The ghost town was a fair piece north of Grizzly Flats, more or less eighty miles as the crow flies. We got our bearings from a ferryman at Sweeney’s Crossing, which wasn’t anything better than a swing ferry, two posts on either bank, and a rope to guide it across. The ferryman was a disabused old codger who spent his father’s inheritance on coming west to get rich and ended up charging two dollars a head and an extra three per horse to get across the Cosumnes River. I reckoned if the geezer survived another decade, at those prices he might get rich still.
“Hell of a boom town for a minute or three,” he grumbled at us as he took his sweet time guiding us over the water. “Twenty, twenty-five years back. Thousands of folks ran full chisel to get jobs up there in those days. Even declared its independence from the Union before those gray-coated traitors down south ever done.”
He gave me the stink-eye with that bit of information, having heard my Arkansas accent, no doubt. No use telling him I was a coward who hid out in those years. That wouldn’t have been any better.
“Independence didn’t last but a few months, though,” he went on. “Fourth of July came around and there wasn’t nothing to celebrate. Folks didn’t like that, so they gave up on the Great Republic of Handsome Frank.”
The ferryman laughed at that until his laughter turned to consumptive coughing and he was hacking up half his lung meat into the river. So much for getting rich on gouging travelers, I thought.
Boon said, “But it’s a ghost town now?”
“Has been a mess of years,” the old man said, still hacking up phlegm. “Prospectors from Minnesota or some such place set it all up in the Forties and it was as good a placer outfit as any. Trouble was, the whole caboodle kept burning right down to the fucking ground. Sorry, Miss.”
Boon waved it off.
“They’d build it all back up, on account of there was still plenty of color in the place, but then it’d just burn down again. Last big one was fifty-eight, fifty-nine, something like that. Most everybody moved on after that. Reckon some stuck around, tried to get the last of the yellow out of the earth, but if there’s anybody left now, I’d figure them for crazier than shit-house rats. Sorry again, Miss.”
“Sounds like there was always a bit of crazy in that place,” I said.
The ferryman chuckled.
“That’s gold for you, son. Y’all go looking, you’ll end up with fevered brains, too. I seen it a hundred thousand times. Mark my words, some scientist back east’ll have it figured in another twenty years that gold poisons the blood and makes men lunatics. Poison’s so vile just thinking about it too much does the trick. Fucking gold!”
“We’re not interested in gold,” Boon said before he could apologize for his mouth again.
“Then you’re crazier than the ones who is,” he said with a grin.
Eventually, we got to the other side of the river. I was running my hand over my cheeks when we got there, wondering if most of the stubble there had sprouted during the journey. The old man kept chattering at us while we disembarked and stepped up into our saddles, warning us that it was a fool’s errand to bother heading for Handsome Frank and that there wasn’t any gold left in California, no matter what Boon said about our intentions. That ferryman was still talking even as we gigged our beasts into a canter away from him and his flapping jaw. What he had was a lonely way of life, I figured.
The rest of the day’s ride was done mostly in silence. Unsurprisingly, I talked the most, Boon only a bit here and there, and the girl—whose name we still did not know—not at all. We gave Placerville a wide berth and camped cold just north of her after dusk. Boon washed her back wound with some water she’d canteened from the Cosumnes and she rinsed out her bandage as best she could before squeezing it out and wrapping herself up again. There was still a good deal of wincing and grunting while she accomplished these tasks, and I knew it was far from a good idea to keep from seeing a sawbones rather than continue onto some dead mining town. But I never had called the shots and I wasn’t about to start doing so then or ever. That was just the way things were.
Since we had no campfire, the only victuals were river water and a handful of berries Boon said were okay for eating. The flour I stole from Sam was useless in a cold camp and probably weevily anyhow. I was sorry for the absence of coffee, too. Each of us ate a little and the berries were so tart my eyes watered. When they were all gone, Boon sat away, whittling a stob with my knife. I had half a mind to just gift the God damned thing to her, considering how often she’d taken to using it.
If nothing else, I did have the tobacco and papers I had also liberated from Sam’s saddlebag, so I set to rolling up a few smokes and hoping to heaven Boon didn’t rain hell down upon me for the tiny firelight it made. She didn’t. I smoked in silence and wondered, idly, whether Sam made it out of Grizzly Flats alive.
I never did find out.
