SIX

Friday Night

PETER FALLON FELT LIKE he had lived it … or dreamed it … or drunk so much marijuana tea that he hallucinated it. But he knew those guys now. He had looked into their eyes … and maybe their souls. And … oh, man, why did they have to hang Cletis?

He was glad that Spencer didn’t see it.

But was Janiva really waiting for Spencer in San Francisco? And Flynn, riding north with Sloate on his tail? Did he get away? Did he turn and kill Sloate? Did he find that river of gold? And what about the Chinese? This much was certain: if their gold was still buried, Peter Fallon knew exactly where it was, and he was going to go and get it. And …

How long had he been reading? He looked through the slider at the fog and said, “Wow.”

“Great stuff, eh?” said Sarah Bliss.

“Spencer sure learns a lot about himself up in those hills.”

“I meant the tea.” Sarah was puttering in the kitchen area.

Brother B. was snoozing in his chair, which Sarah had turned again to the slider, so that he would be looking out on the water when he awoke.

She invited Peter to stay for dinner. “I’m making a nice quinona with tofu chunks.”

Tofu chunks? Even if he didn’t have plans, Peter would have declined.

“We’re vegans,” she said. “No food with a face. It’s the ethical thing to do.”

“Oysters and clams may disagree.”

“Aren’t you hungry? Munchies, you know…”

Brother B. raised his head. “THC bonds to the olfactory bulb and makes everything smell better, taste better, too. That’s why you get munchies.”

Peter was getting hungry, but he had to go. He gestured to the pages. “Let me take these. Then we’ll be close to ending this.”

“You’ll end nothing.” She dropped the pot on the stove. “You’ll just cause more trouble.”

“By telling a story of Gold Rush prejudice and the Foreign Miner’s Tax?”

“Always blame the immigrants,” said Sarah. “A story as old as humans.”

Brother B. looked up and said, “They dropped the tax, then revived it a few years later, but only on the Chinese. Easy to pick on the yellow folks. California collected on them for a lot of years.”

“But this journal shows the Chinese fighting back.” Peter thought that might appeal to these two Sixties relics.

Wrong. Sarah swept her arm at all the pictures on the walls. “We’ve spent our lives fighting back … against racism, sexism, the Vietnam War, the draft, the big corporations that sucked our blood in sixty-eight and the bigger corporations that are sucking our bone marrow today. We have enough stories to tell.”

“So you’ve sided with Manion Sturgis. But the only thing he ever grew besides a grape was a hedge … as in hedge fund.”

“The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” said Sarah.

“When the earth asked him, he gave the right answer,” said Brother B. “What’s your choice? A vine or a mine?”

“Nice rhyme,” said Peter. “But he grows Zinfandel, a wine for grilled meats.”

“Now you’re just messing with us.” Sarah chuckled. She could take a joke. But she still wouldn’t let him take the journal. And she wouldn’t admit that she had ever read any other part of it.

“We’d rather contest the will,” said Brother B. “I will be filing a motion on Monday to have this codicil struck.”

*   *   *

EVANGELINE HAD DONE IT.

That’s what she was thinking. She had brought the Sturgis brothers together to discuss their work, their rivalry, and the wonderful world of wine. A hell of a story … at least for the people who read Travel and Lifestyle Magazine.

They were meeting on the Silverado Trail, a legendary two-lane blacktop that wound through Napa like the aortic artery of California Cabernet. Unless you came by helicopter, you approached the Sturgis House under a long allée of palm trees that ran past visitor parking and the tasting room, the winemaking and bottling facility, then up the hill to the Victorian mansion that the family bought out of a Prohibition bankruptcy in 1931.

Evangeline and the Sturgis brothers were sitting on the veranda, overlooking the golden sea of grapevines that rolled toward Caymus, Mumm Napa, and Joseph Phelps. Six bottles sat on the table, along with a few cheeses, a sourdough baguette, water flask, waste bucket, and three Riedel glasses for each drinker. They had tasted their way from the Chardonnays to the single vineyard Pinot Noir to the three mighty Cabernet Sauvignons.

Manion was playing his best-behavior card. But Evangeline knew it was getting harder for him as the day wore on and the alcohol content in the wine went up.

Where he was expansive and boastful, always aware of his own presence, the balding, pot-bellied George was soft-spoken and distracted, like an accountant planning on nine holes after he finished the morning audit. But he made terrific wines. Evangeline had taken notes on all of them. She had also gotten the brothers to talk, and she had taken notes on that, too, prodding them about their passions and the sources of their fraternal conflict.

Manion had made his fortune on Wall Street and come home to make wines, just as his brother was hatching plans to expand the sales of his lower-end Chardonnays and Pinots. This should have meant a perfect match, the serious older brother and the playboy money manager, wine smarts and business experience, U.C. Davis and Harvard B. School. But the conflict that arose—not for the first time in a California winemaking family—pitted a grand vision for boosting the bottom line against an artisan’s dream of beauty in a glass, or, as George once described it, the “Chardonnay realist” and the “Zinfandel dilettante.”

George and Manion had a younger sister named Rebecca. The three of them had inherited the Napa property from their father, a cousin of Maryanne Rogers. But Rebecca spent her time chasing acting jobs in L.A., seldom visited, and always voted with George.

So, when George decided to go big, Manion went to Rainbow Gulch. George turned to the venture capital firm called Sierra Rock, announcing, “We’ll grow cheap Chardonnay for the guzzlers and Arbella Reserve for the connoisseurs. Let my brother grow Zinfandel. It’s a lowbrow grape, no matter how you grow it.”

From such condescensions were family feuds born, and you did not condescend to Manion Sturgis. When it came to condescending, if anyone was doing it, it was going to be him. But all afternoon, he kept smiling.

Then George said to Evangeline, “What did you think of Arbella House?”

“A home, a museum … beautiful,” she said.

“A pity that the new will mandates a sale,” said Manion.

“Is that why you’re stalling?” asked George. “Because you love the house and want to hold on to it a while longer?”

“Now, boys”—Evangeline tried to keep it light—“Peter Fallon came to California to appraise the Arbella books. I came to taste the wines and—”

“—reconstruct the Spencer journal?” asked George. “That’s what Barber said.”

“Barber.” Manion spit the word but not the Reserve Cabernet. He said the wine was too good to spit, which made him envious. But since he wasn’t driving—he had a designated pilot—he was swallowing, which made him more outspoken, despite his good behavior.

George told Evangeline, “Barber called you the ‘on-again off-again’ girlfriend. If I know Manion, he’s hoping you’re off-again. Why else would he be impressing you with helicopter rides?”

Manion poured himself a little more of the Reserve.

George said, “I’d rent a helicopter to impress you, too.” He was not as smooth as Manion, but he was genuine, perhaps because he was widowed.

Evangeline liked him. She said, “The wine was enough.”

Manion stopped swirling and gave her a look.

She said to him, “Your brother must love you. He pours you his best wines and plays wingman, in case I missed the helicopter come-on.”

“I don’t need a wingman,” said Manion, “and I make my own wines.”

“And you’re very good at both.” She knew it was time to flatter. “But—”

“—I bet you’d love my section of ‘The Spencer Journal,’” said George.

“An added bonus, after the wines,” she said.

“All you have to do is ask.” George excused himself for a moment.

And Manion taunted Evangeline in a high voice. “‘The wine was enough.’ I bet you tell that to all the vintners.”

“Don’t get jealous. Two jealous men is more than I can handle.”

“Peter? Jealous of me? Cool.” Manion finished the wine.

George returned with a leather folder. “My gift to the on-again off-again girlfriend of the famous Peter Fallon.”

Manion said, with sudden anger, “Was she compos?”

“Was who what?” asked George.

“Compos mentis? It’s legalese for ‘Did Maryanne Rogers have all—or any—of her marbles when Barber manipulated her into signing the new will?’”

“Why would Barber manipulate her?” asked Evangeline.

“Because he manipulates everyone,” said Manion, “including Peter Fallon’s son.”

“You got the kid the job,” she said.

“As a favor to you. Against my better judgment.” Manion looked at his brother. “Why did Barber get this codicil into the will? Or was it you?”

“You can blame me because Barber brought Sierra Rock to us and because I brought Barber to Maryanne. But don’t blame me for undue influence. She knew what she was doing. She wanted to divide her cash among her heirs, sell Arbella House and its contents for charity, and reconstitute the journal that tells the creation myth of California. She was planning for all of it, long before Barber came along.”

“And the hit-and-run? Was she planning for that?” asked Manion.

“Drink your wine,” said George, as if he would not dignify that remark.

“Drinking your wines almost makes up for your bullshit.” Manion’s phone pinged. He read: “A text from the pilot. ‘San Francisco fogging in. Need to leave now or unable to land on Alc.’”

*   *   *

PETER FALLON SENSED THAT someone followed him through the fog from the Tree Hugger to the five thirty ferry. If he hadn’t passed so damn many kids in hoodies, he would have thought it was one of them. But kids like that were everywhere, or so it seemed when you were looking for them … and you were still a little … high.

He texted LJ. “Leaving Sausalito. Know location of Chinese gold.”

LJ popped right back. “Take ferry to Pier 41. Come to SF Maritime Visitor Center. Drinks, answers, more Barber, too. Appearances to keep up.”

Peter hoped they had hors d’oeuvres, because … well, he had the munchies after all, and the aromas from the restaurants on the Sausalito waterfront weren’t helping.

As the ferry rumbled into the fog, he took a seat and checked the link LJ had sent: “Tonight, at the National Park Visitor Center on Jefferson St., Friends of the San Francisco Maritime District invite you to partake of history, cocktails, and conversation.”

A fund-raiser, one of dozens every week in a city like San Francisco. And one of the major sponsors: Van Valen and Prescott. So yeah, appearances.

*   *   *

EVANGELINE AND MANION STURGIS buckled in, and Napa was soon spreading below them, while the sun steamed into the blanket of fog out beyond the coastal range.

Through the earphones, Manion said, “Sorry I got pissy back there.”

Click. “You’re forgiven.”

“I hoped the pages I gave you would end the questions about ‘Chinese Gold.’”

“They didn’t,” said Evangeline. “The questions multiply.”

“Such as?”

“If your brother insists there was no undue influence, why do you disagree?”

“Because my brother is in business with Sierra Rock, which is in business with Barber. And I don’t trust Barber.”

“Neither does Peter.”

“I’m surprised he stayed on the case. He seems like a bottom-line kind of guy.”

Evangeline was enjoying the wine, the flirtation, the helicopter rides. But she didn’t like loose talk behind Peter’s back. She said, “I guess you don’t know him very well.”

The pilot clicked on, “Hey, boss, I can’t land in San Francisco, not in the fog.”

“Oh, darn,” said Manion.

“We’re not cleared anywhere else in the Bay Area,” said the pilot.

“Nothing to do then,” said Manion, “but make for Amador.”

“Amador?” said Evangeline.

*   *   *

THE SAUSALITO FERRY REACHED Pier 41 at 6:05.

The fog lay so thick over Fisherman’s Wharf that it looked like the neon signs were bleeding liquid color into the atmosphere.

Peter glanced at his phone as he came off.

A text from Evangeline: “Fog. Must land in Amador. Back tomorrow via Larry Kwan. Don’t worry.”

He texted back. “DON’T WORRY? Spending night in Amador - with Sturgis? - and don’t worry? WTF?” SEND. He hurried along Jefferson until his phone pinged. He stopped to read under the famous FISHERMAN’S WHARF sign with the big red crab.

Evangeline: “Staying in guesthouse. Locking door.”

Peter: “Make sure he’s on other side when you do.” SEND. Then he pressed her number. Time to talk to her, the way people used to when they had something to say. Talk and walk at the same time because he had to get away from the sights and smells of all the open-air seafood counters—God, he was hungry.

The phone rang five times before another text came in: “I’m in effing helicopter! Wearing ear protection! Can’t hear myself think let alone HEAR YOU on phone! Do. Not. Worry. And Manion says, do not trust Barber. Ties to something called Sierra Rock.”

*   *   *

ON THE HELICOPTER, MANION said to Evangeline, “‘Do. Not. Worry.’ You never have to worry with me.” His voice was seduction soft.

Thank God for headsets, she thought, or he would have been nibbling her ear.

She turned off her iPhone and said, “Please don’t read over my shoulder.”

She really hoped that the guesthouse had a lock.

*   *   *

AFTER THAT TEXT, PETER tried to calm down. Not easy to do with low blood sugar and a hyperstimulated olfactory bulb. He hurried past the high-end art galleries and high-tack souvenir shops and—oh, God—the In-N-Out Burger. But all he bought was a bottle of water, which he sipped while Googling Sierra Rock:

“A private equity firm focused on Pacific Rim investments—leveraged buyouts, growth capital, associated investment funds—across a broad range of mineral and resource-based industries.” The article mentioned investments on both sides of the Pacific—mines, vineyards, and other U.S. investments. Most important: Michael Kou was listed as one of the principals. Beyond that: “U.S. legal representation by Van Valen and Prescott, San Francisco, Ca. Contact Johnson Barber.”

The circles were tightening. Peter decided to go into that party with a plan. The best he could come up with: blow things up. But hydrate first. So he drank down the bottle of water and kept going.

*   *   *

PETER LOVED CITIES THAT loved their history, so he felt right at home walking into the National Park Visitor Center, in the repurposed cannery building on the corner of Hyde and Jefferson. He got a name tag and looked around: a six-foot-tall antique lighthouse lens dominated the space, surrounded by ship models, two bars, and running toward the back, a long exhibit hall.

Over in a corner, appearing to take in the exhibits while taking in everything else from the corner of her eye, was Christine Ryan, of all people. As soon as she saw Peter, she disappeared.

But the power crowd was filling fast: young lawyers and business people, creative types and … in San Francisco, it wasn’t always easy to tell who was business and who was creative. A guy in dreadlocks could be the best software engineer in town. The young woman in the conservative Hillary pantsuit might be working at some cool think tank down by the Bay Bridge. And the Gen Xer in the bushy beard and stocking cap might have access to more venture capital than half the bespoke hustlers in Manhattan. So … not a bit like New York or DC or … yeah, here came a platter.

Peter went after it.

The server, a young Asian woman in a tuxedo shirt and black bow tie, said, “Croque m’sieur, sir?”

Little grilled ham-and-cheese sandwiches with a fancy French name. Peter grabbed two and inhaled them.

“Where’s your girlfriend?” Johnson “Jack” Barber sidled up. “Off-again?”

“Off on business,” said Peter. “And you know, you don’t have much skill at winning friends and influencing people. The minute she met you, she put you on her shit list.”

“I’m on a lot of shit lists. That’s why I have your son working for me.” He pointed to LJ, in the midst of a group of older men, chatting and charming. “Smart boy, nice personality, good looking.”

“Like his father.” Peter grabbed a couple of coconut shrimp from a passing tray and dipped them into the sweet sauce.

Barber said, “Hungry?”

“Starving.” Peter stuffed one into his mouth.

Barber watched like an annoyed prosecutor. “Any luck with the Spencer journal?”

A drink tray was coming—red, white, and sparkling water.

Peter said, “You’re drinking red. Is that a preference or a statement on the white.”

“Sturgis Napa makes a nice Pinot.”

“In that case—” Peter snatched a glass of red.

The party photographer came by, told them to smile.

Barber gave a big fake grin.

Peter held up his glass and said, “Fancy party.”

“This is an important charity for us,” said Barber. “We’re one of the city’s oldest firms. We understand history.”

“I wish I did.” Peter downed half the wine. “And I’ve been studying it all my life.”

The camera flashed a few times, and Peter was sure that at least one shot caught Barber glaring at him, because as soon as the photographer slipped off, Barber said, “You appear to be thirsty, Mr. Fallon.”

“Dry as a bone.” Peter grinned.

