FIVE

Friday Morning

“SO … DID THEY BURY the Chinese gold?” Evangeline dipped her spoon into the tiny jar of strawberry jam and spread it on her croissant. “Or did Manion show us his section of the journal just to prove that they didn’t bury it, so we should stop bothering him?”

“Not sure.” Peter sipped his coffee. “But I think he likes it when you bother him.”

“Please.” She took a bite of croissant.

“I think you like it when he bothers you.”

“Right now, you’re the one bothering me.”

They were eating breakfast by their window. They liked the view of Nob Hill. And she liked to luxuriate over room service in a hotel bathrobe, with wet hair wrapped in a plush towel. He liked his robe, too. He also liked looking at her in terrycloth.

He held up a piece of bacon. “Ever wonder why they call these rashers?”

“Focus, Peter. The journal. The gold. The big rock.”

“Big Skull Rock?”

“Do you think you can find it?”

“I found it. Yesterday.”

“You found it? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Yesterday, I didn’t know the Chinese wanted to bury their gold under it.”

They had both stayed awake to read. Neither of them could sleep. Not surprising after a bad night in the back of Wonton Willie’s limo or another cryptic phone call. Evangeline drifted off around two. Peter kept reading till the end.

Evangeline popped the last of the croissant into her mouth. “Two bags of Chinese gold, each weighing thirty pounds. What would a bag be worth in today’s dollars?”

“Precious metals are measured in troy ounces. Twelve troy ounces to a pound, almost half a million a bag at thirteen hundred an ounce.”

“Nice haul,” she said. “But enough?”

“For what?” He dipped the bacon into his fried egg.

“For all this trouble.” She poured more coffee. “For the Spencers to get all twisted over … for your son to drag you out here over … for Chinese gangsters to start whacking each other over.”

“Have your ears stopped ringing from the gunshots?” asked Peter.

“I have tinnitus. I hear hissing, not ringing.”

“Too many rock clubs in your twenties.”

“I ran a flower shop, remember? I was dreaming of a nice, quiet life.”

“Boring.” He finished his egg, took a sip of coffee.

“Your lifestyle was not what I signed up for.” She unwrapped the towel. Her hair dropped down, wet and stringy. She saw his look and said, “I know what you’re thinking.”

“What?”

“Gray hairs. You see gray hairs up under the blond.”

“Even gray hairs look good on you.”

“You’d better say that. You gave me most of them.”

“You know … this is what couples do best.”

“Give each other gray hairs?”

“Know what they’re thinking across the breakfast table.”

She finished her coffee. “So what am I thinking now?”

“I should shave. Male-model stubble looks lousy on me.”

“Wrong.” She stood and toweled her hair. “I’m thinking you need to get this Wonton Willie off our backs, because I don’t want any more gray hairs.”

He put an arm around her waist.

She allowed the arm, but she knew just how to stand to tell him she wasn’t interested in anything but conversation.

And he knew the signals: don’t push. He said, “It looks like we’re back in it.”

“So, focus. What’s your plan?”

“Have another chat with my son.”

“LJ has become a very evasive young man.”

“He didn’t pick up when I called him last night. He just texted, ‘Stay the course.’”

“We need to know the course before we can stay it.”

“We start by visiting the California Historical Society.”

“Why? You think they have answers?” She finished toweling.

“We need a baseline. Who was looking at the journal transcription? How often was it requested? That kind of thing.” Peter put his face against her robe and inhaled.

She let him enjoy the moment. She enjoyed it herself … for a moment.

But he knew enough to keep talking business, no matter how good she smelled after a shower. “The reading history of the transcription can tell us a lot.”

“Not us. You.” She slipped out of his grasp.

“Are you quitting?” He sat back, sensing that the moment was slipping away, too. “It’s all right if you’re quitting. It’s dangerous. And I hate giving you gray hairs.”

“No matter how many times we get into these things, I never quit on you, do I? And I wouldn’t quit on LJ. But I’m not letting some Chinese thug stop my work out here.”

“What work could be more important than finding Spencer’s journal, and Flynn’s lost river of gold, and the bags of Chinese gold? In no particular order?”

“A helicopter ride with Manion Sturgis.”

“Sturgis? In a helicopter? What the—”

“I brokered a meeting between Manion and his brother in Napa.” She headed for the bathroom. “Relax, Peter. It’s research. The brother makes Cabernets. My editor told me to write about Cabernets. So I’ll take the ferry to Alcatraz, then—”

“Alcatraz?”

“The National Park Service lets Manion land there. Pretty cool.”

“Yeah. Cool as hell.” He watched her go padding off to the bathroom. No chance now that they’d finish breakfast in one of the single beds. He finished his coffee instead.

*   *   *

THE DAY WAS DANK and overcast. Sometimes it began that way in San Francisco and ended in sunshine. Sometimes it began in sunshine and ended in cold fog. And sometimes you got all four seasons in a single day.

Downstairs, everything seemed back to normal. No police tape. No one paying attention to Peter Fallon. No Ms. Ryan in the lobby. He even asked for her at the concierge’s desk, but no, she had checked out. And no one followed him across the traffic turnaround or noticed him pounding past the Fairmont, down Mason, moving like a man who was very pissed off.

Helicopter ride with Manion Sturgis? Jesus.

Breakfast table chitchat clearly hadn’t worked with Evangeline. Maybe a little fatherly talk would work with LJ. The boy had always hidden his emotions, even during the divorce, but he was playing things way too close now. Time for a face-to-face.

And it was early enough that LJ might still be at home.

So Peter followed Mason’s drop down to the corner by the Cable Car Museum, where he stopped and texted his son: “I am right outside. I need answers.”

LJ texted back. “On the way to L.A. Following journal lead. At airport now.”

Peter answered, “BS. I can see you in your bay window.”

LJ: “Not me. Maybe Mary forgot something and came back. Talk tonight. Cocktail Reception, NPS Maritime Museum. Big SF history event. 5:30–7PM.”

Peter decided to back off. “Okay.” But now what?

Somebody was up in that apartment, and it did not look like Mary Ching Cutler.

Best find out who it was … and maybe find a few more answers.

Peter knew that his son always kept a hiding place for an extra key—in Cambridge, in his apartment in Berkeley—always where Peter could find it. Force of habit from back when LJ was a latchkey kid and he feared that on visitation days, Dad might get to the house early and leave if no one was home. Peter had always promised that he’d wait in the car all afternoon if need be. Still, the key was always there.

Why should it be any different in San Francisco? So Peter turned onto Jackson and climbed his son’s stoop. The building was a post-earthquake classic: wood frame, blue and white paint, big windows with a bay hanging out over the intersection, two sets of names on the buzzer box. Apartment B, top floor: Fallon/Ching-Cutler.

But … an inner door and an outer door. This might be harder than he thought.

He looked around. No pedestrians, but over on the downhill corner of Mason and Jackson, three Chinese guys, talking and smoking and laughing. Two of them were wearing hoodies over ball caps. One of them was circling idly on one of those bikes with undersized wheels, curb-jumping, spinning, killing time. Were they waiting for a ride? Or a meet-up? Or were they on a stakeout? Of what? LJ’s apartment?

Peter was happy that Evangeline wasn’t with him. Sometimes, it was easier to go solo. It attracted less attention. He took his own keys out of his pocket, pretended to fumble with them, dropped them, all so that he could kneel. While he was down there, he ran his hand along the threshold. And … right where he had expected it: the key, duct-taped to the underside. LJ really was a creature of habit.

But a single key … for three doors?

Give it a try. Into the main lock and … pop. Open. The same with the inner door. He let it close softly behind him. Then he slipped off his loafers. No footfalls on the stairs. And up he went … to the landing at Apartment A. He stopped and listened. No TV or radio. No movement. Nothing.

So on to Apartment B, stairs leading right up to the door. He listened: silence and city sounds. Would the same key work? No. But he found another duct-taped to the underside of that threshold. Into the lock and … pop again.

He pushed the door open but did not step in, just looked. Everything he saw was rehab modern: a galley kitchen across from the door, with counter and stools opening on a living area and that big window with its view down Jackson all the way to the Bay Bridge. Everything high-end, well-chosen, sleek … leather furnishings, leather window seat, glass tables, granite this, stainless that. To his right, a hallway, open doors, a window at the end.

The clanging of a cable car startled him in the silence, but he stayed where he was, right on the threshold, listening. Then he heard movement in one of the bedrooms, then a door opening, and a draft blowing down the long hallway.

Someone was running. He dropped his shoes and followed the draft to the end, to a pair of doors: one led to the bathroom, the other onto a service porch. He stepped onto the porch. Stairs led down to an alley and up to the roof. A gate on the downside appeared locked. So … above? To a trap door that opened to the roof? Or back into the apartment? Or stand still and listen for footfalls?

Hard decisions in a place he’d never been. He heard muffled traffic. Somewhere a radio was playing.

He took the lid from a rubber trash can on the landing and held it like a shield. He wished he had his shoes, too.

He led with the lid and climbed until he could just poke his head above the roof line: Right, left, nothing, nothing. He turned toward the front of the house: a fire escape dropping down between two windows. No one hiding. No one running. No one coming at him with a knife. He was glad of that, and glad that no one saw him with the trash can lid. He looked pretty stupid.

He dropped back down, replaced the lid, went back into the apartment, to a room along the hallway that had caught his eye: the office. At dinner, the kids had talked about the office. They worked in the same room, which Evangeline thought was cute.

Peter stopped in the doorway and looked in at a mess.

Then a tight, nervous voice surprised him: “I am licensed for concealed carry in California, and you are a home invader. I can blow your brains all over the wall. So put your hands behind your head and turn very slowly.”

Peter did as he was told and was greeted by the barrel of a small handgun, a Walther PPK, maybe, and a widening set of eyes. “Oh, shit. Are you LJ’s dad?”

Peter said, “You first.”

“I’m Jack Cutler”—he lowered the gun and made a gesture for Peter to put down his arms—“your future in-law.”

He was a tall guy, skinny, sunburned, dressed in a tan bush jacket and cargo shorts and big boots for tromping across dry fields or old vineyards in search of gold-bearing quartz veins. The adventuring geologist … or the host on a wild animal show.

Peter asked, “What are you doing in their apartment?”

Cutler gave a jerk of the head and led Peter back to a spot in the living room where they could look out the bay window without being seen. “Notice the three Chinese guys.”

“We’re on the edge of Chinatown,” said Peter. “It’s the white guys who stand out. But yeah. I noticed them. They didn’t even look at me.”

They were still smokin’ and jokin’ on that corner, with cable cars bumping past and street life flowing like a river around them.

“They may not have looked, but they were watching. And they’re watching right now. I figured it out after I let myself in.”

Peter asked, “Wonton Willie’s boys?”

“Willie? Willie’s small-time. A pimp.” Jack Cutler put the gun back into the side pocket of his cargo shorts. “But if those guys cross the street, we ought to run. I think they work for the Dai-lo.”

“The Dai-lo? The Big Dragon from the Triad?”

“Word is that he’s coming to town. He might even be here.” Cutler went into the kitchen, poured coffee for himself, and gestured with the pot. Want a cup?

Peter shook his head.

“I need some. Glad it’s hot. You gave me the jitters. You and the Dai-lo.”

“Is he why you’re waving a gun around in our kids’ apartment? The Dai-lo?”

“I need a little armament. I’m not really a civilian.”

“What are you, then?”

“Long story. Google my name and ‘gold fraud.’” Cutler went to another window and looked again into the street.

Peter didn’t like the evasion, and he’d been getting a lot of it, lately. He said, “What were you doing in their office?”

Cutler’s face got long, then longer. “Who said I was in their office?”

“My son’s desk drawers are open. He never leaves his drawers open. He’s a neat freak. And the computer is on. He never leaves his computer on. He’s a green freak, too.”

Cutler backed away from the window but kept his eyes on the street. “They’re coming. We better go.”

Peter snapped at Cutler, “Stop playing games. They’re nobody.”

“Hey, fuck you, Pete.”

“Just tell me what the hell you’re doing here. And don’t call me Pete.”

“Okay, Mister Fallon.”

This was not going well, thought Peter. Meeting the future in-laws was supposed to be more civilized.

Cutler moved to a side window, above Jackson, and tracked the movement of one of the Chinese guys. “We got one coming up to the stoop, one still standing watch, and”—Cutler looked up—“if I hear anyone up on the roof—”

“Just tell me this: why is my son’s desk ripped apart?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“LJ does a thing as if he’s choreographed it.” Peter had believed that until the last few days. “He considers every move and doesn’t move until he considers every option.”

“Like marrying my daughter?”

“A very good move.”

The compliment seemed to soften Jack Cutler. He said, “Yeah, well, they make a nice couple, but your kid’s tap dancing right now.”

“Why?”

“He’s in trouble over this journal. He’s helping the wrong people.”

“Who?”

“You’ve met a few of them. Unfortunately, I’m in business with them.”

“Are you in trouble, too?”

Cutler gestured to the window, “Half the people in Chinatown hate me, so, yeah.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Research I should have done years ago, before that damn journal disappeared. I could have put all this business to bed before it started. But if the right guy puts it back together again now, he can—” Cutler caught himself, as if he did not want to say more.

“He can what?”

Just then, the buzzer rang. The electric sound snapped through the apartment and right through Peter’s spine. Through Cutler’s, too, from his reaction. Without another word, he drained his coffee and headed down the hallway.

“Where are you going?” said Peter.

“Back to my place in Placerville. It’s safer there. I have a shotgun there. I should have stayed there.”

Peter went after him. “What were you looking for in the desk?”

“The journal pages that tell where the goddamn Chinese gold is hidden.”

“Bags of it? Or a lost river?”

“Everybody says the lost river is a myth. But the bags are real. If I find them, maybe I can have dinner in Chinatown again.” Cutler disappeared around the corner.

Peter would have followed, but he wasn’t wearing shoes. So he went back to where he had left them, by the front door, slipped a foot into one, and … the stairs creaked in the hallway. Somebody was out there. One shoe on, one shoe off, Peter listened, motionless.

On the street, a cable car clanged. In the kitchen, the coffee maker hissed. On the other side of the door, a person took a breath.

Peter reached for the dead bolt … an instant too late.

The door burst open and slammed into him and sent him flying into the stools, which went flying into the living area, with Peter Fallon flying right after them.

The guy was short and square and as solid as a fireplug. He reminded Peter of Oddjob, the James Bond villain.

“Where’d Cutler go.” Perfect English.

“Cutler?” Peter played dumb. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Fuck that. Where is he?” The guy came at Peter.

Peter rolled to his feet, grabbed a stool for protection, and retreated.

Could he talk his way out or would he have to fight?

Talk was always better. But if he had to fight, best know the ground. He shifted his eyes from point to point. Behind him: the bay window. Before him: the front door and the hallway to the bedrooms, blocked by Mr. Oddjob. To his left, through the dining area: the galley kitchen, with two entrances, one a few feet away, and the other opposite the front door. That would be his route.

He said, “Do you work for the Dai-lo?”

The guy scowled and reached into his jacket—black leather, a fashion statement in the Tong tough-guy community—and pulled a pistol with a silencer, also a statement.

The time for talk was over. Peter moved left, into the narrow kitchen, putting the countertop between himself and Oddjob.

