Fool's Gold (5 page)

As the carriage breasted the last slope on the drive up to the ranchhouse, he stopped for a moment to sit and savour the clear, warm air.

From these gentle slopes he could no longer see the dust haze that hung over Sacramento, just Tresco Valley’s green acres as far as the eye could see, blurring into the wood-fringed slopes of the Vaca mountains. A beautiful spot. The river, the valley and the ranch had been named for the green and flowering Tresco Abbey Gardens in the Scillies where he had spent a few happy months in his youth, working with his gardener uncle. And if he looked over to his left, across the Sacramento Valley, he could see the jagged peaks of the Sierra Nevada, where it had all begun.

What a fool he had been to waste his time running after Bella in San Francisco, when he could have been here, building his dream! But even Jem had not been able to wreck it; thanks to Kerhouan there would be crops to harvest this year. Soon the hands he had hired would be here in the Valley and the task of turning Tresco into a successful working ranch, profitable and above all self-supporting, would move on another stage. And as for Bella … he suddenly realised that not only was this the first time he’d thought of her in a week, but he’d also spent a fair part of the afternoon paying attention to another woman! There was hope for him yet, he thought wryly, as he clicked his tongue at the horses and moved on to Tresco.

Tresco was one of the big new ranches that were appearing throughout the Central Valley of California, between the Sierra Nevada on the east and the Pacific Coast Ranges in the West. Unlike the other ranches, however, Tresco land did not confine itself to the valley of the Sacramento. To be sure, he held thousands of acres of lush fields down in the fertile valley bottom, where summer temperatures that never sank below 100 ensured bumper crops, but the major part of Tresco land lay on both sides of the tributary once known as the Santa Caterina, from the saint’s day on which its Spanish explorers had first sailed up it. The Tresco river took its head waters from a crystal clear lake in the foothills of the Coast Range and bubbled down over the rough hillside until it reached the broad valley bottom. A few miles before its junction with the Sacramento, it deepened to become navigable.

To the get-rich-quick men of the gold boom time, it seemed like madness not to choose the acres that had been up for grabbing down along the Valley of the Sacramento, where grain ripened more rapidly and cattle fattened fast.

But Cornish had his reasons.

*

There was a sudden rush of late-comers to be served that evening, for Carson’s never shut shop until the saloons were well and truly full. It was well past nine before the shutters were finally put up and by that time the noise from the saloon was almost overwhelming. One of the last customers was an elderly clerk from the Sacramento office of the California Steam Navigation Company, whose steamboat fleets dominated the river traffic from San Francisco up to the furthest navigable reaches of the Sacramento Valley rivers. A strict teetotaller and a lay preacher, he was only too delighted to offer her his escort back through the rowdy streets to the lodging house.

Sacramento on a Saturday night was no place for a woman to be out alone. Sacramento had not quite the brawling reputation of its wilder neighbour San Francisco, nor was it as wild as some of the earlier mining camps where two and three day binges were commonplace. The story was still told of the traveller who had arrived at Rich Bar at three o’clock in the morning, found a bed in the hotel, but been kept awake all night by the carousing miners.

‘Your customers are up rather late tonight,’ the traveller had commented.

‘Lord bless you, no,’ the proprietor had replied. ‘The boys of Rich Bar generally keep going for forty-eight hours. It’s a little late in the morning for the night before last, but for last night, why, bless you, it’s only just the shank of the evening.’

Rich Bar had long since been worked out and abandoned, a ghost town with no inhabitants to carouse, but the memory of such nights lived on and miners came in every Saturday night from the surrounding camps to gamble, whore and drink themselves senseless into the Sabbath.

As they progressed down the waterfront, the old Embarcadero for Sutter’s Fort, to Widow Grey’s boarding house between the Folsom Road and the wharves, they passed the Tehama Theatre, formerly the Eagle, where Lola Montez had recently tried, and failed, to redeem her reputation as an actress.

As they rounded the corner, they came face to face with a group of miners fresh into town.

‘Oh, pretty lady,’ cried one with a flourishing bow. ‘Won’t you take pity on these lonely gentlemen? Can we not implore you to join us for dinner?’

‘We’ve come all the way in from Rough and Ready Camp just to find you!’ exclaimed another.

‘Thank you, no,’ she replied with a smile. ‘My little girl is waiting for me.’

The first man bowed again. ‘Let us not delay you!’ he cried, with the theatricality of a man well on in drink. ‘Hurry away to your little child; leave us with the memory of devoted motherhood.’

