Gold Mountain (35 page)

“What are you finding so funny about this situation?” Jake’s voice came out weak and slurred, but any voice at all meant that he was alive with the strength to speak so for me the sound was more beautiful than angelic choirs.

“A woman’s vanity,” I said softly and then put a hand to his face. “Don’t move. I believe the bleeding’s stopped, and I don’t have many more clothes to take off to use for bandages.”

“Really? What a time for a man to be indisposed.” He settled himself more comfortably into my lap. “I can’t really remember what happened.”

“I believe you came to rescue me and things were going relatively well until we were surprised by one of the black dragons.” I proceeded to finish the story through Colin’s departure.

“I’m sorry, Dinah.”

“Sorry? For what exactly?” I thought Jake might be apologizing for the foiled rescue or for his being injured and incapacitated, but that’s not where his thoughts were at all.

“Sorry that your friend turned out to be what he is.”

“Yes, well, I suppose if I hadn’t been so sure that he was smitten by my womanly charms, and if I hadn’t been so busy basking in his spoken devotion, I might have noticed that something was lacking in his character.”

“Your fault again, my love? When life is back to normal, I’m going to do whatever it takes to prove to you that not every bad thing that happens is your fault or your responsibility. At least, you don’t sound like your heart is broken.” I sat back with my shoulders against the edge of the bed.

“Say it again, please.”

“Say what again?” I smiled at the bewilderment in his voice and despite the awkwardness of our postures and the blood encrusted rags at the side of his face, I leaned down to kiss Jake Pandora fully on the lips.

“What you just called me—
my love
. I’m afraid I didn’t pay attention to anything you said after that.” He did his best to return the kiss but finally had to relax back into my lap.

“Damn. My head in your lap and you sitting in your shift. I can’t help but feel I’m missing out on an opportunity that may never present itself again.” He was trying to make a joke, but his voice faded at the last words and his eyes closed. Asleep or unconscious, I couldn’t tell which.

“Don’t you believe it,” I told him, but I knew he couldn’t hear me. “I intend to enjoy opportunities with you that will make this look like a Sunday School outing. You live, and I’ll guarantee it.” I rested my hand against his poor wounded face and repeated in a whisper, “Just live.”

Chapter Twelve

For the second time in as many days, I watched the late afternoon twilight creep across the sky outside the little window. Only now I had the responsibility for a wounded Jake Pandora and no idea what to do about the situation or about him. Blood still seeped into the fresh cloth I’d ripped from my petticoat and wrapped around Jake’s arm. The pad of cloth on his face remained damp with blood, too, but I was relieved that what had been a steady flow of blood now had the appearance of a slow ooze.

When Jake awoke next, he pushed himself out of my lap and for all my argument would not be persuaded to stay where he was. I yanked the reeking, old mattress off the bed, propped it against the wall, and helped him shift his body so that he sat with his legs splayed out and his back resting against the mattress. I watched him worriedly for any sign that the exertion had caused the bleeding to resume and was relieved not to see a fresh trickle of blood.

With Jake out of my lap, I stood, stretched, took a quick brisk walk around the room’s perimeter, and stopped to peer out the window into what was rapidly becoming night. Traffic had increased and I was busy trying to figure out how to get someone’s attention through the window. More people did not necessarily mean more opportunities for rescue, not from the people that spent their nights on Morton Street. As our room’s interior darkened, I could no longer see Jake’s face, which was a mercy, perhaps, because seeing what would almost certainly be lasting damage to that perfect countenance made me feel like weeping.

“Dinah.”

I sat down on the wooden edge of the bed frame and reached down for his hand. “I’m here. How do you feel?”

“Like hell.” Pause. “Looks like you picked the wrong hero.”

I squeezed his hand. “I don’t think I ever thought of you as my hero.”

“Thanks very much.” His dry tone, more than the words, caused me to chuckle despite the serious situation.

“I mean I never needed a hero. I still don’t.”

“What do you need, then?”