“I count three, then shoot.”

Peter pulled out the coffee pot and said, “Want a cup?”

“Fuck the fuckin’—”

Peter gave him hot coffee, right in the face.

The guy bellowed and brought his hands to his eyes.

Peter fired the pot right after the coffee, right at the guy’s forehead, then he leaped for the front door.

But Oddjob grabbed him by the sleeve and spun him around.

Peter tore away and—oh, shit!—the front door was opening. Someone else!

LJ? Mary. The other Tongsters? Who ever it was, Peter didn’t want them stepping into this, so he slammed the door as it opened, flipped the dead bolt, and sprinted down the hallway. He got to the doors at the end: one to the bathroom, one to the back steps. He stopped. Which way? And Oddjob caught him with a vicious flat hand into a kidney.

The pain made stars explode in Peter’s head, and he hit the cold bathroom floor. Then a knee was dropping onto the middle of his back, pinning him to the tile.

This was no contest. Peter was a Boston brawler, who always ran if he could, up against a martial arts master who grabbed a fistful of Peter’s hair and pulled back so hard that Peter thought his neck might snap.

“Where’s fuckin’ Cutler and what are you doin’ here?”

Peter tried to mumble something while also reaching for something, anything—hair dryer, toilet brush, anything—to fight with.

Oddjob slapped his hand. “You talk or I put a bullet in your brain.” And with his free hand, he pulled another pistol from an ankle holster and jammed it against Peter’s temple.

Peter heard a pop. His neck vertebra? No. He could still feel hands and feet.

The guy released Peter’s hair, gurgled, and slumped over. His head struck the edge of the tub with a thwang that made the whole room vibrate.

A woman in a blue pantsuit was squared in the doorway, in perfect two-hand pistol-range stance. Her gun had a silencer, too. She looked at the thug, then her eyes shifted to Peter. “Why did you flip the goddamn dead bolt? I had to shoot the door open.”

Peter rolled, pushed Oddjob off, brought a hand to his neck.

She gave the thug a poke with the tip of her high heel. “Did he say anything?”

Peter recognized the woman who had been stalking him from the Mark Hopkins lobby. “You’re the one the concierge called Ms. Ryan.”

She ignored that. “Did he say anything?”

“About what?”

“About any goddamn thing? And in what language?”

“He spoke English.”

“Good English?”

“Like a TV weatherman.”

“That means they’re using local talent.”

Peter sat up and rubbed the back of his neck. “Now, who are you?”

“Your new best friend.” She disappeared down the hallway and returned a moment later with his other shoe. “Put this on and get the hell out of here.”

He asked it again. “Who are you?”

She pulled her wallet from her back pocket and flashed her identification. “Christine Ryan, FBI Special Agent.”

He looked at the picture, looked at her, and said, “FBI? What’s going on here?”

“Nothing good.” She crouched and looked at the thug more closely. “Don’t recognize him. At least he died in the bathroom. Easier to clean up.” The way that she looked—red hair and long legs—reminded Peter of an old girlfriend. The way she acted—all business and attitude—reminded him of his current girlfriend.

“My son and his—”

“We’re doing our best to keep them safe,” she said as she rifled the dead man’s pockets. “You, too. Just play your part.”

“My part? In what?” Peter sat on the toilet and put on his other loafer.

“What did our friend here say?”

“He was looking for Cutler. But he didn’t like it when I mentioned the Dai-lo.”

“That’s no surprise.” She went to the back door and pulled it open. “Up the stairs. Do as you’re told when you get up to the roof.”

“Can’t you help me out a little?”

“‘Need to know.’ And the less you know, the better. Just keep doing what you’re doing, playing the dad with the special skill helping his son.”

“What about Cutler?”

“He’s on his own. We can’t cover everybody.” She gestured with her gun up the back stairs. “Louis is waiting for you.”

Peter did as he was told. He had no other options. At least he had both shoes.

On the roof, an Asian guy in a Giants cap called from a fire escape four roofs away.

Peter climbed out and glanced toward Mason Street, just as a black SUV was stopping, and two big guys were bursting out, but the hoodies on the corner were scattering.

The guy in the cap said, “That’s us, trying to clean this up. Come on.”

So Peter went. Across one roof, two, three, finally to the fire escape next to the Cable Car Museum. He asked for the guy’s ID.

Mr. Giants Cap flipped open his wallet: Agent Louis Lee. “Call me Louie.”

“All right, Louie”—Peter climbed onto the fire escape—“you got any answers?”

“Miss Redhead is the answer lady. I’m all about the legwork.”

Louie led Peter down to the alley. “I’m going one way, you’re going the other.”

“Then what?”

“Then get back to helping your son. You help him. He helps us. We all help the American people.”

“The American people?” said Peter.

“That’s our constituency.” Louie started up the alley.

“Hey,” said Peter.

“Yeah?”

“Tell your boss we made her in the Mark Hopkins lobby. We made you, too, at the airport and at the cable stop on California and in Hunan Garden last night.”

“That’s great, but I wasn’t at the cable stop.”

*   *   *

MANION STURGIS WOULD HIT on her.

Evangeline was sure of it. As the Robinson R44 Raven rotored in and touched down in the Alcatraz exercise yard, her expectation became anticipation.

This was a lot more than a vineyard tour. This was over-the-top chick charming. A helicopter ride, a sit-down between rival brothers, brokered by the chick in question, a sampling of some of the finest Cabernets in California. And a great story.

Manion Sturgis hopped out into the swirl of dust and helped her aboard, then he jumped in right after her, gestured to her seat belt, and gave her a headset.

The ground guy, an NPS Ranger holding his stiff brim with one hand, gave the thumbs-up, and the helo rose over that dank hive of concrete, the ruins of the legendary prison that now drew tourists and Hollywood location managers like acolytes to a shrine.

Manion bragged that he had some “juice” with the NPS. He also admitted to promising an article by Evangeline Carrington, the famous travel writer, about how well the NPS ran the San Francisco Bay Marine Park, if they’d just let him land.

And now the helo was airborne.

Manion clicked on his microphone and said, “Can you hear me?”

She gave a thumbs-up. She could feel the rotors thumping through the seat and right up her spine. Outside, the blue of the bay was widening and brightening. She had to admit that she liked the excitement. She liked Manion, too. Always had. And here he was, doing something he said he’d never do, just to make her happy. He was going to see his brother. She decided that she’d be disappointed if he didn’t hit on her.

He introduced the pilot, mostly ball cap, shades, and headset. “Enjoy the flight, ma’am. If there’s anything special to see, I’ll point it out. We should be in Napa in about thirty-five minutes.” Click.

Manion said, “If you want to talk to him, just press that button on your armrest.” He reached across her body and showed her.

She did not pull back. There wasn’t room. And she liked him. She liked the air about him. She liked his confidence and ambition and the speech he had made the day before. And maybe she was just a free market capitalist when it came to love. Competition made everyone better.

But she was too old for little brush-and-flutters—a man “accidentally” brushes across your breasts and you get all fluttery—so she said, “I know how it works. I’ve been in helicopters before.”

“I’ll bet you’ve never flown up the Napa Valley before.”

The helo angled north, with the magnificent bridges bracketing them. “We’ll follow 101 for a while toward Sonoma, then cut over to Napa.”

“Like flying from Burgundy to Bordeaux,” she said.

Manion nodded, “From the cool climate of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir to the heat of Cabernet and all its cousins. But I still grow the best Zinfandel.”

Twenty minutes later, they were passing over Domaine Chandon in Yountville, and across the road, the restaurant called The French Laundry, or as Evangeline had once written, “a Bay Area shrine to the pilgrims of the palate.”

Manion pointed it out. “Do you remember our meal?”

“How could I forget? Fantastic.”

“I was trying to impress you. Meeting you after twenty-five years … that was the best part of our Harvard reunion. I was thrilled when you said you’d come out and visit.”

“I was working. The Laundry was expensed.”

“Ah, yes. Too pricey even for me.” He patted her on the knee.

The pilot clicked on and said, “Opus One coming up on the right.”

They saw the long allée leading up to the big house, and the glorious fields of grapes that one day would become Cabernet Sauvignon for a c-note a bottle.

He said, “Happy memories … a loaf of bread, a wedge of cheese, a bottle of ’07.”

“Maybe the best bottle of wine I ever had,” she said.

“Too expensive. Not like my Zins. Wines for the people.”

“Can I quote you?”

“I sure hope so.” And he squeezed her hand.

She did not pull it away, but she did not squeeze back.

He said, “For the first time since our first wine competition, I’m nervous.”

Oh, God, she thought, he’s acting vulnerable.

“I wouldn’t be doing this for anyone else,” he said. “Really.”

That was bullshit, made all the more bullish in that she was hearing it through the little speakers in her headset.

But he kept squeezing her hand. “I want to thank you for getting us together.”

And she thought, Now what?

*   *   *

PETER NEEDED TO PROCESS what had just happened. He needed a shot of something strong and some coffee, too. And there was a place where he could get both in one cup. So he jumped on the Powell Street cable car at Jackson and headed for the waterfront. From what he could tell, no one followed him.

He got a seat on the outside and texted Evangeline. “Careful. Things heating up.”

She texted back, “Tell me about it.”

What? “Danger everywhere. Even in LJ’s apartment. Not sure who friends are.”

She repeated: “Tell me about it.”

What did she mean by that? He decided he would worry later.

He texted LJ: “Jack Cutler in your apartment? FBI, too? WTF?”

Answer: “Keep doing what you’re doing. Really AM in L.A. Remember, tonight, NPS Maritime Visitor Center. Cocktails and food. Appearances to keep up.”

Peter jumped off in the waterfront park at the end of the line and bounded across to the Buena Vista. He ordered an Irish coffee at the bar where they claimed they invented it, then took a stool and watched it materialize: bartender pours hot water into shaped glass, warms glass, discards water, follows with sugar cube, generous shot of Tullamore Dew, coffee, then heavy cream poured over back of a spoon so it spreads and floats. The first sip—the cool cream, the hot coffee, the sweet whiskey—calmed him like a Sinatra torch song.

He wished that he’d skipped his son’s apartment and started his day here instead, with eggs Benedict to accompany the Irish coffee.

He thought about a second, which would leave him feeling like he could handle anything. In his younger days, he sometimes drank too much, took pride in “going on a bender” once in a while to prove how tough—or how Irish—he was. But not now. What he wanted now was a clear head. So one Irish coffee, then hail a cab for the next stop, to keep doing what he was doing.

*   *   *

THE CALIFORNIA HISTORICAL SOCIETY had once occupied the Whittier Mansion in Pacific Heights. But real estate had grown so valuable up there that they sold and moved down to Mission Street, where they repurposed the old Merchants Exchange Building—gutted it, rehabbed it, quake-proofed it, and installed a climate-controlled storage area to protect the treasures.

Peter preferred the mansion. He liked the Oriental carpets and the Victorian flourishes. He liked the big tables and the high windows in the reading room. He liked the librarian who invited him to come back the next time he was in “the City,” as if there was no other. He liked the civilized, old-school San Francisco tradition.

But the new building screamed “San Francisco,” too, an evolution of today from yesterday, of cool from utilitarian. It looked like one of those celebrated Painted Ladies, two stories, with puce-colored blocks offsetting gray stone trim, big windows showing off new books and trumpeting new exhibits. Inside, it was all modern—shiny floors, glassed gallery spaces, big reception area. A docent directed Peter to the rear, into …

 … a perfect rare-book room: steady 68 degrees, low humidity, windowless but well lit, though not too bright, so as not to overexpose delicate materials, a librarian’s desk with clear sight lines, and on every worktable, little receptacles of sharpened pencils because, as in all rare book rooms, no pens allowed.

But what about other sharp objects, like matte knives or scissors? Stories of thefts in rare book libraries abounded, from Boston to Yale to the far shores of the Pacific. How easy would it be to lift something from the California Historical Society?

The room was empty but for a librarian at her computer. A slow day. She finished typing, then came over. Horn-rims: all-business. Name tag: MEG MILLER. Discreet Ph.d tattoo on the inside of her wrist: show-off.

Peter said, “Dr. Miller, I presume.”

“What? Oh.” She looked at the wrist and pulled down the sleeve of the black cashmere sweater, perfectly matched to the black of the horn rims.

He was hoping for a laugh, but it was a lame joke.

She gave him a level look. “How can I help you.”

He played it straight. “I’m a dealer in rare books and documents. I’m purchasing some Gold Rush materials. So I’d like to familiarize myself with the collection—”

“Like what, in particular?”

“I’m just getting started.”

And from the look she gave him, she was just getting annoyed.

He said, “I’ve read J. S. Holliday’s book—”

“Rush for Riches.”

He really had. He had even sold a few in his catalogue. “I love the image on the cover. It comes from a daguerreotype—”

“Group of Miners. We have it. What else?”

He couldn’t think of anything, so he leaned his elbow on the counter and said, “When I go to a restaurant, sometimes I trust the server’s judgment about the menu.”

“There’s no daily special at the historical society, sir.”

“How about a recent acquisition, then? Something that amazed you.”

She gave him a longer look, as if she was intrigued, and told him to fill out a card. When she saw his name, she looked up with eyes wide behind the horn rims. “Peter Fallon? The Peter Fallon?”

He could not tell if she was angry or impressed or both. He tried to recall an auction where he outbid the California Historical Society. Nothing. So he said, “That’s me. Cofounder and owner of Fallon Antiquaria.”

She extended her hand. “I read your catalogue all the time. I love the essays on your offerings. You write like a historian.”

So, he had found a friend. He said, “My doctorate is in history.”

“Mine, too. Along with a degree in library science. And you just made the best request I ever heard. ‘Something that amazed me.’ Wait here.”

Peter took a seat at the reading table and looked around. If there were cameras, he didn’t see them. But given that Ms. Miller called in her assistant—name tag: KIM HALLY—it was clear that they were always monitoring the reading room. Best practices.

He nodded. Kim Hally smiled and looked at her computer screen, even though her job was to watch him from the corner of her eye.

Meg Miller returned shortly with two archival boxes.

The first contained the original daguerreotype of Group of Miners, one of the most famous Gold Rush images: nine men, five seated, four standing, and all leaping from the plate. The first clumsy photographic process produced pictures that, in the original, were as three-dimensional as holograms. Peter moved his head, and it was as if their eyes followed him.

They looked cocky and confident. One balanced a shovel like a walking stick. Another cradled a Bible as if to proclaim that no matter how much trouble they got into, a mighty fortress was their God. One wore a neckerchief and held his chin just so. Another wore a kepi with a leather brim and glared, challenging you to insult him. And the center was held by an older man with a fringe of chin whiskers, a placket-fronted shirt, and the weathered confidence of one who had seen it all. Those last three reminded Peter of Spencer, Flynn, and Cletis Smith. And seeing those faces drew him a little closer to them.

Then, item two: a long ledger.

Meg Miller set it down on a foam backing, to prop it up, and opened in.

“This was recently discovered in a private collection. The Sacramento Death Registry for 1850.”

It was the very definition of a primary source, research on the most granular level: the names of the dead, with ages, places of birth, causes of death. Early in the year, many things carried away the Gold Rushers, like pneumonia, scurvy, gunshots, gangrene. But as the year went on, more and more seemed to be dying from diarrhea or other bowel complaints. And by fall, those deaths had coalesced around a single cause: cholera.