Barber took a breath, as if to move past annoyance, as if he hadn’t pegged LJ Fallon’s father for a drinker. “I appreciate that you’ve been working without portfolio. It speaks well of your commitment to your son and to the historical truth of the journal. If we can put it back together, we can liquidate the estate and move on. That’s all I want to do for the family, yet they’re resisting.”

“Why would they resist? As you say in the law, cui bono?”

“Who benefits? From doing what the law prescribes?”

“Who benefits from reading the story of James Spencer and the Chinese with their bags of gold and Michael Flynn with his river of it?”

“Michael Flynn? I don’t know who that is,” said Barber.

Peter didn’t believe him for a second. But here came more shrimp, and Peter couldn’t resist. He grabbed, dipped, ate, but what to do with the tail?

Barber said, “You might use your pocket.”

“Or”—Peter knocked back the rest of the wine—“my empty glass.” He dropped the tail into the glass and grabbed a Chardonnay from another tray. “Let’s try the white.”

“Yes, do … before they run out.”

“Well, you know, Jack—they call you ‘Jack,’ right?”

Barber gave him a thin smile. Peter half expected him to say that only his friends called him “Jack,” but a Boston Book Man could call him Mr. Barber.

“You know, Jack, all this business with wiseass tongsters like Wonton Willie is driving me to drink. I came out here to help my son, and—”

“Smart boy, as we have agreed.”

“—all of a sudden, I’m in a Chinatown gang war over this journal.”

Barber pretended to laugh, though he wasn’t amused. “A war? I doubt it.”

“Doubt it all you want.” Peter swallowed half the wine and saw that he was getting where he wanted to go—under Barber’s skin. “But Wonton Willie asked me to find the Chinese gold that Spencer writes about, so he can give it to the Dai-lo, the big man from the Hong Kong Triad. You know the Triad, right? Chinese organized crime, like the Mafia.”

Barber sipped his wine. “This worldwide Chinese crime stuff, it’s out of the Nineties. Whatever’s happening on the streets today is local and petty. My Chinese contacts are businessmen. Very important. Very upright. Just look around this room. Many of them are here.”

The noise level was rising. But it swirled around Barber. A powerful man power-talking, even in the middle of a party, got all the power-space he needed.

Peter said, “You seem to know a lot about the Chinese.”

“And you’re learning. But remember”—Barber kept smiling like a baseball fan imagining a World Series between the Red Sox and Giants—“your allegiance is to your son, and his is to me, and ours is to our late client, last great-granddaughter of James Spencer. Help your son, and—ah, here’s the young man now.”

LJ was coming toward them, wineglass in hand.

Peter said, “Back so soon? You can’t be too serious about this Spencer journal if you’re running off to L.A.”

Barber glared into Peter’s glass, then at Peter. “I sent your son to L.A. because we thought the Sturgis sister had one of the notebooks.”

Peter looked at LJ and winked. Play along. “Did she?”

LJ said, “We were misinformed.”

“That’s how I feel right now.” Peter raised his voice a little. “Johnson ‘Jack’ here can’t even give me good information about the local Chinese community.”

LJ’s eyes shifted, as if he was embarrassed at his father’s familiarity. “Mr. Barber is an expert, Dad.”

“Expert?” Peter finished his white wine and grabbed another. He toasted to Barber, who watched disapprovingly as Peter drained half the glass in a single swallow.

Barber looked at LJ. “Perhaps you should educate your father to the important Chinese interests we represent in America.”

“Like, unh, Michael Kou’s Sierra Rock?” asked Peter in a loud voice.

And for a moment, conversation stopped all around, as if someone had dropped a glass on the floor. Heads turned. Eyes shifted. Even Christine Ryan looked from behind the giant lighthouse lens. Michael Kou, of all people, pulled his head out of a conversation halfway into the main gallery. Bingo, thought Peter. And was that one of the bodyguards from the Arbella Club steps and the Emery Mine parking lot? Bingo! And where was the bodyguard’s boss? Right there, talking to Michael Kou. Triple Bingo!

“Here’s to Sierra Rock.” Peter took down half the wine still in his glass. “Whatever they’re up to.”

Barber said to LJ, “Your father likes wine.”

“I sure do,” said Peter.

Barber’s head veins were pulsating. He scowled at Peter as if he had just smelled a lie in a deposition, then he pretended to see someone on the other side of the room, made a phony wave, and left the Fallons alone.

LJ whispered, “Come on, Dad. Don’t embarrass me.”

“Don’t worry,” said Peter. “I hydrated and filled up on hors d’oeuvres. I just wanted your boss to think I’m a little bit more of a loose cannon than I am, just to see how he’d react.”

“And?”

“Half the room hopped a foot into the air when I mentioned Sierra Rock, but don’t tell me whether they’re investors in Cutler or the Emery Mine. That would be too easy. Let me guess.”

“‘Need to know,’ Dad. ‘Need to know.’”

The partiers were again raising the volume so high that Peter and LJ were talking out loud, and no one else could hear them. This event had achieved the definition of what Peter called a “full stand-and-shout.”

“Behave yourself for ten minutes,” said LJ. “I have to work the room and calm a few nerves you just frayed.”

“Keeping up appearances?”

“Right. And when I talk to Michael Kou, keep your distance.”

“What about the guy he’s talking to now?”

“Him, too.”

“Is he the Dai-lo?”

“Later, Dad. Promise. Now, you need to know about the ship that got this thing started. The Proud Pilgrim.” LJ pointed his father into the exhibit hall. “Follow the timeline.”

*   *   *

SO PETER SNATCHED A glass of sparkling water and retreated into a corridor lined with exhibits, including a multimedia presentation about the Bay, from native fisherman to the Bostoños to the Transamerica Pyramid, an interactive map showing the building of the Gold Rush wharves and the filling of Yerba Buena Cove, a mock-up of the Sam Brannan storefront …

Then, the noise and swirl of the party dropped away, because Peter came to this: a life-sized photo of workers in modern San Francisco, excavating an old ship. Displayed in front of the photo—a rusted kedging anchor, a cognac bottle, an old Ames shovel, and projecting out of the image like a 3-D extension of it, a piece of the ship’s keel.

The placard read: “Workers uncover the infamous Gold Rush Murder Ship. The Proud Pilgrim, out of Boston, arrived in San Francisco in March, 1850, scuttled in May, 1850, rediscovered during an excavation along Clay Street in July, 2016.” This was the ship that Janiva mentioned in her letter to Spencer, dated March 28, 1850. Peter felt the historical synapses firing in his head. Past and present were reaching toward each other, right here in this exhibit. And shortly after this story broke, the Spencer Journal disappeared. Why? Perhaps because …

 … a smaller photo showed what the excavators found when they cleared the mud from the bones of the Proud Pilgrim: bones of another kind, six human skeletons chained in the keel. For days, the story had been huge in San Francisco. How did the skeletons get there? And why? One had a bullet hole in its forehead and the back of the skull blown out. Another had been pierced by some kind of two-pronged object.

Was this the great scandal the journal thief was hiding, the black blot on the Spencer name?

Then Peter sensed someone standing beside him. Red hair, red lipstick, expensive blue pantsuit. A great combination.

She said, “Amazing to think that there are ships like this buried all over the financial district.”

He whispered, “Is that supposed to be an icebreaker, so that anyone noticing thinks we’re just having a random conversation?”

“But it is amazing,” said Christine Ryan.

“At most parties, if a beautiful redhead seeks me out in a quiet corner and makes small talk, I start thinking about the age-old question, ‘My place or yours.’”

“If you’re thinking that now, Mr. Fallon, you’re drunker than I think you are.”

“Not drunk at all.” He sipped the sparkling water. “Are you really FBI?”

“No. I just go around shooting assassins in random apartments.”

Sarcasm. Why did he always like women with a taste for sarcasm?

He looked toward the brighter lights of the outer gallery, where LJ was in conversation with the big players. “What do you suppose they’re talking about?”

“That’s what your son will be reporting to me later.”

“Reporting to you?”

“That’s why I’m watching over him. That’s also why you are still alive.”

LJ, Kou, the sleek-tailored Asian man with the black and white bodyguards, and Johnson “Jack” Barber all threw their heads back, enjoying a big laugh.

“I’m surprised they’re willing to be seen together in public,” said Peter.

“Good P.R. Van Valen and Prescott trots out its biggest clients for this fund-raiser. Those guys know that appearing as pillars of the community is a good way to deflect attention. It also builds goodwill in case the shit hits the fan.”

“Is it about to?”

Christine Ryan leaned forward, as if to read the display card more closely and to tell him that she wasn’t answering that question.

So Peter said, “Let me put it another way. Is my son an agent?”

“Call him an asset. But remember, you’re not helping anyone if you start sticking your nose too far into his work. Try not to keep blundering the way you just did.”

“The Boston blunderer. That’s me.”

“Your Sierra Rock remark set off alarm bells.” She straightened up and leaned close, so she could be heard in the din of conversation. “Just remember, your son is not alone in this. We have other assets.”

“On the inside?”

“Everywhere.” And she was gone. Just like that. So yeah, FBI … or maybe a phantom from the Gold Rush.

*   *   *

LJ MUST HAVE SEEN that conversation because he waited a few minutes, then approached. “Talking to all the players, I see.”

“She started talking to me,” said Peter.

LJ took his father by the elbow. “Talking to her leads to trouble. And you’ve ruffled enough feathers for one night.”

“Sorry, but—”

“With friends like her, you don’t need enemies.”

“She was on our side this morning in your apartment.”

“She’s using me, and you, and she wants to turn my future father-in-law.”

“Using us?”

LJ jerked his head for Peter to follow along. “I’ll tell you outside.”

Halfway through the crowd, Peter noticed the black and white bodyguards, watching. The white guy pulled out his cell phone. Bad sign.

LJ kept leading Peter with excuse me’s and polite nods and friendly words.

But when they were a few feet from the door, Michael Kou stepped out of a conversation and into their path, looking prosperous in his expensive suit, and relaxed in a roomful of peers. “Evening, Mr. Fallon. Still hot on the trail of the Chinese gold?”

“Just like your partner, Jack Cutler. I met him today.”

“You went to Placerville?” Kou asked, as if he did not already know the answer.

LJ jumped in: “Dad’s looking everywhere, just as he said he would.”

Peter played along. “Chasing myths, tracking journal pages. That’s my job.”

“Whatever you find, we’ll be interested.” Michael Kou shook Peter’s hand a little longer, pulled him a little closer, “I want to help your son with his new in-laws.” Then he gave Peter a wink, like they all were pals, which Peter knew they most definitely were not.

As an NPS ranger stepped to the podium in the corner of the room, tapped the microphone, and called for attention, LJ whispered to his father, “Let’s get out of here.”

*   *   *

OUTSIDE, THEY TURNED THE corner onto Hyde Street. A block ahead, the neon sign for the Buena Vista lit the fog, and the cable car clanged its bell in the turnaround.

LJ pointed his father toward the car. “Hop on.”

Peter said, “Let’s hop into the Buena Vista instead. I could do with a hamburger.”

“Just go.”

Peter took a seat at the front, on the right, in the outside section. LJ stood on the little platform beside him and held the handrail.

“Okay. Where are we going?” said Peter.

“A safe house.”

“Safe house? Why?”

The car grabbed the cable and lurched across Beach Street.

LJ said, “That Sierra Rock business … where did you hear about that?”

“Evangeline brought the Sturgis brothers together for an article. Brother George mentioned Sierra Rock. So I decided to shine some light into that corner.”

“You shined plenty. That’s why we need a safe house.”

“Time for you to shine some on a certain Asian guy I keep running into, along with his bodyguards … on the Arbella Club steps … in the Emery parking lot … at this cocktail party.”

“That’s Mr. Lum. And yeah, he’s the Dai-lo, the Big Dragon.”

“A gangster?”

“A very classy gangster, come from Hong Kong—” LJ glanced at two hooded figures on small-wheeled bicycles rounding the corner of Beach Street.

“I’ve been seeing a lot of those Dahon bikes around town,” said Peter. “Just kids?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe good guys. Maybe bad guys.”

Even with the wind blowing cold fog, Peter felt the heat rise at his neck. “If they’re bad guys, why did you put us on a cable car that doesn’t go much faster than a dog trot? And who sent them?”

“First answer, we’re not going far, getting off at Lombard Street, so cable car is the way to go. Second, a lot of people could have sent them. But I think it’s Michael Kou.”

“Aren’t you guys on the same side—”

“That’s what I’ve had him believing. But something may have tipped him. Maybe it’s because his people made Christine Ryan.”

“I made Christine Ryan the day I got here.”

“Or maybe it’s because my father just outed me over Sierra Rock.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t always think you’re digging deep by doing it alone.”

“Well, don’t be so goddamn mysterious and I won’t do it alone.”

The gripman was chatting with another rider. The conductor was in the rear, taking tickets. Everyone else seemed to be tourists, laughing, joking, ignoring the father and son at the front.

As the car climbed Russian Hill, LJ glanced at the guys on bicycles, who were pumping hard about a hundred feet back. Then he leaned close and said, “The Triad Dragons of Hong Kong want to go legit in the U.S. Much better than running prostitutes and protection scams. Berkeley MBAs trump street pimps like Wonton Willie any day.”

“So Lum comes to San Francisco to work with Kou but … why was Lum in Boston?”

“Mending fences with the Boston boss. And if you want to meet venture capital guys in this country, you always go to Boston.”

“So you went with him to hold his hand?”

“Part of the job. Barber bills big hours from Sierra Rock, and Lum is using Sierra Rock for his commodity buys. I was also tracking down a Spencer notebook, because no matter what happens, the journal’s the thing.”

“That’s what people keep telling me. But why?”

“Because of the fucking river of gold, Dad. Come on.”

“Don’t swear at your father. But … is it really a river?”

“Well, not an actual river, but—” LJ stopped talking for a moment and watched a pair of guys in black leather jackets come out of the trees in Russian Hill park, about fifty yards behind the cable car. They were moving with purpose, loping like a pair of Dobermans, heads turning, heels clicking.

LJ took out his phone, texted something, kept talking. “When the Chinese government decided to offer low-interest loans for mineral exploration, Sierra Rock jumped in. So I introduced Kou to the only gold explorer I knew, Jack Cutler, who’d bought a piece of land up in Amador, up in a gulch between the Miwok River and Manion Gold Vineyards. Kou pitched local Chinese investors on Cutler, just to stir up some excitement. Then he took that excitement to the boys in Hong Kong.”

“But?”

“The rumor has always been that Cutler’s test holes were ‘seeded.’”

“Seeded? How?”

“A geologist can create false results by sprinkling gold into test holes. A good test brings investors running. If the mine turns out to be a bust, as Cutler’s did on further exploration, well, at least somebody makes money.”

“That’s why they hate Jack Cutler in Chinatown?”

“The Hong Kong Triad should have put Cutler down like an old dog, but Michael Kou wanted to put him to work instead. Always good to own a guy right down to his boots. So they told him they’d back him. Told him to keep hunting for that lost river. Also told him they’d kill him and his daughter and her fiancé if he blew the whistle on them.”

The bell clanged out the San Francisco beat as the car crossed Chestnut: BANG-ba-bang-bang. BANG-ba-bang-bang. BANG-ba-bang-bang.

And somewhere between the bangs, Peter said to LJ, “So … you’re fucked.”

“Don’t swear at your son.”

“Where’s Mary?”

“She’s safe.”

The cable car seemed to be rising at a forty-five-degree angle, lurching to a stop at the Chestnut Street corner.

Peter asked, “Where does Christine Ryan come into all this?”

“One Saturday, I drove up to Tilden Park to hit a bucket of golf balls at the driving range, and this woman takes the tee beside me. I’m a lefty, she’s a righty, so she’s looking me right in the eye. She compliments my swing, so I think she’s hitting on me. Then she says, ‘Do you know you are involved in a criminal enterprise with Cutler Gold Exploration?’”

“I bet that messed up your backswing,” said Peter. “Did she offer you a deal?”