‘Le’sh shpeed the lady on her way with a shalute!’ said another, and they all lined up and insisted, much to Mr Jones’s embarrassment, on discharging their shotguns into the air in salute, causing not inconsiderable alarm in the neighbourhood.

At every saloon they passed the evening was already in full force, and at Madame Chariot’s, the painted women in their startling finery were hanging out of the upper windows, anticipating a busy evening. She was very glad to have the elderly clerk’s escort, particularly when they reached the end of the Embarcadero and narrowly avoided being knocked over by a bearded miner in a filthy red shirt being hurled unceremoniously out on to the sidewalk from one of the saloons as they passed.

*

Tamsin was in bed when she arrived, but, as the landlady informed her, not asleep.

‘Had one of her screaming fits, she did,’ said the Widow Grey with her usual air of gloomy satisfaction. ‘Fine all day, ate her supper with nary a peep, went to sleep, then all Hell let loose.’

Alicia’s heart sank as she made her apologies mechanically and hurried up the rickety stairs to the cramped and shabby room. Halfway up the stairs she began to shake. She made it to the landing where, leaning against the wall, she took out the phial of Kai’s mixture and poured it down her throat. She took a few deep breaths, opened the door and turned up the oil lamp which guttered in the corner, casting giant shadows over the uneven wooden walls. Tamsin was sitting bolt upright in bed, clutching the rag doll that Alicia had made her in better days, her eyes still wide with terror.

Alicia fought down the instinct to rush across the room and wrap the frightened child close in her arms. She dealt with the lamp, crossed to the bed and, keeping her voice deliberately normal and everyday, said: ‘Hello, my lovely. Did you stay awake to see me?’ She kissed the child warmly, an arm casually round her shoulders, but her heart was wrenched by the rigid self-control she could feel in the thin body.

‘Oh, Lisha! Beatrice thought that the nasty man had come back!’ She was close to tears again, but bit her lip to stop the show of what Chen Kai called baby behaviour, projecting it instead on to the doll. ‘Beatrice cried,’ she concluded sadly.

Close your mind. Shut it out. Force your voice to stay calm. ‘Tell Beatrice we’re in Sacramento now; we can all be happy again.’

As she said it, she felt a shiver run up her spine. Kai would have said she was tempting fate to speak so, but then Kai, despite his mission upbringing, had no faith. About her own she was not so sure.

As if she had followed her thoughts, Tamsin wriggled closer and put her head on Alicia’s shoulder.

‘Kai isn’t here any more,’ she said sadly, her head drooping until she nestled her cheek against Beatrice. ‘I do miss him.’

‘He isn’t far away, darling,’ she said bracingly. ‘He’s still in Sacramento, really. And he’s got a good job with people who treat him well. We must be glad for him.’

‘Am glad,’ said the child with a trembling lip. ‘But Beatrice wants him here.’

Alicia had no more comfort to offer, so she drew her back down the bed, stroking her hair back out of her eyes.

‘Lie down now, my sweet, and tell Beatrice to go to sleep. It’s past her bedtime.’ A thought struck her and she passed her hand beneath the thin quilt.

‘It’s all right,’ said the child with quiet dignity. ‘It’s dry. Beatrice doesn’t wet her bed any more. But she wishes you’d take that sticky sheet away now she doesn’t need it any more.’

In truth, Alicia had wrapped the mattress in her rubberised canvas cape more to stop anything inside Widow Grey’s mattress getting to them than to keep the mattress safe from Tamsin.

Gradually she felt the tension ebb out of the thin frame as Tamsin settled down with Beatrice beneath the quilt. Alicia sang her some of her favourite songs in a soft voice, trying to ignore the shouts and raucous laughter and slamming of doors coming from other parts of the establishment. She preferred to close her mind to what went on behind the other doors. At least three of the other female residents of the Widow’s lodging house would not have been out of place at Madame Chariot’s, and Aggie Grey’s own brood of assorted half-castes owed much to their proximity to the docks. She couldn’t have picked a worse place to try and forget the past, she thought with a shudder.

At last Tamsin grew calm, though she still did not fall asleep. Alicia rose and poured the ewer of water into the basin which stood on the chest and stripped off her dusty dress to wash herself in the tepid water. Night and morning, summer and winter, she never failed to wash herself and the child from head to foot, even if she had to break the ice to do it. To this ritual she ascribed the fact that, throughout the years in the filthy mining camps, she had never succumbed to the countless virulent illnesses or infestations that hundreds of others had fallen prey to.