“An epidemic,” said Meg Miller. “Most were males in their twenties and thirties. Half came from New England.”

“A lot from Massachusetts.” Peter pointed out three or four names. Then he saw Christopher Harding, age 26, Boston, Mass. Cholera. And he felt a chill. The past was reaching right off the page. He said, “That’s what a guy gets for killing an albatross.”

“Albatross?” said Meg Miller.

“Like the poem. Christopher Harding killed an albatross and was cursed.”

Meg Miller gave him a long look, as if wondering how he knew this.

But aside from Christopher Harding, there was no mention of any other Sagamore, no way to get beneath the surface of that daguerreotype or cross the bridge of time to James Spencer and the major players of 1849.

So what next? Peter Fallon was on a fishing expedition. So he threw out a bit of bait. “A lot of these guys left journals or diaries, right?”

“A literate generation, having their grand adventure. They called it ‘seeing the elephant.’ We actually have dozens of their journals.”

“Back in the Arbella Club in Boston, there’s a portrait of a man named Thaddeus Spencer. He had a son who—”

“So that’s why you’re here.”

“What do you mean?” Peter made an innocent, wide-eyed face, but he could tell, from the way she folded her arms, that she saw right through him.

“Big-time Boston dealer with a rep for finding things that lots of people are looking for? You don’t just wander in off the streets of San Francisco.”

“Busted.”

Kim Hally came through the room again, stopped to check something, gave them a sidelong glance, as if to ask her boss if she needed any help, then returned to the stacks.

Meg Miller waited until she was gone, then she said, “If you’re trying to find the lost journal, remember, it’s ours. If it surfaces, the historical society lays claim to it.”

“The family would be happy to find it and return it. So would I.”

She pulled out the chair and sat next to him. “All right, how can I help you.”

“How was the disappearance discovered?”

“We received a grant to digitize a lot of the old journals, including the Spencer transcription, which came to us right after the earthquake. About nine months ago, we went to the box where it had been stored, and it was gone.”

“And the last time it was seen?”

“A woman named Maryanne Rogers doddered in here one day about a year ago and wanted to read it. This was a few days after the Proud Pilgrim had been uncovered in the landfill during excavations on Clay Street.”

“What’s the Proud Pilgrim?”

“A Gold Rush ship. It sank into the Bay, and the city was built over it.”

Landfill burying history? Peter Fallon had been down this road before. He said, “So it disappeared after she saw it? Do you keep records of who looks at what material?”

“Only for six weeks. I remember Mrs. Rogers because she was a big donor. But San Franciscans are protective of their privacy. Who reads what in any library—that’s a sensitive area.”

“Do you remember anyone else? Any other names? Manion Sturgis?”

“The wine guy?” She shook her head.

“Johnson Barber, the lawyer? Or LJ Fallon, his assistant, who is also my son?”

No and no.

Here was one that Peter had been thinking a lot about: “Willie Ling?”

“Wonton Willie, the Tong guy? Wasn’t he shot last night at the Mark Hopkins?”

Peter nodded. “Why would Chinese tongs start shooting each other over this?”

Meg Miller thought a bit, chewed her lip, stumped.

The names Michael Kou and Jack Cutler got the same answer.

He asked, “Did you ever read the document?”

“Only the first chapter. There’s so much material here that—”

Then he threw out a name. “Did a woman named Sarah Bliss ever ask for it?”

“Bliss.… Bliss.…”

“A great San Francisco name for a woman who looks like an old hippie and happens to be the heir to a nice chunk of the Spencer estate.”

And that one worked. Meg Miller remembered the lady in the peasant skirt.

Next stop, Sausalito.

*   *   *

PETER TOOK THE FERRY from Pier 33.

Lots of folks heading home. Business people, shoppers, a few tourists, even a Chinese kid wearing a hoodie and carrying—yes—a small-wheeled Dahon folding bike. But … there are kids like that everywhere. And it was a nice way to commute, especially when your destination was the upscale town under the Golden Gate Bridge.

Peter followed the Gate 5 Road along the waterfront to Waldo Point Harbor, then walked out onto the Liberty Dock, named for all the Liberty Ships built there during World War II. Now it was lined with places that ranged from center-entrance colonials on barges to converted railroad cars to ramshackle collections of this and that cadged from whatever was floating around.

In the old days, all the houseboats could come and go under their own power. They took their water from hoses and got their sewage treatment courtesy of the twice-daily tide. Now water and sewage lines were permanent hookups. Nobody had engines. And the houseboats, known to their inhabitants as “floating homes,” formed a fine exhibit in the living museum of California funk.

At the corner of the wharf, Peter saw the sign TREE HUGGER. As he expected, it was one of the more eclectic vessels, a ramshackle thing that looked like three or four other things all nailed and spliced and welded together.

He had called ahead, so Sarah Bliss was waiting outside with her Giants cap pulled low, shielding her eyes from an outbreak of afternoon sun. She was reading National Geographic. She looked up, “It says here that we used to have grizzly bears, right along the shores of San Francisco Bay.”

“Hence the beast on the state flag.” Peter looked around. “Nice neighborhood.”

“Great scenery. Friendly people. We all keep keys under the doormats so neighbors can come in and borrow sugar or salt or rolling papers when we’re not home.” She waddled to the door. “Where’s the pretty lady?”

“Doing her own thing.”

“That’s good.” Sarah gestured for him to follow her. “That’s the way relationships last, when you let the lady do her own thing. Isn’t that right, Brother?”

A voice from within said, “Oh, yeah, baby. Whatever you say.”

“I didn’t know you had a brother,” said Peter.

“I don’t.”

Peter followed her into the cool interior, a single giant space, a multi-level collection of dining areas, sitting areas, and sleeping areas, with windows popped in here and there like cookie cutters hanging on the walls of a bakery.

Everything had a kind of Dumpster chic about it … the 1950s kitchen set with the red vinyl seats, the coffee table made from an old cable spool, two recliners from a 1970s La-Z-Boy ad, posters of Che Guevara and Jimi Hendrix—Che on a red background, Jimi the centerpiece of a psychedelic pinwheel that was supposed to make the heavy drugs that killed him look mind-bendingly cool. And speaking of drugs, three marijuana plants thrived beneath a skylight.

Sarah introduced her husband. She actually called him her “old man,” as if this was some kind of Sixties commune. But he really was old. His tie-dyed shirt covered a big belly, and his bushy beard and glasses made him look like Jerry Garcia, if Mr. Grateful Dead had been in a wheelchair, tethered to an oxygen tank, and angled so he could see out the open slider onto the boat channel.

He turned the chair. “I’m Benson Bliss. But people call me ‘Brother,’ Brother B., for Brother Bliss, brother of the downtrodden man, the rising-up woman, and the nature-loving human.” Then he chuckled, as if he liked his own wordplay.

And Peter knew already that he was going to like this guy.

Sarah offered Peter a cup of tea. “Or something stronger?”

Peter said, “I have a feeling that the tea is stronger.”

“She makes a great marijuana tea,” said Brother B. “I drink it all the time now, but let the record show that I never once appeared high before a judge.”

Sarah chuckled. “That you know of.”

“We fought the good fight to keep the city for the people, not the developers, and to protect the California environment from here to the High Sierra.” Brother Bliss gestured to another photograph that Peter had missed: two men standing on a cliff above the Yosemite Valley: John Muir and Teddy Roosevelt.

“America’s greatest naturalist and the conservation president. Aside from Lincoln, TR’s the only Republican I ever let in the house.” Brother B. gave Peter a scowl. “You’re not a Republican, are you?”

“Unenrolled,” said Peter.

“Even if he’s a Republican,” said Sarah, “he’s from Massachusetts, and you know what they call a Massachusetts Republican in Texas?”

“What?”

“A Democrat.”

Sarah and Brother B. had a chuckle over that. Nothing like an old couple laughing together. They probably needed to entertain each other, considering that he saw no pictures of children around. No sons or daughters. No nieces or nephews.

Peter said, “So you two have been fighting the good fight for a long time?”

“Too long,” said Brother B. “I just wish my heart hadn’t given out. Congestive bullshit. That’s why I got ankles like baloney rolls.”

Sarah jumped up and said, “Tea time.” A pot on the stove was staying hot. She went over and grabbed it and brought back three mugs. She poured for her husband and herself, then waved a cup at Peter. “You won’t regret it. I use a nice coconut oil to extract the THC from the leaves. I even add a little raw sugar.”

“It makes me happy,” said Brother B., “and not much does these days.”

What the hell, thought Peter. If he joined them, it might loosen them all up.

And yeah, Sarah’s marijuana tea was delicious, even if Peter didn’t feel a thing after a cup.

She refilled it and said, “You’re here because of that Gold Rush journal, right?”

“The codicil is bullshit,” said Brother B. “Holding up everybody from getting their money is a cheap game.”

Peter sipped the tea. “Whose game?”

“Barber’s. And you’re helping him,” said Sarah. “Why?”

“My son asked me.”

“Good dad,” she said. “But who asked him?”

Peter said, “Barber.”

“So Barber asked your son to play his game and your son asked you,” said Sarah.

“So you’re helping Barber to screw us,” added Brother B.

Peter sipped some more tea. “Unh.… yeah. I … I…”

“Have you asked yourself why?” asked Brother B.

“Why what?” Peter felt his buzz growing buzzier, and the circularity of the conversation wasn’t helping. Maybe that tea was stronger than he thought.

It didn’t seem to be bothering the old folks, though.

Sarah said, “Why would a shithead like Barber, with a long list of nasty clients like big chem companies that make insecticides that kill bees and soft-drink companies that pump California groundwater in the middle of a drought, so they can bottle the water and sell it back to Californians at a thousand-percent profit, why would—”

“Don’t forget the Chinese banks,” said Brother B.

“Yeah, them, too,” answered Sarah. “Why would he want to reconstruct an old Gold Rush diary, Mr. Famous Boston Bookseller? Why? Answer me that.”

“Wait … what?” said Peter. “Did you say Chinese banks?”

“He damn sure did.”

Brother B. said, “The banks are the tools of the Chinese government, and they’re funding Chinese companies that are on a commodity-buying spree all over the world.”

“The Chinese are no fools,” said Sarah Bliss. “They know that if they buy the ground that holds the minerals, and leave them there, the minerals only rise in value.”

“Like gold,” said Peter.

“Gold, oil, iron, manganese, copper. They’re into everything.”

Peter felt things getting away from him. He tried to pull them back. “All I know is that somebody stole the diary out of the California Historical Society, and you, Miss Sarah the Teamaker—”

Sarah snickered. Her own tea was getting to her.

“—you were maybe the last to see it. That makes me think you’re the one who stole it and doesn’t want anyone else to read it.”

“You feelin’ a little buzz?” said Brother B.

Peter nodded. He liked the buzz. And he liked that he felt safe with these two. It was the first time he’d felt safe outside of the hotel room since he got to San Francisco.

“A little buzz is nice,” said Sarah.

“At some point, it’s all we got,” said Brother B. “So why deny us? Why delay us with this journal business? I want that estate money so I can hire a few more lawyers to fight another good fight for weed against the Feds.”

“A high goal,” said Peter, and they all laughed a lot harder than the joke warranted, as if any of them, straight, would dignify it as a joke.

And the laughter must have put Sarah in a better mood because she went over to a messy, paper-piled desk in the corner and came back with an ancient notebook. She dropped it on the table in front of Peter. “Drink your tea, then read this. It’s the only part of James Spencer’s Gold Rush journal that I know a damned thing about. And I don’t care if it sends you off lookin’ for gold that isn’t there.”

“You mean, this is the section that starts another gold rush?”

“That’s bullshit. Geologists have been over every last square foot of the Mother Lode. There’s no more easy gold, no matter what Jack Cutler wants you to believe.”

That name again, thought Peter, the rogue geologist.

“No more getting rich quick.” Sarah gestured to the folder. “Read all about it.”

Peter knew right away, even with a little buzz, that he was looking at the original article, in James Spencer’s own hand, written on rag bond, folio’d foolscap, in ink that splotched as Spencer wrote, with few misspellings or scratch-outs, without the filter of transcription or Microsoft Word, a real bridge into the past. So he took another sip of the tea and started reading.

He still wasn’t sure what he was looking for, but wandering the hills with James Spencer was like exploring them with Wild Bill Donnelly. Peter would know what he was looking for when he found it.

The entries for March 1850 spoke of calming tensions. Men moved up and down the Miwok, following strikes from below Broke Neck all the way upstream to the valley where the Miwok turned and the Triple MW was building a dam. Anti-foreign sentiments seemed to calm, too, especially when half a dozen Chileans packed up and left of their own accord. Now, only a few Mexicans were working west of town and, of course, the stubborn Wei Chin and his relatives, still squatting upstream of Broke Neck.

By late March, the claims at Big Skull Rock were playing out. But the river flow was good. So Cletis bought into the plan for selling water to Rainbow Gulch, as it “might be worth more than gold.” Then the new government in San Jose issued a decree.…

The Journal of James Spencer—Notebook #5

March 27, 1850
The New Law

Today—beneath a cool blue sky—they brought the law to Big Skull Rock.

They rode down the north bank, crossed the river by the first flutter wheel, climbed past the second flutter wheel and the new sluice, climbed all the way to the trench we were digging at the top of the hill.

We had made deals at Rainbow Gulch. We had given Scrawny Selwin a commission on every miner he signed to buy Big Skull water. And the race was on. If Flynn believed that by bringing water to Rainbow Gulch, we could gain allies and avoid violence, I would try it. And Cletis, for the moment, was going along.

I had followed a deer trail over the hills to spy on the Triple MW camp. Even as one shovel gang was building the wing dam, another was digging two trenches, one southwest toward Rainbow Gulch, another due south in the direction of Broke Neck.

I had no doubt that they had spied on us, too. They might even have heard us because we had used Flynn’s gunpowder to blow rocks out of our path, and the echoes had rolled like thunder up the valley and down.

But our progress had been slow. Wei Chin, who saw this as a safe way to prospect, had overcome his anger and brought Little Ng along, too, all for a price. But as we dug, Chin would stop often to reconnoiter the route or puzzle over the presence of random gold flakes in some dry gulch. And Flynn would repeat his suspicion that there must be a lost river of gold somewhere nearby, an underground river, just flowing and flowing. And it would fall to me to urge the work forward.

In college, I had read about the Roman aqueducts that delivered water across hundreds of miles. So I knew that in a slope of just one foot per mile, in a conduit three feet wide and three feet deep, we could create a velocity of seventy cubic feet of water per second. Even Cletis was impressed. But before we went too far, we needed to test our design.

That was what we were doing when the men from the Miner’s Council came riding up the bank.

Cletis and Chin had paced out eighth-of-a-mile increments along the trench. Little Ng, shirtless and shoeless, stood below, waiting for our signal to engage the second flutter wheel, which would lift water from the old sluice and drop it into the new one, which ran ten feet above the ground on skinny stilt legs, like a giant, wooden centipede. Flynn and I stood at the crest of the hill, well above Big Skull Rock, and waited to open the gates on the trough that would fill from the upper sluice. If we could raise water from the river, then start it running downhill with the requisite force, it would run all the way to Rainbow Gulch.