“I could go down myself or help take down the San Francisco players in an international money-laundering scheme involving a prominent San Francisco attorney and a venture capital firm called Sierra Rock, which funnels dirty Triad dollars through various gold mining operations—”

“Including Cutler’s?”

“And turns it all into a nice clean commodity.”

“A gold mine.”

“A lot of gold mines. Deep rock mines like Emery with proven reserves, and long shots, too, like Cutler’s river of gold. That’s Michael Kou’s idea. And Lum likes having Kou. He likes having a B-school butt boy—”

“—who now has a Boalt Hall butt boy of his own?”

“I’ve been working hard to make it seem that way. Then along comes my father, pretending he’s had too much wine, outing Barber and Sierra Rock over cocktails.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Dad, I just want to be a corporate guy, do my deals, live my life with Mary, and—shit.” LJ watched the shadows moving along the sidewalk. “They’re getting closer.”

The dark mass of George Sterling Park rose on the right, a high bank of trees and ivy on the hill between Lombard and Filbert. At the top was a tennis court fence, but no lights. Not in a nice neighborhood like this.

LJ looked up Lombard Street and cursed. “Backup’s not here.” His phone pinged again, he read, then said, “Okay. We jump off at the next corner, take the steps up to the tennis courts. Run like hell. We go along the fence, then back down to Lombard. They’ll be there by then.”

“Who? The Feds?”

“You’ll know when you see them. Are you in shape?”

“I can outrun you but not a bullet.”

“Get ready. Another half block, at the corner of Greenwich.” LJ looked down the street at the Dahon bikes, which were also closing in.

The cable car herked and jerked.

“On three.” LJ gripped his father’s shoulder. “Stay with me, Dad.”

“I’ve never quit on you yet.”

“We’ll talk about the divorce later. One, two—”

And they jumped.

Across the dark sidewalk, up the stairs, two steps at a time.

As he reached the top, Peter felt something zip past his ear. He yelled to LJ, “You were right. Bad guys.”

They sprinted toward the end of the chain-link fence, then raced along the pathway through the trees.

Another bullet hit a redwood and sent up an explosion of bark.

Then a bike burst through the shrubbery and slammed into LJ, knocking him off balance. Peter barreled into the bike, sent the rider flying, grabbed LJ by the collar.

And both of them kept running, with the guys in black leather coming through the shadows.

Peter and LJ cut across the little switchbacks in the path, racing for the opposite corner of the park, for more stairs—wider, nicer, better lit—dropping down to Larkin and Lombard. As they trampled through the shrubs, they heard the bikes racing after them and the guys in black pushing ahead like hunters working the underbrush.

At the steps, they saw the limo idling, lights out, rear door open.

“That’s it.”

A shot hit the concrete right by Peter’s leg and ricocheted. Peter ducked. LJ grabbed him. And—Ping! Ping!—the driver of the limo was out, his hands balanced on the roof, his pistol pointed up the stairs as Peter Fallon and his son pounded down.

Peter reached the limo and dove onto a rear-facing jump seat.

LJ jumped in after, right onto Peter, with the door slamming behind them.

And bang! A shot hit the window on the right side, starring the glass.

Someone shouted, “Go! Go! Go!”

And bang! The limo slammed into a second bike as it flew off the hillside. No stopping for that hit-and-run. They burned rubber up the street, scraping bottom on the crest of the hill, grabbing some air, shooting across Hyde, onto the famous stretch of Lombard with all the wild S-curves.

The car slammed left, then right, then left, then right, hitting the curbs on both sides, throwing Peter and his son back and forth and then …

 … they got to Leavenworth and the ride smoothed.

That was when Peter could finally look up.

Waving in front of his face was a champagne bottle.

Wonton Willie said, “Tonight, we drinkin’ Dom Pérignon.”

*   *   *

IT COOLED QUICKLY IN the Sierra foothills, so Manion and Evangeline ate in the dining room of Manion Gold, at the A-table by the fireplace.

A fine crowd had followed the mountain roads from Jackson and Fiddletown, Columbia and Calaveras, couples and families, foliage tourists who stayed in little guesthouses, Tahoe-bound travelers planning to jump off early for the run up Route 88, all filling the place with high Friday night spirits.

California modern was the theme: a wall of glass looking out on the illuminated vineyards, an open kitchen with a roaring grill, stainless-and-glass décor with redwood accents. The piano stayed quiet, just the right cool jazz tone. And the food was delicious: Braised lamb shanks. Rainbow Gulch zin. Truffled baked macaroni for soaking up the wine. Salad from greens grown right outside the door.

Evangeline took a taste of lamb and said, “This was a set-up.”

“Heavy fog in San Francisco, I swear. I just hope I haven’t gotten you into trouble with Peter. Although”—he leaned forward—“it’s great to spend time with you like this.”

Evangeline changed the subject. “Crowded on a Friday night, but on Tuesdays?’

“We’re closed for dinner, Mondays through Wednesdays. But if we make Amador another Napa, well…”

“Stiff competition.”

“Our wine is as good. We have more history. Route 88 runs right up to Carson Pass, where the wagon trains came through, and 49 goes down to the giant Sequoia grove at Calaveras. Few places as beautiful.” He clinked her glass. “Few women as beautiful.”

She liked that, but not enough to take it seriously. “You’re working too hard.”

“You mean if I back off, I might have a chance?”

“Talk about wine, not the effect of my strong Yankee bone structure on your—”

“On my what?”

She shook her head and cut the meat off the lamb shank.…

She was surprised that they still had plenty to talk about.

After the crème brûlée, he offered to walk her out to the little guest cottage, a few hundred feet back of the big house. The path wound through California palms and evergreens, past a gazebo where they had weddings, into an area displaying more Gold Rush artifacts, big stuff like a Pelton wheel, a Long Tom, an old miner’s tipcart …

The full moon threw their shadows ahead of them. The little guesthouse was already lit from within like a greeting card. And a move was imminent. She knew it. But she had decided there would be no full-on-the-mouth kiss.

Then Manion stopped in front of a huge, heavy, iron nozzle, about six feet long, propped nicely for visitors to study. He said, “Do you know what that is?”

“No, but it’s very symbolic.”

“That tool caused a lot of damage in California.”

“Tools shaped like that often do.”

“I’m serious. It’s a monitor, the nozzle of a hydraulic mining hose. They ran water through these things from a great height, delivering enough pressure to knock a man over at two hundred feet. They could cut away whole hillsides in an afternoon to get at ancient riverbeds. You can still see scars all over the Mother Lode. But not here.” Manion looked up at the moon and out at the vineyard. “This land was saved. But if they thought there was gold here today, they’d do anything to get it.”

“Who’s they?”

“They.” Manion made a wave of his hand. “Whoever they are, out there. The ones who destroy. The ones who don’t care what they take and what they break. They.”

And she asked a question that suddenly seemed pertinent. “Do they think there’s gold here … or do they know there’s gold here?”

“No one knows anything.”

“But a lot of people think that Spencer knew something, right? So they’re trying to find the journal, and you don’t want anyone to know any more than they do now.”

“This is sacred ground, Evangeline. Ground I’ve been given to protect. I thank God for that chance.” He took both of her hands in his. “And I thank you for understanding.”

Oh, Lord, she thought, he was playing vulnerable again. That could be sexier than all the smooth in the world.

So she said, “Do you have an internet password in the guesthouse? I want to scan the journal pages from your brother and send them to Peter.”

“Internet? Peter? I’m showing you my soul, and this is your answer?”

“I’m sorry, Manion.” She kissed him on the cheek.

And he kissed her on the mouth. Not hard or aggressive. But enough …

She pulled back, looked into his eyes in the moonlight, looked for something, and said, “Just this once.” She wrapped a hand around his neck and pulled him toward her and kissed him like a lover.

She wasn’t sure why she did it. But she did it. And before he could pull her toward him, she was pulling away, catching her breath. The first words she could think of were, “The password?”

He looked at her as if to say, You can’t be serious. Instead, he said, “You’ll find everything in the cottage.” Then he went off into the night.

*   *   *

“WHAT?” WONTON WILLIE FLASHED the gold tooth. “You think I have safe house in some crummy Chinatown basement, with all old grandpas and grandmas playing mah-jongg upstair and cigarette smoke floatin’ down?”

They were on the eighteenth floor of a luxury high-rise on Mission Street, a block from the California Historical Society. Two bedrooms, nice furniture, in-your-face view of the Bay Bridge.

Mary Ching Cutler was waiting for them. She was sitting on the sofa, surfing the internet, when they got off the elevator. She gave LJ a hug. “I ordered from In-N-Out.”

“My California dream,” said Peter.

“Mine, too,” said Willie. “Better than dim sum.”

In the limo, LJ had given his father the backstory: He first met Willie four years earlier, as a young lawyer doing summer work in the public defender’s office. He helped two of Willie’s boys, in trouble for extorting a coin-op laundry. Ever since, Willie had kept a back channel open.

“And now, we all in the same boat,” said Willie. “We all know each other business. I even know what you thinkin’, Dad. Do Willie know about Feds?”

“Well, do you?” asked Peter.

“Hell yeah. Like I tell you.” Willie walked over and waved his hand from one side of the vista to the other. “This Willie’s town. I know everything. Feds watchin’ me, Michael Kou, Mr. Lum. But they always watchin’ someone.”

Peter was watching the stream of headlights and taillights crossing the Bay. As safe houses went, this one was pretty nice, but he didn’t think it was particularly safe. Eighteenth floor, no back door, access only through elevators.

“You know why I save you, hey?”

“You like my Boston accent?” said Peter.

“Because you still on the case for Willie. We got two day before big sit-down. You still goin’ after Chinese gold. And that’s what wins this fight.” Willie looked over his shoulder. “Ain’t that right, LJ?”

LJ nodded and told Willie, “Dad thinks he knows where it is.”

“And tomorrow,” said Peter, “I will go and get it.”

“I like you father. He make a good soldier.” Willie turned to Peter. “And you son, maybe secret agent, hey, ’cause nobody know just what his game is.”

“What’s your game,” asked Peter.

“Like I tell you, I here to make Chinatown peoples happy and give Dai-lo nice gift, so he know who on his side. Mr. Lum want Michael Kou to run San Francisco. Smart boy, Kou. But book smart. Not like me. Not street smart. Streets tougher than books.”

“So those were Lum’s guys chasing us?” asked Peter.

Willie said, “Lum or Kou. Lum fly in from Hong Kong, do business, fly out again. When he want to scare somebody, like today in LJ apartment, he use tough guys from LA. Not San Francisco, or my boys know. Right, boys?”

Peter looked at Mullet Man and Wraparound, who were standing in the corners with their arms folded. Mullet Man nodded. Wraparound chewed on his toothpick.

Willie’s phone chimed. He looked and said, “Burgers comin’ up. Double Double Animal Style. You like? Animal fries, too, hey.”

“I like,” said Peter. “Whenever I’m in California.”

Willie laughed. “Sometime, you gotta have a hamburger.”

Mullet Man headed for the door. Wraparound went into the kitchen for beer.

“But I don’t save you to eat no hamburger, Mr. Treasure Hunter Man.” Willie came over to Peter. “I save you to find Chinese gold. When I give gold to Mr. Lum, everybody happy, even Mary Ching father.”

“Don’t do us any favors,” said Mary, who was still scrolling on her iPad, feigning disinterest in all of this, perhaps as a defense against it.

“Get the gold, leave a good impression, squeeze Michael Kou out.” Peter could not believe that Willie was in the dark about the deeper issue, the river of gold.

As the burgers arrived, distracting Willie, LJ whispered to his father, “Play along.”

Wraparound brought in beers and handed them out. Everyone sat on the big sectional sofa, facing the floor-to-ceilings.

Willie said, “So where the gold?”

Peter said, “If I told you, I’d have to kill you.”

“Kill?” Willie scowled. His burger quivered in front of him, dripping juice.

“Gotcha,” said Peter. “A joke.”

LJ muttered, “Old joke, seldom funny.”

But Willie laughed. It would never do for the big man to miss the joke. He asked, “You need ride to get to gold?”

“Ride? No. A big deal like you attracts too much attention,” said Peter.

Willie seemed to like that. “True. True. You do like you do.”

Mary said, “He means that you should do it your way. He’s giving you permission. He’s a real gentleman.”

Willie said, “Yeah, yeah. I no care how you do it, but I want Chinese gold. You get, give me, we all okay. After that, I look out for your son and girlfriend all time.”

“I got friends,” said Peter, thinking of Wild Bill Donnelly’s .44 Magnum and Larry Kwan’s bulletproof winery wagon. “My guy can carry the three of us in comfort.”

Willie took a big bite of his hamburger and said, “What three?”

Peter gestured to himself, his son, and Mary.

Willie shook his head. “Oh, no. Mary like it here. She like view. She like Wi-Fi.” He looked at Mary. “Real fast, hey?”

“Like lightning,” she said.

“And she like how she order anything she want from anywhere in San Francisco and we go get it for her. But she stay here till I get Chinese gold.”

That changed things, thought Peter.

His phone pinged in his pocket. He had a look.

Evangeline wrote, “Door locked. Guesthouse quiet. New journal pages scanned and sent from George Sturgis, who appears to be an innocent bystander to whatever is going on. Read this. Read about the Proud Pilgrim.”

The Journal of James Spencer—Notebook #6

April 3, 1850
Janiva and the Proud Pilgrim

I could not sleep on the overnight boat.

I paced the deck, gazed into the blackness, felt every slam of the giant piston, and wondered … what had driven Janiva to San Francisco?

And when I was not thinking about her, I saw Cletis, urging us to go, assuring us that he could brazen his way out of anything. I lamented now that I had not told him how much I appreciated what he had done for us, that I had not offered him a good word to light his way into the overarching darkness, or off to the stars, or up to whatever heavenly place he imagined in his fractured interpretations of Scripture.

My plan had been to get to San Francisco and board the first Boston-bound vessel. I had little doubt but that Hodges would come after me, despite the sacrifices of Cletis and Rodrigo Vargas and the bravely sworn (though perjured) testimony of the Emerys. Far better to face Hodges at home, in a court with rules of evidence, where witnesses would be few and defense attorneys more skilled than noose-makers.

Of course, they might get to Flynn first. Sloate would gladly shoot him in the back. Or Trask would claim maritime law and hang him. Or they might scoop up Wei Chin and his family at the Chinese camp. Still, I should have been proceeding as if they were coming after me … until I read Janiva’s letter, then read it again and again.

March 28, 1850

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 aboard the ship Proud Pilgrim, anchored in the Bay. I have secured a commitment from Ames and Company of Easton and bought 2,000 shovels, with the promise of a partnership. Mr. Slawsby, of Brannan & Co., comes to the ship every day and offers to buy them all. But I will enter into no agreement until you appear. There is more to tell, but I will leave it for our meeting. Please hurry.

Your Love, Janiva

In six weeks, San Francisco had expanded and solidified, like some confection left to set in the sun. It seemed now as if there were twice as many ships, twice as many buildings, and the population had doubled since August. I was told that it might double again by the end of the year.

And every time the city burned, they built it back up again, bigger, better, stronger. New wharfs reached out over the tide flats. Old wharfs reached toward the ships. And all of them advanced to the steady beat of steam-powered pile-drivers and men pounding nails. Meanwhile work gangs were hauling logs to build docks at right angles to the wharfs, so that tipcart drivers could fill behind them with sand from the hills and ballast from the abandoned ships. And as some created new land, others were throwing up storehouses, saloons, and gimcrack firetrap hotels. And every day, ships brought even more houses, pre-built in the East to hammer up as soon as there was land to set them on.

The Proud Pilgrim lay at anchor two hundred yards from the end of the Clay Street Wharf. A rowboat was leaving as mine arrived. A passenger was grousing about the way “that damned woman” did business.

Did he mean Janiva? I would not be surprised.

Stepping aboard, I was met by a man at a table. Before him lay an array of weapons: two Colts, a pepperbox, a Bowie knife. He said, in a grating English accent, “Name and purchase. Foodstuffs at the bow. Manufactures at the stern. Gold dust only.”

