Blood Gold (10 page)

Their air of rough comradeship was welcome to me, after the confusing worldliness of the Castleman household. The Barrymores might be potentially dangerous, but it was a familiar, gritty sort of menace. Something else plucked at my attention, too—a quality about their company that I could not name.

Only as I turned to carry my satchel down the companionway did I begin to guess what it was. I hurried back on deck to verify what I had seen. There among the burly, intimidating group was someone in a gray dress, a demure, full-sleeved garment, complete with a bonnet that totally shadowed her features.

Nicholas lifted one of his white eyebrows and said something to Blackbeard.

I shifted the plug of tobacco in my cheek and made my way to the shabby, adventurous-looking family.

So they dress thieves in women's clothing in California
, I was about to say—certain that I had stumbled on the truth.

But before I could make this challenging remark, rehearsing it over and over again in my mind, the womanly figure turned to meet me.

The words died in my mouth.

Nicholas introduced his daughter, Florence. “William here has told me he can repair anything from a carriage to a shotgun.”

“How very clever of you, William,” said Florence. I did like being called
William
, and not
Willie
—for the moment. Especially when I heard her give the name a saucy spin.

Her face was thin and pale, her eyes green. I had little doubt that I had seen her before—and that she was, in fact, female. She removed her bonnet, shaking down a lock of her long brown hair, perhaps to banish any doubt from my mind. She was striking in appearance, a slight, determined-looking, beautiful young woman.

“No doubt you are faster with your hands,” she said, “than you are on your feet.”

Nicholas and Blackbeard gave me measuring looks with twinkling eyes, not bothering to disguise their amusement.

Perhaps the sight of my speechless surprise awakened her to something like pity. She added, with a glance at her companions, “Although you could easily outrun any of the other men I know.”

This graceful person was, in truth, the thief I had chased through the twilight in Panama City. “I am glad,” I managed to say, “to see you in such good spirits.”

“Oh, none of my family are ever sick,” said Florence, implying that ceaseless good health was a fault. “The entire Barrymore clan can live on fried shoes and boa constrictors.”

“Although your dog, from what I understand, suffered some ailment.” I was trying to sound urbane, and to prove myself not a complete fool.

“Timothy killed him,” said Florence.

Blackbeard nodded, and his features took on a self-conscious glow.

“For barking,” added Florence.

“Timothy has the regrettable habit,” said Nicholas, “of being quick with his knife.”

CHAPTER 26

We had been out of San Francisco half an hour, sailing across the bay, heading toward the inland goldfields.

Captain Deerborn was introducing me to the water sloshing in the
Nyad
's hull. “You notice the bilge is dark and smelly,” he said.

“Very,” I agreed. Very dark, I meant, and likewise very smelly.

“That's a good sign,” he said cheerfully. “It means she's leaking slowly. But it won't last—as soon as she sails against the river, her planks will start to work.”

“I see,” I said, understanding in part what I was being told.

“They'll work and leak,” he continued. “I don't care at all—this is my last voyage on this little ship. I'll tie her up at Sacramento City, and the sturgeon fish can set up housekeeping in the cabin, for all I care.”

“You're already rich?” I had to ask.

“Rich?” He chuckled thoughtfully, but he was polite enough to take the question in all seriousness. “No, not entirely within the normal definition of the word. But I do have my prospects.”

“Have you staked a claim?” I asked, using a bit of gold-mining jargon I had picked up. Miners joined with companions to file papers, naming a given plot of land theirs to exploit as they wished.

“I was a lawyer's clerk,” he replied, “for a shipping company back in Baltimore, but what I really loved was digging and planting.”

“You're going to sell seed?”

“Mining essentials,” he said, but for the moment gave me no further information, as though he had taken out a patent on a new invention and kept it secret to himself. He did, however, produce a stoneware jug, unstopper it, and offer me a drink of fiery spirits. I accepted it with a show of good manners, eager not to offend my employer.

He leaned close and whispered, “Hardware.”