Little Ng was playing his flute when the Council men approached. His sweet tune ended like the song of a dying bird, and he crouched, as if he could hide behind the wheel.

The horses snorted and snuffled and came crunching over our tailing piles, the Gaw brothers in the lead, followed by Sloate and Attorney Tom Lyons. When they reached the top of the hill, they stopped with the sun behind them.

Flynn squinted and said, “If you come to baptize us, Moses, we’ll have water as soon as we pull the chocks.”

Moses Gaw studied the flutter wheels, the elaborate sluice works and the trench, and he said, “What’s that Chink down there fixin’ to do?”

“That’s Little Ng,” said Flynn. “Give ’em a wave, Ng.”

Ng stood reluctantly, as if expecting a blow, though he was fifty feet away. Then he tentatively raised his hand.

“Muscular little rat, ain’t he?” said David Gaw.

“Little yellow rat,” said Sloate.

“Don’t stand too close,” said Flynn, “or he might start the wheel and baptize you.”

Moses Gaw leaned forward. “We been baptized. Not like these heathens.”

Attorney Lyons said, “You know why we’re here, Spencer.”

“You’d best tell us.” Cletis had picked up his blunderbuss and come from his spot along the trench.

Lyons dismounted. He was gentleman enough that he would meet us eye-to-eye. He said, “I’ve brought the new law. Read out at San Jose on March twentieth.”

“We’re spreadin’ the word,” said Moses Gaw.

“Fulfillin’ our promise to the miners of Broke Neck,” added David Gaw, always finishing his brother’s thoughts.

Lyons looked at Flynn the way a man might look at a dog he was about to poke with a stick, then read, “‘By order of the California Senate, under recommendation of the Finance Committee, foreigners are now obliged to pay twenty dollars a month for the privilege of taking from our country the vast treasure to which they have no right.’”

“No right?” said Flynn. “No right?”

Deering Sloate put his hand on his pistol.

“Easy, Michael.” I had seen enough of Sloate to know that the boy from Boston Latin, who would pour lamp oil on a cat and strike a match, or find cause to pummel anyone who did not stand up to him, or find followers enough to pummel anyone who did, that boy had not matured. He had merely intensified.

Sloate said, “Don’t pull your pen, Spencer, or I might have to shoot you.”

Lyons kept reading: “‘We expect that said foreigners will cheerfully pay this fee to tax collectors appointed by the state. Effective on April 1.’”

“Cheerfully?” Flynn looked at me. “They’re out of their fuckin’ minds.”

Lyons ignored him and kept reading: “‘Foreigners are generally considered to be the worst population of the Mexican and South American States, Australia, and the Sandwich Islands, including the convicts of Mexico, Chile, and Botany Bay who are daily turned upon our shores.’”

“It don’t say Chinks or Irishmen,” said Cletis. “That’s what we got here.”

“It says Australians,” answered Moses Gaw. “They’re just Irish convicts. And if Chinks ain’t mentioned, they should be. They will be. That’s how we read this law.”

“But if it ain’t written,” said Cletis, “how can you read it?”

“It’s implied,” said Tom Lyons.

“Implied?” I said. “It’s a law. It says what it says. You know that, Tom.”

“It implies what we say it does.” Moses lifted his whip from the pommel of his saddle. “And we say that the Broke Neck miners want no foreigners takin’ treasure they ain’t entitled to, unless they pay a tax. So”—he looked around—“I count six Chinks. The one by the wheel, the four down by the claim, and this one comin’ down the hill.”

Chin was striding toward us, showing not a shred of subservience. I put myself in his way and said to Tom Lyons, “You want a hundred and twenty dollars a month from these people, just so they can work?”

“Plus one Irishman. Twenty dollars for him, too.” Moses Gaw pointed the whip handle at Flynn, all but daring him to make a move.

“And,” said David Gaw, “if you’re hirin’ Chinks, you’ll pay a tax of ten dollars for each. So saith the Lord.”

“The Lord got nothin’ to do with it,” said Cletis.

“You’ll hang a long time before I pay any tax,” said Flynn.

“You’ll hang first, Mick,” answered Moses Gaw.

Lyons put up his hands, “Now, boys, let’s calm down. This is the law. We waited till it was read out in the senate. We’ve been fair about this.”

Cletis cocked the blunderbuss. “Here’s my law. Get off our claim.”

Sloate kept his hand on his gun and his eyes on Cletis.

Lyons blanched, backed away, got on his horse. “I’ll be back in four days as the state-appointed tax man.”

“You keep talkin’ about the ‘state,’” said Cletis, “but I ain’t heard news about no California statehood.”

“California has petitioned,” said Lyons. “So we’ll conduct our business in the appropriate way.” He turned his horse and started down the slope.

But Moses Gaw did not turn. He backed his horse down, telling the others, “Don’t take your eyes off that crazy old man.”

“Good advice. Just keep watchin’ all the way off our claim,” said Cletis.

Moses kept his big, black horse moving backward but his eyes on Cletis. That way, he could deny any intent over what happened when his horse bumped against his brother’s, and his brother’s horse lost its back hoof and stumbled.

David Gaw whipped the horse around, as if to get control of him, and all but threw him into a nine-foot-high stilt. Flynn tried to grab the stilt, to stop it from tipping and taking the sluice with it.

Sloate, seeing the chance to shoot Flynn, reached for his gun, so I drove my shoulder into the flank of Sloate’s mare. Sloate tried to hold his horse on the steep bank, but the mare screamed and fell over sideways.

David Gaw’s horse was now caught under the sluice, flailing and whinnying as its rider frantically—and, I thought, purposely—whipped its head back and forth.

Flynn smacked Gaw’s horse on the rump, sending him shooting out from under the sluice, but right into another support, so that half the structure came crashing.

And now Moses Gaw went to work with his whip. He fired it at one of the wobbling stilts and pulled another section of sluice down. Then he fired it at Flynn, caught him by the neck, and pulled. But Chin sprang forward with his knife and slashed down on the whip, cutting it in half and freeing Flynn.

Moses Gaw almost fell off his horse, he had put so much weight behind the whip.

Meanwhile, David Gaw swung his horse back, got control, and turned on Chin.

Cletis cried. “Sam, get down!”

The Chinaman dropped, giving Cletis a clear shot at both Gaws.

But instead of shooting, Cletis shouted, “We’re done!”

“Done.” Lyons waved his hands to get the attention of Judge Blunderbuss. “Done.”

“Just remember, old man, you all got taxes to pay,” said Moses Gaw. “If you shirk ’em, this whole camp may get ruined, just like we ruined your sluices.”

“Get out,” said Cletis.

The only gunfire came when Deering Sloate, uninjured but for his pride, put down his horse, which had managed to stand and was hobbling about on three legs. The animal crashed to the right, onto the broken foreleg, dead before it hit the ground.

Sloate said, “That horse cost two hundred dollars.”

“So did that sluice,” I answered. “So we’re even.”

As Sloate doubled up with Lyons, Flynn said to me, “Someday, somebody’ll have to shoot that Sloate feller. Mark my words.”

*   *   *

AROUND SUNSET, FLYNN AND I sat on stumps, listening to the river and looking at the destruction. Weeks of hard work shattered in minutes …

Sloate’s dead horse was already beginning to bloat. At least the Chinese had cut the meat from the haunches. But we would have to burn the carcass.

Flynn said, “I’ll be payin’ no taxes to men who’d put me out of business.”

Cletis loped up the bank, bringing the jug and a bad mood. He sat on a stump, took a swallow, and offered the jug to me, all before he said to Flynn, “You don’t pay that tax, we’ll all pay. Us and the Chinks, too.”

I sipped—I could not drink Grouchy Pete’s rotgut like water—and passed to Flynn, who said, “They won’t go. They’ve taken sixty pounds out of them diggin’s.”

“Then they can pay,” said Cletis. “So can we. But I’m for movin’ on.”

Flynn swallowed and passed the jug to Cletis. “If you go, who’ll burn our coffee? Who’ll hold the claim while we get to diggin’ this trench again?”

“Diggin’ a six-mile trench is fool’s work, even if we hire all them Chinks.” Cletis took the jug again. “Look at them, workin’ down there like there’s no tomorrow.”

“Maybe for them, there ain’t.” Flynn rubbed at the welt that had risen around his neck, where Gaw’s whip had grabbed him.

“Ain’t our problem,” said Cletis. “Time to move on. We made enough.”

“And I been chased enough,” said Flynn. “Chased out of Ireland. Chased out of Boston. Even deserted some fine wet cooch to come back to my claim … so I ain’t bein’ chased off of it, and that’s for damn sure.”

“Then get ready to fight.” Cletis pointed his whiskered chin at me. “You, too. You proved you can take a whuppin’. You need to prove you can give one.”

Perhaps Cletis was right. He was right about most things that he opinionated upon.

But again, I chose what I hoped was the more civilized course, to prove something better about myself and the men who had come to this valley.

March 29, 1850
More Civilized?

And so, I went in search of help and good counsel. On a chilly Wednesday night in Broke Neck, the best place to find such things, along with plenty of unsolicited opinions, was at Grouchy Pete’s.

The saloon was quiet. Only a dozen or so stood at the bar. Another dozen worked the gambling tables. The murmur of voices was low, the mist of cigar smoke light.

I spied Drinkin’ Dan and bought him a whiskey. I bought myself a brandy, which tasted suspiciously like the whiskey, which I am told tasted like the rum, which I never drank. After a few swallows, I asked him if he had heard that the new law had been passed.

“About damn time. Makin’ the district safe for white miners.”

“The law says nothing about Chinamen or Irishmen, but the Council—”

“The Council’s doin’ right.” Drinkin’ Dan drained his glass.

I’d get no moral support from him, so I turned to Grouchy Pete, who wore a shiny new vest, unstained, and a new beaver hat, jauntily perched, offsetting the old steady scowl.

I said, “Have you read the new law?”

“Do I look like a man with time for readin’?”

Someone at the end of the bar called, and Grouchy Pete went grumbling away.

So I ambled over to the woodstove, where Micah Broadback hunched on his customary bench, close to the warmth.

“Whip scar healed up nice,” he said. “See you don’t lose your eye next time.”

“There’ll be no next time, if you take my part on this Foreign Miner’s Tax.”

“Can’t choose you over the law.”

“The Broke Neck Council is overreaching.”

“Hodges has promises to keep, and the Gaws will see they’re kept. So saith the Lord.”

“The Lord has nothing to do with it,” I said.

“The Gaws outvote me, too.” Micah spat on the wood stove. “I come to California for gold. But I seen the need for fair dealin’ in a place where law and order is wantin’. Somebody had to make a council. So I did, me and Drinkin’ Dan and the others. Now, these Triple MWs, they take the business a lot more serious. If they want to do the work, I’ll vote what they want.”

Grouchy Pete came over, picked up a split of wood, shoved it into the stove, which caused a shower of sparks to pop. He stamped them out, then slammed the stove door. “See what I done to them sparks? That’s what Hodges and Gaw will do to you if you dinna stand down, young Spencer.”

Most of the drinkers at the bar, most of the gamblers at the tables, most of the loud talkers all around, most of them were white. But here and there, I saw a serape, a dark complexion, a different demeanor. And foreigners paid in dust, too. I told him as much.

“Foreigners dinna sell shares in water companies,” answered Grouchy Pete. “But Hodges, he means to build somethin’ that’ll last. So I bought four preferred shares of the Triple MW. So long as they stay in business, so does Peter McDougall.”

I had not anticipated this. But it made sense. If Hodges was going to take control of our water, he should make sure that the most powerful men in the Miwok Valley were slaked with money … or the chance to make some.

I said to Micah, “They’re working like beavers up there, building that dam.”

“It’ll be the fellers in Rainbow Gulch who’ll pay the price, and you boys, too, if you think you can win a shovelin’ race against two dozen men.”

*   *   *

DETERRED IN THE SALOON, I crossed the street to Emery’s Emporium. It was quiet, but I sensed a new presence. I even smelled it, something clean, like soap, and then I saw it, not merely a presence but a whole human female. She looked up and smiled. A slender, sunburned woman she was, younger than George Emery by a decade. She was cutting carrots into little slices, bright orange carrots, the first carrots I had seen in a long time. I was not sure if I was more impressed to see her or the carrots.

Then Emery himself appeared from the back with an armload of potatoes. He dropped them on the counter and said, “Spencer, meet the little lady. Meet Mrs. Patricia Emery.”

She wiped her hands on her apron and extended one to me. “They call me ‘Miz Pat.’” And her smile warmed me as nothing had in a long time.

“Yes, sir,” said Emery. “We’re together now for good.”

“Didn’t like being apart,” she said. “So we made a deal with Sam Brannan. Buy wholesale in Sacramento, sell retail in Broke Neck. And live like a husband and wife should.”

She had to be a formidable woman, to have run her husband’s operation in Sacramento. She had to be a loving woman to have joined him here. And she had to be a woman unafraid to work because, as Emery said, “Maybe you seen the big tent I just strung out along the road. Hammered some tables and benches together, too, all so tomorrow, Pat can start cookin’ her famous beef stew. Plannin’ to sell it for one dollar or one pinch per bowl.”

“Smart women are settin’ up food tents all over the Mother Lode,” added Miz Pat. “Makin’ more money than the miners.”

Emery threw his arm around his wife’s waist. “Yes, sir, ain’t she somethin’? Come across on a wagon train in forty-eight. Lost her first husband, then found this old soldier when he was mustered out. She can do sums, bargain a Connecticut Yankee out of his breeches, and grease a wheelhub or a bread pan, dependin’ on what kind of lubricatin’ you need. I swear, my Pat can do anything.” He was in an ebullient mood, and why not? A warm body beside him in bed, a hot meal to look forward to, and big money to be made if his wife could cook even passably well.

“Now,” he said, “what can I do you for?”

“It’s about the Triple MW.” I twitched my eyes toward the wife, who wisely sensed private talk and returned to her carrots. Then I said, “You and Grouchy Pete and Mr. Abbott, you’re all voices of reason. But Pete bought stock, and—”

“Hodges came to me, too. I told him my money’s tied up in my goods and the eatin’ tent. So—”

Shouting in the street interrupted our talk: “Howdy, howdy, howdy!”

And someone in the saloon yelled, “The nigger’s here!”

Another voice cried out, “Has he brung the women?”

Across the street, my old friend Pompey was standing in front of Grouchy Pete’s. He shouted again, up and down the street, then turned and strode into the saloon.

George Emery said, “Spencer, you should’ve started diggin’ that trench to Rainbow Gulch four months ago, when I told you to. I’d have invested. I wanted to be in business with you. But not now…” Then he reached under the counter and put a paper bag on the table in front of me. “Peppermints for Flynn. He sure does like them peppermints.”

I snatched the bag and headed back to Grouchy Pete’s.

Pompey was standing near the entrance, proclaiming, “I come to tell you boys that we’ll be back tomorrow night. We’ll be pitchin’ our tents like before, wettin’ the pussy, like before. Doin’ it all like before but better than ever. So save your dust!”

This brought shouts, backslaps, raised glasses, even a few gunshots.

“Stop the damn shootin’!” cried Grouchy Pete. “You’re puttin’ holes in me roof.”

