. “But it appears that your persistence with a certain winemaker came through.”

The email from Manion Sturgis arrived with a little paper-clipped attachment. “Read about the Chinese gold. Then make this all go away.”

Evangeline said, “Something to entertain us until the melatonin kicks in.”

As Peter started to read, the hotel phone rang again, and Evangeline nearly levitated from her bed. They both looked at the phone, then at each other.

“Who the hell is calling us at this hour?” she said. “On the hotel phone?”

This time, Peter answered with his best get-off-my-lawn voice. “Who is it?”

“Somebody who’s happy that he missed your limo ride tonight. I’m telling you, this can be a very dangerous town.”

Peter decided to engage his mystery caller. He said, “What are you after? The bags of gold, the river, or the journal?”

“I want the journal. All seven parts. It’ll answer all the other questions. Then we can all live happily ever after.” Click.

Evangeline looked at his face. “So … another avid reader?”

The Journal of James Spencer—Notebook #4

February 1, 1850
Steam Passage

Samuel Hodges is heading for Broke Neck.

This intelligence reached me shortly after I had settled into a comfortable chair in the saloon of the steamboat Senator, bound overnight for San Francisco. I had determined to see how the city had rebuilt, to escape the stench and general awfulness of Sacramento, and, most importantly, to find Michael Flynn, from whom there had been no word since New Year’s Day.

I sipped a brandy, my first strong drink in nearly a month, listened to the thumping of the engine, and opened for the hundredth time my letter from Janiva. Would the sight of a Boston-bound ship in Yerba Buena Cove tempt me to buy a ticket and sail back to her? I wondered. Then I sensed someone standing over me.

“Spencer, is it?” He wore a sweat-stained hat and a threadbare tweed suit, and under his arm, he carried a leather satchel as if it was his most valued possession: Tom Lyons, de facto attorney for the Sagamores. He said, “Good to see you, though you look something the worse for wear.”

Traveling in style, I was, in my own tweed suit. But I had lost such weight to the dysentery, I looked like a stick in a tweed bag.

“Headed home?” asked Lyons.

“No. Not yet. Not done yet in California. And you?”

“San Jose. The new government is meeting there.” He dropped into the chair opposite me. “Hodges has asked me to represent his interests.”

“Hodges?” I said the word with what I hoped was concealed trepidation.

Lyons eyed my brandy, although he retained enough dignity not to lick his lips. I offered to buy him one, knowing that nothing lubricated a man like brandy. After that, I needed only to ask how the Sagamores fared, and he began to talk: Hodges had been all over the northern mines searching for a place to build something bigger. Then he heard about Rainbow Gulch, studied the map of the Miwok, and said that was the place to go. But not for the gold. For the water.

“Does he know my claim is on the Miwok?”

“Oh, yes.” Lyons toasted me with the brandy. “He speaks of you often.”

“Warmly?”

Lyons sipped the brandy. “He said that in Broke Neck, he would show you all that he had predicted. In Broke Neck, he would fulfill his ambition, and you would have to tell the people of Boston.”

I was not so foolish as to believe that Hodges was going to the Miwok simply to impress me into writing about him, but that was how Lyons made it sound.

“Hodges means to build that empire, Spencer. He’s greedy for it.”

“Everyone is greedy in California,” I said.

Lyons eyed the crowd—drinkers and gamblers, men of business going between the new hubs of California commerce, flush miners intent on squandering newfound wealth, backtrackers looking sullen and disappointed, and he said, “The greed of most men is for gold. It can be quantified, understood, even satisfied. Hodges is greedy for fame, respect, reputation. That kind of greed is … metaphysical.”

“Then why are you working for him?”

Lyons patted the satchel. “In a land where men make up the law as they go along, there’s great opportunity for one who’s been schooled in it.”

“Lawyers bring civilization, or so I’ve been told.”

“Hodges aims to bring it, too.” Lyons drained the brandy. “But he has joined forces with a company of Missourans, led by brothers named David and Moses Gaw.”

“Lawmaking with David and Moses? Sounds more biblical than legal.”

“They’re Bible thumpers, yes, but the only law they care about is the law of water. And California has no laws regarding downstream rights. Water is power in this country, Spencer. And power is wealth. And wealth guarantees power. Hodges wants water to close the circle.”

“Our water? From the Miwok?”

Lyons stood. “Be careful, Spencer. That’s my best advice.”

February 2, 1850
San Francisco Rebuilds

The Senator reached the city at eight the next morning.

Lyons’ intelligence lent greater urgency to my mission: find Flynn, then hurry back to Broke Neck and face Hodges.

But my first thought upon debarking was that California was an amazing place, to draw forth such effort from men who had seen their city burn and had built it back up again in six weeks. Bright new frames of wood and clean white canvas covered all that the fire had scoured. And the air smelled of fresh lumber, not the fetid flood-waste of Sacramento or the burnt stink I was expecting.

They were building bigger, better, stronger, and I was filled with confidence in the future of this place, which was bright indeed if the inhabitants could control their baser instincts.

I climbed to Portsmouth Square, mailed a dispatch and a letter for Janiva, then began my hunt. I might have expected to find Flynn at the Parker House, which was rebuilding quickly but not yet ready to reopen. Business being business, however, and drinkers being thirsty, the proprietors had set up a bar outside, where men were buying and backslapping and bending elbows in the bright sunshine. But I found no Michael Flynn quaffing an early brandy.

Nor did I find him at Ah-Toy’s, where Keen-Ho Chow was minding the gate. I asked, and Keen-Ho shook his head, as if he did not recognize the name or did not care. So I described the Irishman, and Keen-Ho’s eyes narrowed. “You friend?”

Saying I was Flynn’s friend did not seem the best course, so I admitted only that I was looking for him.

“You find, you tell him no more come back. He drink too much. Fight too much.”

*   *   *

I DECIDED THAT IF anyone knew where to find him, it would be the lawyer, Reese Shipton.

He was working out of a tent on the north side of Portsmouth Square. He offered to give me news. His fee: a pinch of gold dust for fifteen minutes of his time.

I opened my pouch and watched this yellow-haired, honey-drawling Southerner wet his fingertips, then dip them deep. A pinch was the going price for many things not worth an ounce, and a clerk with thick fingers was a valued employee.

Shipton deposited his pinch in a small box on his desk, then gave me a grin.

“So,” I said, “what’s your news?”

“Your Sagamore friends couldn’t take it. Sam Brannan undercut them. And with more ships bringin’ more supplies, prices kept droppin’. Then come the Christmas fire. Burned Jason Willis of Boston right out of business. Him and Collins and half a dozen other fast-talkin’ Yankee boys up and left on the next steamer, pockets empty and dicks draggin’.”

I was not surprised but did not care. I said, “What do you hear of Michael Flynn?”

“Makin’ a fine old legend of himself, that one is. Drinkin’ and fuckin’ and fightin’, too. Surprised he didn’t generate a few fees. I make plenty gettin’ pugnacious drinkers out of the hoosegow.”

“Hoosegow?”

“The city jail. It’s on an abandoned ship till they build one for good and proper. The brig Euphemia, anchored off Long Wharf.”

“So … Flynn’s in jail?”

Shipton shrugged.

“If you keep shrugging, I’ll consider that pinch to be money wasted.”

“Spoken like a Boston Yankee. Always puttin’ a man to the guilt when he asks for an honest fee. No wonder Willis didn’t make it, treatin’ folks that way.”

“Forget him,” I said. “What about Flynn?”

“I hear he got in a fight over a card game. A Boston blacksmith rescued him.”

“Dooling?”

“That’s him. Come after the fire. Went over the burnt ground, siftin’ metal … old nails, barrel rings, and such. Melted it all down, started makin’ new nails at a forge on Montgomery Street. Enterprisin’ feller. Nothin’ this city needs like nails, considerin’ that lumber’s not worth a shit without ’em.”

“But Flynn. What about Flynn?”

“Oh, Flynn found other whorehouses, other gamblin’ tables. And he got into business with Big Beam, of all people.”

“Big Beam? The labor broker?”

“Brokerin’ a new kind of labor, from what I hear. Go see him.”

“Where?”

“Can’t really say. They been movin’ as the city rebuilds. Ask around.” Shipton popped open his pocket watch to signal the end of our time. “But if you need a lawyer, y’all come to ol’ Reese.”

I stepped into the sunshine and the surging San Francisco crowd, considered my next move, and heard a low voice. Dingus, Shipton’s slave, was sitting on a stool by the tent flap, whittling. “I tell you where your friend is, mister. I tell you for two pinches.”

I looked at his huge black hands. “One pinch is all your master got.”

“He my master till California come in a free state. Then he my nothin’. And when it come to your friend, my master know nothin’. But I do … for two pinches.”

I scowled and opened my pouch.

Dingus scowled back, but I suppose he had the right, being enslaved in a place where men of so many races had come to prosper, regardless of their class or the bonds that had held them at home. He took the second pinch and gestured toward the harbor. “He’s out there. Out on the ship.”

“The William Winter?”

“If that the ship that brung y’all to California.”

“He signed on again?”

“Signed on?” Dingus laughed, though he was careful to look down. He was not yet so defiant as to laugh in a white man’s face. “That ship ain’t even got a cap’n.”

“Trask is gone?”

“The boy, Pompey, he say the cap’n cut half the lines, make nooses of ’em, and take off to find every last desertin’ crewman from his ship. Fixin’ to hang ’em. Hang all of ’em.”

*   *   *

I GOT A BOAT to row me out to the William Winter, now just one more derelict in Yerba Buena Cove. The paint was peeling on her false gun ports. Rigging lines swung loose. The upper masts had been stepped down and carried off. Reverend Winter himself had developed a split down his cheek that resembled a great wooden tear. I gave the rower a pinch of gold, told him to wait, climbed the footholds at the side of the ship. The deck, which had pitched and rolled a hundred thousand times on our voyage, lay deserted, bleaching in the sun. Cracks had opened between the boards. Weeds grew in the cracks.

