Spider Dance (23 page)

Not all those California-bound were luckless gold-seekers. Senators and journalists also thronged west, some from the Gold Coast, others traveling there to make their mark on the thriving communities springing up everywhere.

Here is where for a time I donned mannish garb a la Amelia Bloomer. When the railroad stopped at Gabon, we and our goods were loaded into fragile native canoes and paddled up the murky Charges River to Gorgona, where we faced a twenty-mile trek by mule to Panama City on the Pacific side. I wanted no insects stinging me to death through delicate women’s dresses, which I had brought with me in many trunks.

In Gorgona it was every man for himself to find and engage a reliable guide and mules for the rough journey.

Weary travelers to the gold fields gained new resolve from the sight of long mule trains coming the other way, from east to west. Each animal was burdened with large saddlebags holding pure gold nuggets and dust. Only two armed men would accompany each train of fifteen or so mules.

When I marveled at the slim number of guardian riders for such rich mule trains, I was told that each box of gold weighed so much that only a foolhardy man would attempt to take one. And even then such a fool would be shot dead before he could stagger fifteen feet away. And certainly no mule, especially so laden, is fast enough to be herded away by a highwayman.

Many men there, though, would steal if they could, what they could.

I kept my whip constantly in hand. Soon my many wardrobe trunks lay atop the backs of my own train of many mules. This way I could see them at all times and no one could steal the contents. I also ensured that our noble beasts of burden didn’t carry more than they could, and berated with tongue and whip any greedy fool who attempted to abuse them within my sight.

And so it was that the humble mule carried fortunes on his back across the Isthmus of Panama . . . and Lola’s magnificent wardrobe. This array would soon dazzle all of San
Francisco, the storied city at the end and the beginning (depending on which way one was going) of the fabulous Gold Coast.

At last the mules’ narrow footpath opened onto the view of a bustling settlement. Panama City. Here civilization had set up her tents on the outskirts of another mighty ocean.

Here we would wait, and jostle, to command passage on a ship to San Francisco.

Here Lola Montez would begin to stamp her presence upon the minds and hearts and the history of the region. Not since I had come to Bavaria had I felt such a sense of destiny. O brave New World! You are mine!

The Cocoa Grove Hotel was the only reputable hostelry in town. I took rooms there and found myself among political appointees from the new Franklin Pierce administration just arrived from New York City, as well as the editor-owners of three prominent San Francisco newspapers. Oh, my. When I was not castigating the newspapers for spreading slander about my art and life, I was getting along quite well with their owners, such as Mr. Bennett of the
Herald
in New York.

While we waited our places on the next steamer to San Francisco, it was simple to set up a salon at the hotel. The hard-bitten newspaper men who expected to meet a hulking Amazon wielding a whip went away praising my “delicate frame, regular and handsome features, pair of brilliant and expressive eyes, and an exceedingly winning address.”

Hah! They soon saw the mettle of Lola.

While Mr. Middleton of the
Panama Star
and other such men sat talking with me by the hotel’s entrance, a man of their number rose to stroll the premises and wandered into the utter darkness beyond the gate. Then we heard two rapid revolver clicks, yet no discharge. The stroller cried that a man was trying to shoot him. Again came a few more revolver clicks, but apparently the endless tropical damp had disarmed the gun.

I rose from my chair, told the men to fetch a light, and dashed into the darkness. The other men were at my heels, along with the one who found a light. We glimpsed the back
of an escaping villain. One of my followers fired a pistol, but again the tropical humidity made a mockery of gunpowder. (There is a reason I consider a whip an ideal weapon. It never fails, unlike a pistol, and lets me keep my distance, unlike a knife.)

Mr. Milne stood shaking when we reached him. I led him back to the hotel veranda, asking all the way who might wish him ill. Since he could produce no enemies (a sign of a milksop personality, in my view) I concluded that the hotel keepers were patroling the fringes, forcing people to shelter in their establishments.

“How,” I asked the poor-spirited Milne, “could you stand there like a rooted target? When you heard the pistol clicks, you should have dashed into the darkness, taken the offender by the hair and shouted for help whilst you admonished him. So I would have done, and he would have run off sooner.”

Mr. Milne could not answer, other than to beg that I remain in Panama City, and perform at their theater.

I had performed enough at the scene of the foiled “shooting.”

My newspaper gentlemen sang my praises in rotation. Two days later I boarded the Pacific Mail Steamship Company’s sidewheeler, the
Northerner
, bound—where else?—north for San Francisco, a heroine in search of another territory to conquer. From the Atlantic might of New York City, I had come to the Pacific power of San Francisco a full continent away, teeming with enterprise and the raw gleam of gold.

I breathed in a fresh cigarillo on deck. I was smoking perhaps five hundred a day now, but only taking a few puffs on each one. Men followed and gathered around me to hand me the pungent lighted brands, a trademark of my “wild and willful, but never wicked” ways. And who was I to scorn any one of my charming courtiers?