Pompey said to Grouchy Pete, “Thank you, sir.”

The gambler in the corner spun his wheel. As it started to rattle, he gave a shout. “Place your bets, boys. Place your bets. The little ball bounces wild but fair.”

And Pompey added this: “But y’all just remember, you lose your money at them tables, you’ll get no credit when you line up for a fuck. Gold dust only.”

And the gambler who wore the white coat and hair pomade put a hand on his spinning wheel and stopped it. His name was Carl Becker, and men who had been in Broke Neck any length of time knew well not to trust him. He said, “You talk awful big for a nigger.”

“I got a big man backin’ me up,” said Pompey. “A man named Big John Beam.”

The other gambler, the one who favored silk vests and top hat, looked up from his faro shoe. His name was Tector Bunche, and in any dispute, he backed Becker or Becker backed him. He said, “I just want to know, where does a nigger get a fancy vest as that?”

Pompey pulled back his coat to reveal the grip of an ivory-handled Colt pocket revolver. “Same place he gets one of these.”

“Well, this goddamn country’s goin’ straight to hell,” said Bunche, “when a nigger can get his hands on such a pretty gun.”

“An honest black man,” said Pompey. “Better than a dishonest white man.”

Oh, but Pompey was treading dangerous ground. If he had not brought the promise of women, he might have found himself in a noose right then.

Becker said, “You better hope California comes in a free state, boy, or I just might decide to buy you.”

“Or shoot you,” said Bunche.

Becker stepped away from his wheel. Bunche stood from the faro shoe. The others in the saloon all took a step back.

I was behind Pompey, close enough to whisper, “The one on the left keeps a knife in his boot. The one on the right will distract you, then the knife will fly.”

Pompey flashed a grin. “Why, howdy, Mr. Spencer.” He had grown. Not physically—he was big enough already—but in the way he carried himself. A new suit of clothes and a pocketful of money can make any man walk a bit taller, no matter his race.

Becker said to me, “So you’re a nigger lover, too.”

“And now that I know your trick,” Pompey said, “why don’t you boys get back to business. But remember, a man who feel good down in his balls is a man who feel lucky all over. So you gamblers, y’all gonna thank me after the girls come through.”

And that was a bit of sophistry fine enough for a Boston lawyer, never mind an uneducated Negro. He had negotiated his way right out the door and even left a few men laughing.

On the street I said, “You’re looking prosperous. You’ll be able to buy your family soon if you keep this up.”

He patted the money belt at his waist. “Once I have enough, I’ll git on back to North Carolina. And.… you know, you one of the few men ever ask me ’bout my family. I ’preciate that. So I got a nice woman for you. That little Mexican gal. She got some ’sperience on her now.”

I did not like the sound of that.

“She didn’t take to this work straight off, but we kept her at it, and, well, y’all get in line tomorrow night. You git a free poke, doin’ what you just done for ol’ Pompey. Nothin’ so sneaky as a fancy-dressed white man with a knife in his boot.”

I had no interest in mounting a frightened girl. But perhaps I could help her. Perhaps I could get her out, get her back to a decent life. Perhaps in this I was still naïve.

*   *   *

AS I STARTED OUT of town, Mr. Abbott called to me from his Express Office.

I asked him, “What about you? Will you speak for us against the tax?”

“I’m neutral. I’m a businessman. And here is my business.” He put a letter into my hands. It came from Janiva.

I took it into his office and tore it open.

When I saw just four lines, I thought that she was telling me it was over, that she had found someone else. And the first sentence was not promising: “I cannot live like this any longer.” But she followed with, “I am on the verge of doing something amazing. And no one will be more amazed than yourself, sir. Your Love, Janiva.”

That was all. I reread, puzzled, and must have shown it, because Abbott said, “It’s my business to be discreet. So I will not ask you what’s in that letter that just turned you as white as new canvas. I will only tell you to be careful on the trail.”

“Why?”

“When a man asks me a question about the deposits of another, I say nothing.”

“Fair enough.”

“So I said nothing to your friend, Harding, when he came by today, paid for a few letters, and started asking about you.”

“Me personally?”

“You … and your friends. Your white friends and your Chinese friends, too.” He brushed his hand up and down his vest, polishing those neat nails. “It’s like they’re trying to find out where you’re keeping your gold.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him nothing. There’s loose lips in this camp. But not inside these walls, rough hewn though they might be.”

I thanked him for his discretion.

*   *   *

I SAW ONE MORE thing that night in Broke Neck that I must report:

As I was leaving Abbott’s, a man was riding up the road. He looked like a professional mourner. He wore a long black frock and a top hat in the shape of an upturned plant pot. He rode with his eyes straight ahead, as if fixed on some dark, distant star. He reined up in front of Grouchy Pete’s and dismounted. Then I saw the length of rope draped over his saddle. It terminated in a noose.

Captain Nathan Trask had come looking for deserters.

He glanced in my direction, but I withdrew into the shadows.

*   *   *

MY SENSES WERE SHARP as I rode home.

There was a good moon, so the road ahead was well-lit, and the darkness beneath the trees did not threaten. Nor did the distant woofing and crying of the coyotes.

And I did not fear the Triple MWs. They had gone to such lengths to assure the legality of their predations that an ambush would be out of the question. Nor did I fear Mexican phantoms, though there were stories of banditos riding in the night, robbing the Yankees who had driven them from their claims. And I did not fear the grizzlies that Cletis said were awakening now in late March and wandering the hills, ravenous and dangerous.

No. It was that cryptic letter from Janiva that vexed me. What on earth would be so amazing? And how, this far away, could I be amazed by what she was doing in Boston?

I dismounted at the road above our claim and led my horse down the bank, toward the flutter wheel that stood like a sentinel in the night. For a moment, I stopped on the north bank and watched the water, running with a steady rush and swish, doing its springtime business day and night.

Then, over its burble, I heard a voice:

“Trouble comes.” Chin’s shadow stood to my right, on the narrow bank between the bushes and the water. The moonlight shone off his forehead.

“Trouble. Yes.” I saw the bags of gold dust over his shoulders. “When it comes, it may come as quickly for us as it does for you.”

“So bury gold.” He spoke just loudly enough to be heard over the water. “Bury one bag. We bury the other on this side. That way—”

And I made a decision. Chin had earned our friendship. He deserved our help, no matter what Cletis said. I took one of the bags and told him, “Nine o’clock.”

He furrowed his brow, as if he did not understand.

“Big Skull Rock is round, like a clock. Flynn’s gold is buried at two o’clock, Cletis’s at noon. Mine is at ten o’clock. I will bury yours at nine o’clock, three feet down.”

But I would not tell Cletis. In this, I would remain anonymous.

March 30, 1850
A meeting

Sunlight streamed like warm liquid through the east window and awoke me for the first time since we had lived there. A week after the vernal equinox, a man could feel the turning of the earth, hear “the music of the spheres,” as Professor Agassiz had described the celestial hum of the planets around the sun. Such were the thoughts that filled my mind for a moment or two before consciousness came upon me. Then I heard the simpler music of the river. Then I heard the crowing of one of the Chinese roosters. Then I heard something—or someone—else.

Flynn was stumbling through the door, bootless and bottomless, naked from the waist down. I asked him what he was doing.

He said, “Takin’ a piss. Go back to sleep.”

But I was awake with the sun in my eyes. So I got up, pulled on my breeches, and slid on the soft moccasins I had bought at Sutter’s Fort. Even a hillside in the California wilderness can seem more like home when you have soft footwear in the morning.

I stepped outside, grabbed a few splits of wood, and threw them on the embers smoldering within the circle of campfire rocks. The ground had not yet dried to a crispy brown, so we did not worry about our campfire, and we preferred to cook outdoors, where smoke and smells dissipated readily. I was puzzled to see Flynn’s wet smallclothes hung to dry on the grate, but I poked a bit until the flames began to jump, then I grabbed the coffeepot and went down to the river. I knelt, dipped the pot, and over the rush of water, came a voice:

“I’ve been here since first light, hoping to catch you alone.”

On a boulder on the other side, shielded from the downstream view by shrubs and deep shadows, sat Samuel Hodges. He pulled a white handkerchief from his pocket, almost like a flag of truce. “I’ve come to talk, James.”

I left the coffeepot and stepped across from rock to rock.

With the handkerchief, he brushed off the boulder next to him and invited me to sit. As I did, I remembered the power in his bulk.

He said, “I’m sorry for what happened. You and your partners worked hard to build that sluice.”

“Your partners did not have to work at all to destroy it.”

“I won’t deny that I’ve made common cause with rough men. This is rough country. But I’ll build a legacy here, however I must.”

“If the legacy means that you drive away men because of their skin color—”

“We are white men of European descent, James. We are builders.” He spoke calmly, as a counselor. “Mexican sneak thieves, Digger Indians, spineless Chinese claim squatters … they block the path of progress. You should have learned that by now.”

“I’ve learned that it’s easy to unite beaten men against an enemy that doesn’t exist, then use them for your own purpose.”

“My purpose is to build something I could never have built in Boston.”

“You were well respected in Boston.”

“My father kept ledgers. He moved from one shipping house to another. It would have taken two generations for Hodges sons to rise to the level of the Spencers or for daughters to know the comforts that Spencer women know.”

“Sons? Is Gaw’s girl-child with a child of her own? Have you married her?”

This comment unnerved him. He was making a larger point, but in this elemental place, with the river at our feet and the sun slanting through the trees, I would take no larger points. What was in front of us was what mattered.

He stared at me, as if trying to decide whether to submit to his anger or continue to conciliate. He chose the latter. “In California, I can make a future. Then I can bring my little girls. Then perhaps I will marry. But first must come the building. So I come to you as a friend. We are days from completion of the dam. I come to propose an arrangement.”

The rooster crowed again, and the hens began to gabble and cluck.

Hodges looked toward the sound and said, “We are ringed by enemies, James. Best know who your friends are. I’m yours, as I was in Boston, as I will be forever if you commit to us. In exchange, I will give you and your partners ten shares of stock.”

“Do you include Flynn?”

“He can stay. As the new law is written, a foreigner is anyone who has come directly from another country. Flynn came from Boston. And he’s white. But not the Chinese. I cannot go back on my word to the men of this district.”

“I cannot go back on my word to my friends.”

“You went back on your word to me. You were one of the few men on that ship that I trusted. I’m proud of what you’ve done here. But you betrayed my trust.”

Those words gave me a pang of sorrow for denying him, a burst of pride for earning his admiration. I had proven myself.

Just then, Michael Flynn stumbled out of the cabin, pantless and oblivious, and headed for the outhouse.

Hodges said, “I watched your Irish friend this morning. He was down here before dawn, down here with one of the Chinamen. Is he that sort? Like Sloate and Harding?”

I shook my head, but in shock that Flynn was meeting Mei-Ling.

Hodges waited for a response to the larger question.

I fixed my eyes on the water forming V-shaped riffles as it cut over the rocks.

Hodges watched the water himself for a time, then clapped his hands on his knees and stood. “All right, then. Let me tell you what will happen if I go up that hill without an arrangement.”

I stood and looked him in the eye. I would not let him intimidate me.

He said, “We will divert your water at our dam. Then we will finish the trenches. The first will carry water to Broke Neck. Once those claims are supplied, we will run another to Rainbow Gulch. Your complaints to the Miner’s Council will be denied. I will win. And it’s all legal. Ask Lyons.”

By damming the water, he could create a reservoir and keep sluices flowing all season, at a volume that would not be affected by the meandering watercourse, the natural absorption of the streambed, or evaporation in the summer heat. That his trench bypassed Big Skull Rock would bother most miners not at all.

But I did not give him an answer. And he did not offer his hand. He simply turned and stalked off.

*   *   *

FLYNN BY NOW WAS sitting at the campfire, with his pants on, warming his stocking feet. “What did he want?”

“A son. Or an arrangement.”

“I hope you told him to go and fuck himself.”

“In so many words.” I put the coffeepot on the grate and recounted my conversation. Cletis came out, scratched his rear end, listened, and said, “So we got trouble comin’.” Then he went up to the outhouse.

I waited until he was beyond earshot before telling Flynn, “Trouble coming downstream and trouble across the river, if you’re shaking the shrubs with Mei-Ling.”

“Did Hodges—?”

“He thinks you were doing it with a Chinaman, which could get you hanged on general principle.”

Flynn gave a nervous laugh. “I got up to piss before dawn. I looked down at the river and saw somethin’ movin’ in the water. So I went, very quiet-like, till I was close. And it was Mei-Ling, cleanin’ herself. She looked up, looked right at me. I figured, now you’ve done it. She’ll scream and all the Chinks’ll come runnin’ and—”

Was I envious? I suppose. I could not take my eyes from Mei-Ling. But as I had told myself before, if her eyes were for Flynn, I would be grateful for a temptation eliminated.

“You know what she done?” Flynn looked off into space, as if reliving the wonder. “She smiled. I swear to God, Jamie, she smiled like she was invitin’ me. She covered her titties with one hand and her little black snatch with the other, and she smiled. Then she climbed onto a rock and disappeared into the bushes. Oh, but the sight of her sweet little ass was like lookin’ at honey made flesh. Me dick went as stiff as—”

“What did you do?”

“I crossed the river. That’s how I got all wet. I followed her into a little hollow in the bushes. She was sittin’ there, holdin’ her black gown up in front of her.”

“Did she say anything?”

“She just looked at me.”

“Did you say anything?”

“Wasn’t the time for talkin’. I knelt to kiss her. Then she heard somethin’, and she tensed like water freezin’ to ice. I thought, what’s that? A grizzly? A Chink? Felt like I was back in New York, standing outside that window—”

“You never did finish that story.”

“Someday … But faster than a fairy, she put that gown back on and shooed me away, sayin’, ‘Go. Go.’”

“She can speak English?”

“Maybe the most important things. So … even with an extra bit between me legs, I scrambled across the river and stumbled back to bed bare-assed and ballocky, which must’ve been a bad way for you to wake. Oh, but I tell you, Jamie, I think I’m in love.”

“In lust at least.”

“Always that. But she was so delicate … so innocent when she looked at me … I guess them peppermints worked.”

“So you won’t be coming to town tonight? Big Beam’s bringing the girls back.”

“Like hell. I’ll lead the way.”

“When you do, keep a clear eye. Watch for a man in a top hat and black frock.”

“A sea captain with a noose instead of a ship?” said Flynn. “He don’t frighten me.”

*   *   *

AROUND MIDDAY, CLETIS BEGAN to pile his goods on the back of the burro, and as we watched like deserted children, he said, “Damn good little beast, this burro. Works all day, carries more than his weight, goes where no horse could. Gotta have my Miguel.”

“You call him Miguel?” said Flynn, as if this was the greatest insult of all. “Miguel’s Spanish for Michael.”

“Boys, we made a deal to hang together till the winter rains. Now, it’s, it’s—” He gestured up at the sun arcing ever higher into the sky, as if he could not finish the sentence. He tightened the cinches on his saddle and said, “I ain’t stickin this old neck out no more. I got enough gold to live like a king. Could never get a woman to love me, but now I can pay for all the women I want, so … I hear they got some fine ones in San Francisco.”