Then female laughter came to me from somewhere aft. I followed it to the quarterdeck, to the skylight in the roof of the captain’s cabin. I peered down and saw breasts … naked, voluptuous breasts.

A woman was pumping herself on someone who was pumping right back. She said, “Come on, baby, come on, pop one more time for Mama and—”

A deep groan rose from beneath her.

“Yeah, yeah, you know what Mama likes.” She pumped harder and threw her head back, perhaps in ecstasy, perhaps not. I was no expert, but as her face turned to the skylight, I saw no contortions of pleasure, only the concentration of someone finishing a job of work. And her eyes were open. When they met mine, she screamed.

A man’s face appeared beneath her. He shouted, “You son of a bitch!” And with the woman still astraddle, he grabbed a pistol from somewhere and fired.

The shot shattered the pane at my ear, and a moment later, Michael Flynn, wrapped in a dirty sheet, exploded from the stern companionway. “I told you sons of bitches that— Why, Jamie! What are you doin’ here?” He was naked except for the sheet and an enveloping cloud of whiskey.

I said, “I’ve come to bring you back.”

“And leave all this?” He waved his pistol toward the city, as if he owned it.

Then the girl emerged, also in a sheet. “You said no customers ’fore noon.”

“It’s all right, darlin’. He’s my good friend.” Flynn gestured to her. “This here’s Roberta. Want her?”

“Want her?” I said, trying to hide my shock.

In the sunlight, she looked hard and hard used. And she smelled, but in a way that smelly miners didn’t. There was something earthy in the air around her, a scent of fecundity, of musk, of sex. I had to admit I found it tempting. She grinned, but a missing tooth did little to diminish the power of her scent. She said, “I don’t come cheap, mister.”

“You can have her for two ounces,” said Flynn. “Or Sheila? She’s got a glorious rump and ain’t above offerin’ it, if your taste runs that way. Hey, Sheila!”

“Not before noon.” Sheila, in frilled pantaloons and camisole, was emerging from the forward companionway. She staggered to the rail, held a finger to a nostril, and blew her nose into the water. Then she asked, “Where’s the nigger?”

“Drummin’ up business,” said Flynn.

“What about Big Beam?” she asked.

“Ain’t he with you?” asked Flynn.

She scratched at her crotch. “He’ll never be with me again, if he give me what I think he did.”

Flynn looked at me. “Big Beam’s me pardner. He brought three girls. I had two—”

“You’re pardners? With Big Beam? In whoredom?”

Flynn put an arm around Roberta. “It may be whoredom, but it’s heaven, too.”

I said, “Cletis needs us.”

“Cletis?” Flynn wobbled, as if he was drunk at ten o’clock in the morning. “These girls need me. They come down from Oregon, lookin’ for to make a few dollars. And—”

“And we made plenty from you, Mr. Galway Bay,” said Roberta.

“I’m a man who likes to live,” said Flynn, “and ain’t above payin’ for the pleasures we’re entitled to while we’re on this side of the grass.”

“How much?” I asked.

Roberta looked me in the eye, “Say, mister, do you want a poke or not?”

“Oh, he wants one,” said Flynn, “but he’s too upper-crusty for the likes of you.”

My crust had nothing to do with it.

She said, “He ain’t good enough for me.” Then she disappeared down the companionway as Flynn gave her a loud smack on the bottom.

“How much?” I asked Flynn again.

“After roulette and faro and the buyin’ of bad liquor, the lasses got all I had left.”

“All? You lost it all?”

“Makin’ it back, though. I get all the cooch I want, while Big Beam and Pompey go about town, tellin’ the boyos who’ll pay in gold all about our floatin’ palace of pudenda. That’s Latin for the pussy, the snatch, the cunt itself, the wellspring of life, deeper and richer and way more rewardin’ than all the hot holes men are diggin’ up in them blasted foothills.” He chuckled. “Of course, your Boston investors, they’d fall over dead if they seen the holes we drill on this ship. But—”

“Trask? Where is he?”

Flynn gestured to the east. “Gold country swallowed him up, like it swallows up damn near everybody. Swallows ’em whole, then shits ’em out into the California dirt, and they never even know they been digested. I’ll stay here and get fucked when I want and get fifteen percent to protect these gals when they do their business.”

“What happened to your dream? Your Boston dream?”

Flynn looked at the hills and islands around us, blinked, and said, “Why, I woke up.”

I took a ticket from my pocket and put it into his hand. “The Senator is leaving this afternoon. We can be in Broke Neck tomorrow.”

“What’s so damned important in Broke Neck, now?”

“Hodges. He’s gone to the Miwok Valley.”

“Let him. I’ll stay on the Willie Winter. And you’d be smart to take passage on the Panama, not the Senator. She’ll be here in a day or two. You’ll be steamin’ back to Boston in the time it takes to fuel her up and turn her around. Get on back to civilization, Jamie. It’s what you’re made for.”

“I signed on to tell the story of Hodges. And we owe that old man up there. Without him, we’d be dead. So I’ll see you in an hour or goddamn you.”

February 3, 1850
Returning

Michael Flynn did not meet me on the dock, so I gave him a good goddamning, then goddamned myself because he was right. I had “seen the elephant.” I had faced loaded guns, fought for my life, found a fortune in gold, and met inhabitants of the Celestial Empire itself. I had watched men die and had buried them and had nearly died myself. If all that experience could not make me a writer, nothing could. So I should have taken passage for Panama City and joined the reverse migration across the isthmus to the Atlantic, where a fleet of steamers now ran between Chagres and the East Coast. I would have known the embrace of my beloved before the glaring red rockets of the Glorious Fourth had faded from the Massachusetts sky.

But here I was, riding again toward those distant mountains, crossing countryside now as green as the land of Michael Flynn’s birth. While I headed east, backtrackers were streaming west, washed out at last. But for every one of them, two newcomers were trudging or riding or wagon-wheeling along with me. It seemed that the worst of the winter rains were over, so the roads were drying, which made for better going.

It took me two hours to cross what I now recognized as the Vargas ranchero, but no one rode out to demand a tax. And to El Patrón, I would have paid.

I did not stop in the grove where Flynn and I had our meeting with him. But about five miles later, I was drawn to another grove, drawn by the need to pay witness, though to what, I was not certain. Turkey buzzards floated in the sky above. Crows cawed in the branches. And the air hung heavy with the stench of rotting flesh, as when we come upon a dead animal in the woods.

Then I saw something hanging from the branch of one of the live oaks. It was a man, hands and feet bound, head to one side, mouth open, tongue like a sausage grotesquely bloated from his mouth. A crow was perched on the corpse’s shoulder, pecking at his eye, not bothered in the least by the soul-gagging smell.

I recognized the blue jacket, cut at the waist. Second Mate Sean Kearns had been wearing it when he signed the Sagamores aboard the William Winter. Around his neck was a crudely lettered sign: Deserter. So the stories about Trask were true.

I would have buried the corpse, but I had no shovel.

*   *   *

I REACHED BROKE NECK as the evening chill settled and felt like a man returned to the ancestral manse, only to find a new family moved in. The camp seemed more crowded yet less busy, as if everyone who had put aside mining for the rainy months had found their way here, to winter where supplies, whiskey, and gambling were easily come by.

And Grouchy Pete could accommodate them. He had been building a proper saloon when we left. Now it was finished, a fine place to escape the rain and occasional snow of the foothill winter. He had even imported a handsome mahogany bar and stand-up piano from San Francisco, so music was rolling out of the saloon, along with loud talk, louder laughter, and a large collection of legless drinkers.

Noticing a familiar sorrel horse tethered outside, I stopped for a swallow of whatever McDougall was passing off as brandy.

Faces turned as I stepped in. Some I recognized through the cigar smoke and lantern light. Some were new. A few I had not seen since the Sagamores broke apart. At two tables in the far corner, a pair of gamblers—one wearing a top hat and satin vest, the other a white suit contrasting with pomaded black hair—were mining more gold than the miners with much less effort. Cletis was standing just inside the door. Micah Broadback and a few others had collected around the wood stove. They were chatting and half listening to a loudmouth by the bar, who was declaiming, “Once a mining camp gets big enough, you need to expand the council.”

Cletis seemed in no way surprised to see me. “Did you get my letter?”

“Letter?” I leaned against the wall beside him.

“Wrote you a letter. Brung it to Abbott’s three days ago.”

“What did it say?”

“‘Where the hell are you? I ain’t heard a peep out of you.’”

“I was sick.”

Cletis gave me the once-over. “I’ll say.”

“Almost sent for you to help me. But Vargas sent his grandson, the boy Rodrigo.”

“Vargas?” Cletis cocked an eyebrow. “Strange country. Friends become enemies. Enemies make friends.” He gestured toward the bar. “You got any friends over there?”

“I know a few. Wouldn’t call them friends, exactly.”

“They been askin’ for you. Been doin’ a lot of big talkin’, too. And speakin’ of big talk, where’s Galway Bay?”

“In San Francisco.”

“What’s he doin’ there, outside of fuckin’?”

“More fuckin’,” I said. “Have you met Hodges?”

“Not yet. But his friends are stirrin’ for an election, and—”

The air was ripped by a gunshot. All the jawing and laughing and music stopped. Grouchy Pete waited for the shock to settle, then he lowered his pepperbox and shouted, “I’m done with all this political yammerin’. You’re cuttin’ into my business. I say we run a new election, then get back to drinkin’.”

Micah Broadback jumped up and shouted, “We picked a council nine months ago, agreed on the particulars, and done what needed to be done.”

“Damn right,” added Stinkin’ McGinty from the end of the bar. There was not another drinker within five feet of his smell. Some things did not change.