The kid was perched on a mossy log not more than five feet from where I lay on my side on the hard ground, sucking the smoke deep into my lungs. I could only sort of make out her outline in the moonlight, but her eyes shined like there was a light behind them, which I kind of reckoned there was. She stared at me a good long while, from the time I started rolling the smoke to when I smoked it down to a stub that burned my fingers and crushed it out in the dirt. That was when I said, “You got a name, kid?”
The kid nodded. I had to laugh at that.
“Fair enough,” I said. “Guess I didn’t ask what it was. Mine’s Edward, though I ’spect you already foxed that out for your own self.”
She nodded again, her eyes never trailing away from me. I was starting to feel like I looked funny to her.
“Chinese?” I asked her.
She shrugged.
“Born in America, then.”
Her mouth screwed up to one side and she thought that one over. Then, another nod.
“’Splains how come your English is so fine, anyhow.”
And another shrug.
“Boon there, she’s Siamese. Or half, anyway. Born over there and everything. I guess that’s close to China, but I don’t rightly know.”
I took to scratching my beard while I tried to figure on where, exactly, Siam might be hiding on a map of the world when the kid by God giggled. Turned out I did look a little funny. And boy howdy, wasn’t that delightful.
I smiled at her smile, and I said, “Now, me? I come from Arkansas. Not much to tell about it, ’less you’re a right smart interested in hogs, because that was what we did until I skedaddled. Raised ’em, bred ’em, sold ’em, slaughtered ’em. I knew a hundred times more hogs than people by the time I was fourteen. But I also ate pork seven times a week when most everyone else around us was scrabbling for poke salad, even before the Yankees came. Hard times. Still is, most like. Don’t much plan on ever heading back, though you never know. Mostly I don’t ever think too far ahead. Drifter is what I am. I go where the wind blows, though these last few years that wind’s been the name of Boonsri Angchuan, if you get me.”
She smiled a little wider and nodded her head. I wasn’t doing anything but rambling, running my mouth to keep from getting too stove in by the silence, but she hung on to every word.
“Truth be told, I never done much but drink and make the acquaintance of fallen women. A little stealing here and there but only on account of I was hungry or thirsty or something like that. I never robbed trains or banks or took anything somebody really needed. My whole life wasn’t worth spit on a dull knife until I met her.” I motioned with my chin at Boon, whose back was still to us, where she still sliced away at that old stob. “I mean, I done plenty of that since, too, but now there’s more. I’m more. Because of her. Best friend I ever had. Only one, I reckon. Only real one.”
The child’s brightness dimmed a little then, her little brow furrowed into a nest of wrinkles at the bridge of her nose. Something I’d said confused her, or maybe concerned her. I shut my mouth for a minute to let her voice any complaint, but none came. Faced with her continued silence, I wondered whether it was the concept of friendship, or the particular friendship of which I had spoken. Kid like that, the way she’d come up so far, I couldn’t imagine she understood much if anything about the way real people were with one another. All she’d ever known was horror and filth. My gorge rose in me at the notion of it. Made me sick. Sick and angry. It was an awful old world, sometimes.
A lot of times.
I hadn’t really paid much attention to the rhythm of Boon’s whittling, a measured scratch and slice, until it stopped. I narrowed my eyes in the dark and cast a look at her as she tossed the stob off and rose to her feet with my knife in hand. She winced as she stretched her back and sauntered over, where she turned the knife hilt out toward me.
“Whyn’t you just keep it?” I said.
“Ain’t my knife.”
“All right, then.”
I took it back and sheathed it under my trouser leg, and Boon said, “Plenty more miles to cover tomorrow. Best get some rest.”
I nodded sharply. The kid mimicked me, nodding with equal seriousness at Boon.
Boon grinned, tousled the kid’s hair, then returned to her spot away from us, where she curled up on her side to sleep. And seeing that, I realized that sleep sure as shit sounded mighty fine right about then.
I’d been resting my head on my bedroll, but I took it up and pushed it over to the kid, who tested it out with her hands before laying her head down and, apparently, considering it workable for a pillow.
“Sweet dreams, kid,” I said.
“Meihui,” she whispered back at me.
“Huh,” I said. “That Chinese for good night?”
“No,” she said, pointing at her chest with her thumb. “It’s me. Meihui.”
“I’ll be damned,” I said. “Good night, Meihui.”
“Good night, Edward.”
“Meihui. I’ll be damned.”