Blood Gold (2 page)

It was already November in the gold-fevered year of 1849, and we were making slow progress, up to our boot tops in tropical muck, with a long line of fellow gold seekers in single file along the muddy trail. The colonel—responsible for our safety during the jungle leg of our trip—had warned us to stay on the path.

Ben put his hand to his ear and pointed, signaling that he heard something of interest in the jungle. He called out something, too, but I couldn't hear. He motioned me to follow, but I shook my head.

“If you get lost in there—” I called, my voice faint in the rain.
I'm not coming in after you
, I did not bother to add.

But I knew I would.

Outlandish creatures had been creeping out of the underbrush all afternoon. I had crushed a centipede by accident, squashing it with my boot, and Aaron Sweetland, hurrying into the underbrush with another bout of diarrhea, had stepped on an iguana the size of a dog. The iguana had been uninjured, by all reports, but Aaron's temper was not improved. Howler monkeys thronged the broad-leafed trees. Colonel Legrand had shot one that morning, and stretched him out beside the trail.

Now it was late in the day and I hadn't eaten anything but a mouthful of jerked beef for breakfast a thousand years ago.

I called after my friend, but there was no further sign of him. I was worried, although the other men on the trail gave no sign of concern.

“Ben, come back here,” I cried out as loudly as I could, my words drowned by the rain.

I reached for the Bowie knife in my belt, loosening it in its scabbard. It would be ready if I had to rush in after Ben and save his life.

I called again, but there was no answer.

Dr. Merrill came back down the line of pack mules, rain dancing off the brim of his hat. “Is he ill?” asked the doctor.

“No, he's just—”
He's simply being himself
, I would have added.

“I wouldn't leave the trail, unless there was an emergency,” said the youthful doctor, concern in his voice.

I was uneasy, wondering what was taking Ben so long. Maybe he had been taken ill with malaria, yellow jack, or some jungle fever I dared not name.

Too long.

Ben was taking too long.

I had no choice—I slipped into the undergrowth after him.

CHAPTER 2

Leaves spouted water down my neck, tree roots and generations of rotted plant life slippery under my boots. I had to hang on to twigs and glossy leaves to keep from stumbling, every glossy, broad green span of vegetation spouting water.

Ben struggled, his boot trapped between two sinuous roots.

I tried to wrestle his leg free, but his ankle was wedged hard, and the tree overhead gave a subtle, deep-throated groan. All day we had been stumbling over huge tropical behemoths, trees that had fallen across the trail. It took no great imagination to see that in a few heartbeats Ben could be crushed.

“I heard a parrot calling,” he said.

“Did you?” I said, in a tone of exasperation, realizing that even if I slit his boot he would still be trapped—his foot had plunged all the way into the subsoil.

“I just had to take a look,” he added apologetically.

A pair of wings burst upward, the bird shrilling wordlessly as he flew, flapping off through the rain. He was joined by a flock, an insane choir of birds, looking wet and brilliant, a ceaseless, cackling jubilation that brought a certain happiness to my heart.

The tree overhead gave another threatening groan.

“Willie,” said Ben, continuing his shaky explanation, “that bird is just like Reverend Josselyn's.”

I answer to William, Willie, or Will. I am named after my father's older brother, the same William Washington Dwinelle who was killed while rescuing passengers on the steamboat
Algonquin
, in the winter of 1830. My parents had both died of typhoid, and I was being raised on the stew-and-dumpling fare provided by my mother's younger sister, my aunt Jane. I missed my parents badly, but with every passing season they were becoming more like legendary people who had lived in a bygone era, while each day thrust me forward into new prospects.

I didn't like to think of home just then—it seemed so far away. Reverend Josselyn's bird could yell
Isaiah
, the reverend's Christian name, the only word he knew, and give off a strange, very human chuckle. I missed the bird, the way it would take a piece of toast out of a visitor's hand, and I wished I was there right now in the parlor with the clergyman and his daughter Elizabeth.

“Very much,” I agreed.

I had my knife in my hand, and sawed at the great green roots.