The big man who had been doing all the talking grinned and put a hand on the bullwhip coiled at his belt. The brown of the leather whip was the only color on him. Shirt, pants, boots, and vest were as black a priest’s cassock. “My brother and me and our friends, we just want things on the up-and-up.”

Broadback said, “This council been on the up-and-up. Me, the Johnson boys, Drinkin’ Dan, Stinkin’ McGinty, we’ve played fair all across this district.”

“And we thank you for it,” said the man.

“We?” said Broadback. “Who in the hell is we?”

“My brother and me—” He gestured to the man standing next to him, who looked like a deflated version of himself and actually wore a minister’s collar with his black outfit—“and the men of Triple MW.”

“The what?” said McGinty.

“The Massachusetts and Missouri Mining and Water Company,” answered a man standing in the shadows near the bar. I had not seen him until now: Deering Sloate.

The big talker approached Broadback. He was still grinning, as if he knew that there was something sinister about flashing white teeth in the nest of a black beard. “My name is Moses Gaw, late of Joplin, Missouri. This here’s my brother, David.”

“Biblical fellers, are ye?” said Cletis.

“All good names are born in the Bible, sir,” answered Moses.

Brother David kept his peace and kept his dark eyes on me. These were the men that Lyons had warned me about.

Cletis said, “If it’s biblical names you favor, do you got a Jesus Gaw in the family?”

“Basphemy is not our way, sir,” said David Gaw.

“Namin’ someone Jesus ain’t blasphemy to the Greasers hereabouts,” said Cletis.

“Is that a fact?” Moses Gaw kept grinning. “Well, we won’t be worryin’ about them too much longer.”

Brother David said, “We’re just good Christian white men askin’ for new rules.”

Broadback said, “We agreed on hundred-square-foot claims and a hundred runnin’ feet along dry gulches. We hang a man who kills and flog a man who steals. What more rules do we need?”

Moses Gaw said, “We need rules on water, rules on Niggers, Chinks, Greasers, and any others the Lord did not see fit to make white, and rules on whether such as them have the right to work on an equal basis with white miners. We need—”

“Too many rules get confusin’,” said Broadback. “‘Come and go and do as you please, just so long as you don’t bother no one else.’ That works just fine.”

“A place without rules ain’t a place to last, and we mean to last in Broke Neck.” Moses Gaw spread his arms. “So, as claim holders in this district, we’re callin’ for a new election in due time, as is our right.” And out of the corner of his mouth he shot this at Broadback: “You honor the rights of white miners, don’t you?”

“What’s due time?” asked Broadback.

“A week,” said Grouchy Pete. “That’s fair, ’less you want to step down, Micah.”

“Hell no,” said Broadback.

“It’s settled, then. All candidates gather in front of the saloon at noon a week from Sunday,” said McDougall. “You got any complaints, Mr. Moses Gaw?”

“To prove that I have none, I’ll stand every man to a drink.”

That brought a cheer from the crowd, but from Micah Broadback a plaintive whisper to Cletis: “Ain’t I done fair in this district?”

“As fair as Solomon cuttin’ his kid in two.” Cletis had been Bible-reading again.

The crowd got back to drinking and betting and yakking, but then Stinkin’ McGinty shouted, “Who in hell said I stink?”

“I did,” said Deering Sloate. “And I’m not voting for anyone who stinks.”

And the room fell silent. Certain men had a sound to their voice, a timbre of trouble, that could stop any conversation. Sloate practiced it.

“Hell, Sloate,” said another Sagamore, “we all stink.”

“I’m not voting for a man who smells like his own asshole.” Sloate kept at it.

“He’s goading,” I whispered to Cletis, “just to show how dangerous he is.”

“McGinty does smell awful bad,” said Cletis.

“And he’s an easy one to goad,” said Broadback.

Everyone was listening now. Even the roulette wheel had clattered to a stop.

McGinty said, “You must’ve gotten your nose awful close to my asshole to know what it smells like, mister. Are you one of them nancy-boys who like assholes?”

“Am I what?”

In point of fact, he was. I must say it honestly.

Moses Gaw said, “This ain’t talk for a friendly saloon. Take it outside.”

“Yeah,” said Grouchy Pete. “Outside.”

“If they take it outside,” I whispered, “McGinty won’t come back.”

That seemed to be what Sloate was goading for. He said to McGinty, “If you want to talk more about your asshole, I’ll be in the street. Maybe I’ll give you another one.”

McGinty said, “I ain’t afraid of you, you asshole-sniffin’ son of a bitch.”

I took a step, but Cletis grabbed my arm. “You got a wall at your back. Keep it there.”

Micah Broadback did not hear that advice, for he certainly did not heed it. He pushed past us with his hands up high, not threatening, and approached McGinty. “Now, boys, let’s don’t do nothin’ rash.”

“He looks at me crosswise,” said McGinty, “I’ll pull on him, by God.”

“That ain’t a good idea,” said Broadback.

Sloate said, “I’m lookin’ at you crosswise right now.”

And Micah Broadback made his mistake. I had seen him stop McGinty before for his own good, right at our claim. He reached now for the pistol in McGinty’s holster, and McGinty tried to knock Micah’s hand away, a simple motion that sealed his fate.

The blast and smoke hit McGinty at the same instant. He looked down at the hole in his belly, then dropped like a hundred pounds of brick.

After a moment, Moses Gaw broke the silence: “He was pullin’ on Sloate. You all saw.”

“I was takin’ his gun,” said Micah Broadback. “It was an accident.”

“Accident pullin’ on Sloate,” Moses Gaw looked around. “Ain’t that right, Brother David?”

“So saith the Lord.”

From somewhere in the shadows, a familiar figure pushed forward and knelt over McGinty. He said, “I’m Doctor Beal.”

McGinty was moaning in rhythm to the blood pumping onto the sawdusted floor.

Grouchy Pete leaned over the bar. “Want a whiskey for him, Doc? On the house.”

Doc Beal shook his head and told McGinty, “You just lie quiet.”

“I … I can’t feel my legs,” said McGinty. “I can’t feel my goddamn legs.”

Doc Beal reached into his little black leather case and pulled out a bottle of laudanum. “This’ll take the pain.”

I stepped from the shadows with my hands well away from my sides.

Sloate’s eyes shifted but showed not a glimmer of surprise. His gun was back in his holster, and he seemed entirely composed, strangely satisfied, as if he had just finished a good meal or a good … something else.

I tried not to look at the wide circle of blood spreading under McGinty.

Sloate spoke as casually and contemptuously as if we were aboard the William Winter or back at Boston Latin School. “What is it this week, Spencer? Pencils or pens?”

Now, every eye turned in my direction.

I turned mine to Doc Beal. “Hello, George.”

Doc Beal gave me a nod, poured a measure of laudanum into McGinty’s mouth, and told him to swallow.

McGinty’s eyes were searching the ceiling, as if watching his soul leave his body.

Sloate said, “Write it down for the Transcript that I killed a man in self-defense.”

“Same excuse as when you shot one in San Francisco?” I said.

Sloate looked at bleeding McGinty. “Same result, too.”

McGinty let out a final low groan, a loud fart, and breathed his last.

Moses Gaw stepped between me and Sloate, still grinning like a hungry bear finding a fresh carcass of elk. “So this is the writer.”

Cletis stepped up behind me. “And I’m his pardner. Welcome to Broke Neck.”

The sight of the blunderbuss crooked in Cletis’s arm warmed my heart.

Moses kept grinning. “Glad to be here. Maybe your friend will write a speech for our candidate.” He shifted his eyes to me. “You heard of him, I think. Samuel Hodges.”

“Tell him to come by and say hello,” said Cletis.

February 4, 1850
Morning at the Claim

The cry of a rooster awoke me. A rooster?

I had been expecting Hodges or his men, not roosters.

Cletis heard me stir, and from his pallet he said, “That damn rooster’s the only bad thing about the Chinks having chickens.”

I went to the cabin door and looked across the river.

The Chinese were moving about in the chill morning air. One was gathering firewood. Another was stirring a pot. A third was tossing cornmeal to a dozen pecking birds.

“They spent good gold dust to get a few hens and a rooster. Now they got chickens and eggs. Ever taste egg blossom soup?”

“You mean they feed you? You don’t even like them.”

Cletis scratched at his stubble. “They like me, and I like their soup.”

“You liking their soup I understand, but them liking you?”

“I warned ’em when the river was fixin’ to rise. Figured it was the Christian thing to do. Saved all their gear. After that, they adopted me. Now, they bring me hot soup, and I give ’em weather wisdom and Bible verses.”

“You’ll make Christians of them yet.” I looked out at the flutter wheel, standing firm in the middle of the stream. “River’s gone up and down some since I left.”

“It’ll come up again with the snowmelt,” said Cletis. “Yes, sir, a river’s a livin’ thing, risin’ then fallin’, runnin’ then walkin’, then gettin’ up and leapin’ like the Lord.”

My claim and Flynn’s were underwater. So Cletis suggested I stake one a bit above the edge of the river. “Don’t want those Triple MW fellers thinkin’ there’s any room for ’em here.” Cletis poked up the fire, greased his pan, cracked four eggs into it. “That was some nasty gunnin’ your Boston friend put on last night.”

“He’s not my friend. Not now. Not when we were in Boston.”

It was good to sit again at the rough table with Cletis and swallow strong coffee in the morning. The cabin felt like home now that it had a proper door, which Cletis had built himself and hung with leather hinges.

“I tell you, I worry some about them Chinks.” Cletis flopped two fried eggs on my plate. “What that Moses Gaw feller said ain’t far from the truth.”

“About what?”

“About makin’ rules on who can mine where. This country belongs to the United States now, so real Americans should have the say-so.”

Cletis had his contradictions, I knew. I ate some egg and sipped some coffee and waited for more wisdom.