I gave his question serious thought before answering. “Needing and wanting are two different things, Jake. I want a lot, probably too much, but what I need is someone I can count on for faithfulness and freedom and friendship.”

He repeated the three words and I thought from his increasingly slurred speech that he was in worse condition than he let on or that I realized. “I’ll give you that and more, Dinah, if you let me.”

“Are you proposing to me?”

“I think I am.”

“Well, you’re delirious so it doesn’t count.”

“I may be delirious but it counts, anyway.”

“When we’re out of here, you won’t remember you even asked.”

“I’ll forget a lot of things, darling girl, but I will never forget that. I thought maybe this—” he took my hand and laid it against the bandage on his face “—would clinch the deal.”

“You
are
delirious! What in the world are you talking about?” He tried to laugh but caught his breath in pain when he did so.

“You said you’d never—how did you put it that afternoon?—throw yourself at a man who was more beautiful than you were. Won’t this take care of that obstacle?”

“You are the most immodest and shameless man I have ever met.”

“But I think you love me anyway.”

The room was completely dark by then, and I couldn’t see his face any more than he could see mine. All we had was the firm warmth of our hands together.

“Yes,” I responded thoughtfully, “I think I do, but don’t let it go to your head.”

“Don’t worry, love. My head has had about all it can handle for the time being.” We sat in the darkness for a while longer before Jake spoke again in a weak and breathy voice that sounded nothing like him. Hearing him that feeble frightened me more than anything I had experienced over the last thirty hours. “I sent a message to your brother-in-law before I came here and to your Miss Cameron, too. I told them both where I was going and why. Someone will be here for you soon, Dinah.”

“For us, you mean,” I corrected, desperate to hear some of the old Jake’s arrogance in his voice. Desperate for him to live. “Someone will be here for us. I’m not going anywhere without you.”

As if on cue, the door opened to show Colin’s bulky figure outlined in the doorway. In one hand he carried a lamp that he set down on the floor next to Jake.

“He isn’t dead then.”

I still held Jake’s hand and felt it clench at Colin’s words, in fury more than anything. I thought, He wanted to take a piece out of him and I couldn’t blame him. So did I.

“No,” I replied evenly, “he isn’t, and he’s not going to die, either, at least not in the near future.”

“Dinah, I’ve come to take you home. That’s the order I got: make sure she gets home. Someone must have talked a blue streak because at one time they wanted you to disappear completely, dead and in the Bay and no one the wiser. But that someone, whoever he is, must move in high circles and he wouldn’t let that happen, so now I’m told to make sure you get home.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you, Colin. I don’t trust you any farther than I can throw you, and even if I did, I wouldn’t leave Jake.”

“I did everything for
us,
Dinah. It was all for us. Don’t you see? I didn’t have a choice. A woman like you would never be happy on a policeman’s wage, and it was easy money. Carry messages, deliver the girls to wherever I was told, collect the money, and hand it to the waiting courier.” The calm assumption of his words infuriated me.

“Don’t you dare lay that on my shoulders, Colin O’Connor! Don’t you dare! You were involved in the slave trade before you met me, and you know it. You’re the one who wanted that mansion on Nob Hill, not me. What did I ever say or do to make you believe that I valued wealth more than the well-being of children? You’re the greedy one, and I was just another thing you coveted.”

“That’s not—”

“Go away, Colin. I’m not leaving Jake.” At the finality of my tone, Colin lifted the lamp so it shone fully on my face.

“I can see that. He’s a lucky man. Even luckier if he lives. Well, I won’t force you to come with me. Someone’s bound to be along for you soon. Jesse Cook is looking for you, and I’ve never known him to fail when he’s as hell bent as I saw him today.” Colin moved toward the door, then stopped long enough to turn and explain, “I have to leave town, Dinah. My taking you home would have been the last you’d have seen of me, no matter what. The Chinaman I shot was a high level turtle man of the Black Dragons, and I’ll be dead by morning if I don’t run.”

