Far From Home (42 page)

She caught hold of his sleeve. ‘You are wrong, Wilhelm. I value your opinion very highly. I will go to Philadelphia and travel by ship to New Orleans.’ She gave him a warm smile. ‘I shall be perfectly safe on a ship, so you need not worry.’

‘But I will,’ he answered.

Lake had his misgivings when she told him of her plans. ‘Are you in this woman’s debt? Is she so important to you that you will risk your life for her?’

She suddenly felt frightened, just as she had when she first set out on the voyage to America. ‘I owe my life to her father, who is dead. I would have been destined for an orphanage otherwise.’

He didn’t understand the term and so she explained. He simply nodded his head and gave a small grunting noise. ‘You must pay that debt,’ he agreed. ‘And then you are free for ever. You can do whatever you wish with your life.’

‘I only wish to be with you,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t want to go away. I’m happy with my life here, but when I come back I will be ready to follow you if you will let me.’

They were up on the plateau overlooking the valley, and he put his arms around her and drew her towards him. ‘My freedom is not the same as yours, Gianna. I am beyond civilization, which is where you belong. My freedom is on the plains and in the mountains. It is on the riverbanks and beside lakes. It is being able to make my shelter where and when I choose.’

He kissed her gently on the lips. ‘I can travel in the heat of the sun or in the depths of winter snow. If I am tired I rest, and if I am not I keep on travelling. You and I know it is not a life that I can share.’

‘Do you love me?’ she asked.

‘I will love you always.’ He looked down at her, then closing his eyes he touched her face, tracing her features with his fingers as if he wanted to imprint them into his own quintessence. ‘Look for me when you return and I will be here.’

When Edward and the other men looked on San Francisco for the first time, they were looking through weary, yet eager eyes. ‘We’ve been through hell,’ Edward had muttered, ‘and we’ve reached El Dorado.’

They were triumphant at having arrived as there had often been times on their long journey when they were on the verge of giving up, and would have done so but for the hazards of going back. They were also astounded by the size of the city. The previous year a conflagration, lashed by the wind blowing in across San Francisco Bay, had caught hold of the crude wooden shacks, canvas tents and waggons, and within minutes had reduced the town to smouldering timber.

Now a new city had arisen. Cheap hotels, bars, brothels, gambling dens, quarters where Chinese, Mexican, Negro, and countless nationalities had settled in their own domain to speak their own language and continue their customs. The city was a conglomerate mass of cultures. Educated men with pen and paper, parsons with bibles, seamen jumped from their ships, cooks with recipes, farmhands with hayseed in their hair, scoundrels and card sharps, all eagerly converged on this once small settlement of Yerba Buena to seek a quick fortune.

Following on behind the gold prospectors were merchants selling their goods at inflated prices. The whores set up brothels, theatre groups put up their stages and vigilante bands held trials and hangings, sometimes on the same day. Justice was swift, rough and conclusive.

‘Why did we come here?’ Jed had muttered as they pitched their tents on a hillside outside the town. ‘Just look at those ships, all filled with prospectors! We should have gone straight upriver, the strikes will be all worked out!’

Down in San Francisco Bay the ships crowded together on the wharf, having disgorged hundreds more men to swell the city to bursting point.

‘No, they won’t,’ Larkin asserted. ‘There’s gold all over Californy. We’ve just got to look for it, that’s all, but we need to be here in San Francisco to hear of the best sites.’

I might have made my fortune with a ship if I had stayed with Rodriguez, Edward had thought as he’d gazed down at the seething city. I suppose fate has brought me here. He hardly ever looked back to his life in England, and rarely thought of his wife May, though often of his mistress Ruby.

She had come into his mind many times as he had tramped over mountains and along rutted trails, forded rushing creeks, crossed dusty plains and rocky valleys, and he had longed for her to be by his side.

The gold rush had started in 1849 when thousands of men and some women left their homes in search of gold, but it had been the year before that James Marshall had discovered gold in the tailrace of John Sutter’s sawmill at Coloma on the American river. Once the secret was out, towns and cities emptied and the long trek to California began.