He put the frying pan on the table—he still avoided dirtying plates—and sat. “Foreigners catchin’ it all over … like the French down Mormon’s Gulch. They was infringin’ considerable on the rights of us Yankees, doin’ what they pleased, no matter what the Miner’s Council said. Pretty damn saucy—”

“Good term for a Frenchman.”

“What?’

“Saucy. The … unh … the French. They’re known for their sauces.”

Cletis gave me a long look, as if he was thinking about calling me an educated fool again. Then he returned to the point. “These Frenchies got so troublesome, the local alcalde decided to go round to the other diggin’s to get some help.”

“For what?”

“For drivin’ them out,” said Cletis. “He come back with a hundred armed Yankees and give that gang of frog-eaters five minutes to pack up and leave, or else they’d run ’em off and sell the tools and tents at auction.”

“By what right?”

“Miner’s Law and the plain rights of God-fearin’ white Americans.” Cletis shoveled an egg into his mouth and wiped a dribble of yolk from his chin. “French ran like rats. Then there was that gang of Chili-eaters down Sonora way.”

“Chili-eaters?”

“Fellers from Chile. Good miners. Too damn good. Made the whites resentful. So they got chased. And don’t forget the Injuns. Over in Woodsville, them sneak-thieves was stealin’ food and tools, even jackasses. White miners had to take a few scalps and send ’em skedaddlin’ with their squaws and papooses.” Cletis finished his coffee. “Yes, sir, too many dusky folks around here, and more comin’ every day.”

“So you’re for chasing off the Chinese?”

“I ain’t. But others will be. With less gold to go around, it stands to reason it’ll get nasty. But the trouble them Chinks have, it’s as old as dirt. Don’t make it your trouble, too. Even if you like that little Chinese gal.”

“Who said I liked her? Flynn was the one giving her candy all the time.”

“I seen how you looked over there last night … and just now. She’s awful pretty with her little Chinese feet and her little Chinese titties.”

“How do you know?”

“I snuck down there one night myself. She was takin’ a bath in the river.”

“Why, you dirty old man.” I said it with admiration, and we got to work.

Mid-morning, Chin came across with two pots. One contained ginger tea, the other soup. “My sister say you look like you been sick. Skinny like handle of shovel. She think you need tea for to make stomach better. Chicken soup for to make full.”

“I lost weight. I did not die.”

“Good not to die. Where Flynn? She want to know.”

“In San Francisco. I don’t think he’s coming back.”

“My sister sorry to hear. Not me.”

So Mei-Ling had liked Flynn’s peppermints more than my longing gazes. So much the better.

February 7, 1850
Samuel Hodges

There was music in the turning of the wheel. A steady rhythm of push and whoosh, push and whoosh, push and whoosh and splash, all the day through. And nothing brought more focus to a distracted mind. When the wheel was turning and the water was flowing and we were spreading gravel in the Long Tom, Cletis Smith and I were engaged right to the bottom of our souls.

We ignored the weather, the Chinese, and the stream of men now traveling on the road above our piece of river. Miners went on foot, on horseback, and in wagons laden with supplies, all headed for the big upstream claim of the Triple MW.

At midday, Cletis and I were sitting in the cabin, spooning Chinese chicken soup. I had my back to the open door, so I noticed his reaction first. Then he said, “What the hell is this?”

They had come at last. There were four of them:

Moses Gaw was running his finger along the riffles in the Long Tom. His brother David was standing nearby, holding their horses. And another mounted man was up at the road, watching everything, like a guard.

But the real presence was the big man on the black horse at the edge of the river. His hands were folded on the pommel of his saddle. His head was turned because he was studying the Chinese, who were working hard at pretending he wasn’t there.

Samuel Hodges was still as handsome as Byron, though much changed. His hair curled to his collar, his beard had grown full and thick. His black coat had been torn and mended. But one thing had not changed: the square of his shoulders bespoke more power than the turning wheel or the river that drove it.

As Cletis and I came down the bank, Moses Gaw held up a finger covered in dirt and gold dust. “Rich damn diggin’s. No wonder you like it here.”

Cletis had his scary old blunderbuss crooked politely in his arm, but his tone told everything. “How long you been in this country, mister?”

Moses grinned. “Long enough.”

“Not long enough to know you don’t touch a man’s tools or his pay dirt ’less you’re invited. Now wipe that finger on the edge of my sluice and take a step back.”

Moses Gaw did as he was told, though by his motions made it plain that he was not ordinarily so compliant.

Hodges gave Cletis a glance, then said to me, “You seem to favor hotheads, James. Where’s the Irishman?”

“San Francisco.”

“So he deserted you? I hope that this old veteran serves you better.”

Cletis said to me, “Is this the Boston windbag? The one who wants to mind everybody’s business?”

“I mind my own,” said Hodges. “And my friends’. Isn’t that right, Mr. Gaw?”

“It’s why we threw in with you, Mr. Hodges. Shrewd Boston Yankees and strong-backed Missouri muleskinners. We make a good team.”

“What do you want?” asked Cletis.

“Your vote,” said Moses. “We’re visiting claims in the district, telling what we’ll do for you boys, so you’ll vote for our slate on Sunday.”

Cletis said, “What can you do for me that I can’t do for myself?”

David Gaw said, “Guarantee a white district for the white Americans.”

I knew that Chin, squatting downstream, was listening while pretending not to.

Hodges swung his big head toward the Chinese. “Things might not go so well for them, but … we’ll be humane. Maybe we’ll hire them to dig a trench to Rainbow Gulch.”

“Mindin’ Chink business, too?” said Cletis. “A man starts mindin’ other men’s business, he may get to likin’ the idea.”

Hodges ignored Cletis and said to me, “I’ll count on your vote, Spencer. We want to make this the best damn mining camp in the Mother Lode.”

“Why?” I said. “Men mine and make money, or they don’t and move on.”

“We’re after building something more than a camp,” said Moses Gaw.

“Much more.” Hodges kept his eyes on me. “But you knew that back in Boston.”

The rider on the road inched his horse down, “Sir, we’ve other claims to visit.”

I recognized my old friend, Christopher Harding. I waved to him.

He had grown a black goatee and pulled his hat low. “It’s good to see you, James.”

I said, “Thank you for not shooting me the night I left the ship.”

Moses Gaw mounted his horse and said, “Harding wouldn’t do that. He’s one of them Boston gentlemen. But I ain’t.”

Samuel Hodges, backing his horse across the stream, said, “We’ll take it kindly if you vote for us. Then you may interview us for the Transcript.”

February 10, 1849
Election

Too much democracy can be a dangerous thing. That is why the framers of our Constitution chose a republican form of government, with checks and balances to keep the baser instincts of the voter—or of him who would court the vote—in check.

While Californians at the coast had convened a legislature and awaited news of statehood, up here in the hills where such aspirations had been born, democracy functioned on its most basic level. One man, one vote, majority rule.

And would the majority vote for Samuel Hodges?

The miners turned out on that pleasant Sunday to keep holy the California Sabbath in all the usual ways. They came from claims up the river and down. They loaded their wagons and burdened their mules at Emery’s. They lined up outside Abbott’s Express to post letters. They brought high spirits or got into them soon after they crowded the outdoor bar that Grouchy Pete had set up. And when someone started strumming a banjo, someone else pulled out a harmonica, and a squeeze-box started to wheeze, and soon, miners were jumping about and pounding their feet in a rough imitation of dance, though it appeared more likely that they were trying to stomp an army of roaches.

Micah Broadback and the Johnson brothers came through this crowd, pumping hands all about and promising that things would be as they always had been in the District. But Drinkin’ Dan had decided to sit this one out, a decision made after Moses Gaw stood him to a night’s worth of whiskey in Grouchy Pete’s.

“You got our vote,” Cletis told Broadback.

“Thank you,” said Micah. “Never seen miners wanted to be on the council so much as these Triple MWs. Most of us is here to dig for gold, but these boys—”

Whatever Broadback was about to say was drowned out by the bang-boom of a big bang-booming kettle drum coming down the road.

All the other music and talk and politicking stopped, and every man turned.

Bang-boom-boom-boom-boom!

Into town marched two dozen men of the Massachusetts and Missouri Mining and Water Company. I noticed Sloate and Christopher Harding, Doc Beal, Attorney Tom Lyons, two of the Brighton Bulls, and half a dozen others. The only mounted men in this group were the Gaw brothers, and Samuel Hodges himself.

They paraded through the crowd, and Sloate fired his Walker Colt into the air, all as if it had been planned, stage managed like a Boston play. (For that, I credited Christopher Harding, whose love of amateur theatrics at Harvard was widely known.)

“If this don’t beat all,” muttered Micah Broadback.

Moses Gaw shouted, “Drinks all around, as soon as the votin’ is done!”

That brought a mighty cheer.

Micah Broadback said to Cletis, “My claim ain’t rich enough for buyin’ drinks.”

“The boys’ll vote for you still,” said Cletis. “They know you done the job.”

I knew otherwise. Hodges had won already. If the drinks hadn’t done it, his promises would. He asked to speak first, proclaiming that the newcoming challenger should defer to the incumbent.

Cletis and I retreated to the little porch in front of Emery’s for a better view of Hodges, who climbed onto the makeshift speaker’s platform—a flag-bedecked buckboard in front of Grouchy Pete’s—and eyed every man as if he could see into their hearts and know their frustrations. His rock-like presence seemed to comfort men, even calm them. All the disappointments and defeats of the last year had not diminished him, especially when he wore his black coat with a clean white shirt and a red cravat.

He began by telling of our journey from Boston, the collapse of our company, and its rebirth when he met “these good men from Missouri and their God-fearing wives.”

“You got wives?” shouted someone.

“We sure do,” answered Moses Gaw.

“Are they pretty?” shouted someone else.

“Who cares?” shouted a third.

“They sure are,” said David Gaw.