I glanced forward: another table, another big man, another harsh accent.

Then I heard a female voice coming from the stern, from a table by the aft deck house, where half a dozen men clustered over a woman, either to gawk or do business. I could not quite tell as I could not quite see her, but I knew that voice, confident and smart. And I knew that silhouette, trim and serenely motionless.

I smoothed the red and yellow-paisley silk neckerchief that I had put on for our meeting and stepped toward her.

The man at the table almost knocked it over, he jumped up so quickly. “Did you hear what I said, mate? You go nowhere on my ship without statin’ your name.”

I had learned from Cletis Smith to answer a challenge with one of my own. So I said, “Are you the captain? And if you’re not, why should I give you my name?”

The man picked up the Bowie knife. His face was sunburned, except where scars held it together with jagged white lines. He stood a head taller than I and seemed twice as wide, now that he was on his feet. He said, “State your name or step back.”

Challenge met, turf marked, I consented: “My name is James Spencer.”

He lowered the knife. “So you’d be the one she’s waitin’ for?”

“The very one.” And here I had a choice. I could threaten this man who threatened me with the tip of his knife, threaten him with a bullet if he ever brandished a blade in front of me again. Or, I could conciliate. “You guard the ship well, sir. I thank you for being so assiduous in seeing to the safety of Miss Toler and the Proud Pilgrim.”

He gave me a squint. “So what? So ass—”

“So assiduous. It means so dedicated. Thank you for being so dedicated.” I also remembered Cletis’s warnings about showing off my book learning.

“She said you was a smart one. Too damn smart. Well, here’s the rule of the—”

“Is that James Spencer that I hear?” Janiva was pushing back from her table.

“Miss Toler.” I headed aft, paying no further mind to the gatekeeper.

Janiva gestured for the others to give me room, and as they parted, the vision of my dreams appeared. She wore a prim crimson dress of gingham with a white collar, a gray shawl, and a broad-brimmed straw hat that made her look almost girlish. Her posture and tone were as formal as if we were meeting at a Boston cotillion. But from beneath the yellow brim, her eyes met mine, and she smiled.

Yes, she had done something more extraordinary than I could ever have imagined. And she was proud of herself. I could tell. Seeing her like this, holding the center of this circle of businessmen, in the bright San Francisco sun, I was proud of her, too.

Then she offered her hand.

I feared taking it, feared the merest touch of her after so long apart, feared that it might cause me to respond as I had when I thought about her on lonely nights in the high country. But I reached out and said, “Welcome to California.”

She told the other gentlemen to complete their transactions with Mr. McLaws, who had taken their weapons when they came aboard.

The largest of these, wearing the blackest coat and beaver hat, looked me over as though I still had the dysentery. “If this man offers you fifteen dollars a shovel, miss, I’ll offer sixteen.” From the mended bullethole in the hat. I recognized Jonathan Slawsby, the man who had greeted us from his rowboat that first day.

I said, “Sixteen? The Ames shovel is the best made.”

Slawsby played the high dudgeon that men of business sometimes affect when met by unexpected opposition. “Just who in hell do you think you are, mister?”

“I know exactly who I am, sir. Who do you think I am?”

Janiva said, “This is James Spencer, my partner.”

Slawsby said, “Partner? I thought those Aussies were your partners.”

“They’re my bodyguards. A Boston lady can’t go about San Francisco without physical protection, now can she?”

Slawsby said, “The gentlemen of San Francisco will do their utmost to protect your virtue, ma’am.”

“I worry less for my virtue than for my two thousand Ames shovels and the license to import more—”

Slawsby’s jaw flopped open, so that his beard dropped down over his shirtfront. “You hold an Ames license?”

She produced it from a sheaf of papers on the table.

Slawsby took off his hat, wiped the sweat from his forehead, and read the first few sentences before she pulled it away. He said, “May I bring this to Mr. Brannan?”

Janiva raised her finger for silence. In that she had met my father, perhaps she had learned the gesture from him. She certainly understood its impact, because Slawsby stopped in mid-sentence. She said, “You may bring Mr. Brannan here.” She then excused us with this: “My partner and I have business to discuss.”

*   *   *

SHE LED ME DOWN the gangway to the saloon, where we were suddenly, exquisitely alone. She stepped into the shaft of incandescent gold falling through the skylight, took off her hat, took a deep breath, and hurled herself into my arms.

My whole being ignited, as if the skylight were a magnifying glass focusing all the sunshine of that April morning.

I shall avoid the most intimate details of our reunion, except that I could not stop from pressing against her, absorbing the softness of her, inhaling the sweet perfume of her. And she responded with a passion that bespoke her willingness to endure a six-month voyage just to be with me.

How much farther we would have gone at that moment, I cannot tell, because a voice dropped down the gangway: “Miss Toler. Miss Toler!”

It was the first time that the Australian accent of Tom McLaws invaded our privacy, but already I sensed that it would not be the last.

He and his partner, I learned later, had signed on to the Proud Pilgrim when she put in at Valparaiso, Chile and attached themselves to Janiva’s cousin, John Toler Dutton, who had sailed as her protector and business partner. While the rest of the crew had deserted in San Francisco, along with the captain, these two had offered their services as bodyguards for Dutton, his goods, and “the lovely lady.” But their protection had not been enough. On his second day, Dutton had wandered down the wrong street, only to be found the next morning beneath a boardwalk, skull stove in and pockets turned out.

McLaws’ partner, Mr. Henderson, had accompanied Dutton and had brought the bad news, while admitting that he had fallen into a drunken stupor himself. McLaws had chastised Henderson with a belaying pin and promised that they would be vigilant in Miss Toler’s services henceforth. Vigilance, on the part of McLaws, appeared to have grown into jealousy, perhaps for Janiva, perhaps for her supplies.

I sensed this from the moment of that first interruption, as Janiva withdrew from my embrace and said, “What is it, Mr. McLaws?”

“Beggin’ your pardon, but will your friend be stayin’ aboard this afternoon?”

“Yes, he will.”

“In that case—” McLaws descended backward, big boots followed by big ass, then big, red face ducking under the beam.

“In that case—what?” Janiva smoothed her hair and the front of her dress.

“I didn’t tell him the rules.” McLaws spoke with the false friendliness of a man talking a child out of a sweetmeat.

“Rules?” I said, “About what?”

“About weapons on board. I take charge of all arms, so I’ll take the Colt Dragoon I spied under your coat.”

Here was another test. I said, “The Colt stays with me.”

“I been lookin’ after this lady’s safety for ten days now, sir, and not a bit of harm has come to her. But for me and me mate, she’d have been all alone after the demise of Mr. Dutton. You should be thankin’ me for that.”

“I did,” I said mildly.

“Well, then—” He held out his hand and gave me a grin, secure in the knowledge that his bulk intimidated most men.

I said, “You missed your chance when I came aboard.”

His smile fell off, and the blood drained from his face, almost as if he had willed it. “Miss Toler was so happy to see you, I didn’t want to spoil your reunion.”

Janiva, whose emotions played on her face like projections from a camera obscura, showed sudden and surprising fear. She said, “James, it’s a good rule, I think.”

“He can have his gun when he leaves, miss,” said McLaws, turning to me. “Stayin’ at the El Dorado, are you? They ain’t finished rebuildin’ the Parker House yet.”

I kicked open the shuttered door behind me and threw my sea bag onto one of the berths. “I’ll be staying right here.”

McLaws looked at me with no expression, which was more unsettling than his grins and scowls. Then he said to Janiva, “I can protect you, ma’am, from them who knows enough to fear me. But I can’t protect you from every man you bring below.”

It was as if he was leaving me out of this, as if this was only between them.

So I asserted myself: “I’ll keep my gun, and you will give us our privacy.”

“Is that your wish, ma’am?” asked McLaws

Janiva said, “We have business to discuss.”

“When you do, remember our deal.” Then he climbed the gangway.

“Deal?” I said to her after he was gone.

“He and Henderson are promised ten percent of the profits for security.”

“Each?” I asked.

“I’m not sure. I was so upset when my cousin died, but … oh, James, I’m glad you’re here.” She led me to the stern, to the captain’s cabin, which extended the width of the ship and was an even finer space than Trask’s on the William Winter.

As soon as we had closed the door, I said, “I’m going home.”

She folded her hands in front of her, lowered her head in that way she had of expressing disappointment, so that she seemed to be looking at you from under the darkest, angriest eyebrows God ever gave a woman, and she said, “I have come all this way to build something with you, and you would go home?”

“I was going home to build something with you,” I said.

Her answer was simply to stand, still and silent, framed by the four windows of the stern gallery, with the blue of the bay and the light of the day pouring in around her.

So I told her of all that had happened, from finding the first gold to the final good-byes a few days earlier. And with each detail, her posture relaxed a bit, her expression blossomed slowly from anger to surprise to awe to shock, and when I was done, she said, “Did you leave your gold?”

“Five pounds, safe under Big Skull Rock.”

“And the rest?”

“On account with Abbott Express. The value of twenty pounds was shipped to Boston in January. Following it home seems the safest course.”

“But is it the right course? You fought for something up in those hills, James. You helped the weak confront the strong. Running can’t be the right course.”

“I’m tired of deciding the right course,” I admitted.

She turned to the windows. “So you’d go home to Boston, where your family, your friendships, and your standing among your peers will speak more loudly than Samuel Hodges?”

“Isn’t that why we live in a society?” I said. “To have the trust of neighbors and the benefit of reputation?” I realized that I sounded like my father.

“To have the benefit of the doubt, you mean?” She pivoted back, crossed the cabin, came close, looked into my eyes.

A week earlier, beside the Miwok, I could only have dreamed this moment, alone in a clean, well-furnished place, with Janiva’s eyes on mine.

She said, “What you seek in Boston, you can have right here.”

What I sought was her. But she was not offering herself. She was talking about something grander. She said, “You just need to build it, James. Build it through business, through relationships, as my father and your father and their fathers did it in Boston.”

“You would”—I searched for a word—“replicate Boston in San Francisco?”

“I would remind you of how the world works.”

“I’ve seen how the world works. It works harshly.”

“Then let us set about changing it.”

“You mean, civilizing it?”

“We start with Slawsby and his boss, the famous Sam Brannan. We make a deal for the shovels and other Ames equipment. We establish ourselves, so that if Hodges comes to extract vengeance, he’s assailing a man of business, a man with friends, a man with a reputation.”

It was good sense, though tinted with more hope than realism. I said, “When Hodges appears.”

She went to the desk and wrote a note. “You sign first. The male in the partnership should sign first.”

And I think that in the sudden intensity of her dedication, I loved her even more, no matter that her litany left out the most important leg on the stool of reputation: a man with a wife. A wife gave a man the stability of a rock in any corner of the world, and surely in wild and wifeless San Francisco.

I read the letter: “Dear Mr. Slawsby, Please inform Samuel Brannan that we shall await his visit aboard the Proud Pilgrim tomorrow, Saturday, at 11:00 a.m.”

After I signed, she snatched the paper and scratched her signature beneath mine, then said, “What shall we call our partnership?”

I said, “Is it a full partnership?”

But before I could answer, we were distracted by an ear-piercing whistle as the steamer Panama came thumpering past, so close that her side filled the stern gallery, and her wake caused us to rise and rock and dip.

Janiva grabbed the table for balance and must have seen something on my face, something that reflected my uncertainty, because this exploded out of her:

“James Spencer, I did not endure my parents’ shock, my friends’ derision, and the leering looks of passengers and sailors alike, nor did I suffer awful food, cramped quarters, and water so layered with green slime that it smelled like a millpond, nor did I torture myself with seasickness, boredom, storms, and the death of my own cousin, all so that you could look longingly at the steamer that might take you back to Boston. I am here, James. I am here for you. I expect you to be here for me.”

I let her words hang in the air for a moment, to lessen their impact as the ship stopped rocking, then I said, “If I look longingly, miss, it is only at you.”

She lowered her chin and gave me that angled eye, from under that dark brow. “Then you are staying? It’s your name on the Ames license. They’re your cousins, not mine. Tell me that you are staying.”

“Tell me that you did not come all this way just to sell shovels. Tell me that and I’ll stay. Stay to build something more, out there”—I gestured to the stern gallery—“and in here”—I gestured to the space between us.

“Soon, James. Soon. If we can build a company, we can build a life. But the company first. The shovels. The deal with Brannan.”

Such ambition she had, for a woman. But what she said was enough. Soon was enough.

Since we were not yet joining our names, I suggested we find a title for our partnership that bespoke our Boston background. We tried “Union,” after the Union Oyster House. No. “Atheneum.” Too bookish. “Beacon,” for Beacon Hill? No, but what held memories on Beacon Hill? The Arbella Club. So … Arbella Shipping and Mercantile.

Janiva wrote it on the letter, beneath our signatures, then put the letter in an envelope. “We need to get this up to Sam Brannan straight away.”

*   *   *

ON THE DECK, I called for the rowboat.

McLaws said, “Me and me mate, Muggs Henderson, we’ll do the rowin’, sir.”

Henderson was shorter than McLaws and carried a belly that protruded over his belt like a flour sack flopped over the edge of a buckboard. He gave a touch of his knuckles to his forehead, like a sullen seaman. “Pleasure to meet you, sir.”

I had known Janiva’s cousin, J. T. Dutton, and had never thought much of his judgment. I thought even less of it now that he was dead. Looking at these two, I thought that perhaps his judgment was the reason he was dead.

I told them I could row myself. The Clay Street Wharf was not far. But they insisted. They said that the day’s business appeared to be done on the Proud Pilgrim, so Miss Toler would be safe aboard. And they had business of their own in town.

“Yeah,” said Muggs, positioning himself on one of the thwarts and gripping the oars. “Ah-Toy’s Palace of Pleasure is a good place to work off the stiffies.”

“You heard of Ah-Toy?” said Tom McLaws, stepping into the boat after me.

“The Chinese princess of whores,” said Henderson.

“And we’re two randy kangaroos,” said McLaws.

“We sure is, and protectin’ a pretty lady like Miss Toler, it strains the loins.”

“But don’t worry, mate.” McLaws patted my leg. “We been good boys.”

I just looked at them. I had learned that sometimes, just looking was enough to unnerve a man, force him into saying what was really on his mind.

“So,” said McLaws, pushing off, “how’s the whores up in gold country?”

I said nothing.

Muggs chuckled. Maybe they would not be unnerved. “The quiet type, Trub.”

They said no more until we looped a line around a piling on the wharf and started walking. They positioned themselves on either side of me, more as a threat than as bodyguards. After we had gone a short distance, sidestepping stevedores and piles of goods and scatterings of garbage and debris, McLaws said, “Did you hear what Muggsy called me? ‘Trub’?”

I did not answer, as if I was not in the least interested.

“It stands for ‘Trouble.’ I’m known as Trouble Tom. Trub for short. ’Cause I’m nothin’ but trouble for them as gives me such.”

“Do I call you Trub, then, or Mr. McLaws?” I picked up my pace. I could imagine one of them stabbing me and leaving me to drop in the swirling confusion of dockhands and cargo and carts, so I wanted to be off this wharf as quickly as possible.

But McLaws kept pace. “You can call me Tom, so long as there’s no trouble.”

“Don’t make trouble,” I said, “and there won’t be any.”

McLaws looked at his partner. “Now there’s a right answer, Muggsy, me lad.”

I pointed to the dirty old brig Euphemia, anchored between the Clay Street and Long Wharfs. “Wouldn’t want you to end up on the jail ship.”

Their laughter told me that they underestimated me. Let them.

Now we approached one of those sights only seen in San Francisco: the whaleship Niantic, run onto the mudflat, propped with huge redwood supports, and surrounded with a fine new dock. They had covered her deck with what resembled a New England barn, cut a doorway in her side, and put up a sign: REST FOR THE WEARY AND STORAGE FOR TRUNKS. A larger sign along the ridge beam announced, NIANTIC STOREHOUSE.