I felt deserted, deprived. Cletis was more than just a friend. He had become a counselor and guide, with a view of the world that was narrow but always clear.

I said, “You were right about the men in town. None of them want to stick their necks out. Not even George Emery.”

“Good faith plays out fast. Just like a claim. You boys can keep the black fryin’ pan.” He shook our hands solemnly, wished us luck, then swung a leg and rode past the shattered remnants of the second sluice. At the river’s edge, he stopped and looked back, “Are you sure you won’t come along to Frisco?”

“We been there,” answered Flynn.

“Suit yourself, then.” Cletis gave his horse a kick and headed up to the road.

“Now what?” I said to Flynn.

He stood. “We clean up and go to town. I got an yearnin’ for Sheila’s round rump.”

*   *   *

THAT NIGHT, THE TOWN smelled of sex. It was in the air, something copulative, creative, a commingling of scents to excite the spirit and then the loins. Big Beam squirted perfume onto the tents so that if there was a breeze, the aroma took life. And the sweet smell of anticipation, of men finished with their labors looking forward to fulfillment, that was so strong, it almost hummed. And if anticipation was keen enough, cleanliness might follow, so that the smells of soap, hair pomade, and bay rum danced on the currents of air, too.

Or was I confusing the smell of sex with the smell of stew? Almost as many men had trooped into town to get themselves a bowl at the huge steaming kettle that Pat Emery was stirring in the tent beside Emery’s Emporium.

Flynn said we could have stew later, so we made for the line on the south side of the street. A dozen men stood in front of us, all waiting to get into the big top of Big Beam’s Traveling Circus of Earthly Delights, where every man stopped before heading to one of the smaller tents that led to fulfillment. We waited our turn. We would have been in a fight otherwise. There was almost a fight anyway, as the two men ahead of us—two from the Triple MW, a skinny, hairy specimen named Vinegar Miller and his rat-like partner Charlie Boles—offered us crosswise looks as soon as we ambled up behind them.

But Flynn answered with a smile. “Boys, as the unofficial Irish mayor of Big Skull Rock, I proclaim all hostilities suspended for the night, since we’re all after one thing: the best fuck of our life.”

And that seemed sufficient. Without a crosswise word to match their looks, they turned back to the night’s plan.

Things had grown more organized since Big Beam’s first visit. Just inside the flap, at a table under a lantern, he greeted each man. A chalkboard behind him showed the names of seven girls. And yes, Maria was one of them. Big Beam wrote the name of each man on the board, next to the name of the girl he requested, either for herself or for her particular specialty. Some men liked to ask for Sheila. Others cared only to know that they were getting a “round rump” or “smooth-shaved legs.” Big Beam promised to fulfill requests, if he could, then demanded an ounce for fifteen minutes, two for thirty, and so forth, but No Kredit Accepted, as the sign said. So men dutifully measured out their dust, then sat on benches, like schoolboys awaiting dismissal into the June sunshine. When a girl came ready, she would ring a bell and another miner would go through the back flap. If there was romance in any of this, I did not see it. But romance was not the point.

I requested Maria. Flynn made a joke of my request, something about me being in love. Then he and Big Beam went to jawing about all the whoremongering competition coming into the gold country. Meanwhile, men kept streaming through the back flap, toward the smaller tents until only two remained ahead of me.

Then Big Beam called for Vinegar Miller, who popped up, cried, “Here I be.”

The other miner, Charlie Boles shouted, “Hey, we come in together.”

“One of you has to wait,” said Big Beam. “There’ll be another girl soon.”

“I waited all day. I ain’t waitin’ no more,” said Boles.

“Me neither,” said Miller.

Big Beam said, “But there’s only one girl.”

Raised voices brought Pompey to the back flap, ready to exert himself.

But when it came to sex, the men of the Triple MW were downright cooperative. Boles said, “We’ll both take her, then. We’ll give you four—no five!—five ounces for half an hour. That ought to give us some extra fun. Right, pardner?”

Vinegar Miller got a devilish glint in his eye, pulled out his pouch, and dropped it on the table. “Take what you want out of there. Then let’s get to her.”

“Well, I don’t know.” Big Beam scratched the back of his neck.

Charlie Boles pulled out his pouch and offered three more ounces.

It was all too much for Big Beam to turn down. “The girl is Maria, in tent six.”

I made a strange, strangled sound, and Flynn asked if I was all right.

I said to Beam, “I’ll pay six ounces for her, right now.”

Miller and Boles looked at me. Then Miller said to Big Beam, “Tell that son of a bitch to wait his turn.” Then he and his friend went through the back flap.

I thought to follow them, to stop them. I even took a step, but Pompey put himself in front of me. “Sorry, Mr. Spencer, but once the boys pays their gold and go down the line, ain’t nothin’ we can do. You get her for free, like I promised. But they gettin’ what they want first.”

Big Beam said, “If you wasn’t friends with my old pardner, I’d throw you out on your thick head. Just sit quiet and wait. You’ll have the little Mexican filly in half an hour.”

I called him a fat son of a bitch and would have called him more, but Flynn grabbed my elbow and pulled me away, whispering, “Either you found something good or you’re in love. Want to let me in on it?”

Before I could speak, Big Beam shouted, “Flynn! Roberta’s free. And she been talkin’ about you all day. Says she powdered up nice, just for you.”

Flynn said, “I’m here for Sheila, but I missed Roberta, too. Maybe I’ll have her, then pay another ounce for Sheila.” And that was the end of my talk with Flynn. He told me, “You be careful, Jamie, and wait your turn.” Then he headed for the back flap.

More men were coming in, loud men swinging jugs, spreading laughter and the scatology of minds made up for fucking.

One of them shouted, “We hit it big, and we all want a poke!”

“That’s right. Poke anything that ain’t nailed down.”

“One ounce for fifteen minutes,” said Beam. “Gold dust up front. Leave your guns with me.”

“You want my pistol or my gun?” shouted another, and they laughed and burped and farted and eyed me as if they remembered me from somewhere. One of them dropped down beside me, his breeches already bulging, and offered me a swallow of whiskey.

I took it. I could use it, and refusing it would only bring bad feelings, of which there were already enough in that tent.

Then, to my surprise Deering Sloate came in, approached Big Beam, and asked for Sheila. “I hear she’ll take it in the rump.”

“You’ll have to pay her a bit more,” said Beam. “Leave your pistol with me.”

Sloate seemed to be a man who followed his stiff dick in any direction it took him. He paid his money, dropped his gun and holster, looked around, and his eye fell on me. “Writing with your other pen, Spencer? What’ll that girl back in Boston think?”

“What would your mother think?”

In response, his hand went to his hip. I was glad he was unarmed.

I decided to step out of the tent, away from Sloate, away from the cloying smells of perfumed canvas and whiskey breath, away from the close stink of miners in rut. Another fifteen minutes in that tent and I’d be gagging.

I walked a little ways up the street, past the crowd slopping down in Emery’s eating tent, and I took a perch on the stoop of Emery’s store.

Miz Pat came out, aproned and sweating, to take a small rest. She lit a cigar, which did not shock me as once it might have, and she leaned against the porch post.

I said, “The boys like your stew.”

“They’d eat anything that didn’t eat them first, so long as it had a sauce.” She took a deep inhalation of smoke and said, “Sure is rowdy tonight. Are you headin’ for the girlie-tents?”

“Yes, but not for the purpose you might be thinking.”

“My husband said you were a strange young man.”

I suppose that I was, given such an answer as that. And she had no more talk to offer. So she turned and went back inside, muttering about more carrots for the stew.

I stayed on the stoop, watching the men surging through the streets. I heard laughter from the eating tent. I listened to the piano in Grouchy Pete’s pounding out “Oh, Susanna.” The fucking and eating and carousing would go on all night beneath the sputtering torches of this transitory little town in the middle of the wilderness, and—

—a scream pierced the air like the shattering of a window. It came from the line of whoring tents. A moment later, Maria burst from the last of them, running, running as if she had just seen hell and wanted to escape before she fell into the abyss, running as I had never seen a woman run before, running completely and utterly naked, and screaming as she ran, wordless and terrified.

Vinegar Miller lurched out of the tent after her and cried, “Murder! Murder!”

Pompey burst from the main tent. “Murder? Who been murdered?”

Then Boles staggered out behind Miller, looked down at his chest, reached for the handle of the knife now protruding from it, and collapsed.

“Murder! Right here!” cried Miller. “That Mexican whore just killed my pardner!”

Two miners came out of Grouchy Pete’s. One fired his gun into the air. The other shouted into the saloon, “Hey, come see the naked whore!”

Pompey grabbed Miller and threw him back. “You just wait, now. Wait.”

I ran into the street, and as she came toward me, I tried to grab her. “Maria, stop! It’s me. Spencer.”

She gouged at my eyes and kept running, the innocent nakedness of her shining in the torchlight.

Now dozens of men were running and lurching and staggering from everywhere, shouting for us to grab her, stop her, get the Mexican whore.

The man in the top hat and black frock stalked out of Grouchy Pete’s. He had a noose over his shoulder. He saw the young woman go by. He saw the body of the miner. He stepped off the porch and strode after her.

Pompey tried to put himself in front of the crowd. He threw up his hands and shouted, “Y’all wait one damn minute, now. Let me get her. She trust me. She—”

I heard a gunshot, and the crowd surged over the falling Pompey, all except for one in a white suit, who rifled Pompey’s pockets, pulled off his money belt, grabbed his pistol. As he ran off, I saw the pomade shining in his hair. The gambler named Becker, making good on a threat, which meant Bunche was sure to be lurking nearby.

Now the Gaws burst from the saloon. Moses was unfurling his new whip. David was carrying the leg of a chair like a club.

I put myself between Maria and the men and cried, “Stop! She’s just a girl! Stop!”

But the mob did not stop for me, either. They were an angry wave rolling right at me, right over me. When the chair leg hit me, the world went black.

*   *   *

THEY HANGED HER FROM the oak tree beside Emery’s Emporium.

Her pendent body was my first sight when I came to. Pain was my first sensation … for her and for the throbbing inside my skull.

Flynn had dragged me unconscious out of the riot, to the safety of Emery’s porch.

I tried to go to her, but Flynn held me, held me down, held me in place.

“Goddamn them,” I said. “She was just a girl.”

“She killed a man,” said George Emery.

I looked over toward the line of whoring tents, to where Boles had fallen. They had carried him off, but Pompey still lay there, in a pool of blood that glistened darkly in the torchlight.

Flynn said, “I reckon our black friend won’t be buyin’ that family, after all.”

My mind, fogged by confusion and pain, kept going from the girl to Pompey and back. I said, “Who hanged her?”

Miz Pat put a mug of tea into my hands. “Moses Gaw got her with his whip, tripped her, dragged her. Then his brother started in to screamin’ hellfire and damnation on a murderess. Then a tall man in black frock and top hat stepped up, said he’d do the work of the Lord and the law.”

I said to Flynn, “Trask? He hanged her?”

“I’m thinkin’ he’ll hang anybody.”

“Sure did kill the appetites in the eatin’ tent,” said George Emery.

Miz Pat told her husband, “If that’s all you have to say, get inside.”

The town had gone quiet. Even the randiest of miners left after the hanging. The only sound came from the hissing and sputtering of the torches that lit the street.

Then Big Beam appeared from his big tent and hurried toward us like a man late for work. He carried a ladder on his shoulder and was muttering, “Terrible thing. Terrible thing to have to see. Terrible. Terrible.”

George Emery said, “At least justice was swift.”

Miz Pat turned to him, “I swear, George—”

As Maria twisted in the night breeze, so that her breasts and bottom were displayed for any who passed, Big Beam fitted the ladder beneath her and called over to us, “Does anybody got a knife?”

I said, “Why don’t you use the one she fought them off with?”

Big Beam said, “Why don’t you just stay out of it?”

“I stayed out of it.” I came down off the porch and strode toward the ladder. “I let you use her, you and those dirty miners, and now—” I looked up at her and felt something explode inside me. It was in my mind, and suddenly, it was in my whole being.

I flew at Big Beam and smashed into the ladder and sent him sprawling onto his fat, food-filled belly. When he tried to get up, I kicked him in that belly, then kicked him again, then again, kicked out all the fury I had in me, all the anger building for months, anger at the ease with which men slipped the bonds of civility and civilization, kicked out all the anger at letting those bonds slip in myself, kicked and kicked and smashed my boot into his face, so that his nose crunched, then kicked again so that his teeth flew and then, Flynn flashed from somewhere … and the world went black once more.

March 31, 1850
Swift Justice

Morning sunlight brought no joy when it struck my face.

Flynn was sitting on the edge of his pallet. He said, “Sorry I had to hit you. I thought you might kill Big Beam.”

“She was sixteen. He let two miners have her at once. Damn him, damn them, and damn this place.” I was lost, cut loose from anchor and mooring. The mob had left me unnerved, unwound, and unmanned. I stared at the wall, saw her naked breasts and blackened face twisting obscenely, then saw the black bulk of Pompey, bleeding in street.

Flynn brought me coffee.

I did not want it.

He suggested I step outside.

I wanted to stay in the dark of the cabin, stay and hold my head, keep it motionless and empty.

Flynn brought me my journal and suggested I write. “Might make you feel better.”

I said, “I’ll write about Pompey, shot down like a dog—”

“Pompey got no more rights here than in South Carolina. It was one of them gamblers killed him. A low brace of cowards, them two.”

I took the pen and dipped into the ink and stared at the page. They say that after a blow to the head, a man can go wobbly for days … or months. I had taken two, and though I scratched a few things, I could not focus. I closed my eyes and held my head. I heard Flynn working outside. I heard the Chinese down by the river. I heard Chin talking to Flynn. I could not hear what they were saying. I did not care. Then, late in the day, I heard horses coming down the opposite bank. Whoever they were, let them come.

Then I heard Samuel Hodges say, “Who you boys speak-ee English?”

Moses Gaw said, “The tallest one, the one scowlin’.”

Chin said, “I know your language.”

“You tell others boys, we no like-ee fight, so they move, chop chop.”

“But tax?” said Chin. “If we pay tax?”

“The council met last night,” said Hodges. “We’ve decided to move you all out. No more Chinks or Niggers or Mexicans murdering white men.”

I went to the window. The sunlight made my head throb.

Hodges had brought half a dozen Sagamores, including the Gaws, Tom Lyons, Sloate, Vinegar Miller, and Christopher Harding. Up on the road, in white duster and top hat, Miner’s Councilor Micah Broadback sat his horse. Next to him, a perfect contrast in black, sat Nathan Trask. Broadback looked like he did not want to take any part in this. Trask looked like he was yearning to use the noose again.

Tom Lyons said, “From now on, foreigners can pass through, but they’ll stake no claims in Broke Neck, not even on tailing piles like this.”

Stepping into the cabin, Flynn watched through the open door. “Might be trouble.” For all his volubility, he understated things when they were at their worst.

Little Ng, shirtless in the hot sun, had moved close to Chin. The other three, in their baggy clothes and straw hats, had formed a half circle around Mei-Ling. Uncle Bao held a hoe, Little Ng’s big brother, Ng-goh, stood with a shovel, and Friendly Liu had produced a pair of threshing sticks chained together.

Flynn said, “I don’t like it, Jamie. If them Triple MWs find out about Mei-Ling—”

Hodges was saying, “We’ll give you fifteen minutes.”