Edward and the other men had disregarded the trappers’ advice about leaving the waggon behind and trekking on foot after the snow had dispersed, and had travelled many more miles with it, following a pack train. Eventually an axle had cracked and the canvas tore in a storm, so they packed as much as they could onto the horse and on their backs, abandoned the waggon and set off to walk.

The trail was well used and they passed many burnt-out waggons, much discarded equipment and the bodies of horses and mules which had been left to rot. They had encouraged each other whenever any one of them was weary, but once they had arrived in San Francisco, dissent began to set in.

James and Matt called a meeting one day to say that they had decided to move off together. They were going up a tributary of the Sacramento river. ‘It makes sense,’ Matt pronounced. ‘If we split we can cover more ground. We can meet up here – say, in a couple of months – and compare findings, and,’ he added, ‘if any of us finds a good vein then we can join forces and set up as a team again.’

Jed, Larkin and young Tod had glanced at each other and Edward realized that they probably wanted to do the same, but he knew that he would hold them back. He was not as physically strong as they were, he had developed a cough and his chest often ached. He also realized that his skills at reading documents were probably not now needed as they had picked up plenty of information on what to do and how, from other experienced travellers.

‘Well, look here,’ he’d said. ‘I think I’ll hang about San Francisco for a while. Rest up a bit and have a look around. See what’s happening, you know.’

‘You’ve no money,’ Larkin reminded him. ‘And nuthin’ to sell.’

‘Ah! No. So I haven’t. But then none of us have!’

‘I’ll give you my cards.’ Jed fished in his bag and handed Edward the dog-eared pack. ‘You play a good hand. You might make some money.’

Edward looked down at the pack in his hand and felt strangely touched. It was the only thing Jed had managed to hang onto. He had pushed his precious wheelbarrow when the waggon had gone, then borne it on his back for miles, before finally discarding it on a mountain top when he couldn’t carry it any further. He had looked back as he’d walked away and wept.

‘I’d leave you my horse,’ Matt said. ‘But we’ll need him. Besides, he’s not going to last much longer and I want to be with him when the time comes.’ He gave an embarrassed grin. ‘I guess I’m just a sentimental ol’ farm boy!’

Edward was aware that he looked rough and dirty, so on his first foray alone into the city he had found the cheapest, lowest bar possible and joined a table of men at cards. They’d guffawed on hearing his English accent, but curiosity had inclined them to let him play. Whilst they’d questioned him on where he was from, he had taken stock of them, seen they were drunk and ignorant, and managed to win enough to pay for a trip to the barber.

With his hair cut and beard trimmed and his clothes brushed down, he ventured into another slightly less rough saloon, where he made sufficient money for a bath and something to eat. The other men had left him one of the canvas tents, which he carefully rolled up every morning and carried with him, for the last thing he wanted was for someone to steal it, leaving him without shelter. He pitched it every evening as near to a baker’s shop as possible, in the hope that the following morning he could steal a loaf of bread or pastry from the tray which the baker left cooling near his open door.

He lived by his wits, which had been considerably sharpened since escaping from the Mississippi river boat. He obtained work as a porter down on the wharf, which bought him food, a second-hand coat and boots and a blanket, for the nights were cold. Then he applied for work as a barman in a saloon. He called himself Eddie Newsom. Word got around about the Englishman, for he couldn’t disguise his accent, and he would be offered drinks just so that they could hear him say
Thank you so much.
So very kind
, phrases which became more and more cultured and refined as he perceived their effect. The miners would hold their sides as they bellowed with laughter, and mimic him, whilst he would smile and pocket the money and make one drink last all evening.

The saloon owner increased his wages when Edward told him he was thinking of moving on, for there was no doubt that he was a big draw. The saloon girls trusted him because he treated them with respect and not as whores, which was what they were. One of them, Dolly, invited him to her bed. ‘For you, honey, there’ll be no charge,’ she whispered, and when he asked why, she winked and said she was curious.

He accepted her offer. She was nicely rounded and attractive and it was a pleasure to make love to her. Afterwards she cried. ‘Honey,’ she said. ‘I’ve been with many men, but none like you. It’s the first time I’ve been treated like a lady.’ She raised her eyebrows and gave a little wriggle of her hips. ‘And I’d been told that Englishmen were cold!’