“Amazin’, it is,” said Muggs, “doin’ all that to a ship.”

“What’s amazin,” said Trub, “is the things people thinks of to make money. Some men makes things. Some makes the space to store things. Some digs things out of the ground. And some serves the rest.”

“It takes all kinds,” I said.

“Me and Muggsy, we serve. Don’t you think it was good of us, stayin’ on like we done to serve Miss Toler in her hour of need.”

“Aye,” added Muggs, puffing his beery breath, “’fore you was anywhere to be seen, Mr. Spencer of Boston.”

“So true, Muggsy, me lad, so true.” Like a bad actor, McLaws took off his hat and placed it over his heart. “Kept her safe from all manner of evil fate in a dangerous place.”

“Damn dangerous, Trub. As dangerous as the hairy-faced Australian fucksnake.”

“Ever heard of him, Mr. Spencer?” Trub McLaws put his hat back on.

“Not a snake I’d worry about, so long as it stays in Australia.”

We crossed over one of those long docks running at right angles to the wharfs, following the line of Sansome Street. On the landward side, tip carters were dumping fill and shovelers were spreading it, creating new-made ground on which buildings rose as quickly as the land dried. But dry land was more hoped-for ideal than terra firma reality. When the tide rose, the new ground might still take on the consistency of buttered oat gruel, as I discovered when I stepped off the wharf into the ankle-deep mud.

McLaws and Henderson had a great guffaw at my expense.

Yes, I was stuck and damned embarrassed about it, too.

McLaws shouted, “So, our new pardner ain’t smart enough to step ’round a big puddle when it’s right in front of him.”

I was not their pardner, but now was not the time to argue, stuck as I was with the mob of San Francisco—the walkers and hawkers, the workers and wagoneers, the muleteers and drivers and barking dogs—all sloshing and splashing around me, all oblivious to this little exchange of insults and threats.

McLaws came close and offered his hand. Reluctantly, I took it, preferring his help to falling facedown in the mud.

He said, “See how good we treat them we works for? A pair of stout blokes, we are. But we’ll be paid fair. Ten percent of everything that comes out of your partnership. You understand? Ten percent. Each.”

“I hope you got that in writing,” I said.

“Ooh. In writin’, he says. We’ll give you writin’.” He let go my hand, sloshed over to the boardwalk, and said to Muggs, “Let’s go get fucked.”

April 4, 1850
A Man of Business

I lay awake half the night trying to decide how to handle McLaws and his pardner. I spent the other half wondering how to bring Janiva into my bed.

With the Australians, it seemed best to act as the boss. So in the morning, I ordered them not to insult Mr. Brannan and his assistant by asking for their weapons when they came aboard. McLaws tried to contradict me, but I cut him off. “No arguments.” And before he could answer, I turned on my heels and went below.

We had decided to receive Brannan and Slawsby in the captain’s cabin, at the fine cherrywood table by the stern gallery, with the bustle of San Francisco as our backdrop. We would appear as part of the fabric of the city, part of its future.

Presently, we could hear them descending.

Janiva squeezed my hand and said, “Thank you. I have dreamed of this.”

“I am shocked by this,” I said. “By all of it.”

Some big men shriveled when they drew closer. Some small men expanded to fill a room. Sam Brannan was a big man in fine crimson coat and luxuriant side whiskers, and he filled every bit of vacant space in the cabin, so much so that we barely noticed the blustering Mr. Slawsby coming in after him.

We exchanged pleasantries and took our places at the table.

Brannan had single-handedly started the Gold Rush two years before. Learning of the discovery at Sutter’s Mill, he had quickly and quietly bought up all the shovels, picks, and pans he could find. Then he traveled to San Francisco, strode into the sleepy adobe settlement at Portsmouth Square, held up a bottle filled with glittering yellow dust, and shouted, “Gold! Gold! Gold from the American River!”

He might have sounded like a cheap barker in a country carnival. But his cries awoke the nation. And no one had ever called San Francisco “sleepy” again.

He was now reputed to be the wealthiest man in California. He was also a Mormon, one of the so-called Latter-Day Saints, though there was little saintly about him. I had heard that he could be crude, impatient, and outspoken, but his opinion was solicited on every matter. Such is the power of the money-made man … here or anywhere.

He looked at Janiva and smiled. “A lovely lady is a pleasure.”

I was reminded of an old word, “lickerous,” to describe the look in his eyes. He was eager, lustful, but constrained for the moment.

He turned to me. “Will the lady be negotiating with us?”

Before I could say anything, she said, “Yes. I will.”

Brannan raised an eyebrow, as if asking me, Are you in charge here or is she?

But Slawsby jumped in, eager to assert himself. “Mr. Brannan has little time. You know of his reputation. You know it will speak well of you to be in business with him. Eleven dollars a shovel.”

“Is this fair?” Janiva said to me.

Slawsby said, “Fifty percent, wholesale to retail, standard here and in the East.”

Brannan’s eyes offered me a challenge: Did I have anything to say, or was the woman going to do all the talking?

Janiva said, “We would do better to sell them ourselves.”

Slawsby said, “That will require a warehouse, a store, a paid staff.”

Brannan kept his eyes on me.

So I slid our licensing agreement across the table. “Ames and Sons make the best shovels in America. They invented the back-strap shovel. They make other fine implements, too. And they are my cousins.”

He inclined his eyes, read, raised a brow. “You come from fine stock, sir.”

“They promise a second ship with another two thousand shovels and two thousand picks. The Madeleine M. left a month after the Proud Pilgrim, but she’s a fast brig, so the semaphore on Telegraph Hill will be announcing her any day now.” This was all as Janiva had described it to me.

At a look from Brannan, Slawsby said, “Let’s not quibble, then. We’ll sell these shovels in Sacramento for twenty-two dollars apiece. But we’ll offer you twelve, a dollar more than wholesale.”

I said, “I’ve been in a camp called Broke Neck.”

“We’ve heard of Broke Neck,” said Brannan. “We’ve heard of trouble there.”

I felt Janiva tensing beside me.

But I remained calm and offered my prepared answer: “The Miner’s Council overreached their power. Trouble always follows when men seek to inflict their will unfairly on others.”

“True in the mines,” said Janiva. “True at this table.”

I had not expected that, but it was the perfect point. We made a good team.

Slawsby huffed, “How does Broke Neck affect wholesale on your shovels?”

“Traveling from Broke Neck, one goes through Sacramento, so one may visit Mr. Brannan’s fine store there, where a shovel much inferior to the Massachusetts-made Ames shovel goes for twenty-five dollars.”

Slawsby reddened, scowled, picked a bit at his beard.

But Brannan seemed to brighten, as if sensing he was in the presence of someone more formidable than he had first thought, and while he might not have liked that fact, he liked the challenge. So he sliced to the bone of the matter: “We’ll offer you fourteen.”

I looked at Slawsby. “Yesterday, you offered sixteen.”

“Sixteen?” Brannan turned his bushy side whiskers to Slawsby.

“I heard a rumor that someone was planning to bid fifteen and sell at thirty,” said Slawsby. “I wanted them to know we’d be prepared to top it. But—”

I cut him off. Time for the kill. Time for the deal. “If you would pay sixteen against fifteen, it means you think our shovels are worth seventeen. So—”

“Do you see that city behind you?” Brannan slid his hands into his waistcoat pockets and pointed his chin at the stern gallery windows. “Do you know how much of it I own?”

Intimidation by means of wealth and power was a game I had seen my father play.

Before I could think of a response, Janiva said, “If you own as much as we’ve heard, you’ll need shovels to dig foundations. Many, many shovels.”

Brannan almost smiled. “But if you hope to get more than thirteen, you’ll need to find another bidder. Who will bid against me?” Despite his reputation as a blowhard, he spoke softly when he spoke from power.

But I had to earn his respect now. If I did not, I’d best flee on the Panama at the next trill of her whistle, because these men knew about Broke Neck. That meant the story was spreading and would soon swell into a nasty carbuncle, one that a man without the respect of his peers might never be able to drain.

So I said, “Are you familiar with my friend, Mark Hopkins?”

“Hopkins, the hardware man?” said Slawsby.

“A license to sell Ames shovels would benefit Hopkins, undercut you, and develop a business relationship for me in Sacramento.”

And competition made all the difference. Our back-and-forthing went on for a time, but we agreed. Arbella Shipping and Mercantile would sell 75 percent to Brannan for two years, shovels and picks at a firm price of sixteen dollars. But because I was loyal to my friends, I had to give Mark Hopkins a chance in Sacramento. And that might have been the most important position I took, for Brannan said, “A man who is loyal to his friends, even if they are my competitors, is a man I can trust.” I knew then that I would have an ally in Sam Brannan.

He stood and shook hands and told Janiva, “You have chosen well, miss.”

Civilized business, conducted in a civil manner. We closed the deal with a bottle of the departed captain’s De Luze cognac. Though Sam Brannan espoused Mormonism, he did not decline a good cognac.

*   *   *

GETTING RID OF TOM McLaws and Muggs Henderson proved more difficult. After we had signed the papers with Brannan in the new office of Reese Shipton on Portsmouth Square, I returned to the Proud Pilgrim, went to the table by the aft deck house, put my pistol next to the inkwell, and called our Australians aft.

When they were looming over me, I produced two sacks containing eight pounds of gold dust each—sixteen hundred dollars times two.

“There’s your ten percent,” I said. “Good luck and thank you.”

Trub said, “Ten percent? Each? That don’t look like ten percent each.”

“Miss Toler tells me it was ten to split,” I said. “Five apiece.”

Janiva stood behind me, hands folded, eyes shadowed by her straw bonnet.

“Well, beggin’ your pardons, but Miss Toler’s as wrong as rottin’ fish.” McLaws pulled from his pocket a sheet covered in pencil scratchings, and read, “‘I hereby authorize Tom McLaws and Muggs Henderson, to receive payment of ten percent each for the total value of our shipment of Ames shovels upon completion of a sale in exchange for services. J. P. Dutton.’”

I snatched the sheet, glanced at it, showed it to Janiva.

She nodded. “That’s my cousin’s signature.”

“Well, then,” said Trub, “it’s a contract, gen-u-ine.”

“The signature may be genuine. But”—I held the paper between two fingers—“the document has been altered. Someone inserted the word ‘each’ in a darker pencil, and it’s not initialed. If a caret is not initialed, it’s invalid.”

“Carrot?” said Muggs, about whom I worried less each time he opened his mouth. “We ain’t talking about bloody vegetables. We’re—”

Trub raised a hand for his partner to be quiet. Then he looked at Janiva and jerked his head at me. “Is he a lawyer? Because he talks like one.”

“I’m not, but up on Portsmouth Square, there’s a lawyer named Shipton. We can ask him.” I stood and picked up my pistol.

McLaws kept his eyes on Janiva, as if to express an unspoken attachment, as if to say that the real man to protect her was himself. “This is how you’d treat us? Men who’ve tooken care of you and—”

She said, “I won’t let you cheat me, Tom. You’re released from your contract.”

After a moment, Trub McLaws picked up one of the sacks of gold.

I said, “That’s the full amount, though we’ve only contracted the sale of three-quarters of the shipment. Take it, or we can go see that lawyer.”

McLaws hefted the gold. “Outside of a few police and some weak-kneed judges, there ain’t much law in San Francisco. Men comes and goes and does as they please, and them as has the strongest hand has the strongest chance.”

“That’s why I never give up my pistol,” I said.

“But that little popgun won’t stop the Sydney Ducks. Ever heard of them?”

“If he ain’t, he should,” said Henderson.

“Right you are, Muggsy, me boy.” Trub leaned on the table. “They live in Sydney Town, over by Telegraph Hill. They ain’t the nicest blokes, and they been comin’ in bunches, ever since word reached Down Under about this here Gold Rush.”

“Aye.” Muggs laughed. “More hairy-faced Australian fucksnakes every week.”

I was looking for a chance to take this conversation back, and Muggs gave it to me. I picked up the pistol and jammed it against his red, vein-streaked nose. “Miss Toler is a lady. Use those words in front of her again, I’ll put a bullet right through your pudding pot of a brain.”

“Easy,” said Trub. “What Muggs is sayin’, in a crude way, is that we got bad Australians in San Francisco, and we got worse Australians. We come from a penal colony, you know. So most of us is escaped convicts, or former convicts, or the sons of such.”

“So what?”

“So some folks say the big Christmas fire was set by them Sydney Ducks, lookin’ to do some lootin’ while the city burned. Considerin’ that you two are settin’ up a tradin’ outfit, with your own warehouse and all, you’ll need some lads who know how to fight fire with fire.” Trub McLaws could sound quite logical when he wanted to.

Even so, I pretended not to understand his meaning. “Fire with fire?”

“In a manner of speakin’. So let’s forget the lawyers and such. For one ounce of gold per day, per man, we’ll protect you from the Ducks, the Chinks, the Greasers, and all other comers, whether you’re here on the Proud Pilgrim or in a warehouse ashore. And from what I heard, you got another ship comin’ any day now. You need our help.”

So, this hairy-faced Australian fucksnake was an eavesdropper, too.

Janiva and I went below to talk it over, and we agreed that once the second ship arrived, we would need storage on land, and storage would need protection.

“Besides,” Janiva added, “better to have these ‘fucksnakes’ inside the tent pissing out than outside pissing in.”

I laughed. “Such language.”

“I’m not Hallie Batchelder, James. I’m a woman of the world.”

So she was. She was also right. We were stuck with these two. We could never trust them. But if we dispensed with them, they could make even more trouble. So I would let them enhance our presence—if not our respectability—in San Francisco. Arbella Shipping and Mercantile would have its own protection force. They would protect our goods and, by association, Sam Brannan’s. And they would be well paid. That ounce of gold a day would be an investment in our safety … or a deal with the devil.

But I told them that if something happened to me, all agreements would end and Miss Toler would return to Boston.

“On a journey like that, I’d go with her meself,” said Trouble Tom McLaws.

Such an answer gave me the resolve to sleep every night with my cabin locked, and my pistol or Janiva—or both—at my side.

And that night, to my everlasting joy, it was both.

April 5, 1850
A New Day

Janiva awoke with these words: “I cannot believe that San Francisco is ever anything but the most beautiful place on earth.”

“If it isn’t,” I whispered, “we will make it so.”

She rolled toward me. “But if we hope to bring our new city a bit of respectability, we’re doing a rather poor job of it.”

I told her I respected her more with every caress of her hand and touch of her leg.

So she pressed her leg against mine and ran her hand along my arm.

In all my imaginings of this morning, I had never anticipated the transformation it would make in me. I was drained of all but pleasure by the softness of her flesh, by the satisfaction of my own, by the salt-sweet aroma of our bodies filling my lungs and soul.

The captain’s narrow berth, built into the little gallery that bowed out on the larboard side, was just wide enough for two, if two slept entwined as one.

“You’re different than when we embraced after musicales at the Atheneum.” She touched my cheek, just below the whip scar. “You look harder.”

“The men who made the scar made me harder.” I got up and pulled on my breeches. “Before we’re done, we may both have to grow harder still.”

“But not today. Today, I prefer to be a wanton.” She threw her arm over her head, giving me a frankest yet most innocent view of her sweet breasts that I could ever have hoped for. Her sudden smile lit the room. Her brown hair, which she had never unpinned for me before, spread across the pillow and framed her face in a dark halo.

But I could hear the Australians moving about. They had hired another pair, known only as Brizzie and Bludger, so now they were four. And they were making breakfast. I smelled coffee brewing, bacon cooking. Time to take control, a task that I expected I would have to perform every day for as long as they were in my employ.

I bent to put on my boots, glanced out the stern gallery, and noticed the semaphore on Telegraph Hill. A new signal had appeared: arms extended, at two o’clock and three: A brig. They were signaling the arrival of a brig.

I said, “Isn’t the Madeleine M. a brig?”