As perverse as it must sound, for just a moment I felt almost sorry for the man. He’d forfeited everything he valued: the brotherhood of the police, the city he loved and claimed as his home, his ambitions of promotion and prominence. Everything. Even me, although I wasn’t sure that what Colin O’Connor felt for me had much connection to love. I didn’t see how it could. Sitting in that stinking place in my shift with Jake’s dried blood on my hands, I still had the sense to realize that a person didn’t abandon his beloved. I wasn’t leaving Jake.

“Go ahead and run, Colin. You’ll be running your whole life so you might as well get started.” He stepped into the hall without looking back but this time did not pull the door shut after him. I watched the light from the lantern Colin carried dance on the wall outside the door and then gradually fade until he had disappeared completely taking all the light with him, a man living in a personal darkness blacker than that hallway and all his own choice. I never saw or heard of him again.

“You sure know how to pick your men, Dinah.”

Jake’s faint words were meant lightly, but I didn’t find them anything but true. I slipped off the edge of the bed and crouched beside him long enough to kiss his forehead—too hot from fever, I thought, and felt another desperate pang of something close to hysteria—before settling next to him on the floor shoulder to shoulder.

“I do, darling. You bet I do,” I agreed and tried to give our situation objective consideration. I knew someone would come for us, but I couldn’t be sure they’d arrive soon enough for Jake’s well-being, which meant I should walk out the open door and find help. But a woman alone on Morton Street after dark couldn’t be sure she would make it safely out of the rough neighborhood, especially if that woman was running around in her underclothing without a cent to her name. I wasn’t even certain I could get safely out of the building where I was being held. Who knew what hobgoblins lurked at the end of the hall? At the same time, letting Jake Pandora die because I was frightened of the dark and the unknown and the street was unacceptable. I turned toward my companion, careful not to jostle him. He felt hotter than ever to the touch and had taken to mumbling random words and incomprehensible sentences, clear indicators that he needed medical care and needed it right away.

“I won’t be gone long, Jake, but I have to get help. I’ll be back. I promise. You won’t die while I’m gone, will you?” Foolish question, I thought, but couldn’t help repeating it. I had told Colin that I wouldn’t leave Jake and I didn’t want to, could hardly bear the idea of leaving him alone in this terrible place. I dreaded the idea of stepping out into a street renowned for its murders and assaults, its bawdy houses and taverns and criminals and whores. And yet somehow I did, I did, and in the end, it wasn’t half as hard as I expected.

I met no one in the hallway as I carefully walked in the same direction the light from Colin’s lamp had seemed to go, and at first I judged the shabby building to be empty. But I heard a commotion behind a door along the hall, a man and woman laughing very loudly, and realized I wasn’t alone. I contemplated knocking on the door and asking the pair inside for help, heard more noises that indicated they would not appreciate being interrupted and would almost certainly not give a rip about me. I walked past the closed door toward the light that illuminated the end of the hallway. When I reached the source of light, I saw that it was an old oil lamp on a table by what appeared to be a front entrance. The lamp brightened an open doorway on the other side of the front door, and from that far room I heard more laughter, men and women both.

I weighed my chances: either sneak out the front door onto Morton Street or step into that room of rowdy strangers and hope someone would have pity on me. To this day, I can’t say for sure which I would have chosen, a real-life dilemma strikingly reminiscent of Mr. Stockton’s “The Lady, or the Tiger.” Taking the time to process the risks of both alternatives and deciding which would give me the better chance of bringing quick aid to Jake took a moment and as I gathered my strength and said a quick prayer, the front door crashed open. One man who looked vaguely familiar stood directly in the doorway and behind him hovered several more men in uniform. The man and I exchanged stares, and I know I must have been a sight, half dressed, my hair in shambles, Jake’s dried blood on my face and chest and hands, as wild-eyed and filthy a woman as I believe this man had ever seen for all his work among criminals. Finally locating his face in my memory, I smiled.