I liked Ben, but sometimes I wished he wasn't so impulsive, always hurrying off to look at some amazing sight. We made our way back to the trail, Ben walking with a slight limp, and I hated the sound that rushed after us through the undergrowth, the tree collapsing, bird and animal life fleeing into the recesses of the jungle scrub.

All the mules in the long line of pack animals had come to a stop, the men hunched over waiting for a signal to come down from ahead telling us what we were going to do. We had been afraid of bandits all that day—ever since a traveler heading east, one of the few individuals traveling that direction, had reported men armed with shotguns in the jungle, waiting for a mule train rich enough to be worth the trouble.

No one besides Ben made a move to walk off into the foliage—except to answer a call of nature. A special case was poor Aaron Sweetland, who had the flux, and a fever that made him weak. Every one of us had a fondness for Aaron, who had the only decent singing voice among us. Dr. Merrill had given him salts, and Richardson's Bitters, and even had him chewing charcoal by the spoonful, but no medicine worked. Even now Aaron was struggling off into the jungle yet again, unbuttoning his trousers.

The natives of the Isthmus of Panama carried machetes, long tools much the same as the cutlass, and rumor had rippled up and down the line of travelers that two Virginians had been found dead with their throats cut, half eaten by ants beside the Chagres River. It was true that the Spanish-speaking people I had met in Chagres town, and all along the trail, had been gracious and businesslike, but stories were told of violent jungle dwellers who hated fortune-seeking Yankees.

Ben had read a book about the jungles back in Pennsylvania before we left many weeks before. He had reported that the isthmus was only three days' travel across, and much of it by river, but the land route that completed the journey west was “through a territory marked by the jaguar, a flesh-eating cat, and the anaconda, one of nature's largest and most powerful serpents.”

Now Colonel Legrand came back down the line, giving out plugs of chewing tobacco to the men who wanted it. He tugged a leather strap now and then to keep luggage secure on the backs of the mules.

Legrand was our trail guide, his services provided as a part of the price of our ticket with the steamship company, and he was the only man among us with any fighting experience, having been a part of Zachary Taylor's army invading Mexico in 1846. It was said that he had killed an officer of the Mexican army with a bayonet thrust, and he looked like a man who could have done it—sweating, sunburned, his cheek fat with a plug of molasses-cured tobacco.

“Are you men all right?” asked the colonel, looking me in the eye.

I nodded, my hat heavy with water. The rain had slowed down. I took a cut of the black, sweet-flavored leaf the colonel offered me with thanks, and when I had it tucked securely in my cheek, I asked, “We're going to bed down here?”

I tried to sound manly and indifferent to where I spread my blanket, but in my eighteen years on earth I had not imagined such a hot, wet, inhuman place.

“I don't think anyone mentioned beds,” said Colonel Legrand, with a laugh. He wasn't a real colonel, I suspect—people just called him that out of respect. “Neither one of you,” he added, “would be reckless enough to wander off into the underbrush, would you?”

“No, sir,” answered Ben. He favored his right leg—the one that had been trapped—keeping his weight off it.

The trail guide called out
hey-up
, and the mules stirred, plodding forward. Their hooves were unshod for service on this jungle track; they could pick their way through roots and mud much better than humans.

And for an instant the romance of all this swept me, and I was happy. Ben was of the opinion that I am too changeable, but surely there are worse traits. With the remnants of rain echoing like applause off the broad leaves, and the smell of spice in the air, I spat tobacco juice and was about to feel pretty sure of myself again. I wondered if maybe Ben and I could get accustomed to exploring unknown regions of the earth, and other such adventures, after we had found the scoundrel we were hunting in California.

We passed a snake hanging from the crook of a tree, headless but still writhing.

When we got to the wide place in the trail, night had nearly fallen. The jungle heat teased us with hungry mosquitoes and a ceaseless chirping Ben had said were tree frogs.

“We need volunteers for first watch,” said Colonel Legrand. He held up a musket with a bayonet attached to it to indicate the responsibilities involved.

I wasn't feeling particularly brave, but buoyed by my cheerful mood. Besides, I just didn't want to lie down on the ground right then, not where spiders and serpents made their homes.

“I don't mind if I stand the first watch,” I volunteered.