“A brig, yes, and fast.”

“This could be her, then.” I looked at Janiva, half-wrapped in the sheet. “But the wind is from the east. It will take her an hour to work her way onto an anchorage.”

“An hour can be a long time.”

I undid my galluses and dropped my breeches, then I knelt beside the berth and touched her leg, slid my hand along the smooth skin, kissed her again.…

And a voice in my head whispered my prayer, that Samuel Hodges forget me.

April 9, 1850
A Pre-Dawn Visitor

First entry since the arrival of the Madeleine M.:

Our brig brought all that we expected and more: Ames shovels, picks, and pans; flannel shirts, boots, hats; a hundred pipes of rum; a hundred cases of French champagne; a hundred crates of salt cod; a hundred other foods in every kind of container from tin to sack to hogshead; and four pianos manufactured by Chickering & Company of Boston.

Why had we received all of this?

My brother Thaddeus had decided that my California adventure might have merit after all. At the insistence of his wife, Katherine (surely meddlesome but perhaps not the ninny I thought), he had been a great help to Janiva, first by persuading her father that she had the fortitude to endure a long sea journey, then by aiding her in the Ames negotiations. Of course, I suspected that he acted for his own benefit as well as mine. Opening a new market in San Francisco or quieting a querulous wife in Boston were high ideals for any man of business. But I was glad that he had decided, in his fashion, to throw in with us.

And I was glad that, in addition to her other assets, Janiva Toler had the backbone to push my brother, confront her father, and challenge me.

Unloading our treasures took most of three days.

Brannan brought a crew to take three-quarters of the Ames shipment. He paid for the shovels, picks, and pans with 99.9 percent gold dust, which we left on deposit in the safe in his warehouse on Sansome Street. He gave us space in the warehouse—for a price, of course, but a fair one.

Until our goods were properly stored, the papers signed, and the Madeleine M. on her way back to Boston for more, I had no time to ask Janiva if it was time to marry.

So, unmarried, we slept as if we were. And the captain’s berth became our Bower of Bliss, until …

*   *   *

THE EASTERN SKY WAS just glimmering when the knock came.

I grabbed my pistol and bounded for the door. “Who is it?”

“You got some deep-sleepin’ guards on this boat, Jamie, that’s for sure.”

I undid the latch and pulled open the door. “Michael!”

Janiva half rose from the bed. “Who is it?”

“Your Irish waiter,” I said over my shoulder.

Michael Flynn peered in at her. “So it is true? She came to you after all.”

I pushed him into the saloon, struck a match, lit a lantern. He had a black beard now. But he still wore my old visored hat and seemed little changed.

I whispered, “Is Hodges after you?”

“Hell no.” Flynn laughed. “He’s still at Broke Neck. Seems we done him a favor. He was looking for a way to get rid of the Gaw brothers. Gettin’ too big, they was, tryin’ to take over. And when we blew up the dam, we opened a gravel bank like a river deposit, halfway up the hill and loaded with gold.”

“A lost river of gold?”

“Don’t know about that. But Hodges and the rest, they’re minin’ and bankin’ and not givin’ two damns about us.”

“We’re in the clear, then?”

“Don’t know about that, either.” Flynn picked at his beard. “Hodges may be downright cordial, but you got problems of your own.”

The cabin door opened and Janiva stepped out, neatly dressed, hair pinned.

Michael Flynn swept off his hat and bowed. “A pleasure to see that the lovely lady followed my advice after all.”

She gave a little half curtsy. “You were the only man to encourage me.”

“And damn glad to do it.”

She liked Flynn. She had liked him from that first day in the Arbella Club. She said, “I’m damn glad, too. And I’d be damn glad for a cup of coffee.”

“Coffee?” said Flynn. “Why? Is it morning already? I ain’t even been to bed.”

“Brandy, then,” I said.

“In your coffee.” Janiva went forward to the caboose, where we always kept a pot bubbling.

And Flynn whispered to me, “Good lookin’, feisty, curtsies like a lady and curses like a lad. Oh, Jamie, you’re a lucky man.”

We sat at the captain’s table and watched the morning light brighten the April-greened hills. I sweetened three mugs with brandy, and Flynn told of his travels. He had begun by leaving tracks to the north mines, to throw off Sloate. Once he was certain that Sloate was deceived, Flynn had turned south for the Chinese camp.

Janiva asked him why.

To find Mei-Ling, he admitted. But when he got there, he learned that she and her brother and their friends, fearing vengeance from Broke Neck, had already moved on. To where? No one knew. So Flynn had come looking in San Francisco.

Janiva understood. She had sailed seventeen thousand miles for much the same reason. She said, “Love will make you journey far.”

Flynn said he wasn’t sure if it was love, but he sure missed Mei-Ling.

Janiva told him that we all have our dreams and must do what God tells us, even when he tells us to pursue the love of a heathen. She spoke with what I knew she considered a liberality of spirit about the Chinese. And Flynn, well-supplied with a liberality of his own, took no offense.

He explained that he had not found Mei-Ling in San Francisco, so he had gone to Ah-Toy’s, to satisfy his urges. And there, he had overheard the conversation of a man called Trub with three others named Muggs, Bludger, and Brizz.

At first, Flynn was surprised to hear our names bandied about in a Chinese whorehouse. Then he was astonished to hear the one called Muggs say, “You know, Trub, she’s a bird worth pluckin’.” To which Trub responded, “I thought of it. And from the way she makes eyes at me, she thought of it, too.”

Janiva said, “Eyes? At him? He frightens me.”

“Some women like to be frightened,” said Flynn. “And some men think frightenin’ is what women want.”

“I am not some women,” she said.

I poured Flynn more brandy and told him to keep talking.

“The one called Muggs, he said if you was out of the way, Jamie, this Trub could have it clear with Miss Janiva and her goods.” Flynn sipped. “Amazin’ the things you hear waitin’ for your name to be called in a whorehouse. We need to see that this Trub McLaws don’t call yours … in a manner of speakin’.”

“We can fire him,” said Janiva after a moment.

“No,” I said. “We’ve agreed that if we do that, he’ll just make more trouble.”

“It ain’t firin’ you should be thinkin’ of,” said Flynn. “It’s killin’.”

“Killing?” said Janiva. “Killing McLaws?”

“But first, you two get married if you ain’t already, so the likes of him can’t be braggin’ in the whorehouses about havin’ a chance with a proper Boston lady.” Flynn drained his cup, got up, and unlatched a gallery window, which swung out on its hinge. “I’ll come and go by the stern. Better them Aussies don’t know when I’m about.” Then he put a leg out and dropped down a rope into a rowboat tethered to the rudder.

Janiva leaned out the window and asked, “Where are you going?”

“To find that Chinese girl. And if not her, any girl.”

“Where are you sleeping?” I asked.

“Nobody on the Willie Winter but rats. I’ll sleep with them.” He pointed to the figurehead of the North Shore minister, rotting and lonely, a few hundred yards away.

And I said, surprising myself and Janiva both, “Will you witness our wedding?”

Janiva looked at me. “Wedding?”

“Day after tomorrow!” I said. “Shipton’s at eleven o’clock.”

“I’ll be there, but ask that Brannan feller to be your witness. Make friends with the powerful, not the Irish.”

April 11, 1850
Man and Wife

It was not the nuptial that we would have planned in Boston. It was in no way traditional, since we had spent the night before in the same bed. But we knew as our wedding day unfolded that we would never forget it.

Janiva wore her best dress, maroon, with four petticoats, a dark blue half jacket, matching hat. I wore my last white shirt and red cravat with the brown tweed suit, and I arranged my red and yellow-paisley neckerchief as a bit of color in my breast pocket.

We let Muggs and Trub row us in. Trub offered to escort us to Portsmouth Square, but I told him we had someone else watching over us. Who? The man waiting for us at the end of the Washington Street Wharf. He wore polished boots and a new gray flannel shirt with a black neckerchief. He was holding a bouquet of orange California poppies.

Trub said, “Who’s he?”

“My friend, Michael Flynn,” I said. “Expert with pistol or fists.”

The boat bumped against the wharf, and Flynn handed Janiva the flowers, then helped her up. “Ah, but it’s a grand sunny day for the most beautiful bride in California.”

Trub whispered, “You don’t invite your faithful Aussies … but a Mick?”

I knew the old adage about keeping your friends close and your enemies closer. But this was our wedding day. We would invite who we would. If the Aussies wanted to loot the ship while we were ashore? I had goods in the Brannan warehouse. I would not be impoverished. So I put McLaws out of my mind, took Janiva’s arm, and together we walked up Washington Street with Michael Flynn clearing the way.

There was no plan to our procession, but up ahead, Reese Shipton’s slave, Dingus, was standing on the boardwalk. When he saw us cross Kearny Street, he put bow to fiddle and delivered the most beautiful rendition of the old Pilgrim hymn, “We Gather Together,” that ever we had heard.

Now, the mob around Portsmouth Square made way, as if all of them, engaged in all their forms of commerce, construction, and conversation, remembered for a moment what a wedding had meant back home, in Joplin or Savannah or Boston, Massachusetts.

Men doffed hats and bowed. Women, many of them what we might have called “soiled doves,” offered us a “God bless” or “you look beautiful, dear” or even “make him pay, darlin’, pay every day,” which made Janiva laugh out loud.

Dingus played us right into the office, where Reese Shipton awaited in a suit so white that I could not believe he had ever worn it in California before.

As our official witnesses, Sam Brannan came with his wife, a delicate woman named Ann Eliza, who greeted Janiva with a motherly embrace and told her that she would always remember this day, “even if it’s not a church wedding.”

I sensed that Janiva liked her from the start.

Jonathan Slawsby and his wife also attended, as did a woman named Sally Tucker, who was associated with Shipton, but who appeared as if she had been associated with other men. Indeed, as I thought about it, I realized she had been the living tableau above the bar at the Parker House.

After Shipton pronounced us man and wife, we paraded to the Brannans’ home at Stockton and Washington, on the uphill outskirt of town. The green slopes above were dotted about with houses, and the streets faded into sandy paths crisscrossing their way toward the top. But the Brannans’ house reminded us of a pleasant dwelling in Concord or Lexington, and as the day was warm—April being one of the nicest months in these parts—they had laid out a collation on the veranda. We feasted on oysters and champagne and fresh sliced beef prepared with chilis and Mexican spices, all with a glorious view over the city and across the bay to the distant hills.

Though our small talk was genteel, as spirits rose, so did the volume of our laughter and sense of good fellowship. And in San Francisco, there was a distinct lack of the caste consciousness that we would have found in the environs of old Boston. When I introduced Flynn as “my good friend from Galway,” Brannan did no more than look him over, take the measure of him, and offer his hand. “If Spencer vouches for you, you must be all right.” When Flynn asked Sally Tucker if she had any friends, no one acted insulted or appalled. Social boundaries here were fluid, and Sally said she would be happy to introduce Flynn to a few “unattached” San Francisco ladies.

At sundown, Janiva and I bid our farewells and retreated to the St. Francis, the red-painted, twin-gabled, three-story hotel at the corner of Dupont and Clay. In that few marriages were celebrated in these parts, the hotel lacked a bridal suite, so they gave us a double room on the third floor, beneath the gables, from which we could see the ramshackle city expanding in every direction. And a bottle of champagne awaited us, chilled in shaved ice shipped round the Horn from Boston.

Alone together, we toasted to the great wonder of our lives, that in little less than two weeks we had come so far. We toasted to a future that we viewed now with new optimism, no matter the dangers around us. We put the distant spectre of Samuel Hodges and the nearby threat of Trub McLaws out of our minds. And we agreed that Mrs. Brannan was right. We would always remember this day.

Then we fell together into the enormous featherbed.

April 14, 1850
Doing Business

After four nights of bliss in the Drake and four days of meals in the restaurants around Portsmouth Square, including an exotic Chinese dinner (which did not feature maodan) in a restaurant called Jon-Ling’s Canton House, we returned to the ship, where we immediately felt a distinct sense of resentment from our hirelings.

I resolved to be on my guard around Trub and Muggs and their equally hairy associates, Brizzie, short for “Brisbane,” and Bludger, which is Australian slang for lazy.

But I lowered it the first night back as I strolled the deck after dinner. I liked to watch the sky darken from east to west. And here, as we raced toward the longest days of the year, I liked the lingering of the light. I also wanted the stern lanterns lit, so that the Proud Pilgrim looked like a storeship rather than a derelict.

As Janiva preferred to stay in the warmth below, I brought a cognac for company. I leaned on the rail and sipped and considered the ways in which my life had changed. Boston was no longer my destination. It was something much closer, up on those San Francisco hills … and something far away and unknown, a distant future …

 … until my contemplation was interrupted by, “Evenin’, Mr. Spencer.” The voice of Trub McLaws preceded him. He sauntered along the rail, mug in his hand, and the thought skittered through my head that a man who enjoyed an evening stroll must have some good in him, after all.

So I offered a bit of friendly talk: “Marvelous night.”

“Aye, Marvelous.” Trub tipped his mug.

I asked him what he was drinking.

“Rotgut rum.”

“Would you like some cognac?”

“Is that like brandy?”

I told him to drain the mug, then I poured him a healthy measure from my glass.

He sipped and smiled, as if his whole being had been illuminated by such a magnificent drink as the De Luze. He said, “You know, runnin’ with the likes of you is a good way to get an education in the finer things … and another in knowin’ when your betters is lookin’ down on you.”

“Betters? Lookin’ down?”

“Me and Muggsy was awful hurt you didn’t invite us to your weddin’.”

Though I had an answer, Trub was not interested. He kept talking. “But something tells me you ain’t so high and mighty, seein’ as you’re friends with that Irish whoremonger—”

“Whoremonger?” I sipped my brandy and feigned amusement.

“An honorable callin’ in my world, but not in yours.” Trouble Tom turned and headed toward the bow. “Maybe he’ll come round tonight and tell some Irish tales. A tall teller, that one is, with a big mouth for the tellin’ and some mad men on his own tail, too.”

On his tail? Hodges? Trask? Had Flynn led them to us? If so, they would be more trouble than Trouble Tom.

April 18, 1850
A Ship Sinks

Michael Flynn did not come round that night or for days afterward. Neither, I was happy to say, did Hodges or Trask.

And our fledgling company kept growing, despite my fears of revenge. We made another wholesale deal and awaited word from Hopkins in Sacramento. We also considered the purchase of land. We had come late to the sale of so-called water lots. The city council had run an auction on January 3 for four hundred and thirty-four prime plots. But by spring, men were developing new means to lay claims, as I observed that morning.

I happened to glance toward the storeship Elizabeth, anchored between us and the Washington Street Wharf. I had noticed her crew dismasting her and removing anything—binnacle, bright work, lines—they might carry. Now, they were rowing frantically away, because she was sinking, going down on an even keel, as if they were scuttling her right there in Yerba Buena Cove.

But why?

McLaws came by, stopped, looked out, and said, “Fine smart fellers, them hulk undertakers, buryin’ dead ships like dead bodies.”

If Trub McLaws admired them, dishonesty was afoot.

“What’s a hulk undertaker?” I asked.

“The city sells ‘water lots’ for tax money and the buyers agrees to fill the land, all as if it’s the very thing to make this canvas-and-sand shithill a right honest city. But hulk undertakers kedge their vessels into prime spots and scuttle ’em. That way they owns the land without payin’.”

The air was bubbling up through the hatches of the Elizabeth and roiling the water as she settled onto the bottom.

“How do they own it?” I asked.

“Laws of maritime salvage. Shipowner can claim the bottom his hulk is sittin’ on. That’s what they done with the Elizabeth and the Niantic and a dozen more.”

“Sounds like a good line of work.”

“Aye.” Trub scratched at his stubble. “But not so good as what we got here. And my price is goin’ up. Two ounces a day for all four of us. And a monthly bonus for me, to keep me mouth shut.”

I was almost afraid to ask: “About what?”