“How come you didn’t bring ’em?” shouted another.

“’Cause of how pretty they are,” answered Moses Gaw.

And everyone laughed. Oh, but there were high spirits in Broke Neck that afternoon.

“Now, boys,” said Hodges. “We have no desire to change any of the good things that Micah Broadback and his council have done. So we’ll interfere with none of the hard-working white American miners. But for foreigners, there’ll be changes.”

And that brought an ear-splitting, jaw-cracking yowl in the dry air.

Hodges raised his hands. “Who denies that white Americans took this place from Mexico?”

“Nobody!” shouted Deering Sloate from the back, bringing a cheer.

“Who denies that white Americans discovered the gold?”

“Nobody!” shouted Christopher Harding, in the middle, bringing a louder cheer.

“So who denies that we have the right, the right—”

The cheering was growing so loud that Hodges had to stop, while Moses Gaw walked back and forth on the buckboard, like a bear in a cage, waving his hands for the men to pipe down.

Then Hodges shouted, “Who denies that we have the right to limit the number of Mexicans comin’ into our district to look for gold?”

More cheering and general shouting.

Hodges cried over the noise: “God put American gold in American ground so good Americans could dig it up.”

“It’s prophesied”—Moses Gaw held up a Bible—“in the good book.”

And from the booming shouts and gunshots that greeted Gaw’s gesture, I knew that his argument was good enough for most of the men of Broke Neck, even though Cletis whispered, “I guarantee there ain’t no such prophesy in my Bible.”

Hodges continued, “Therefore, I speak for all of us, from New England and Missouri and the good states of the South, when I say—”

Cletis whispered in my ear. “Here it comes—”

“—that from this day on, any foreign miner who wants to work a claim in Broke Neck will have to pay a tax of twenty dollars a month at the Abbott Express Office.”

The cheer was so loud it brought a chill up the back of my neck.

Micah Broadback leaned over to the Johnson brothers and said something that looked like, “Wish I thought of that.” He and the Johnsons conferred a bit more, then he put up his hands and shouted, “I concede. Let the Hodges slate have it by acclamation.”

Now came more celebratory gunshots and hats skimming into the air, then Hodges, with a grand air of noblesse oblige, accepted his election and invited Micah Broadback to join him, “for his good counsel and opinions.”

“Very smart,” said George Emery, standing next to me on his porch. “Bring your rivals into the fold.”

Hodges waited for quiet, then said, “I will run the council like a New England town meeting. So I’ll ask for a voice vote. Be it written by David Gaw, our secretary.”

“Can he write?” shouted one in the crowd.

Yes, spirits were still climbing, and jokes were flying.

“He can write and shoot,” said Hodges. “Be it written, all Mexicans, Chileans, Chinese, and other non-Americans will have to register and pay or get out of our district.” Hodges let another ovation subside, then he said, “I have it on good authority that every miner’s district in California will be levying a tax on foreign miners. That’s word from the assembly in San Jose. So let Broke Neck show the way.”

And the subsequent roar was punctuated by more gunfire and the beating of the big kettle drum.

They say that in 1848, right after the discovery of gold, California was a place of almost religious harmony. The horde had not yet arrived. There was gold enough for everyone. So men tolerated each other, overcame their prejudices, and devoted their energies to rewarding labor. But resentments had begun to simmer with the rising population, and they overflowed before the end of ’49.

I should not have been surprised in early 1850, then, that Samuel Hodges would seek to expand his power by playing on the fears of men for whom there was less and less to share with more and more strangers, many of whom looked, spoke, and dressed strangely, too. But I was not merely surprised. I was infuriated. Chinese had become my friends. Californios had threatened me only later to save my life. And what they wanted for themselves and their families was no more than what white men wanted for theirs.

“We don’t give a damn about showin’ the way,” shouted a miner. “We just want better claims for the white men. And free drinks!”

“Before the drinks,” answered Hodges, “the vote. All in favor of taxing foreigners, signify by saying, ‘Aye.’”

And hundreds of men roared out the word, as if this would solve all their problems in the California diggings.

Hodges nodded, “Any opposed?”

I could see beards shaking, heads turning, eyes shifting. A few Chileans, who had been mining and minding their own business, lowered their heads and discreetly moved off.

I was not by nature a man who separated himself from the crowd. But I was learning to speak out, and I could not stop myself. I called, “Before the vote, a question.”

Cletis whispered, “Watch it, Harvard.”

I asked, “What do you plan to do with the money this tax brings in?”

“You serve your New England upbringing well,” said Hodges. “Your Harvard professors would be proud of your questioning nature. So would your mother.”

This brought a big laugh. Mama’s boys were a favorite target of the self-styled toughs who strode around any mining camp.

Cletis whispered, “You got ’em laughin’. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

But once entered upon a thing, I did not know how to back away. So I kept talking, perhaps to my detriment: “You have no right to drive a man off his claim because you don’t like the color of his skin.”

“The miners of Broke Neck have given me that right,” shouted Hodges.

Cletis said it again. “Time to leave.”

But everyone was watching. I could not back down. I said, “That’s money they worked hard for, just like every man here has worked hard.”

“The money will be shared in the district, until the government in San Jose asks for it. We’ll use it to dig trenches to keep water flowing to the places where men need it.”

“Who will control this water?” I heard my voice echo.

“The laws are clear,” said Tom Lyons from the edge of the crowd.

“He who has the water controls it,” said Hodges. “The council will mediate disputes.”

I was growing bolder. “So you set yourself up on the Miwok, above all our claims, then get control of the government, just to control the water?”

Moses Gaw hopped down from the buckboard. “If you don’t like it, you should’ve stood for the council yourself.”

The miners parted before him as he strode into the street and stopped where all could see him. Hodges had surrounded himself with henchmen: Moses Gaw, burly bully from Joplin, Missouri, in front of me, Sloate to my left, Christopher Harding to my right, others all about. I hoped that no one noticed my kneecap shaking.

Moses Gaw told me, “I don’t like what you’re sayin’, mister.”

“Then be like me,” said Cletis from our perch. “Don’t listen.”

A few men got a laugh from that.

“If the California assembly says the tax is legal, it’s legal,” proclaimed Hodges.

“So wait for them to say it,” I answered. “It’s too big a law for one district.”

“These men voted us the power to back the laws up”—Moses Gaw unfurled the bullwhip—“with force, if need be.”

I had heard that he could use his whip the way I used a pen. He could snatch a fly from the tail of an ox at twenty paces or put out a man’s cigar with the flick of a wrist. And before I could say another word, the whip snapped, wrapped around the pistol in my belt, and pulled it clear out. In another instant, it took the hat off my head.

I came down from the porch, tried to grab my pistol, but the whip snatched it away.

“We’re whippin’, not shootin’,” said Gaw, “so keep your hands off that gun.” And he snapped again.

I saw the tip of the whip, heard it, then felt my cheek open and the blood spill down.

At the same moment, Cletis was moving quick and certain toward his saddle and the blunderbuss that could end any argument.

But every other face was turned to me, some twisted with derisive laughter at another Silk Stocking meeting a real man, others contorted in shock or awe at the speed and skill of the whip master, and at least one gratified that Moses Gaw knew just the man to whip. Yes, Hodges was letting it all play out as if there was a lesson here for everyone.

The next snap of the whip went around my ankle and yanked my leg, so that I flew off my feet and hit the ground. When I banged my head, I wished I had my hat.

Gaw yelled, “That’s what we do to Chink lovers!”

I rolled over and tried to see where Cletis and his old gun were. But Deering Soate was holding a pistol to Cletis’s head. I was on my own.

Moses Gaw was hauling on the whip, dragging me toward him “Come on, Mr. Boston Writer, come and take the lickin’ you deserve for insultin’ our American democracy.”

The men were egging him on, cheering his strength and anger. This was now nothing but great fun and good entertainment at my expense.

But if Moses Gaw thought that calling me a writer would appeal to my sense of myself as a gentleman, he was mistaken. I rolled over and grabbed a handful of dirt, rolled again, and flung it at his face.

Gaw bellowed and brought his hands to his eyes, but he never let go of the whip.

I tried to stand, and he yanked the whip again, slamming me onto my back.

“Now you’ve bought a real beatin’.” Gaw strode toward me to deliver something—a bare knuckles or a boot—while the men closed around him.

Then, as if it had come from the sky, a fist flew from the crowd, a flash-pan left that drove into Gaw’s big, broad belly and stopped him in mid-stride. He doubled up around the fist, and looked toward the puncher, just as a right hand shot from shoulder-level into Gaw’s face. His nose crunched. He landed on his ass in the middle of the street, looked up dumbly, and a boot took him square in the jaw.

Michael Flynn had come back, and just in time. He spun around, looking into the eyes of every miner, and shouted, “If anybody attacks one of me pardners, he attacks me. Fightin’ with Jamie Spencer means fightin’ with me. Do you understand?”

I got to my feet, wiped the warm blood from my cheek, and grabbed for my pistol and hat.

Flynn shouted it again, with a kind of crazy Irish anger that he could summon when he needed it. “Maybe you sons of bitches didn’t hear me. I said, ‘Do ye’s all understand?’ ’Cause I ain’t askin’ another time.”

Deering Sloate turned his pistol onto Flynn.

But I heard George Emery’s voice, “Don’t you be thinkin’ of shootin’ any of my friends, there, bub. You pull that trigger, I’ll let fly, and it’ll be too damn bad for whoever gets hurt.” Emery stood in the doorway of his store, with his fowling piece at his hip. The miners downwind of him immediately gave way, making a wide berth for the spray of ball and buck that was sure to follow if Emery kept his word.

Hodges made a slight motion of his hand, and Sloate lowered the gun.

“That’s better,” said Emery, and he shouted, “You need to get control of your men, there, Mr. Samuel Hodges.”

Moses Gaw by now had rolled onto all fours, spit blood, and reached for his whip.