“Fifteen minutes?” Chin just stood there.

Hodges pulled out his watch. “Starting now.”

Flynn said to me, “Last night is an excuse. No talk. No tax. Just go. He’ll steal every foreign claim, give it to some white miner.”

Chin was saying, “We do no bad thing. We no move.” Then he took a few steps toward the other Chinese.

Hodges looked up toward our cabin, to see if we were watching, then he said to Moses Gaw, “Seize him up. Tie him to the wheel.”

Two men grabbed Chin, who kept his eyes fiercely on Hodges …

 … who leaned down from his horse and said, “A dozen lashes, Mr. Chinee man. Then you leave. If you stay, we give a dozen to every Chink here.”

They dragged him to the wheel, which was chocked and motionless above the current.

I moved toward the door.

Flynn stepped into my way. “No, Jamie. They have to face this themselves.”

Four of Hodges’s men tied Chin, hand and foot. He said nothing and did not struggle, as if by taking the punishment he could protect the rest.

But David Gaw had dismounted and was walking among the Chinese. He stopped in front of the smallest of them, gave a long look, and said, “Brother Moses, let’s flog this one instead.” He was pointing at Mei-Ling.

And Flynn forgot his own advice. He flew out the door and down the hill with his Colt drawn and fury in his stride.

Sloate pulled his pistol and swung it toward Flynn, but Hodges stopped him and said, “No. No. Not yet.” Then he shouted at Flynn, “Keep that gun pointed down.”

“These people had nothin’ to do with last night,” answered Flynn. “You got no right to be punishin’ them. If they pay the tax, take it, and ride on.”

“Did you hear that,” said Moses Gaw. “This arrogant Mick says ride on. To us?”

Hodges looked at him, “Arrogant in Boston, arrogant in Broke Neck.”

Sloate laughed as if he knew that a bully’s laughter was just the thing to provoke an Irishman’s anger. “You think you can drive all of us off yourself, Mick?”

“No, but I can kill you, you son of a bitch, and two or three others.”

Moses uncoiled his bullwhip and said to Flynn, “Where are your pardners?”

Sloate leaned back in his saddle. “One of them is up there writing all this down. That’s all he’s good for.”

I watched as if this were a play unfolding in a Boston theater. But through the fog in my brain, I could see that Flynn was right. Exposing myself to their guns would do no one any good. Standing ready to fire from cover might keep them at bay. So I pointed my pistol out the window, aiming it at the men who had hanged Maria like a dog and done it as self-righteously as a New England jury.

David Gaw shouted up at me, “Write it down that we hanged a whore who murdered a white man.” Then he turned to Mei-Ling, “And if my eyes don’t deceive me, we got another whore right here, of the Chink species. A woman breakin’ the rules of Leviticus by dressin’ as a man.” He knocked Mei-Ling’s straw hat off her head. Then he put his hand under her chin and turned her face to him.

From his spread-eagle on the wheel, Chin shouted something in Chinese.

Ng-goh, the biggest and strongest of all the Chinese, let out a bellow and swung a shovel into the back of David Gaw’s head. And the uprising began.

Friendly Liu swung his threshing sticks as he put himself between the girl and the other whites. Little Ng leapt foward with a wild cry. Uncle Bao raised his hoe like a club.

These Chinese men had protected Mei-Ling across thousands of miles and most of a year, and they would fight for her now, lest she be violated.

Deering Sloate, however, was unmoved by their anger. He pulled his gun and coldly shot Uncle Bao, just as the Chinaman was turning his hoe onto Moses Gaw.

Flynn fired at Sloate. But once, twice, he pulled his trigger in frustration. Two haphazard loads, two misfires, so he shouted, “Run, Mei-Ling! Run!” And before Sloate could swing his pistol again, Flynn leapt at him and pulled him off his horse.

As Flynn and Sloate went at it, Mei-Ling scrambled into the bushes and up the bank.

Ng-goh swung the shovel at two Sagamores who came flying from his right.

Moses Gaw looked at Chin and said, “See what you done?” Then he kicked out the chock, so the wheel started to turn with Chin tethered to it, down into the water then up, around, and down again … Wei Chin, tortured by his own handiwork.

Uncle Bao had fallen and was screaming in pain, his body curling around the hole in his belly. But Friendly Liu, who always seemed to be smiling, even when he wasn’t, backed toward the bushes, keeping himself between the white men and Mei-Ling.

David Gaw got to his feet and pointed his pistol at Friendly Liu.

And a rifle shot cracked from somewhere downstream.

David Gaw cried out as his elbow seemed to explode in blood.

Another shot came right after, from the bushes on the north bank. Were two men shooting from cover? Had Emery and Abbott come to our rescue?

Christopher Harding turned his gun toward the trees and loosed two or three rounds. He was answered with a rifle shot that took off his hat, which was followed by the high-pitched cackle of Cletis Smith. “I wasn’t aimin’ for the hat!”

And for a moment, there was silence, punctuated by the steady thump of the flutter wheel, turning Chin up, around, and down, while David Gaw sat on the ground and moaned, and dying Uncle Bao whimpered in agony.

Then the disembodied voice of Cletis Smith echoed again, “Hey, Harvard! Rest that hog leg on the windowsill. Aim good. And shoot Hodges first.”

Realizing his predicament, Hodges shouted up to me. “Our arrangement still holds, James. If you want it—”

Moses Gaw was tightening his belt around his brother’s arm to stop the bleeding. He said, “Arrangement? What goddamn arrangement?”

Cletis delivered another shot that cut the reins on Samuel Hodges’s horse.

“That’s my arrangement.” Then he shouted, “Now, we got two muskets and a rifle up here, and a big old blunderbuss, too. Every time I shoot, I get another gun right in my hands. So I’ve got you in a crossfire, boys.”

Vinegar Miller emerged from the bushes, dragging Mei-Ling by the hair, shouting, “And we got the China whore.”

Chin, still turning up, around, and down, cried out to his sister, then splashed into the water again.

Flynn, who had left off grappling with Sloate, ran toward her, but Moses Gaw fired his whip, took out Flynn’s legs, and dropped him on his face. Someone else drove a knee into Flynn’s back. Sloate pinned his arms. And two more took Ng-goh.

Hodges ordered Miller, “Put a gun to her head.” Then he shouted up at the hills, “There’ll be no more shooting. We’re arresting the big Chink for assault on a white man, and Flynn’s a deserter from the William Winter. His fate is sealed.”

I hadn’t fired my pistol yet. I knew that if I did, I was likely to hit someone I cared about. And Cletis had gone silent.

Hodges ordered his people to mount. Then he shouted up at the hills again. “You can have the Chinaman riding the wheel. You can have the girl, too.”

Tom Lyons looked up at our cabin. “We’ll give them a fair trial, Spencer. I promise. In town, tomorrow, as prescribed by the council. You can testify.”

“Then we’ll hang them,” added Moses Gaw.

*   *   *

CLETIS DID NOT DESCEND until after the Triple MWs had disappeared up the road with Flynn and Ng-goh, hands tied and tethered to saddle pommels, running along behind the horses.

By then, I had chocked the wheel and was untying Chin, while Mei-Ling and Friendly Liu comforted the dying Uncle Bao.

Cletis led his horse and burro into the clearing, followed by a young man leading a horse of his own. I recognized Rodrigo Vargas. The frightened boy who had waylaid us in August, the angel of mercy who had nursed me in January, had once again been the agent of our rescue.

Cletis said, “I met him on the road. He was comin’ up. I was goin’ down. He said he was lookin’ for the girl he loved. The girl named—”

“Maria?” I said.

“I told him I’d help him find her.”

“Why?”

“Well, Harvard, I could never get a woman to love me, so I reckoned I’d help a young feller who could.” Cletis bit a chaw of tobacco. “Then we heard that she’d been hanged, most likely by them who just left.”

Rodrigo looked from under the brim of his straw hat. His face had been a river of tears when first I gazed upon it in that bloody grove of trees. It was now a mask of grief. But his jaw was set, as if he would never cry another tear. He told me he would bring Maria back to the ranchero to bury her, and he would avenge her. “It does not matter in what order I do these things. I will do them.”

I said, “They may have buried her already.”

“Then I will help you,” he said. “Help you kill the men who killed her.”

“You helped plenty already,” said Cletis. “Damn good loader.”

Chin, soaked and exhausted, half drowned and disoriented from his riverine crucifixion, dragged himself to his feet, listened as Little Ng unleashed a stream of Chinese, then said, “He wants to know … what will happen to his brother.”

“They’re supposed to wait for the law,” I said. “But if they promise a trial tomorrow—”

Cletis said, “Elected head of the Miner’s Council does the job when you don’t have a real alcalde nearby. That’s Hodges. So, if there’s a trial, it’ll be quick.”

“We can’t just leave them,” I said.

“We can fight,” said Rodrigo with a sudden, adolescent ferocity.

“Hodges has two dozen men, boy, all armed,” said Cletis.

“I will fight,” said Rodrigo. “I will fight them myself if you will not.”

Chin added, “We not let them hang Ng-goh.”

Mei-Ling came toward us, standing straight, head high, as if something had happened within her, something that overcame her natural subservience. “Uncle Bao dead. No hang Flynn and Ng-goh, too.”

Chin said, “No hang. I help. Little Ng, Friendly Liu, they help, too.”

Little Ng scowled. Friendly Liu smiled and nodded.

I remembered the body of Sean Kearns hanging in a grove of trees and the corpse of Maria twisting above Broke Neck. I would not let them do that to Michael Flynn, too. No man worth his manhood would let them hang his friend. I said, “A small, dedicated group of fighters can win by catching an enemy in his bed.”

Cletis spat tobacco. “When did you become a military expert?”

I massaged my aching head. “I’m a student of history. George Washington led a surprise attack in a sleet storm at Trenton and changed history.”

“Is that a fact? Well, whatever we do, we’ll change history, too. Our own.” Cletis led the animals across the river, up toward the cabin.

Chin called after him, “Ng-goh not be hanged.”

Cletis looked at Chin. “No matter what happens, you’ll have to go. Make for San Francisco, get on a boat, go home.”

“Gum Saan home, now,” said Chin. “We go Chinese camp or San Francisco.”

Cletis looked at me. “You ought to go home, too. You ain’t made for this.”

“Get Flynn first,” I said.

Cletis leaned on the burro’s back and appeared to think it over. “Well, they’ll never expect us. They think we’re too frightened.”

“We are,” I said.

“Can you draw a map of the camp, the log piles, the sluices, the dam? All of it?”

*   *   *

AROUND NINE O’CLOCK, IN the midst of our plotting, we heard someone crossing the river below. The moon was up, so we could see him clear. He reined about twenty feet from our cabin and called my name.

Cletis pointed his blunderbuss out the window. Then he nodded to me. Go ahead.

I stepped into the moonlight as the rider dismounted and came closer: Christopher Harding, no more than a shadow beneath the brim of his hat. He said he was leaving.

“Why?” I asked.

“Hodges has no … no conscience. Neither does Sloate.” And I saw a flash of the boy I had known in our school days—honest, principled, perhaps a bit naïve—not the man who had taken abuse on the boat, taken a predator like Sloate as a pardner, and taken to doing the work of Samuel Hodges in the Mother Lode.

He said, “Flynn will be hanged at dawn.”

“Without a trial? Tom Lyons said there’d be a trial.”

“Trask says deserters get hanged. They don’t need a trial. That’s the argument.”

“And Hodges won’t stop it?” I said.

“Hodges wants him dead. Moses Gaw hates him. Sloate wanted to shoot him. They’ve all gone mad with their own power and ambition up there, Jamie. They think you men down here threaten it. So they’ll hang him and come after you.”

“We were here first,” said Cletis from the window.

“Doc Beal cut off David Gaw’s arm tonight,” Christopher told him. “Your shot shattered his elbow. He’s gone feverish. If he dies, they’ll hang you first.”

Cletis came out of the cabin. “Where they keepin’ Flynn.”

“They put him and the Chinaman in the saw pit.”

“I know the saw pit,” I said. “Right in the middle of the encampment.”

Christopher Harding said, “It’s about six feet deep so a man can work a ripsaw and turn tree trunks into planks. They cover it at night so animals won’t fall into it. That’s all I know.”

“That’s enough,” I said.

As Christopher mounted again, I asked if he was going home.

He said, “After all I’ve seen? All I’ve done? No.… but California is a big place. A man can get lost.”

I watched him go and thought, yes, a man could get lost, or find himself, even a man who had killed an albatross. Then I told Cletis that I could draw the sawpit on a map.

“That’s good,” said Cletis. “Good that you can draw. But can you kill?”

I showed him my Colt Dragoon. I could. I would. I had seen enough death to know that, sometimes, violence was the only answer.

Cletis nodded. “Then we have to go tonight, whether they’re expectin’ us or not.” But we’ll leave the girl and Friendly Liu here.

April 1, 1850
The Dams

Gunpowder is not a weapon. It merely allows a weapon to work. The weapon is a pistol or a musket, or in our case, a door. Yes, the door that Cletis Smith had made so proudly for our cabin. He had always said that an honest door must be thick enough to shut out the weather yet wide enough to admit a friend. He might also have said that it should be solid enough to float two hogsheads of gunpowder on a river.

I had scouted an overland trail to the Triple MW dam, so I went in the lead, Chin and Little Ng following, with Rodrigo and Cletis at the rear, leading the burro that carried the door and gunpowder. What a strange vision we must have made in the moonlight, moving though the brush and over the hilltops, following deer paths and rabbit runs, angry and aggrieved men, bent on rescuing our friends and securing vengeance. Around three in the morning, we came onto an open patch overlooking the Triple MW camp and the dam …

 … that marvel of primitive engineering, eight feet high, three feet wide, built of stone and wood and earth, reaching halfway across the stream, turning at ninety degrees, running fifty feet downstream, then turning back to the bank, all to expose a portion of riverbed. At the upstream end, they had built a footbridge all the way across the stream, and they had installed a sliding-log sluice gate, so that they could allow more water or shut off the flow entirely. That would be our escape route, the last step in a four-part plan that began with diversion, destruction, and extraction.

Cletis would stay on this side of the river. There was not much cover, a few rocks here, an outcropping there, a dozen three-foot stumps where a blue oak grove had stood not that long ago. He could do his best work with his Kentucky Long Rifle and musket, sowing fear and confusion, while Rodrigo did his loading and fired off a few potshots of his own.

I would climb the hill on the other bank, above the road, to play my part.

Torches burned on the dam and in front of the longhouse where the men slept. Someone was moving through the night to the outhouse near the edge of the settlement.

“Figures they’d put the shithouse downstream,” said Cletis. “About the only thing they want flowin’ down to us.”

We could hear the river running and a wheel turning, driving a shaft attached to a pump that removed water from the exposed riverbed so that in the morning, men could get at the gold in the bottom.

Most dam building did not happen till late summer, the driest time of year. But as soon as the rains of January and February had subsided, the current had slackened enough to make it possible for determined men to work until the snowmelt began. And they had made remarkable progress, damming and fluming and slowing the Miwok right where it bent.

But we cared nothing for their ambition. We cared only about saving our friends.