Kai had shown her the herbs to scatter in the sheets to keep the fleas at bay, and which ones to distil to wash Tamsin with when she was in unavoidable contact with sick or verminous children; Alicia made a mental note to find time to go out into the surrounding countryside to pick some more. She listened to the whine of the mosquitoes pinging against the shutters; thanks to the aromatic liquid which stood in bowls on every surface, their lodging, despite its proximity to Sutter’s Slough, had none of the monstrous insects which made life so hideous elsewhere in Sacramento.

She picked up a brush and uncoiled her luxuriant hair. It was a pretty but undistinguished shade of light brown, except where the sun had picked out streaks more golden-red than fair. Thank God the doctor had not cut it off when she was in the fever. Twenty times on the right she brushed it, then twenty times on the left, before she laid aside the brush and braided it softly into a slim plait over each shoulder. She tied the ribbons at the neck of the long, worn nightdress and looked solemnly at her reflection in the cracked glass on the wall.

Soft brown eyes gazed back at her, shadowed still by the dark circles of those last dreadful days in San Francisco. Both she and Tamsin could do with some good fresh air. Perhaps tomorrow they would walk out from town, along the river-bank. She passed a tired hand across her forehead as if to erase the frown lines there.

As she snuffed the lamp out and groped her way to the bed — not a difficult task, since the room was barely larger than the bed — she heard Tamsin murmuring to Beatrice.

‘It’ll be all right, Beatrice, you’ll see,’ she whispered. ‘We’ll find the wagon again and make all the pictures for ev’rybody and you shall sleep in your own little bunk. An’ ev’ry night we’ll find somewhere nice and green like that pretty place where Chen Kai is, and we’ll pitch camp there. And Chen Kai’ll tell us stories while we girls all cook us the food and …’

A deep sigh, then the heavy breathing told Alicia she was asleep. As she lay in the bed and let the exhaustion of her body overtake her, tears ran down her cheeks. Let Tamsin have her dreams, for children needed hope, but for herself there could be no delusion. The days when they had roamed the countryside, staying in the mining camps or the towns as the feeling took them, making a more than comfortable living from the photographs that they took of the miners or the prosperous tradesmen and their families, were gone. They had lost the wagon for good and with it had gone the only freedom she had ever known.

Chapter Five

Sleep was a long time coming that night, despite her physical exhaustion, and, lying between sleep and consciousness, she found herself thinking back to the time when Chen Kai-Tsu had come into her life.

The autumn of 1852 had been an unusually hot one. On the main street of Sonora, Mr Stiles, the proprietor of the stationery store, the miner’s ‘intelligence’ centre, was passing buckets of water up to his apprentice to line up on the flat roof of the store; the fire risk was high after such a long hot summer. As she passed on by Bertin’s Exchange and Banking House, she heard someone hailing her.

She turned, shading her eyes, and saw a German miner who’d been out at Angel’s Camp at the same time as the Langdons, when Bennager Raspberry the storekeeper had thrown out a keg of brandied peaches that had spoiled on the Cape voyage and all the pigs in Angel’s Camp had stayed squealing drunk for four days and nights.

‘You Missus Langdon,
nicht
?’

‘I am,’ she replied cautiously.

‘Your man, he very sick up by Sierra City,’ said the German, spitting skilfully out into the road. ‘Pretty soon, you be vidow. Go stake your claims, before men he owes comes for his tools and his mule.’

‘You are a fool!’ Angelina told her roundly. ‘Madness to go up there. You think Lucky Langdon gonna leave you anythin’ worth risking your health for?’

‘That’s not why I’m going,’ she said quietly, packing her few belongings into a saddlebag.

‘What for then? Love?’

‘I married him for better or for worse, Angelina.’

‘And he kept his vows so well, huh?’

‘No. But —’

‘Alicia, think! Could be cholera, smallpox, spotted fever, anything.’

‘Angelina, I have to go.’

‘Then take the mule.’ The cook gave her a piercing glance out of her normally placid eyes. ‘You come back?’

‘I — I don’t know, Angelina, really I don’t. It depends on so many things …’

‘Like if he dies?’

‘I’ll make sure the mule gets back safely, whatever happens.’

‘God watch over you, child. You sure deserve some good fortune.’

Within the hour, she was on her way. She tried to persuade Doctor Walker to accompany her up to Sierra City, but he was too far gone in drink to be of any use to anyone. She bought a bag of medicines from his wife, took Angelina’s mule and set off up into the hills.

*

She looked about her with wonderment, half-convinced that she had taken the wrong road through the forest. She had expected to see a thriving township: all she saw before her was the crumbling remains of one. Since she had last been in Sierra city, the buildings that had risen so proudly and swiftly from the forest had been abandoned and the luxuriant growth of summer made it look as though they would soon return whence they had come.