Flynn snatched it away and threw it at my feet. “Go ahead, Jamie. Use it on him.”

I wiped the blood from my face, picked up the whip, and—when David Gaw made a move, I snapped it. I was shocked by the power I felt at the end of my arm.

David Gaw stopped where he was. “Best put that down. Or it’ll go awful bad.”

Moses Gaw looked up. “You’re bound for trouble, mister. Right now.”

And here was the crucial moment. In half a second, we could all be spraying lead and leather and blood, but—

As always, Flynn knew when to throw water on rising flames. “Nobody’s bound for trouble, Mr. Whip Man, so long as you stay calm. If you do, I’ll give you first crack.”

“First crack at what?” said Hodges, as if he was ready to leap down and exact the revenge he had been planning on Flynn since the Arbella Club.

“First crack,” Flynn paused like an actor, then shouted, “at the women!”

In that transcendent moment, it was as if a second sun had burst though the blue of the cloudless California sky.

Women? Women? The word went flying faster than the tip of the whip, repeated a hundred times, two hundred, all in an instant. Women? Women! WOMEN!

Then we heard wild, high-pitched shouts from the west, and a female voice screamed, “Howdy, boys! Howdy! Howdy!”

A covered wagon came pushing up the road into the mob of men. A gang of painted women was waving from behind Pompey, who rode shotgun for Big John Beam. Yes, Big Beam, the two-legged San Francisco rat, was riding to the rescue, whipping the horses, shouting and yahooing in a voice loud enough to call the grizzlies down from the hills.

And among the Broke Neck mob erupted a riot of running, stumbling, rushing, pushing, until Michael Flynn leaped onto the wagon beside Hodges, and fired three times into the air. “You’ll all get your turn, boys. We brung some fine ladies, and—”

A miner shouted, “I can smell ’em!”

Another shouted, “Smell ’em? I can taste ’em!”

Another one shouted, “I can’t taste ’em, but my mouth’s waterin’!”

Concerns about democracy, the taxing of foreigners, and the revenge that I now wanted upon Moses Gaw, which was surely as strong as what he wanted upon Michael Flynn—all of that faded in the cloud of perfume and high-pitched female laughter.

*   *   *

IT IS FAIR TO say that February 10, 1850, brought a greater transfer of wealth in Broke Neck than any day before or since (including the best days of ’48, when the earth itself rendered riches to any man who could bend at the waist).

Samuel Hodges proclaimed that the Miner’s Council would deliver to every man another free drink while they waited for Big Beam’s Traveling Circus of Earthly Delights to stake its tents and position its wagons on the south side of the road, right next to Grouchy Pete’s. Then he sent the Gaw brothers home to their wives, no doubt because they had to appear as virtuous men. He also sent George Beal to see to my face, which would not stop bleeding.

Doc Beal took me to the rear of Emery’s store, gave my cheek a look, and said, “Stitches.” He then pinched the skin together and challenged my manhood with a curved surgeon’s needle and thread, four times, painfully but neatly.

And in a reversal of a long-ago scene aboard the William Winter, Flynn appeared with a flask. “You have an awful habit of speakin’ your mind, James Spencer. It’ll get you into trouble. Ain’t that right, Doc?”

“I’m glad he did,” said the young doctor. “Honest words take root.”

Flynn offered me the flask. “Ain’t right, drivin’ out foreigners.”

I took a drink and said I was grateful for his help.

“Not at all, not at all.” He offered us peppermints. “Thank me when I get you laid.”

Doc Beal said, “These girls you’ve brought, are they clean?”

“They all had baths in San Francisco,” said Flynn. “I washed Roberta meself.”

“That’s not what I’m asking,” said the doctor.

“Well, come to think of it, I got a bit of an itch, like.”

“I don’t want a girl,” I said, “whether she itches or not.”

“Yes, you do, Jamie.” Flynn caught Doc Beal’s eye. “Don’t he, Doc?”

“He’s twenty-five. He wants something.” The doctor raised an eyebrow, as if to ask if what I wanted was not a woman. “Be careful, both of you, or you’ll both end up with the itch.”

“Ah, but it’ll go away,” said Flynn. “Always does.”

“If it doesn’t,” said Doc Beal, “come see me. I’ll give you the mercury treatment.”

“Shove a big needle up me pecker and shoot me full of quicksilver?” Flynn put his hands over his crotch. “Not on your life.”

“That’s not how it works. But it’s not my life I’m worried about,” said the doctor. “You both should be worried to start a war with the Triple MW. Hodges has changed.”

“He seems like more of the same to me,” said Flynn.

“No,” said the doctor. “More dangerous.”

“Love conquers danger,” answered Flynn. “That’s what I told Big Beam. I said, ‘Too much love in San Francisco. Women arrivin’ every day, some a lot better lookin’ than what we’re offerin’ the stiff peckers of Portsmouth Square. So let’s head for the hills. Bring some love to lonely miners.’”

I asked, “Are they the girls you had on the ship?”

“And a few more. You remember Señor Vargas? We stopped at his ranchero. He offered two girls, indentures up from Mexico.”

“You mean, slaves?” I asked. “Sex slaves?”

The doctor shook his head, as if he did not want to hear more, as if it disgusted him, as if he had seen too much in every direction that disgusted him. He packed his instruments into his leather case and said, “We’ll cut those stitches out in a week. I’ll come to your claim, just so long as that old man with the blunderbuss doesn’t shoot me.”

“Once he gets his poke,” said Flynn, “he’ll be downright docile.”

I said, “Cletis? He’s in line for a poke?”

“He damn sure is.” Flynn took me by the elbow. “And you need one yourself.”

*   *   *

FLYNN LED ME OUT onto the porch of Emery’s Emporium.

Though the days were getting longer, the lanterns were already ablaze because when dark came to those foothills, it came quickly. George Emery was leaning against a post, looking across the street at a line of miners outside the largest of the new-pitched tents.

Flynn said, “You been over there, Georgie boy? Considerin’ all you done for this town, I could get you one on the house.”

“My wife would kill me. And don’t call me Georgie.”

Flynn, always impossible to insult, tipped his hat. “Well, you don’t mind if I give Jamie a tour of the titties and bums, do you?” And he led me toward the tent.

I stopped in the middle of the street and said, “I’m not sure about this.”

I know how naïve I sounded. But my experience with women was as limited as my experience with life had been when I boarded the William Winter. I had gone far toward expanding the latter. I wanted to expand the former. But—

“Come on, lad,” Flynn whispered, “Sally Five-Fingers won’t make you a man, nor teach you how to love a woman. And there’s a long line of fellers who seen you take a beatin’ already today. If you don’t go into one of them tents with a bulge in your breeches and come out pantin’ from the pokin’, they’ll call you a nancy-boy for sure.”

“But—”

“I have someone special for you.” And he told me to wait. Then he jumped to the head of the line, ignoring the grousing miners. In the tent, Big Beam had set up a table on which were scales, a loaded fowling piece, and hourglass timers. After a few words, Flynn gestured for me to follow.

And I went. I wanted it as much as any man in Broke Neck. And I decided that what Janiva did not know would not hurt her.

“You got fifteen minutes,” said Flynn.

Then he led me through the back flap and down a line of six smaller tents lit by lanterns hung from poles. Beneath one of them stood Pompey, arms folded like a harem guard. All around him rose the sounds of male satisfaction, of female urging, of the grunting of every man desperate to make the most of his time before the sand in his glass ran out.

I said to Pompey, “I see you found something other than cooking.”

“Oh, we cookin’, Mr. Spencer. And the food be very tasty.”

Flynn led me to the last tent and shoved me through the flap.

I expected to see a woman from the ship, like Roberta or Sheila, wrapped in crusty sheets or stained camisole. Instead a small, birdlike girl of dusky complexion sat, head down, on the edge of the cot. Her eyes darted up to me, glistened briefly in the dim light, then turned down. She wore a clean, plain dress, a black ribbon around her neck, and a red ribbon in her hair, which was wet and combed back, as if someone has spruced her up a few moments before I entered.

I did not smell that feral, female aroma that I remembered from the other whores. If I smelled anything, it was fear. I said, “Good evening.”

She kept her eyes on her hands in her lap.

Outside, Pompey shouted, “Hey, Number Five. Fifteen minutes up.”

In the adjoining tent, a man began to pound harder, the thump of copulation causing our canvas walls to vibrate as if the breeze had just stiffened.

Pompey repeated, “Time’s up!”

“But so am I!” said the man in Number Five, then he whispered, “Damned embarrassin’ to be explainin’ such things to a nigger.”

“If you ain’t out in sixteen seconds,” said Pompey, “you’ll pay another ounce.”

I heard the man finish, stumble, jump, bump, and fall out of the tent next to ours.

I said to the girl, “He’s very clumsy.”

She nodded but did not look up.

I sat beside her on her pallet and asked her name.

She said, “It does not matter.”

“You are very young.”

“I am sixteen, señor.” Her accent was thick with the music of Old Mexico. “Please do not hurt me.”

I took her hand. I knew what I wanted to do. I was simply mustering the courage to do it. I asked, “Have other men hurt you?”

And she stopped me with this. “There have not been other men.”

I was shocked. I said, “I am the first to—”

She took her hand away and folded it on her lap. “This is my new job.”

“And before?”

“I work at the Vargas hacienda, washing and cooking. Then Señor Vargas tell me to go with Beam and the Irish man who talk so much. El Patrón say times are hard. He need to make more money. So he sell me and—”

“El Patrón? With the broken leg?”

“His son. Back from the gold fields with nothing to show. Back now to run what is left of their ranchero. The old señor is dying.”

Any lust I felt for her, in my head or my loins, drained quickly away. She did not want to be here, not for desire or commerce. I leaned over and kissed her cheek. She neither rejected nor invited. But when she turned her face, so that a shaft of light fell upon her from the lantern outside, I recognized her.