“That sounds very important,” I said, still largely mystified.

The captain clapped me on the back. “Shovels, Willie. And picks!”

The captain and I emerged into the fog-filtered daylight to see a stew of passengers, two men locked in combat in their midst. One of them fell as we approached—or slipped on the wooden deck—and people flung themselves out of his way as he scrambled to regain his footing and failed in the damp morning air.

A man with a copper-colored, spade-shaped beard stood with a whip handle—a short, stubby truncheon—in his gloved hand.

Timothy Barrymore crouched on the deck, men crowding away from him. Nicholas emerged from the crowd and helped his family member to his feet. Florence was nearby, peering from behind a stocky passenger, her eyes bright.

“This man stuck an elbow into my side,” said the man with the whip handle. “Pushing me like I was a sack of coffee beans.” He gestured, demonstrating a quick, painful jab in the ribs. “And so I hit him. And I'll hit him again.”

Timothy smiled within his black beard.

CHAPTER 27

This was the sort of raw Western behavior I had once anticipated but, as before, the potential violence was soon dissipated.

“Gentlemen,” cried Captain Deerborn in a robust, senatorial tone, staring from one to the other of the two combatants. “I beg your kind attention, if you please.”

The captain had the gift of natural authority, unfeigned and easy. Every voice fell silent.

“Gentlemen, if you please,” he continued, liquor having perhaps given him a regard for his own speech. “Justice in California is quick, and rarely needed. A killer faces the noose or the garrote, and the thief earns twenty lashes.” A garrote was a wire or cord used to throttle the victim from behind. Twenty lashes was scarcely a more merciful punishment—many criminals died from being whipped.

“We find in California,” added the captain, “that the best proof against bloodshed is good manners.”

“I'm sure my nephew is sorry for any harm,” said Nicholas in a firm, gentle voice. The Barrymores had gathered, a silent gang.

Timothy was bleeding from his scalp and gave no sign of being anything but silently amused by the captain's address.

I stepped forward, placing my body between Timothy and the aggrieved passenger.

“I know these people,” I said.

What possessed me to protest the harmlessness of this unsavory Barrymore I could not name—perhaps that taste of whiskey. But as I spoke, I looked around at the swarm of faces and caught Florence's eye. She gave me a smile.

And I felt the strangest warmth flood through me.

“And who are you?” asked the red-bearded passenger with heavy emphasis, looking me up and down.

“Willie here is one of the crew,” Captain Deerborn replied.

“Oh, well, I guess that makes all the difference,” said Redbeard sarcastically.

But perhaps it did. Besides, the passengers were already losing interest, spitting over the side, drawing on their tobacco pipes and cigars. A small group settled back to a game of dominoes; somewhere a deck of cards was being shuffled.

I worked my way over to where Florence was knotting her bonnet, making a ladylike show of making sure it was secure on her head.

“I'm not sure California is prepared,” I said, “for an invasion of Barrymores.”

“Whatever do you mean?”

“Just making a casual observation,” I said, worried that I might have offended her. The truth was that I wanted to talk with her very much, and see her smile at me again.

“I swear to you,” she said, “that we are by no means as coarse as you must think us.”

Ben would have had some witty rejoinder to this pretty speech, but I could do little more than touch my finger to my hat and pull a twist of tobacco from my pocket. I felt as I did so, that this was not an appropriate offering for a young woman in such a handsome—if slightly worn-looking—headdress.

But she accepted a chew—a good pinch of tobacco disappearing into the shadowy interior of her bonnet.

“My mother passed away last winter,” she said. “And we see little reason to stay out of trouble in her absence.”

I expressed my sincere condolences. But then I heard myself ask, shocked at my own bluntness, “Is that why you steal from drunken schoolmasters?”

She took a long moment before she spoke again. “Please don't think so poorly of me. I was putting a coin back into that poor man's pocket—it had fallen out, along with some papers and a broken watch fob.”