“About what you and that Irish whoremonger done in a place called Broke Neck. Blew up a dam, killed men … that’s the talk, anyway.”

“The talk? The humbug, you mean.”

“It’s what they’re sayin’.” He studied me, as if waiting to see fear’s shadow cross my face, then he turned and headed for the fo’c’sle, casting this over his shoulder: “New arrangement starts next week and the first bonus on May 1.”

*   *   *

THAT NIGHT, I FOUND Flynn at Ah-Toy’s. I warned him that if he was to spend time there, he had best not drink beforehand. Too much drink caused his gums to flap.

He assured me that he had said nothing, that word must be spreading by other means. He also warned against paying McLaws to keep quiet, as it would lead only to more demands. Having heard talk of an actual lake of gold, he was planning on leaving. “But I’ll stay a bit longer. You might need help with this Trub. And I might still find Mei-Ling.”

I looked around at the men, sitting on benches, waiting for their “lookees,” “touch-ees,” and “do-ees.” I said, “Just so long as you don’t find her in here.”

May 1, 1850
No Pay

When we handed out the week’s wages, the gold share was as it had been, an ounce a day, one of the best salaries in San Francisco. But no bonus for Trub McLaws.

When he said nothing, I told Janiva that he was planning something. But I could not imagine what lay ahead.

May 4, 1850
Fifty-dollar shovels

Even San Francisco slept at four in the morning, but I lay awake.

Most of the worries afflicting me since Broke Neck afflicted me now. But they were calmed by the quiet breathing of the woman beside me. She lay on her stomach, her face turned to the window, her hair cascading onto us both. I touched her sweet bottom, but lightly so as not to wake her. The rising sun would do that within the hour.

I would simply enjoy the quiet and her presence and our existence together.

Then I heard the sound of a distant bell. It clanged once or twice, then it began to ring as furiously as a scream in the night. I sat up, looked toward the city, and saw flames leaping near Portsmouth Square.

I jumped into my breeches and boots and ran to rouse the Aussies, for we had goods to protect in the Brannan Warehouse. Past the long table in the saloon I ran, past the caboose, into the forecastle, and—where were they? Their berths were empty. Could they still be carousing at this hour?

I raced back to our cabin, where Janiva was already dressed, striking a match, lighting a lantern, and screaming at the sight of a face appearing at the stern gallery.

But it was Flynn, once more clean shaven. He pulled open the window and said, “It’s a bad one, Jamie.”

I told him the Aussies were gone.

“Probably out lootin’.” He climbed in. “Them Sydney Ducks been braggin’ they could torch the city and loot the hell out of it whilst it burned.”

I said, “If the Brannan Warehouse goes—”

Janiva said, “If it goes, the five hundred shovels we’re holding on this ship will become the most valuable shovels in California.”

“So we’d best stay and protect them,” I said.

“It’ll take a long time to steal five hundred shovels,” said Flynn. “You got a lot more in that warehouse you need to protect. But the lady—”

“Don’t worry about me,” said Janiva.

“I don’t, darlin’, not at all, not with a woman who can sail seventeen thousand miles on her own hook, all for the glories of love and commerce. But I worry for your goods. So your husband should stay with you to protect ’em on this ship, and I’ll go protect ’em in your warehouse.”

Janiva said, “They won’t even know who you are, Michael. They’ll shoot you for a looter. So both of you, go. I’ll stay with the shovels.”

And before I could protest, she grabbed a fistful of my shirt and looked at me fiercely. “This is our future, James.”

“She’s right about that,” said Flynn.

Then she went to the locker in the corner and pulled out the seven-barrel Nock gun that the captain of the Proud Pilgrim had left behind when he headed for the gold fields. It was like a small cannon, perfect for sweeping a deck of mutineers or pirates. She said, “I have shot duck on the Rowley Marshes and partridge in the Berkshire Hills. I can shoot anyone who comes aboard this ship.”

And I relented. She was right. Our future lay crated and priced in that warehouse, not to mention the gold in Brannan’s safe.

I said, “Stay here, then. Bolt the door. If anyone tries to get in, shoot through the door. Seven barrels will make an awful mess, no matter what’s on the other side. Then use this.” I put my pistol on the table. “It’s fresh-loaded and capped.” I kissed her and followed Flynn out the window, down the rope, into the rowboat.

The red glow of dawn was expanding to the east. But we were headed toward the redder glow of the flames spreading over San Francisco.

“The wind is up,” I said.

“Bad sign.” Flynn took the oars. “But there’s a good sign behind you.”

I looked over my shoulder at Janiva, standing in the side gallery, watching us, with the big gun in her hand. I waved to her, but she could not see me in the dim light.

Flynn pulled a few times—clink, clank, splash—and said, “I was hopin’ you’d come with me. Help me find my river of gold. But you found your gold right here.”

*   *   *

WE TIED UP AT the foot of the Clay Street Wharf and ran.

We passed four men dipping buckets and filling a canvas-lined cart. One of them was shouting, “Hurry up, damn you. They’re giving sixty dollars a cart for water. If we can keep it comin’, we’ll be rich before the city burns down.”

“Does your heart proud to see men doin’ their civic duty,” said Flynn.

We ran past the Niantic, its balcony crowded with gawkers watching the flames on the hill. We ran all the way to the end of the wharf and dove into a torrent of people and carts and animals flooding Sansome Street.

A month ago, this had been a dock. Now it was a thoroughfare, lined with one- and two-story buildings, sheds, canvas tents, saloons. And it might all soon be gone. Everywhere, men were running and stumbling, in and out of buildings or off toward the wharfs. Some were saving what they could carry. Others were stealing what they could grab. And a noble few were preparing to fight the fire, filling buckets and daubing walls with great gobs of insulating black mud.

Meanwhile, more fire bells were clanging. And in one of the saloons, someone was pounding on a piano, perhaps for the last time.

The whole east side of Portsmouth Square, the downhill side, was now ablaze, including the magnificent new Parker House, scheduled to reopen that very night with a grand ball. And the wind was pumping the smoke and firebrands in our direction, so that everywhere, sparks were flickering on rooftops and boardwalks.

“If that wind keeps up,” said Flynn, “Frisco’s fucked.”

A gang of men came along, hauling a red fire pump. The words MARTIN VAN BUREN were painted on the side. It had once belonged to the former president, who used it to water his lawn. Saving San Francisco on this night would be a far greater challenge.

“Hey, lads, tail on,” shouted one of the volunteers. “We could use a push.”

“We got things to do,” answered Flynn.

Another volunteer shouted to a gang of men milling about on the corner of Clay Street. “You! What about you? We need help gettin’ up the hill.”

“Three dollars an hour!” said one of the men.

“Why, you son of a bitch,” shouted the brigade captain. “We got a fire to fight and a city to save. If that fire gets goin’—”

“It’s already goin’, mate,” cried one of the corner hangers. “The Exchange is gone. The new Parker House is goin’. It’s all bloody goin’.”

Flynn grabbed me by the elbow. “Sydney Ducks. Keep clear of ’em.”

The captain looked from the Ducks to us, then back. “So none of you’ll help?”

“Three dollars an hour!” shouted one of the Ducks. “Each!”

“Well, fuck you all!” The fire captain made a swooping wave and got his men going again to push the Martin Van Buren up Clay Street.

The Ducks went in the other direction on Sansome, moving like gangs always seemed to, all dark shadow and bobbing hats, swaying shoulders and swagger. One of them was carrying a wooden club. Another pulled a sap from his pocket. A set of brass knuckles flashed. Trouble Tom was nowhere in sight. But trouble was everywhere.

Flynn said, “Do you recognize any of them.”

“None on our payroll.” I noticed, however, that two of them broke off and went running up Clay Street. I figured later that they went in search of McLaws, because I saw them again. But we were distracted just then by the shouts of Reese Shipton, who came rushing along in his white suit, with Dingus at his heels.

“Shipton! Where are you going?” I asked.

“To my office, if I can get there. Get my papers.”

“Ain’t you got a fireproof safe?” asked Flynn.

“Yeah, and the last fire cooked everything in it right down to a fine powder.”

I told him I’d help, but we had worries of our own, and he understood. I shouted after him, “The papers aren’t worth your life.”

Shipton went one way into the surge. We went the other, dodging carts and crowds and clots of thuggish toughs bent on nothing but trouble. The Australians weren’t the only bad ones in town. We knew that. Society’s bonds could easily be loosed in the kind of panic now rising like dawn in the eastern sky.

When a group of Chinese came scurrying by, their backs laden with whatever they had saved from their huts and hovels, Flynn studied them in the orange firelight, as if hoping that he might see Chin or Mei-Ling. And … did he see a female? I could not tell. But someone, a Celestial shadow, turned as if startled to see us. Flynn took two or three steps, and the shadow disappeared into the throng. Then I grabbed him and dragged him ahead. We had a job to do.

Off to my left, I heard a window shatter and saw two men run from a hardware store carrying—yes—shovels.

“Ignore that.” Flynn pulled his pistol. “Keep goin’.”

Up ahead, on the right side of Sansome Street, stood Brannan’s barn-like warehouse. A gang of men had gathered in front of it, dark men with muskets, hulking in the heat and strange burning light. Were they looting? Would we have a fight? As we drew closer, we saw that they were surrounding Sam Brannan himself. They barred my way, but Brannan said, “It’s all right, boys. It’s his goods we’re protectin’.”

“And we’re damn glad of it,” I said.

“We learned our lesson at Christmas.” Brannan looked up at the flames leaping a few blocks away. “Somebody set fire to the U.S. Exchange just to get us stirred up.”

Jonathan Slawsby stood next to him. “We’ll be fine, sir, with the help of God.”

Flynn said, “We come to help you hold off the looters.”

“I got my Mormons,” said Brannan. “I promised them a percentage. They know our goods are worth more with every hardware store that goes up. We could be holdin’ fifty-dollar shovels by dawn. So we’ll wet the roof and shoot the looters.”

A ladder was leaning against the side of the warehouse, and a bucket brigade was lifting from one of the water-filled carts.

Brannan said, “The son of a bitch who owns that cart is gettin’ sixty dollars a load. But I’ll pay, Spencer. I’ll pay, and you’ll get the benefit.”

From up the hill came a great, explosive whoosh of sparks as a building fell in on itself. Brannan said, “Get back to your ship. Protect the shovels you kept aboard. They’re the real gold.”

“Have you seen my men,” I asked. “McLaws and Henderson?”

“They were here when we got here, takin’ positions around the doors. The big one, McLaws, he said they were here to protect your goods.”

“They’d been drinkin’ some,” said Slawsby, “and one of them had a crowbar. Strange tool for protectin’ a warehouse.”

*   *   *

IF THE WIND SWEPT the fire toward the Brannan warehouse, nothing would stop it. But if my Australians were disappointed that they could not plunder on land, they might decide to steal the fifty-dollar shovels from the Proud Pilgrim.

So we rushed back onto the wharf, only to discover that our boat was gone. I cursed and looked toward our ship, and what I saw froze my blood. Men were moving about on the deck, looking furtive in the pre-dawn light, doing nefarious business for certain.

“They’re lootin’,” said Flynn. “Probably usin’ me own damn rowboat, the bastards. Probably tied her up on the other side, so nobody sees what they’re up to.”

I began looking for another boat. Some were chained and padlocked. Some were without oarlocks. And—

I heard a voice behind me. “Is that Spencer? Mr. Spencer?”

He was wearing a plug hat and leather vest. He was carrying a big canvas bag full of tools, just as the first time I had seen him on the wharf in Boston.

“Matt Dooling! Where are you going?”

“Burned out,” he said. “Nothin’ left but my anvil and my rowboat. I’ll get the anvil when it cools, but—”

Flynn said, “You have a boat?”

“Right here.” He went to the side of the wharf and dropped his bag into a boat chained below. “Goin’ back to join a bucket brigade.”

“Can we borrow the boat?” I asked. “Somebody stole ours, and—”

“They’re lootin’ the Spencer ship,” said Flynn.

“Lootin’?” said Dooling, almost indignantly. “From you?”

I pointed to the Proud Pilgrim. As I did, I heard a muffled shot and saw the windows of the starboard gallery, our Bower of Bliss, lit by a muzzle flash.

Good Lord, but Janiva had just fired that monstrous Nock.

I said, “We need that boat, Matt. Right now.”

“You need help?” asked Dooling.

“Do you got a gun?” said Flynn.

“Nope. But I got a big claw hammer. And this!” He pulled a fine Bowie knife. “And Matt Dooling never forgets a favor.”

In an instant, all three of us were in his rowboat, with powerful Matt Dooling pulling hard for the Proud Pilgrim.

The next few minutes were pure agony for me, knowing that intruders were aboard with Janiva.

Dooling said, “You want to go right up to the side? Or do we surprise ’em?”

I heard myself say, “Surprise or not, if they’ve hurt her, we kill them all.”

“We might have to,” said Flynn. “But we need to see what’s happened in the cabin before we start shootin’.”

Behind us an explosion rocked the city. The fire had reached something flammable—paint, turpentine, gunpowder—and a huge red-orange ball roiled into the sky. The brigands on the deck glanced toward the eruption, but with all the boats full of panicked people fleeing the flames, we attracted none of their attention as they got back to pillaging our stores.

Flynn told Matt Dooling, “Make like you’re pullin for the Willie Winter over there, then get in close to the stern.”

In a few minutes, we bumped unseen under the gallery of the Proud Pilgrim.

Flynn borrowed Dooling’s Bowie knife, slipped it into his belt, threw his hat into the boat, then lifted himself onto his rope ladder, up to the windows of the stern gallery. He peered in and made a gesture: nothing. Then, he lifted himself to the taffrail, beside one of the glowing stern lanterns. Another gesture: two fingers for two men. He dropped back, pulled out the unlocked gallery window, and climbed in. Then he stuck his head out and, with his finger to his lips for quiet, he gestured for us to follow.

I could not imagine what I would see. But what I heard pierced my soul. As soon as I dropped through the window, the sound of gasping, moaning, and crying struck me. It was echoing down the passage from the saloon amidships.

Flynn grabbed me and whispered, “If you want to end this right, be quiet.”

A second later, Matt Dooling followed me through the window with his big shoulders and his big ass and his big feet tripping on the sill. He dropped his hammer. But Flynn, with a flash of his hand, caught it before it hit the floor.

We all stopped, motionless, in fear that we had been heard. Instead, we heard Trub McLaws say, “Come on, Muggs, finish up. Then Brizz gets a bit.”

“Aye,” said another voice. “My dick’s fixin’ to explode.”

Janiva groaned out a cry that sounded more like a growl.

Again I fought the impulse to race down the short passage and burst into the saloon, where these slugs were raping the woman I loved.

Flynn pointed at the deck. The body of the one called Bludger, face and upper torso shot to pieces. Splinters of the door were shattered and blood was splattered all around him.

Then I heard a groan, met by higher-pitched screams, a male voice and female response. Muggs Henderson was finishing his obscene business.

Flynn raised a finger and whispered, “We kill them all. Nobody gets away. Not in there, not—” He pointed above. Then he asked Dooling, “Are you with us?”

Dooling held up his pound-and-a-half hammer—octagonal head, long nasty claw. “Goddamn them all to hell.”

In the saloon, Trub laughed, “Get off her, Muggs. Time for Brizz. And I’m gettin’ another stiffy just watchin’. I’ll have her again ’fore we call Brizz’s baby brother down.”

“He’s sixteen,” said Brizz. “Awful randy.”

“Let him keep loadin’ shovels. It’ll make him tired so’s he don’t pop off so fast.”

Janiva whimpered, then she growled, “When my husband gets back—”

“When your husband gets back, we’ll kill him,” said Trub. “All we wanted was a signature, sayin’ we was takin’ them shovels all nice and legal-like. Then we would’ve been gone for good. Them shovels was our payment for keepin’ quiet about Broke Neck. But your smart husband wouldn’t pay in gold. Instead, he told you to shoot through the door.”