The saloon was a burnt-out shell; the church at the head of Main Street stood as the inhabitants had left it, half-built, its roof timbers bared to the sky like the ribs of some primeval skeleton. Those sidewalks that had survived the fire lay under a heap of rotting leaves and Main Street itself was full of mud holes.

The stench of decaying waste hung over the little stream that had once gurgled down the mountainside; now it trickled sluggishly behind the empty buildings, around the heaps of mouldering rubbish that lay along its course.

She remembered the cocky little miner they had elected as the Mayor of Sierra City, the grandiose plans he had spoken of at the patriotic parades, the sanitation engineers and the volunteer fire company he had pledged in the
Sierra Gazette
— too late, by the look of the charred buildings up at the east end of Main Street — and the Opera House and the dance hall the local merchants had proposed. And in the end Sierra City had suffered the fate of so many other townships in the goldfields: the rich placer gold had been worked out and the miners had moved on. What the fire had not consumed, the forest would soon engulf. Before long, it would be as if Sierra City had never been.

Strange, though, that there was no sign of life. Usually at least one old miner stayed on, obstinately convinced in the face of all reason that right here where they had started was where the Mother Lode would be found. But in Sierra City there was no one. If the fire had not driven them away, then perhaps fear of the sickness had.

She turned her mule back down the Main Street, back to the dusty, rutted forest road again.

There had been a rumour, she remembered, of rich diggings up in Dry Gulch, way above the town, farther yet into the mountains. No doubt Robert would have gone there, following the rest of the sheep. She mopped her forehead, gritted her teeth and set the mule at the mountain track.

The sun had dipped below the rim of the distant mountains when at last she emerged from the gloom of the forest. In front of her was Dry Gulch, but in all the tangle of tents and lean-tos, there was no sign of human life. The fire in the centre of the gulch was cold and had been so for at least a day and no smoke rose from among the clumps of fir trees that hung precariously to the rocks above the gulch.

Something moved in the trees and she started violently, thinking fearfully of grizzly bears.

‘Missie lost her way?’ came a voice from behind her.

She whirled in the saddle to see a Chinaman, face hidden beneath the brim of his large straw hat, bowing obsequiously to her.

‘No one here, missie. Much sickness. Better go back.’

As he spoke, she saw a thin thread of smoke rising over to her right and before he could stop her, she dug in her heels and rode the mule over to the clearing. She dismounted in front of a large tent.

The Chinaman rushed to bar her way.

‘Missie not go in,’ he said urgently. ‘Is much sickness here. Cholera.’

Her heart turned over. In his weakened state, brought about by too little good wholesome food and far too much strong drink, Robert would stand but little chance of fighting the dread killer.

‘I must go in,’ she said with a calm which she did not feel. ‘My husband may be in there.’

He raised his hands, palms upwards in a gesture of resignation. ‘Then first you tie this round you neck, missie.’

‘This’ was a pungent resinous lump of asafoetida on a string.

‘Then you rub this round you face and hands.’ He produced a phial of equally pungent liquid and she did his bidding without a murmur.

Even the pungency could not overcome the stench of the tent into which the Chinaman showed her. A primitive oil lamp in the centre of the tent, no more than a rag dipped in a dish of perfumed oil, illumined the pallets around the canvas walls. One of the occupants was tossing and turning feverishly and the Chinaman hurried across to his side and bathed his face, then held him while he writhed, screaming, racked by terrible spasms.

‘Here, missie!’ He summoned her urgently to his side. ‘You give him drink. I hold him still.’

It took their combined efforts to get the water past his cracked lips, then he fell back on the hard boards in an exhausted sleep — or was it stupor?

‘What hope for him?’ she whispered to the Chinaman.

He shook his head slowly.

Slowly she looked around the tent until she found Robert. She took the few steps to his side and the Chinaman followed her.

One glance at Robert and she knew the worst. He lay in the same stupor as the first man, but already the flesh had wasted away from his face, and he did not look as though he would emerge again from that deep sleep. She had come too late.

She knelt by his pallet all that evening, bathing his face, trying to squeeze a few drops of water from a sponge against those black, cracked lips. Towards midnight, he stirred and opened his eyes. She leaned forward, brushing the lank hair from his eyes.

With a great effort he raised his head.