I knew I might as well get accustomed to putting up with hardship. After all, I was not going to California to seek pay dirt, like all the rest of these hopeful, ambitious travelers. Ben and I had a special purpose for wandering so far from home.

We were looking for a particular individual in the gold country, and we fully intended to find him.

CHAPTER 3

Colonel Legrand sized me up with a smile, perhaps thinking I was too young and green to be trusted with a musket.

I am tall and broad-shouldered, and unafraid of any kind of hard work. Mr. Donald Ansted, my employer back home, and author of the pamphlet
Some Remarks on the Prospects of Repeating Firearms
, had been an expert gunsmith, when the carriage-repairing business was slow. He had always praised my willingness to put in extra hours repairing weapons.

I knew enough to say, “The gunpowder's so wet it wouldn't spark anyway, Colonel.”

I had test-fired a few guns with Mr. Ansted, and I knew that at twenty paces you had a better chance of hitting a man with a frying pan than a musket ball.

Colonel Legrand gave a laugh and put the musket into my hands. The weapon was heavy, and gave off the scent of gun oil.

“It'll shoot,” said the colonel simply. He meant: be careful.

Ben hoped someday to study Shakespeare at a university, but I had more lowly ambitions. I had dreams of redesigning carriages, or repairing the fowling pieces of clergymen and scholars. Reverend Spinks was the master of the Methodist School of Classics and the Arts I had attended; Ben had studied at Professor and Mrs. Holliday's Boys' School. Ben and I had been friends and neighbors since childhood, and we both enjoyed the same stories of King Arthur and Richard Lionheart. I was not destined to be a gentleman, however. A skilled craft, working with my hands, would be enough for me.

The other guard the colonel posted that night was Isom Gill, a man who had been seasick every day on the side-wheeler out of New York. A cabinetmaker by trade, he was, like me, neither lofty gentleman nor unlettered day laborer. He was one of the few among us to have a really decent gun, a double-barreled English firearm with one barrel rifled, the other smoothbore.

Ben said he would stand watch with me, but I told him to get some rest. Mr. Gill had a determined set to his mouth, eager to prove himself, and I believed we would be in good hands. A few of us had packed guns or pistols when we left our families and homes, but all day we had been passing cast-off fowling pieces and flintlock pistols, already rusting in the vegetation, along with piles of heavy wool clothing. Dr. Merrill kept a Navy Colt revolver in a mahogany case, the sole example of the newly invented repeating pistol I had ever seen.

The doctor bent down over Aaron Sweetland, asked a question, and straightened, heading back to his trunk for a blue bottle of laudanum, the one sure medicine for cramps. He administered the potion to his shivering, sweating patient. We had buried a blacksmith at the trail-head by the river, and a jolly gray-haired cooper named O. P. Schuster, and Dr. Merrill had confided to me that he suspected there would be more outbreaks of fever.

The doctor met my eye as he stepped back to his medical bag, pressing the stopper back into the bottle. “Mr. Dwinelle, every bandit in Central America would faint dead away at the sight of you.”

I laughed. It was true that I was tall enough, and sturdily built enough to fancy myself a man among men. But inside I knew I was a rank novice at adventure, and just for now I was happy to keep dramatic thrills in the distant future.

The musket the colonel thrust into my hands was an old Brown Bess—type weapon, the sort the British army had used for generations, the barrel well oiled but the lock tarnished from the damp. I imagine I made a tough-looking figure, in my slouch hat and heavy trousers, a foot-long knife in my belt. In fact, any one of my traveling companions would have frightened off the toughest alley fighter in New York or Philadelphia. A more dirty-looking set of men I had never seen.

Many other traveling companies were camped in the same clearing, and it was some time before tents had been arranged in spots that were not knee-deep in water. After Ben brought me a plate of fried salt beef and a cup of thick, sweet coffee, I felt about ready to fight off an army of robbers.

Later I would marvel at my confidence that all would be well.

The night was pure darkness, and the smoke from our fire lifted straight up. I tried to find a place where the smoke drifted down again, weighed down by the humidity. When I did, I stood there surrounded by wood smoke, even though my eyes smarted—the smoke discouraged the needling attacks of the mosquitoes.