“I’m glad I did.”

“So now,” said Trub, “we’ll kill him. We’ll lure him aboard. Give him a look at what we done, then kill him.”

“Aye,” Muggs said, “him and that smart-mouthed Irish prick.”

“Should’ve killed ’em the first time we set eyes on ’em,” Trub went on. “But too many watchin’. So we had to act like gents. Like proper poopers—”

All the rapists laughed at that.

Trub kept talking. “Now them damn fools is off fightin’ our fire. Maybe they’ll burn up in it. Then we’ll take the ship, too. Bring Lady Boston here along with us, fuck her all the way to Sacramento. Would you like that, darlin’?”

I heard Janiva spit. Then I heard a slap.

Flynn’s hand went across my chest. Wait. Wait. He pointed to himself and said, in gestures, “I’ll look.” He slipped down the passage as it began again, and the sound of my wife’s pain tore at my soul.

A moment later, Flynn scuttled back and whispered, “Trub is at her head, with a knife to her throat. They got her legs tied on the table.”

Trub said, “That’s a fine big cock you got there, Brizzy boy.”

I heard poor Janiva scream.

Trub cheered him on. “Get it all the way in lad, all the way.”

Now we heard another man coming down the gangway from the main deck. “Oi, when’s it my turn?”

“After me,” said Trub.

And that was all I could take. I grabbed my Colt from the table, cocked it, and rushed down the hallway.

Janiva lay there, legs splayed in my direction, Brizz between them, his back and bare ass to me and his pants at his ankles. I could have killed him, but it was Trub that I wanted. Trub stood at her head, holding a knife. And Trub would kill her.

But I gave him only enough time to see me, see the muzzle of my pistol, and see it flash in his face. The ball went through his forehead, and the back of his skull blew out, splattering brains all over Muggs, who was just then pulling up his pants.

And that was my plan. Kill Trub while one man had his pants half off, another had his half on, and a third was halfway down the companionway steps.

But Flynn and Matt Dooling followed right after me, and they knew what to do.

Flynn grabbed Brizz by the shoulders, pulled him off Janiva, sent him stumbling back with a look of shock on his hairy face and a white dick standing stiff and wet. He drove the Bowie knife so deep into Brizz’s belly that it came out his back.

Muggs turned to run, but Dooling drove the hammer claw right into the top of his skull. Muggs sank to his knees, stood and stumbled forward, then collapsed with the hammer in his head.

The one on the companionway steps—he looked about sixteen—stood frozen in shock.

Flynn tried to pull the knife out of Brizz, who was still twisting and struggling and squirting blood, but the knife would not budge. So Flynn shouted at me, “Shoot him.”

And for a moment, I hesitated.

He was a boy. He raised his hand, cried, “No!”

Then Janiva sat up and looked at me fiercely and said, “Kill him.”

And I did. I went up straight and hard, and before he could turn, I put a bullet under his rib cage. It came out his back and cut his spine, because his legs collapsed and his young body flopped down the steps like a sack of clams.

Another voice cried down from above, “Oi, what’s goin’ on? Did you fuckers shoot her before I fucked her?”

Fucked her? Another one? He would get no hesitation, no mercy. As he came down, I went up, shot him once, chased him out onto the deck, and shot him again.

Dawn covered the sky. Fire covered the dawn. And blood covered the Proud Pilgrim.

*   *   *

BY NOW, JANIVA WAS standing, trembling. She seemed not to notice the dead bodies. Trub and McLaws, Brizz and the boy. She was saying, “Seven barrels for six men. That’s what I had. Seven for six. One shot should have killed them all.”

“Don’t worry, darlin’,” said Flynn, wiping the blade on the shirttail of the dead boy. “Big gun like that, sometimes, it ain’t so accurate. Ain’t that right, Matt?”

“Right for sure. You done good, missus.”

She looked around at the mess of blood and gore and said, “It stinks in here.”

I tried to lead her back to the captain’s cabin. But she pulled away, smoothed the front of her dress as if it would make everything all right. “It’s time for breakfast.” She started forward, to the caboose.

I reached out to her again, and she screamed, “Don’t touch me! Do not touch me.” But there was no anger on her face, no fear, just a cold, affectless stare, the expression I had seen that day in the Arbella Club, when I announced I was leaving.

Flynn said to her, “Let me cook, darlin’. You go back to your cabin and rest.”

“Yes,” said Matt Dooling. “We’ll protect you.”

After a moment, I reached out again, though I did not touch her, and she allowed me to lead her to the stern, to our Bower of Bliss, which felt as violated as she.

While the city burned beyond the windows, we three tried to comfort her. We gave her brandy. We had some ourselves. We made coffee, too. We brought her hot water and cloths from the ship’s store so that she could clean herself. Then she retreated to the captain’s private necessary in the gallery on the larboard side, a single-holed seat dropping straight into the sea. There, she spent twenty minutes, behind a louver.

Flynn, Dooling, and I sat at the table, watched the flames leaping on the hill between the waterfront and Portsmouth Square, and debated our next move.

Finally, I said, “We go to the law. We take Brannan. We plead self-defense.”

And from behind the louver I heard her voice, cool and rational. “We do nothing of the sort.” Then she emerged, hair pinned, dress smoothed, the front of the bodice covered with a clean white apron, and powder makeup, which I did not know she possessed, covering the bruise under her eye.

She poured another brandy, and brought the glass to her mouth. Though she could hide the bruise, she could not hide the shaking hand. But after a swallow, she said, “Seven barrels and only one man went down. I grabbed for the pistol on the table, but—”

“We’ll plead self-defense,” I said. “No shame—”

“No,” she said softly, then furiously, “No! I never want to speak of this again. I never want to answer a question. And they will ask. Six dead men? How many raped you? How many times? Two? Three? Why are there six dead men? How did they get aboard? Were they invited? Where was your husband? Where were his friends? Weren’t some of these men in his employ? And six dead? Why did you kill them all? And wasn’t the Irishman a whoremonger? Could it be that the men were confused, or were you one of his girls? Couldn’t you just—just—no. No!” She looked out at the burning city.

After a time, as the truth of what we had done sank in, I said, “We still need to answer for their bodies.”

She said, “Let the crabs eat them.”

And Michael Flynn, who had been uncharacteristically quiet, said, “You know, she’s right.”

“I know I will not suffer another indignity,” she said.

Flynn asked Dooling, “Can you lend us that strong arm a while longer?”

Matt Dooling nodded and made a fist.

“Good,” said Flynn. “If we can row an anchor about a hundred yards, we’ll turn something bad into good. We’ll sink the Proud Pilgrim with all six bodies.”

“And claim a water lot,” I added.

*   *   *

SAN FRANCISCO BURNED UNTIL eleven o’clock that morning.

The fire consumed everything from Kearny down to Montgomery, from Clay to Washington. It jumped Portsmouth Square and started burning up the hill, but John Geary, the strong-browed young man whose appointment as U.S. postmaster had positioned him to win the city’s first mayoral election, ordered the destruction of all buildings on Dupont, thereby creating a firebreak. It was easy because some of the buildings were made of canvas, and others had been thrown up in a few days. Now they were all gone, making room for another round, bigger, better, stronger, perhaps built of brick.

But the Brannan warehouse survived. So did all our goods, which would now leap in price. Once we could swallow down the horror of what had happened on the Proud Pilgrim, we would be in business for as long as we wanted.

By afternoon, we had carried the six bodies deep into the ship, chained them along the keel, and closed the hatches of the orlop deck. I tried not to look at the faces. I tried not to consider the lives. We had done what needed to be done. Even the boy had earned his fate. I felt better once the bodies were out of sight. But while we could wash the blood from the decks, we could never wash it from our souls.

I told Janiva to stay in the cabin while we did this dirty work. I told her to read the Bible or Shakespeare. She chose MacBeth. She said that she admired the backbone of that fierce, flawed wife. I admired hers.

Later, Michael made beef stew, and we ate, though none of us had much appetite.

As night came on, we moved the last of the shovels off the ship. It took five trips in the rowboat. We loaded half of them onto a cart. And while Matt Dooling waited on the wharf with the other half, Flynn and I brought the cart to Brannan’s warehouse. The night fog had rolled in. The smell of smoke hung thick and wet.

Brannan was doing an inventory, re-pricing while the city smoldered. I told him that it would be best if he sold all our shovels in San Francisco. As I had not heard from Hopkins in Sacramento, and as Brannan had done such a loyal job of protecting our goods, I would honor the price I had given him on all the other shovels. And our partnership grew stronger.

Then, as we were leaving, I saw Wei Chin. I was not certain at first. He was hunkered in a shadow in an alley across the street. He pulled back at the sight of me.

I did not think that Flynn noticed him, so I said that I had left something behind, that he should continue down to the wharf. Then I stepped into the shadow and looked into the eyes of the Chinaman, filled with fear and defiance.

Yes, he and the others had been in the crowd of Chinese we had passed during the fire. He had been watching the Brannan warehouse ever since, hoping to see me. He said he had brought his people to San Francisco, and here they would stay. Then he asked about Flynn. “Does he come to stay?”

And a voice cut through the darkness. “I come to find Mei-Ling.” Flynn had not been fooled. He was never fooled. He knew I had seen something, so he doubled back.

Chin looked at him. “She no see you.”

“Why not?”

“She marry. She marry Jon-Ling.”

“The one with the restaurant?” I said.

Chin nodded. “She no love white man. Too much trouble white man. No white man for brother. No white Irish man. No peppermint. She never want see you.”

Flynn blustered and threatened and said he would follow Chin back to wherever they were living or spy on the restaurant until he saw her.

Chin, with cold calm, said he would kill the Irishman if he interfered with Mei-Ling’s marriage to a man of business, one of the Celestial leaders of the town.

And for one of the few times that I knew him, Michael Flynn took no for an answer.

Something came over him for days after that. He stopped smiling. He stopped talking. He stopped making light of serious matters and waxing serious about trivial things. And I knew that he had more than mere lust for the Chinese girl named Mei-Ling.

*   *   *

I MUST RECORD ONE more thing about that terrible day, illustrative of the deep wellspring of strength in Janiva Toler Spencer.

Torn by the horrors of the dawn, she rolled to me late in the night and told me to love her. She did not ask, nor did she seduce. She spoke bluntly, as if telling me that it was a necessary task. After all she had gone through? I hesitated. So she said, “If something more comes of this, we will always believe it is your child.” I admired her bravery even more. And somehow, we affirmed our life together.

May 8, 1850
Good-bye, Proud Pilgrim

In the succeeding days, Janiva did not smile and seldom spoke. But if she had a task, she went to it willingly. Prepare coffee. Wash her “rape dress.” Repeat the process of procreation with her husband. Sink the Proud Pilgrim.

We waited for the morning when the tide took flood at four o’clock, then we got to work. While Flynn and Dooling rowed the kedging anchor to a spot about two hundred feet away, we detached the main anchor and let slip the Proud Pilgrim.

We had the help of Wei Chin and Little Ng in this. They did not know our exact purpose, only that we needed muscle. Chin said they would provide it, if Flynn would promise not to see his sister again. And Flynn agreed. I asked him why, and he said, “So your wife never has to answer a bad question about a terrible thing.”

Yes, I thought, he was a true friend.

With the tide running, Wei Chin, Little Ng, Janiva, and I wrapped hands around the capstan bars and waited for Flynn to sing out, a signal that the kedging anchor had taken hold. When the first lines of “The Wild Colonial Boy” rose from the darkness, we threw our strength forward and began to crank. By six o’clock, we had accomplished the amazing task of kedging the eight-hundred-ton vessel into a spot directly in line with the end of the Clay Street Wharf. Whoever laid claim to the mud beneath her keel would now have to contend with us.

Then I told the Chinese to leave.

Chin said, “You no want us to see blood?”

“What blood?”

“Blood everywhere, James Spencer.” He tapped his nose. “Get nothing without spill blood. This ship make you rich where you sink it. I be rich, too. Spill blood, too, if need. Spill blood to make good place for Chinese.”

Flynn, who had come back aboard, must now have felt the weight of his promise, for he said, “I love your sister, Sam Who. I can make a good place for her right now, if she’ll have me, if you’ll let me.”

“Stay away, Irish. If you my friend, stay away,” said Chin. Then he and Little Ng went over the side.

While Matt Dooling rowed the Chinese and my silent wife ashore, Flynn and I went below and lifted the hatches of the orlop deck, then dropped down into the cramped space beneath. Our torches did little to burn away the stench of rotting flesh but were a great weapon in warding off the swarm of rats that scurried everywhere, except for those still feasting on the bodies of the six men we had killed.

Flynn to the bow and I to the stern, we hunched and crab-walked through the bilge. With chisels and six-pound hammers borrowed from Dooling’s tool bag, we set to cutting the boards close by the keel.

As water seeped in, the rats started squealing and darting and slithering around my legs. I waved the torch to ward them off, and for an instant, saw the half-eaten face of Trub McLaws in the light. Goddamn him, I thought, for what he had done to my wife and for what he had made me do to him.

I hammered harder and faster until I had opened a six-by-six-inch hole. When I struck the final blow and knocked the square of plank free, a column of water fountained up.

An instant later, Flynn shouted, “Get out, Jamie. Get out now.”

I lifted myself through that hatch, but Flynn was not following. I stopped, waited, listened to the rush of water and the noise of the rats. Was he so despondent that he would stay and drown with them, mourning Mei-Ling? A moment after that thought crossed my mind, he emerged, holding a pouch of gold dust. He said it belonged to Trub. But now it belonged to him. The old Flynn was not gone altogether.

By full sunrise, the Proud Pilgrim had sunk into twenty feet of water, masts and upper works still visible at low tide, hull sitting on a bottom that would one day be worth a fortune.

May 15, 1850
Good News

We live now in the St. Francis Hotel. We exchanged the water rights we claimed with the Proud Pilgrim for a piece of land on Market Street, at the edge of town, where Dupont runs in. We will build a warehouse there and a business, too. It is a good deal.

And this evening Janiva gave me news that we had prayed for. Yes, we pray regularly, having joined the new Congregational Church. And what we prayed for we have been given: Her monthlies have arrived. We will never wonder who fathers our first child. For the first time in ten days, a glimmer of smile has appeared on her face. And so I write my last dispatch for the Boston Transcript:

A new James Spencer emerges from the cocoon of the callow young Sagamore, one of a hundred such who sailed through the Golden Gate just nine months ago.

The Sagamores have dispersed, like birds before the hurricane. Some still work the Miwok, where the mining is good and the water flows fast. Others wander, still searching. Some are happy. Others, heads hung, make for home. And sadly, some have now passed to another plain.

The only truth we can offer is that in California, opportunity abounds. But it is an unforgiving place. Hard work is essential, but good fortune trumps labor. Life can be beautiful or it can be brutal, but it is seldom fair.

As for me, I have seen the elephant. I have seen beauty and brutality on the shores of this bay, and out on the browning plains, and along the rivers that drain the beckoning hills. So I will now set about civilizing this place, creating a new order, where the fickle mistress of fortune will give way to a caring and reliable mother.

I thank God that in this purpose, I have a true helpmate, Janiva Toler, daughter of Joshua of the Toler Ropewalks. We are business partners, shipping goods from Boston for wholesale in the city where, we are told, more cash and gold are in circulation than anywhere else in America. We are also life partners, man and wife. I apologize to any for whom this news is a shock, but our American distances are great, so we must live the adventure of life as it unfolds before us. And be assured that our prospects are bright.

As for my old partner, Michael Flynn has heard stories of an actual lake of gold near the headwaters of the Yuba River. He says that there may lie the great source of the Mother Lode, the strike to make all others pale. A general migration has begun in that direction, and he has joined it. I will miss his friendship, as I miss the mentorship of Samuel Hodges and the companionship of so many I sailed with and so many I met in the gold country.

I wish them all Godspeed and good luck. And never fear word of another San Francisco fire, for each time it burns, we build it back up, bigger, better, stronger.