I thought about this. “Why did you run so hard, if you were innocent?” I asked, unable to disguise my skepticism. But I hated myself at the same time, wishing I could banter with her, like a gentleman of the world, and win yet another smile.

“Because some big brute with a knife strapped to his leg came galloping along—hollering out of his face.”

I wondered if I could have mistaken what I had seen in the Panama street.

Galloping
. The word stung. I had fancied myself quite a nimble runner. And surely I had not made much noise.

“I swear on my mother's grave,” she added, “that I am no thief. Although,” she added, “I am not sure most gold seekers are much better than robbers, hurrying like crazy men to dig nuggets out of the ground.”

I explained my own particular reasons for coming to California, speaking as plainly as delicacy would allow. I was not just another gold seeker, I told her. My journey would be complete, I told her, if I found Ezra and explained to him why he was required back home.

Florence leaned against the rail, and I joined her, both of us watching an egret as it hesitated, startled by the approach of the schooner.

“And is this Elizabeth back home a special friend of yours?” she inquired.

“A good friend,” I agreed. But then I found myself adding, “But not in the way you might mean.”

“Is it possible, then, that you did not leave a lady back in Philadelphia?”

“No, you could say, in all fairness, that I didn't.” I was afraid that the truth made me sound plain and unworldly.

Timothy made his way along the rail. I realized that I had never heard the voice of this darkly bearded member of the clan.

The blood was drying to a long bright wrinkle along his cheek. He gave me a conspiratory nod, with the same combination of gentleness and danger displayed by his father, his eyes twinkling but studying me, perhaps wondering if he would have to cut my throat to keep me from barking—or doing anything to harm Florence.

At that moment the white-feathered egret took to the air, circling over the auburn marshland. Timothy made a show of holding an imaginary fowling piece, following the water bird's flight.

Florence stood very close to me.

“William,” she said, “the women of Philadelphia must be as dumb as oysters.”

I couldn't keep myself from laughing. “Florence, what would make you say such a thing?”

“Because,” she said, “you seem to me like a person very well worth knowing.”

CHAPTER 28

Captain Deerborn gave me a quick verbal sketch of California geography, between sips of fiery corn liquor.

A long inland valley, scored by a few navigable rivers, was skirted by rugged foothills. Beyond the ascending hills, to the east, lofted the mighty Sierra Nevada. It was in the streams and culverts of the mountain foothills that the gold was being found. Word was that soon California would join the United States. Meanwhile, the American government did what it could to deliver mail and defend California waters from theoretical foreign intrusion—British, Russian, Spanish. Nevertheless, as anyone could see, no central government operated with any coherence in this lively land.

“There's a newly situated U.S. courthouse in Monterey,” said the captain, “but communications being mostly slow, mining camps deal with felons independently, as the need arises.”

“On the field of honor,” I suggested.

The captain shook his head emphatically. “If there's a death there's an inquest, Willie, and a sensible trial if one is needed. I saw a legal proceeding in Benecia a couple weeks back, and read about one down in Jamestown. We're gold seekers, not barbarians.”

I spent most of the time during our short voyage up the Sacramento River belowdecks. The bilge was no longer so black and foul-smelling—it was running clear through the pumps, a bad sign. I liked my fellow laborers, a cobbler from Albany, a glassblower from Toronto.

It was the second morning upriver.

I was on deck washing down a mouthful of corn bread with thick, sweet coffee, the landscape around the river low and flat. An autumnal mist obscured the horizon, and waterfowl veered up out of the sere marshland. As I looked on, a large golden-furred creature raised up out of the rushes, marsh water streaming from his fur.

The bear watched our passing vessel, his brute presence radiating silence.

At last the effort of standing on his hind legs wearied him, and he lowered his bulk back down again, into the thick autumn-brown vegetation.

The creature continued to graze, in a meditative, cowlike manner.

A few of the Barrymore clan, leaning over the side of the schooner, saw him, too. By their gestures I discerned that they were discussing what firearms they would use to bring down such a bruin.