She felt, rather than saw, the Chinaman, Chen, come up behind her with a cup of some herbal mixture, and tensed. Robert might be pleased to see her, but it was just as likely that he would insult her. He had never hesitated to humiliate her in public: he frequently came into the cook house in Sonora roaring drunk and if she was not quick enough to set food before him and hand over what he deemed to be sufficient money, often struck her in front of the terrified women. Only Angelina was not frightened of him and his reputation: once when he had laid Alicia’s forehead open with his fists, the cook had come in upon the scene of mayhem and gone for him with the carving knife.

‘Well,’ he breathed in a hoarse whisper, ‘if it isn’t my saintly Alicia.’ Her heart plummeted. ‘Ministering angel, eh? Left the wifely concern a little late, haven’t you? But then, you never did quite fit into that role, did you?’

She flinched away. Even now he could still hurt her. She glanced back over her shoulder, but Chen had moved away and was busying himself on the far side of the tent — or pretending to do so. She did not much care which.

‘Drink some of this, Robert,’ she murmured, holding the cup to his lips.

With the last ounce of energy he would ever summon, he knocked it out of her hand to spill half on him, half on her.

‘Poison me now, would you?’ he snarled. ‘Bury me and marry one of the other curs who’re always sniffing round your heels? Be in for a shock, wouldn’t they? Don’t know what a frigid bitch you really are, do they?’ He paused for a painful, panting breath and a cunning look came over his face. ‘Anyway, Fisher staked for you, didn’t he? When I go — you’ll be his. He’ll have it all then. You and Valley Hall.’

She began to shake as she always had done under his tongue-lashings. Even when he fell back and lay panting for breath, grey-lipped, she could not speak.

Gentle hands drew her up from her knees.

‘Missie go out for a moment, breathe some fresh air,’ said Chen softly. ‘I take over here.’

Blindly she held the cup out to him and stumbled out of the tent to breathe in great lungfuls of pine-scented air in the chill night until she was calmer. She had to force herself to go back in: Robert or no Robert, she could not leave the Chinaman to look after them all alone.

But Robert would never hurt her again, with his tongue or his fists. He had sunk back into the stupor from which there was no awakening. A few hours later, just as dawn was beginning to lighten the shadows in the gulch, he died.

She put on the odorous muslin mask Chen handed her. Wordlessly they wrapped him in his bedroll and lifted the board on which he lay. There was no weight left to his body and they carried him, without much difficulty, down a path through the forest to where a digging had already been turned into a grave.

‘You go now, missie,’ he urged her. ‘Back to camp. I finish here. Not good sight.’

She shivered. ‘How many?’

‘Eight already. You go now please.’

What matter if the prayers were said here or at the tent? At least there she could ease the last hours of the other three wretches.

Two more died in the early hours of the next day; masks over their faces they carried them again to that hideous pit. The fourth fought long and hard to survive. To Alicia’s surprise it turned out to be a woman.

‘Wife of picture man,’ said the Chinaman enigimatically, and Alicia was too tired to demand an explanation.

‘Wife of picture man’ lasted another thirty-six hours, then she too died. For the first time Alicia saw some emotion cross her companion’s face. ‘All so unnecessary,’ he said, or so she thought, yet how should he speak such good English all of a sudden? ‘If only she had listened …’

‘She fought hard,’ said Alicia as they trudged wearily back from the communal grave. ‘I thought she might have pulled through.’

‘Sick as others. But better reason to live.’

‘What reason?’

‘Missie see. Later I show.’

Later. But first they had to burn the tent, the tents of the sick miners, all their possessions.

‘Now your clothes, missie, please.’

Again that obsequious bow which accorded so ill with those knowing eyes.

‘No trouble, missie. I smoke ’em only. Burn off any infection. You go behind they tree. I behind they. Put clothes in my tent and burn special herbs. You see.’

It was a little late to think about her situation, isolated up in the mountains, miles from anywhere — and anyone — alone with a total stranger. Instinctively she knew that he meant her no harm and did as he bade her.

It was soon done and the clothes no worse for the experience.

‘Now, missie, now I show.’

In a clearing not far from the camp a small wagon, a little like a shed on wheels, stood incongruously among the trees. A pair of mules cropped the grass nearby. Beside the wagon, a little spring bubbled out of the ground and plashed its way across the clearing to run down the hill until it found the Stanislaus itself, a mile or two further on.

Mystified, she followed the Chinaman up the steps. As he opened the door, a baby of about a year gazed up from the drawer in which it lay, reached out its arms and smiled at them.

‘Her baby?’

He nodded and then she cried: for the baby, for the mother who would never again hold it in her arms, for Robert and his wasted life and for the baby they had never had. She cried and cried until she felt a tentative hand on her arm.