Chin and Little Ng took the burro. If the animal honked, it would sound as if he was just another beast in the Triple MW corral, which lay unguarded at the upstream end of the camp. Just before the attack, Chin would open the corral gate because frightened mounts were sure to scatter, raising more confusion.

I moved downstream, well below the camp, where I was certain there would be no lookouts, and I slipped across. Then I scrambled up the bank. There were more stumps and fewer trees than on my last visit, so there was less cover in the moonlight. But I moved from stump to shrub, stopping, looking, waiting, until I had found good cover, near a pyramid of logs.

From here, the camp spread below me, covering perhaps two acres of flat riverbank: three large structures, scattered tents, sluices, and wheels. The saw pit lay near the base of the hill. Two men were playing cards at a table atop the planks covering the pit. The glare of their lantern made it difficult to see much around them, but I knew that Flynn was beneath them.

He probably knew that somewhere in the camp, Nathan Trask was tightening a noose just for him. Could he have known that somewhere in the dark, an old man was picking targets? Or that somewhere upstream, two Chinamen were lashing a hogshead of gunpowder to a door, piling branches on top of it to disguise it, preparing to light the fuse and launch their device? Or that I was here, waiting to loose the logs?

I looked at the moon, which had passed its apex but still shone bright.

Chin had said, “When the moon dips below the trees, I will light the fuse. Then you will hear Little Ng’s flute, like a bird awakening. Then send the logs.”

It was not yet time, so I leaned back and I listened to the music of the river. And I wondered at this Mother Lode night. I had dreamed of showing Janiva our brilliant sky, with Mars and the other planets wheeling above me. And I told myself I would do it … a year from now, in Italy or the Alps. But not here. Never here.

Then I heard a door bang open below. A man strode out of one of the smaller cabins, lumbering like Moses Gaw. I could track him across the clearing because the moonlight caught the white of his nightshirt. He muttered a few words to the men guarding the saw pit, then went into the outhouse and slammed the door.

Then I heard something in the bushes nearby, something big, coming my way. I pulled my Bowie knife. Could I kill a man hand-to-hand, especially a man who sounded as if he might be bigger than Moses Gaw? And what was he doing up here? Was he with someone? A woman perhaps? Someone’s wife?

I waited and listened. And yes, there were others with him. It sounded like two, moving off to my left. I held my breath.

Then I caught the smell, oily and earthy, like a dirty fur collar. I heard a deep-throated grunt and snuffle. I moved my head so that I could see around the branches, and there, rising on its haunches in the middle of the road, stood a huge grizzly bear. The silvering moonlight struck her back, and it was as if she shone in the dark.

I would have preferred Moses Gaw.

But here I was, if not eye-to-eye, close enough to be terrified. Then one of the cubs emerged from the brush, followed by the other.

This hillside in the night was their domain. We gold seekers were interlopers, all of us with our sluices and flutter wheels and high-minded conceits. The sow came to within ten feet of me, then stopped, rose on her haunches again, and snorted. Was it me she smelled in the still air? The salty, pickled stink of white meat, dirty clothes, and abject fear? Or was it the garbage down in the slops pit beside the outhouse?

I wanted to sheathe the knife and pull my pistol, but any motion would attract her. Bullets would only anger her and alarm the camp, too. So … sit, hold my breath, and hope she moved away.

Down below, a woman came out of the longhouse. She was carrying a bucket. She chattered some at the men guarding the saw pit, then went over and dumped the bucket. Fresh slops.

The grizzly snuffed, liked what she smelled, and down the hill she went, pushing through the bushes, down toward the sleeping camp, down toward the sweet aroma of garbage, down with her two yearling cubs tumbling after her.

I exhaled, then I unbuttoned my trousers and took the piss that had almost poured out of me unbidden a few moments before.

Then I heard one of the guards say, “What the hell is that?”

The other said, “You wait here.”

His surprise was not long in coming. He shouted, “Oh, Jesus! Jesus!” And boom! A gun went off. The other man leaped up.

Now, the saw pit was unguarded.

In an instant, doors were banging, men were running and shouting, and the great mama bear was rising onto her hind legs. When the outhouse door swung open and all but slammed into one of the cubs, she turned to deliver a mighty swat that caught Moses Gaw in the side of the head.

Someone else shot into her huge back, which only enraged her. She whipped her paws about in a great arc as the terrified cubs scurried around her.

Moses Gaw tried to stand. The bear turned to the movement and with thunderous bellow and another swat, all but ripped his face off.

I heard him scream, saw him turn and stumble into the slops pit.

For a moment, I wondered if I should let this confusion unfold or take advantage of it. Then Cletis made the decision for me. He started shooting. His rifle flashed in the dark on the opposite bank, then his musket, then his rifle again.

Meanwhile, the men in the clearing did not seem to know where to shoot … at the grizzly now lumbering and bellowing and swatting at anything that came near, or at the terrified cubs, or at the hillside where muzzle flashes were flaming like starbursts in the night.

I ran to the front of the log pile. Two heavy stakes kept the pyramid in place. I kicked one out, then ran around to the other side and did the same. The pyramid held for a moment. Then, with a roar, it collapsed into a moving wall of two dozen logs … pounding and thundering down the hill, bouncing over their own stumps, flattening canvas tents, knocking down work stations, destroying sluices, and making a perfect diversion as I dove after them, down into the shooting and shouting, while the bears bellowed and the horses and mules that Chin had loosed came galloping into this scene of riverside chaos.

Hodges was at the door of the main building, shouting, “Not the bear. We’re under attack. Forget the bear.”

A rifle shot from the hillside whizzed past him and ricocheted off into the dark. He stopped shouting so abruptly that I thought he was hit.

I went straight to the saw pit. The logs had shattered the table and chairs, and the guards were running around with all the other Triple MWs, trying to make sense of what was happening in the torchlight. I grabbed the boards and threw them aside.

Flynn and Ng-goh looked up, and Flynn said, “What kept you?”

A bullet flew past my ear.

Flynn said, “We can’t climb. They got our hands tied.”

One of the Missourans saw me and pulled a pistol. I reached for mine, but a shot from the far bank took him in the side and sent him spinning away.

Flynn held up his hands and cried, “Cut the bonds! Cut the bonds!”

I took my knife and slashed through the rope. Then I cut Ng-goh’s bonds. Meanwhile, the bear was still bellowing, and men were shooting at it, and the cubs were yowling, and Cletis was still firing. All was confusion, just as we had hoped.

Hodges shouted, “Stop shooting! Stop! Or we’ll be shooting ourselves.” Then he called, “Moses! Moses!” and was answered with a strangled cry from the slops pit.

The bear stood up in the moonlight, and the noise that rose from her made the ground shake.

Flynn bounded out of the hole, then grabbed one of the shattered chair legs for a weapon. Ng-goh sprang up after him.

I said, “Come on!” and turned.

And there stood Nathan Trask, in his long frock coat and hat, with a noose in his hands. “Going somewhere?”

“Straight to hell,” said Michael Flynn, and he delivered a blow with the chair leg that squashed Trask’s top hat and maybe split his skull. Down went the captain, and away went three fugitives from angry justice.

A woman on the bunkhouse porch was waving in our direction. “Samuel! Samuel, they’re by the saw pit! The saw pit!”

Hodges came stumbling out again with a musket at his hip, shouting, “Stop! Stop in the name of the Miner’s Council!”

“Where are we goin’?” said Flynn.

“The dam!” I pointed him and Ng-goh across the river.

And we raced through the confusion, past men who saw us and started to give chase, others who were still trying to chase the bears or grab the panicked livestock now galloping about.

And all the while, I could hear the crack of Cletis’s rifle, then the report of his smoothbore musket, and in between, the peppering shots of Rodrigo’s pistol. Then came the boom of Hodges’s gun and Ng-goh spun down. I grabbed him and dragged him to his feet. But he had taken it in the belly, the worst place for a musket ball.

Hodges threw down the musket, pulled a pistol, and shouted for us to stop. As he raised it to fire, a shot from the trees hit him in the leg and took him down.

“Keep running,” I said to Flynn. “Across the dam and up the hill.”

Then I heard the shrill warning of Little Ng’s whistle. No tune, no birdsong, just a scream above the shouting of men and the bellowing of animals and the crying of women.

Chin and Little Ng had risen from the water on the far bank, and Chin was shouting, “Run! Run!”

We kept dragging Ng-Goh behind us. He was losing strength, but we had almost reached the planked walkway across the dam when Sloate came out of the shadows. He did not tell us to stop. He did not warn us. He raised his gun and fired. The bullet went over our heads. Then he lowered, pointed at me, but before he shot, he fell to his knees, dropping the gun and grabbing at the back of his head.

Chin had hit him with a perfectly aimed rock that knocked him senseless. Then Chin cried for us to hurry because Hodges was up again, limping toward us. Two or three others had broken off chasing the bear and were coming, too.

I kicked Sloate’s gun away and leapt onto the dam. Flynn kicked Sloate in the face and leaped after me. But Sloate grabbed Ng-goh by the leg.

I turned to grab Ng-goh and then I saw the brush-covered door floating toward the dam and the hidden fuse burning in the brush.

Chin screamed, “Run!”

I pushed Flynn ahead and stumbled after him. We both tumbled onto the bank as a flash lit the world. An invisible fist knocked me sideways, knocked me down, and punched through the air with a burst of sound that sent the dam flying into the sky.

Rocks and chunks of wood rained down everywhere. And a torrent of water swept through the breach, shooting down the ravine, slamming up and over the bank where the river turned, and roaring down the valley.

*   *   *

WE MADE IT BACK to our camp before dawn. But the water had made it well before us, racing down the little narrow gorge with enough force to knock the flutter wheel off its supports and somehow deposit it right against Big Skull Rock.

But our concern was Rodrigo. He was dying. He had sent pistol shots into the night, drawing wild gunfire back, and one of the shots had hit him in the gut. Now he was bleeding out, and there was nothing we could do.

We got him off his horse and into the cabin, where we laid him on the pallet.

“I’ll stay,” said Cletis.

“He won’t be alive for long,” said Flynn.

“Then he needs a friendly face, even if it ain’t a pretty one.” Cletis studied Rodrigo and listened to his breathing and said to us, “You boys best be goin’.”

“What about you?” I asked.

“I can brazen my way out of anything.” Cletis spit tobacco and laughed at his predicament. “Strange country. Friends become enemies. Enemies get to be friends. And too much mercy, well—”

“Too much mercy’ll get you killed,” I said. “You need to come with us.”

Then we heard commotion outside.

Chin, Mei-Ling, Little Ng, and Friendly Liu were coming up the hill. They looked somber, sad, frightened, as gray as the pre-dawn light. They were leaving with everything on their backs but without Uncle Bao and Ng-goh, both now dead.

And there was something else. Half their gold was still buried under Big Skull Rock. Chin had insisted that they not dig it up until our attack was over. That way, if we failed and our claims were raided, the gold would still be safe for Mei-Ling to find later. But they would not be digging now, because the flutter wheel lay wedged in the way.

Chin grabbed at it, tried to move it, let out with a great bellow of frustration, then called for the ax, which Friendly Liu carried.

While the others watched, he began to swing the ax, swing hard and angry, but as soon as it began to echo off the hillsides, Cletis stalked out of our cabin and said, “That gold won’t be worth a damn if the Miner’s Council hangs you Chinks. I knew you planted it there and never touched it. I’ll never tell anyone. So git. Come back for it later.”

Chin stopped straining, as if he knew that Cletis was right and was a man of his word, too.

Then, from inside, Rodrigo cried, “Señor Smith. Please.”

Flynn stepped toward Mei-Ling. She stepped toward him.

Chin stepped over the wheel and put himself between them. “You go north, Irish. We go south.”

Flynn gave a long look at Chin, a longer look at Mei-Ling. Then he pulled a bag of peppermints from his pocket and put them into her hand. “We will see each other again.”

She looked down at the bag, looked into Flynn’s eyes, and tears filled her own.

Her brother grabbed her by the arm and said, “Never see again.”

Cletis shouted from inside the cabin. “Y’all better be gone ’fore that sun gets up and those boys get their livestock together and come ridin’.”

I headed west for San Francisco and the first Boston boat, even though my gold from the last four months was now pinned under the rock, like Chin’s.

The Chinese aimed south for the Chinese camp, where such as they would be welcome, and where they might lose themselves in the anonymity of their race.

And Flynn, with his gold in his saddlebags, took one of the horses and headed north.

April 2, 1850
Shocking Intelligences

I reached Sacramento late in the afternoon of April 1 and checked into the Sutter’s Fort Hotel, as there was no passage aboard the Senator until the afternoon of the second. I slept with my pistol loaded on my lap, expecting a posse of Triple MWs at any moment.

Then, this morning, two backtracking miners stopped for breakfast in the fort and discussed the events they had seen in Broke Neck. I ate and listened … and listened.

The Miner’s Council had arrested Cletis in the morning. They tried him in the afternoon in Grouchy Pete’s with Hodges as judge.

Cletis testified that he had slept through the night. Then a Mexican boy had come to him before dawn. Cletis explained that he had tried to help, but the boy had died. He may have thought these were good lies, but Samuel Hodges did not believe any of them.

Then they asked Cletis about his friends.

Cletis said that they had all left late the night before, played out, disappointed, and fearful of the Miner’s Council.

Hodges did not believe this, either, and said that he had dispatched Sloate to find Flynn. The Chinese he did not care so much about. He could round them up anytime.

George Emery had corroborated Cletis with more believable lies: “Spencer came through about ten o’clock last night. He bought provisions and said he was headed for San Francisco. The Chinese came through a while later.”

Pat Emery said the same, and who did not trust a woman who could make such a fine beef stew?

“And all the while,” said one of these overheard miners, “a feller in black clothes and crumpled top hat was tyin’ nooses to pass the time, like a woman knittin’.”

I continued to listen with growing trepidation for the fate of my friend.

Hodges had his men carry the corpse of lawyer Tom Lyons into the saloon and showed the hole in his side, then the .45 caliber bullet they dug out of it. Hodges said to Cletis, “That’s a ball from a Kentucky Long Rifle. Not many men in this district have such a weapon. But you do. You shot me, and Lyons, and three others. Moses Gaw is dead from the bear attack. His brother is dyin’ from fever after you put a ball through his elbow. You did that, didn’t you?”

Cletis did not lie. Yes. He had shot David Gaw. So saith the Lord.

Hodges told him that if he confessed to everything, they would go easy on the Chinese and his pardners. So, as a last gesture of friendship for us, that is what Cletis Smith did.

They hanged him from the same tree where they hanged Maria two nights before.

As the backtracker described it, “The old boy took a final chaw of tobacco, thanked the Emerys for being good friends, and swung off into space.”

I could not finish my meal. I paid and hurried for the riverfront, more determined than ever to make it as quickly as I could to San Francisco and thence to Boston.

But something made me stop at Abbott’s Sacramento office. If there was mail bound for me in Broke Neck, I might catch it. And a letter was waiting. It came from Janiva. My heart leapt, then fell, then leapt again.

Dear James,

I have accomplished something amazing. I am in San Francisco! By the time you read this, I will have been here more than a week. You will find me in the harbor, aboard the ship Proud Pilgrim …

Good Lord.

Without reading the rest of it, I ran for the boat.