This was the girl who had cared for me in my sickness at Sutter’s Fort. Whenever Rodrigo could not come, she had brought me beef broth and clean water. She had been gentle and kind. I took her hand and reminded her and thanked her for taking mercy on a sick man.

Then Pompey shouted through the canvas flap.

My time was up. I said good-bye.

Maria thanked me for my kindness.

I felt better hearing those words than if I had spent half the night spending myself inside her. I felt better for me … but worried for her.

*   *   *

OUTSIDE, I MADE SURE to walk with a bit of a strut, so that Flynn would sense a change in me.

“How you feelin’?” he asked.

“Fine, just fine.”

“The quiet type, eh? How was she?”

“A nice girl.”

He gave me a long look, then said, “I’ll be damned, Jamie, but it’s the quiet ones who do the best. You could go far with the ladies. But for now, let’s go home.”

“Home?”

“Back to the claim.”

This puzzled me. I thought he had found his life’s work in whoredom.

He said, “I woke up the mornin’ after you left and thought, damn me, but Jamie’s right. I come to here to find a river of gold, not little trickles of it dribblin’ from the dicks of randy miners. So I’m splittin’ with Beam. Takin’ me share, gettin’ back to manly work.”

There was nothing to say to that, so we walked some in silence. Then I stopped.

“What?” said Flynn. “Do you want to go back? Get another poke already?”

“What would you think of me buying that girl I was just with.”

And Flynn laughed in my face. A burst of whiskey breath and bacon, loud and maniacally amused. “By Jesus, you’re in love!” And he started walking.

I followed on, saying, “Not in love. But—”

“You spend fifteen minutes in a little Mexican gal—or was it fifteen seconds?—and you think—”

“She’s not made for this.”

“She got a pussy, ain’t she? Besides, the old Patrón was worried that his grandson, Rodrigo, was fallin’ in love with a girl from a lower class, so they sold her to us.”

“For how much?”

Flynn led me to a buckboard beside Beam’s covered wagon. He flung back the canvas, revealing a load of supplies—coffee, flour, bacon, brandy, beans, and four hogsheads of gunpowder. “Beam and me, we bought up a lot of supplies, agreed to divvy ’em when we split. El Patrón offered us the girl if we’d barter. He didn’t need food, but he said he could use some gunpowder. So he took nine hogsheads. We kept the rest.”

“Why gunpowder?”

“He’s sellin’ it to miners. Good for blastin’ holes in hard rock. Never know but we might need it ourselves. And with Emery’s prices, it’s for damn sure we can use the rest of the supplies, too.”

February 11, 1850
Chinese Eggs and Chinese Gold

In the morning, I stepped out of the cabin and saw something I had never seen in six months in California: a smile on the face of Wei Chin. He was brewing tea at our campfire, and two large sacks were curled at his feet.

He stood and offered a deep bow. Then the Chinese across the river stood as one from their tasks and raised their hands over their heads and clapped, causing the birds to flutter up from the bushes on the bank above them. Uncle Bao, Friendly Liu, Ng-goh, Little Ng, and Mei-Ling sent their joy echoing up the valley and down.

“They know your words in the town yesterday,” said Chin. “They thank you.”

I did not say that if I’d had it to do again, I might have held my peace.

The noise brought Flynn and Cletis stumbling out, and I noticed Flynn’s eyes brighten. Then he turned and went back into the cabin.

Mei-Ling was crossing the river, climbing for the first time toward Big Skull Rock. She carried a small lacquered box before her with great ceremony until she stopped directly in front of me. She handed the box to her brother. Then she withdrew a tin of salve from her sleeve and, with a delicate gesture, daubed some on my face, which had swelled so that my left eye was all but closed.

I admit that I was filled with warmth and desire both. Had she been the girl in the tent, I would not have held back out of conscience, guilt, or fear of disease. But her brother was watching, and Michael Flynn was returning with a bag of peppermints, which he offered her, saying, “Here you go, darlin’. All the way from San Francisco.”

Cletis laughed. “Now we got two fellers wantin’ the same pretty Chinese girl.”

She did not know what we were saying, but she accepted the candy, which she handed to her brother. Then she took the box and held it forward.

Chin translated as she spoke: “My sister say she make for special times. Maodan.”

Flynn looked into the box and said, “Eggs! Hard boiled?”

“Pickled special egg,” said Chin. “Maodan.”

Flynn reached for one and Mei-Ling slapped his hand.

“First one go for man who speak for us,” said Chin.

Mei-Ling now held the box to me. “Maodan. Good.” She nodded and made a gesture as if to have me take an egg.

I lifted one from the box, looked at Chin, who gestured for his sister to help me. She took the egg and, with a dainty touch, removed its top. I expected to see white, but instead, I saw a beak, and bulbous, blackened eyes, and the little pea-sized brain of a cooked embryo.

Flynn said, “Now that’s what I call hard boiled.”

“Feathered egg,” said Chin. “Great delicacy.”

My face must have turned gray at the prospect of eating it.

Cletis whispered, “You turn down their fancy food, and all the good you done speakin’ up for them won’t mean a damn thing. You’ll never get to touch them little titties.”

Chin said to Cletis, “That never happen.”

“Certainly not by Harvard,” said Flynn.

Chin aimed a dagger-eye at Flynn, too.

But Mei-Ling continued to smile and nodded for me to eat.

So I took the egg, then she raised her finger to stop me. I thought I had been saved from my fate. But no. She took a pinch of salt from the box, then a pinch of pepper, then a dash of something red from a bottle. Then she made a drinking motion.

“Down the hatch, Jamie,” said Flynn.

I raised the egg in a toast to the Chinese below. Then I brought it to my lips. If I could have held my nose, I would have. But I closed my eyes, and down it went. I refused to gag. Even when the feathers tickled the back of my throat and the beak scratched the roof of my mouth. I concentrated on the salt and pepper masking the taste of cartilage, bone, and cooked organs. I swallowed, breathed hard, held it down, and was done.

Mei-Ling smiled and nodded. Good, no?

I took another deep breath and said, “Delicious.”

Cletis grinned. “Surest way to a man’s heart is through his belly.”

“Delicious,” said Chin. “And good for man who spend time in fuck tent.”

Flynn said, “You mean eatin’ them little cooked chicks’ll make you stiff?”

Chin nodded.

“In that case.” Flynn grabbed the other egg and sucked it down, much to my relief and his distress.

Mei-Ling did not stay. At a look from her brother, she bowed her head and scurried back down the bank.

Wei Chin picked up the two sacks and said, “Inside? We talk? We talk inside?”

So into the cabin we went. I took a swallow of tea to wash out my mouth. Flynn threw back a shot of whiskey.

Chin dropped the sacks onto the table. “I pay you to watch this.”

“What is it?” asked Cletis.

“From the way it thumps,” said Flynn, “I think it’s gold.”

“Our gold,” said Chin. “Chinee gold from piles white men leave. Sixty pound in two bag. You keep safe. Bury with yours, under big rock.”

“How do you know where we bury our gold?” asked Cletis.

“I look. I think. And I think, if Miner Council come, they maybe try take our gold. Like they do to Frenchmens at Mormon Bar. If they give us five minutes to go, how we save our gold?”

“By payin’ whatever the tax is,” said Cletis.

“No pay. No pay tax. No pay ’less you pay,” answered Chin. “Or him.” Chin jerked a thumb toward Flynn. “He foreign, too.”

“Got a point there.” Flynn burped. “Damn feathers.” He tapped his chest to coax another burp, then said, “If we bury their gold, we charge five percent.”

“Five percent? You rob me,” said Chin.

Cletis shook his head, “Don’t matter. We ain’t doin’ it. I don’t want any more trouble than what you Chinee boys brought on us yesterday. If not for them gals comin’ in, we’d have been in a fight for fair. Nope. This is dangerous damn business. So we all need to agree. We need to be anonymous.”

“Unanimous,” I said.

“That too.” Cletis grabbed his shovel and headed for the door. “So the answer is no. I ain’t stickin’ my neck out again. I ain’t buryin’ Chinese gold.”

Chin did not wait for us to say more. He threw the sacks over his shoulder and stalked back down the bank.

Flynn said, “I knew they was sittin’ on somethin’ rich.”

“We should protect his gold,” I said. “Put it with ours under Big Skull Rock.”

“And if somethin’ should happen,” said Flynn, “like the Chinks get driven out so fast that they can’t come get it, well, we’d just have to hold it, and invest it, and—”

“That’s not why we’d hold it.”

“Why then?”

“It’s the right thing to do. If you don’t know that, why did you came back?”

“I came back for gold, Jamie. I came back for a river of gold flowin’ through this promised land of California. I came back for gold and I mean to get it, however I can.”

In the days that followed, the passions of the men dissipated between the legs of Big Beam’s women. Moreover, the mining was good, the Chinese were docile, and Hodges seemed to have delayed his plan to expel foreigners. But what were the men of the Triple MW up to? James Spencer decided to find out.

Cletis counseled against it, but Spencer considered this his job. And he had four stitches for Doc Beal to remove. So he made sure that his pistol had fresh loads, sealed with clean grease. He told Flynn to stay behind, so as not to provoke Hodges by his presence. And he emptied his bladder, so as to be certain that he would not piss himself from fear.

A few hours later, he returned and sat to write:

The Mother Lode runs two hundred and fifty miles, north to south, in a wide band that begins as the ground rises from the Sacramento valley and butts at last against the granite wall of the Sierra. There is ample room for men to come and go and never see each other once they have separated.

Thus, I had little expectation of encountering the Sagamores again, but I have the pleasure of reporting that I was wrong. They have united with others and created the Massachusetts and Missouri Mining and Water Company, establishing a claim comprised of many contiguous claims on the upper Miwok, where the river turns north and cuts between two hills formerly covered in tall pines.