The land is full of bloody crimes, and the city is full of violence
.
—EZEKIEL 7:23

F
ROM THE
C
ASE
N
OTES OF
S
HERLOCK
H
OLMES

While I smoked a considering pipe, I examined my position and its advantages: the intersection of Fifth Avenue and Fifty-second Street, directly across from the notorious Madame Restell’s house. That dark brownstone block of a house had been the scene of a horrifically dangerous denouement involving myself and Irene Adler Norton and her loyal friend, Miss Huxleigh, only days before. What melodrama Watson would make of such events neither I nor the panting public will ever know, to the peace of mind of both. I turned away from the recent past with a grim smile to regard my present, the huge white stone carcass that was the Willie K. Vanderbilt’s triumphal city mansion. Even the princeliest city mansion must sit parapet by paperboy on the city streets, and Fifth Avenue hosted as many peddlers and hucksters as any New York neighborhood.

Homeless urchins are, unfortunately for them, to be found in every major metropolis. Fortunately for me, New York was enough of a great metropolis to sprout a particularly large and enterprising population of these threadbare entrepreneurs. A good many of them hawk newspapers, so they are well informed of the day’s most lurid events and in
addition have become quick studies of the ways and means of passing humanity.

Arriving early on the corner of Fifth Avenue with my rented cart, I established my place of business and identity in one fell swoop. Jimmy Crackcorn, dealer in tools and tinware. A peddler had rented me cart and contents for a ten-dollar gold piece and immediately hied himself to the nearest saloon.

I spent the morning engaging the small merchants of the city street in palaver and dispensing American dimes to them. By noon the Vanderbilt house was under the eagle eyes of a company of utterly ignored rapscallions whose loyalty was ensured by promises of quarters and even a dollar to the lad who described the most interesting visitor to the Vanderbilt château, fore and aft and from port to starboard.

Of course I had no time to create a company as loyal and well instructed as the Baker Street Irregulars, but I used the same quasi-military cant that enchants boys everywhere, and coin of the realm, or the republic, speaks the same language everywhere.

I am not well-known in New York, yet my guise as an old peddler came easily. I exchanged my English accent for the brogue of Ireland and immediately was as worth overlooking as any of my barefooted boys.

There is a far greater tolerance in America of people of different classes mingling in the streets. I soon made the acquaintance of other confreres, and sisters, loitering about with the intention of perpetrating no good on the honest citizens bustling to and fro.

These alone recognized me as a new face, and came toddling round to eye me and warn me to beware of treading on their turf.

First came a stout, matronly lady of sixty and middling height, all in widow’s black from her now old-fashioned bonnet to her long black cape. Gray eyes, gray hair, almost-gray complexion, and an Irish lilt to give mine the test of truth.

“Good day, Sir. I see yer new to commerce on this corner.”

“Aye, mum, jest off the ship, with me feet fresh on American soil.”

“You’ve got a lot of nose for a son of the auld sod, m’boy.”

“Ah, there was likely a German in the peat bog, back when every man jack was invadin’ the isle, don’t you know?”

“German’s all right, long as it’s no Englishman.”

“Heaven forbid,” I said piously.

“And what game you got goin’, lad?”

I nodded at the grandiose Vanderbilt mansion, inspired, as I often am when creating a fictitious persona. “I’m not sayin’ there’s not a game or three I got playin’, but all I do here and now is not for gamin’ but for subjects closer to a man’s heart. There’s a maid in yon mansion, a very fair maid, and ’tis hard for a man to find a way to her inside one of these blasted castles.”

“Like a fairy tale.” The old lady cackled. “Well, good luck to you, lad. They call me Old Mother Hubbard, but me given name’s Margaret, with a few last names to go wi’ it.”

“Aye. I’m Liam, but whether ’tis Kelly or Casey depends on the day and time and the person.”

“And what is this fair lass like?”

“Hair as red as any burnin’ bush under her white cap, and a quick bright eye, and sings like the thrush in springtime.”

“I can see yer enamored, lad, best watch yer step. Those who work for the great houses get turned-up noses quick.”

Now that Mother Hubbard had stayed to chat, we were joined by two of her kindred: street pickpockets and satchel robbers, and banco artists and swindlers.

“Why, ’tis Lord Courtenay,” Mother Hubbard hailed one. The appellation didn’t surprise me. He stood over six feet, like myself, an exception on the metropolitan street, but he was bronzed of skin, slim, with dark hair and a light mustache. I am sorry to say that his chin, unlike mine, was weak, and that immediately conveyed an air that underlined his masquerade: an English Lord.

“M’lord,” said I, with a facile bow.

“One of the brethren,” Mother Hubbard said quickly.

“A pretty good bow, for a street fellow,” the false lord said in upper-crust tones.

“Who are ye this time?” Mother Hubbard inquired.