Larkin, Tod and Jed turned up from time to time and if Edward had any money he bought them supper and a bed for the night, for he was very conscious of his debt to them. They had panned river beds and sluiced the streams and came away with a small handful of gold dust. They used this to buy food and more tools, but they could only afford the simplest troughs and sluice boxes. Of James and Matt nothing was heard.

Edward took to wandering around the city, looking for some opportunity or the chance to gamble, for he didn’t attempt this in the saloon where he worked. There were numerous bar rooms which seemed to spring up overnight; stores where anything could be bought, from picks and spades to sacks of flour, providing the customers could pay cash. Boards were placed outside the doors proclaiming
Cash only. No credit. Don’t ask.

The city was awash with humanity, a congestion of shacks, shanties and hovels. Desperate men stood on street corners begging for bread or trying to sell a washed-out claim which, they assured anyone prepared to listen, hadn’t yet petered out. Indians roamed the streets, their faces vacant as they succumbed to the white man’s liquor. Chinese sat outside their dark cabins smoking pipes of opium, and Edward would stop for a moment and wish that he could buy an ounce to raise his spirits.

He was careful not to venture into the city at night, for that was when drunken fights broke out. He worked from six in the evening until four in the morning, when he fell into the bed above the saloon, which came as part of his wages. He then slept until eleven, when he began his prowl around the city.

He watched the gold prices as they fluctuated, and saw them rising higher. He pondered on whether, the next time Larkin and Jed came by, as they’d promised they would, he should travel out to the diggings with them.

A fight erupted one evening. A group of miners, already well inebriated, came into the saloon. They had struck it rich and were buying drinks for everyone. Edward and the owner, Benton, accepted theirs as usual and Edward put his money in his pocket. Then someone said something disparaging about Edward’s accent. A regular at the saloon took exception on his behalf and in the next minute tables were being overturned, guns were drawn and fists pulled back.

Edward and Benton swiftly cleared the counter of glasses and bottles and crouched behind it to avoid the flying glasses, chairs and knives. Edward huddled contemplating his beer-stained apron. How have I come to this? Hiding behind a counter of a seedy saloon, thousands of miles from civilization! Not a chance of making any real money or improving my situation.

When the fighting stopped he worked his way around the saloon, picking up chairs and broken glass and wiping down tables with a cloth, whilst Benton carried on serving at the counter. Some of the girls had gone upstairs with their customers, someone was playing a mouth organ and for a few moments there was calm. Edward bent down beneath a table to clear up some glass and picked up a leather hat that had been knocked off during the fight. He put it on his head whilst he swept up the slivers of glass into a shovel.

As he swept, he caught sight of a small stone or rock and within it a glint of yellow. He put his cloth over it, scooped it up and stuffed it into his apron pocket.

‘Hey! Hey, you English son of a bitch.’ A drunken miner, one of those who had previously been fighting, staggered back into the saloon. ‘You’re wearing my hat!’

Edward took it off his head and threw it to him. ‘You left it behind,’ he said.

‘
Left it behind
,’ the man mimicked. ‘You damn well stole it.’ He swayed towards Edward and poked him in the chest. ‘What you doin’ here anyway in this country? It ain’t yours no more. Damned English!’

Edward turned away but the man hauled him back. He was big and rough and Edward had no desire to get into an altercation with him, yet he couldn’t help saying, ‘Well, it hasn’t always been yours either.’

The man glared at him, his eyes bloodshot. ‘You a redskin lover?’

‘Not especially,’ Edward replied calmly. ‘But they were here before you, as were the Spaniards.’

The drunk hit out, catching Edward on the chin and making him stagger. Some of the men sitting at the tables got up, always ready to join in a fight. Edward found himself surrounded, and the faces were not friendly. He was not a fighter and looking for a way out saw Dolly beckoning him from a side door. Beside her was the Chinese girl who washed the dishes and cleaned the floors.

He ducked as a blow was hurled his way and it found its mark on someone else’s nose. He dropped to the floor as a mêlée erupted and crawled on his hands and knees towards the door. Not the most dignified way of making an exit, he considered, keeping his head down. But I have no wish for a cut lip or a broken nose.