In my capacity as Yr. Ob’t Correspondent, I took the road that comes up from Broke Neck, runs past our claim, then carries across a long ridge, rising gradually, to a promontory from which you may look down on the entire Triple MW operation.

I stopped there to take it in: three cabins and a longhouse; fresh stumps stubbling the landscape; new logs piled in pyramids atop the hills; muleskinners driving skids of logs along the bank; men in a saw pit cutting logs into boards; others digging a ditch beside the river or collecting dirt in wheelbarrows and delivering it to a sluice beside a flutter wheel; half a dozen women, as rock-hard as their men, washing clothes, stirring pots, sweeping dirt out of the cabins.

Then I heard a ragged volley of pistols, four or five going off nearly at once. My eyes traced the rising plumes of white smoke to a target range where Deering Sloate, formerly of Dorchester, was giving pistol lessons to a handful of men. On the voyage, he had promised, “Every man a marksman.” Perhaps by this, he sought to make good.

Then Christopher Harding startled me with his appearance from the nearby brush. He said that he had been watching me up the road, as it was his task to guard this approach to the camp. He is an old friend and a true gentleman, despite the bristle of weapons protruding from his belt, and he bid me follow him.

As we descended, men stopped in their labor to give me a greeting or glance. Some appeared curious. Others glared with open hostility. But I presented a cordial expression, despite the four stitches under my right eye, which gave me a fiercer look than the readers of Boston might remember.

Stopping first at the tent of Doctor George Beal, I sat while he quickly and painlessly removed the stitches, displaying all the skill we would expect from a graduate from Harvard’s Medical Annex.

Then Samuel Hodges received me in the biggest cabin. He has seen the inside of many a Boston boardroom and knows how to present himself. So he was sitting behind a table, with a roaring fire on the stone hearth and an American flag hanging over the mantel. But I did not approach him with the awe that he once inspired. Experience in this country has changed us both.

He complimented my courage for riding into a camp where I have more than one antagonist.

I said I did not count Doc Beal in that number and was thankful for his ministrations after my altercation with Moses Gaw, the Missouran now allied with Hodges.

That alliance, announced Hodges, was soon to be affirmed, in that he was betrothed to Moses Gaw’s daughter. Yes, you disappointed ladies of Boston, Samuel Hodges intends to take a California wife, a young but plain woman named Hannah Gaw, who will presumably mother his two daughters when Hodges sends for them at last.

He explained that his alliance with the Missourans had strengthened all of them. “And joining with a woman in holy matrimony strengthens any man. That is why we have partnered with family men. They are already strong, reliable, and responsible and seek to settle the land, not merely exploit it.”

Was that why they were cutting so many trees, stacking logs, sawing lumber, gathering rocks, piling dirt, and digging a long ditch beside the river, I asked.

“We plan to divert the Miwok and control it,” he said. “As the Lord has given us dominion over the birds and the beasts, he wishes us to have dominion over the land and the flow of the rivers.”

Hodges explained that soon, they would dam half the river and run the rest through a wooden flume controlled with a sluice gate. And for what purpose, this massive effort of engineering and labor? Why, for gold, of course. To expose the riverbed for mining, to generate a strong, continuous flow to run pumps that would keep the bed dry, and to drive flutter wheels for washing the gravel. The dam would also create an upstream pond from which to sell water to the dry diggings at Rainbow Gulch. It was a measure of how seriously they took this work that they were doing it in March, when the river was far more difficult to control than in August.

I suggested that all this might cause resentment downstream.

Hodges said, “The law favors us. I won’t let downstreamers stand in the way of progress. The man who builds a textile mill cannot bow to the woman who runs a loom in her parlor. The corporation that lays iron rails cannot bow to the whims of he who makes wagon wheels. I’ve told you before, we are remaking the earth here, not just digging for gold.”

I asked if he was also hoping to remake our society with his promise to implement a foreign miner’s tax.

He gave a sage nod as if to signal how much thought he had given to this matter. “We will be informing the foreigners soon, giving them the chance to leave and avoid paying. But we will implement the tax only when we receive word of its official passage from the assembly in San Jose.”

Moses Gaw had joined us by now and said, “In the long run, the law will benefit us. If it doesn’t, we’ll change it.”

Hodges added, “Those who do not pay will be treated like the French at Mormon Bar.”

“America for Americans. That’s our motto,” said Moses Gaw.

Hodges gave another nod, as if to show his approval of such comments, even if he found them to be no more than a film on the surface of his own deep lake of thought. He said, “Tell them in Boston that men who have known disappointment, defeat, and despair have rallied around us and our vision.”

My response to my old mentor was that he had become a dangerous man. If this discomfits any who knew and loved him in Boston, I am sorry. But his answer was characteristic of the man I now knew. He told me that if I was not prepared to be dangerous, I should go back to Boston, “where you can believe what you want at ease, because your beliefs will never be tested.”

Yr. Ob’t Correspondent

The Argonaut

March 1, 1849
Before the Mail

I allowed my pardners to read my dispatch when we broke off work at midday. Our lunch was beans and coffee and the prose of James Spencer, which I flatter myself had a kind of flow and rhythm not unlike the wheel turning in the river.

But nothing that Flynn or Cletis read made them happy.

Cletis said, “They’re plannin’ to take our water.”

“Can’t take it all,” I said. “The whole district will rebel.”

“If they clear out the Chinks and Greasers at the same time as they’re takin’ the water, it might be enough to keep the boys happy.”

“Oldest trick in the book, that,” added Flynn. “Offer a little with one hand while takin’ a lot with the other.”

“Well, boys, I been thinkin’”—Cletis stood—“gold veins go dry as fast as youth goes by, and our color’s gettin’ thin. May be time to pull up stakes.”

“Pull up stakes?” said Flynn. “On a payin’ claim?”

Cletis spat and went down the bank. “Can’t stay here forever.”

Flynn and I sat in the midday sun and watched the wheel, thumping and turning, thumping and turning, as Cletis took to shoveling.

Flynn said, “I think the old boy’s losin’ his nerve.”

I did not answer, perhaps because I was beginning to wonder if pulling up stakes might not be the best course. Was water really worth a fight? Was the dwindling supply of gold? Were the Chinese, who would have to learn to fend for themselves?

Flynn must have sensed my thoughts. He was good at reading people. He said, “You know, Jamie, Hodges is right.”

“About what?”

“About gettin’ dangerous, or goin’ home.”

Flynn was right, too. I had come to write about this world, but I could not stand aside while others struggled to create a society. Still, I was no fool.

I said, “No matter how dangerous we are, Hodges has twenty men or more. Those are bad odds.”

“Jamie, me lad, odds don’t matter to me one damn bit.” Flynn stood and brushed the dust from the back of his breeches. “If they did, I’d be back in Galway, hoein’ spuds. But all me life, I had men tellin’ me I couldn’t do this or couldn’t say that and best keep me place, no matter who said what to me. It’s why I come to California. Any man can get a piece if luck favors him here, no matter where he come from and no matter how many stripes he has on his back. And I won’t let any one man take that away from me … or any twenty.”

“So if Hodges takes the water, you’ll fight?”

“If I have to. But I been learnin’ from you, Jamie. You always think before you fight. It’s a fine trait. So”—Flynn tapped his head—“I been doin’ my share of thinkin’.”

“Thinking can be dangerous, too,” I said.

“Especially if you do it right.” Flynn disappeared behind the cabin. A few minutes later, he was back, leading our two horses. “Let’s go for a ramble.”

*   *   *

WE HEADED ACROSS THE roadless hills, traveling south by southwest, studying the terrain, marking the places where the slope would be strong and give weight to water, noting down the places where we would need a wheel, perhaps, to move it along, or a wooden sluice to guide it all the way to Rainbow Gulch.

About halfway there, Flynn said, “I wish we’d brought Chin. He might see things we don’t.”

“He’d see how hard it is to dig a trench six miles.”

“That’s for fuckin’ sure,” said Flynn, “but if we make deals in Rainbow Gulch and get them boys water before Hodges can, we’ll have standin’ amongst them when Hodges steals our flow.”

From what I had seen, miners sided with the men who made it easy for them to mine. And if the Triple MW sluice reached Rainbow Gulch a few weeks after ours, with a better flow at a better price per miner’s inch (the measure of water hereabouts), the men of Rainbow Gulch would shift their allegiance to Hodges as easily as they would shift their attention from an old hag to a young beauty. But like two quixotic knights we rode on, seeking salvation in sharp thinking and square dealing with men whose only goal was to wash dirt.

At length, we came to the little graveyard where Hiram Wilson would sleep until the Second Coming. We stopped and looked down on Rainbow Gulch, bathed now in the high, hopeful spring sunshine. Hundreds of miners worked the claims at the bottom and along the gulch. But they would not be working for long, for the water was already drying up.

Some were anticipating this. Half a dozen wagons were rolling west out of the ravine. And over on the plateau on the south side of the gulch, two men were busy with shovels, but they were not mining. They were planting. It looked as if they were planting grapevines.

Flynn said, “Do you reckon they got a Miner’s Council here?”

“We can ask Scrawny Selwin, if he isn’t dead yet.” I spurred my horse, but Flynn remained, staring out across the ravine. I stopped and asked him what he was doing.

He said, “Doin’ like Chin. Lookin’. Thinkin’. Wonderin’.”

“Wondering what?”

“Why there’s so much gold here, so far from any runnin’ river. Where did it come from? Another river, maybe? A river that dried up?”

“We could ask Chin, if he wasn’t still angry that we wouldn’t bury the Chinese gold with our own.”

“If that’s all it takes for him to give us that sharp Chinese eye, then we should hold his gold for nothin’.”

“And give it back to him when he asks.”

“My only thought,” said Flynn. “Bury it. Bury it deep. Bury it safe. Just like our own.”