Authors: Win Blevins
So what was pushing my feet toward the town instead of the camp? I could have made a list of reasons, I suppose, but I wouldn’t have believed it. Right then, I don’t think it was anything fancier than,
My friends are in town. I’m traveling with these, not those. I know about this, not that. I speak English, I don’t speak Paiute
.
I was feeling pretty subdued as I walked along. Didn’t recover any of my spirits until Daniel and I started making music for the dinner crowd at the Heritage. Come quitting time, I stayed and played all through the night. Slow ballads, spirituals, sad, soulful songs. I fingered soft chords on the piano and whistled above them, high and slow and sweet. White-man music, that I did understand.
Richard Burton was shaving carefully. The scar on his cheek was always a nuisance to cut around, and he believed that he did it better than most barbers. A well-groomed appearance was important to him. After
shaving and dressing, he would take his morning constitutional, have luncheon, and get down to writing.
The afternoons worked well for writing. Nights he spent enjoying himself—forbidden pleasures, in whatever moderation he could muster. Well before dawn he was in bed. During the forenoons he slept, then a substantial luncheon—one Virginia restaurant was not half-bad. Then write all afternoon. For some days of the journey he had only notes, and he filled these out into full and proper entries in his journal. He felt fitful when doing it. Would he ever be able to reveal to the reading public that he’d traveled in America a second time? And let the Unionists know Her Majesty’s government had opposed them? Doubtful, very doubtful.
Sun Moon’s fever was only occasional now—a spell of fever, say, every second or third day. Customarily, she went out to dinner with him. Sometimes she felt up to going out to luncheon as well, or for a short evening walk. In ten days she might be ready to travel. In that time he might have indulged himself sufficiently in Virginia’s pleasures—or might not. Praise be, there was always San Francisco. What hurry should he feel to get back to the exile of Fernando Po?
When he had completed his toilette, he found Sun Moon waiting for him in the sitting room. “Please luncheon today here? I need talk.”
Intrigued, Burton ordered food brought up. They exchanged small talk, which he normally hated, but took pleasure in with Sun Moon, as a way of showing her the social graces of the British and observing the social graces of Tibetans. He was gratified to see that she held back her particular object of conversation until they had set the dishes aside and poured the last of the coffee.
“I tell secret, you keep?”
Now Burton was intrigued. “Naturally.”
“Promise.”
“Yes.”
My profession is secrets
.
“Thank you pay passage ship to Calcutta.”
Burton was delightedly surprised. Sun Moon never discussed money. As a nun she had little occasion to use it. Now probably she found her financial dependence on him embarrassing. They both knew better than to add to her embarrassment with a vulgar discussion of dollars.
She looked at him over her cup and said baldly, “I need more money.”
He waited. Life was infinitely amusing if you waited and observed.
She touched her belly. “I need help for my child.”
Burton tilted his coffee right into his lap.
Sun Moon managed not to smile at him. She waited patiently while he changed his trousers. When he returned, Sir Richard simply picked up where they had left off. “Your child?”
She moved her fingers gently against her belly and took strength from it. She had thought it out, but she must go slowly and thoughtfully.
What to tell, what to keep for myself. How to ask with dignity
.
With the power from her belly she quelled her desperation. That life in her belly, it kept saving her life. Now her position for meditation was left hand on the heart in her belly, right on the heart in her chest. Her mind sank into the point below and behind the navel that was the center of herself and the center of her child.
I am making a new it, it is making a new me
.
“I once think this plan. Leave San Francisco few weeks, sail Calcutta, arrive winter, stay convent. In spring travel through mountain passes with traders of my people, go Lhasa. Stay at holy city, meet other teachers at
ta ts’ang
”—she fumbled for the English word—“college.” In summer travel east with traders to Kham, to Zorgai, to my convent, arrive autumn. One year.”
She lifted a finger. “Was plan. No more. Now not safe.”
She took thought. She must make him understand. “Child,” she said, her eyes moving to the hand on her belly. “Daughter.”
Can you understand I know it is a daughter? Can you understand she is my life?
“In spring I am big in belly. Show not chaste, not like nun should be. No respect. Travel dangerous for me, dangerous for child.” She let herself feel the life within her for a moment, enveloped, protected, nurtured, loved.
She opened her eyes at Burton. She looked her appeal into his heart. “Must have money. Not dress as nun. Dress as wealthy woman. Hire guides, servants. Much money. Must do. Else child—daughter—not safe.”
She breathed in and out slowly, taking strength from her twin centers. “You help?”
Burton felt the effort these words had cost her—even he felt exhausted. “Asie’s child?”
She looked at him evenly, with great serenity, and did not reply.
But he knew. And he saw. He saw that the life within her was changing her spirit. It gave her the desire to live. He felt a pang of love.
He spoke gently. “I will be delighted to help. How much do you need?”
She named a sum in Tibetan silver
tamka
. Burton translated that in his head into rupees, then into pounds, last into dollars.
“Five hundred dollars should do it,” he said. Actually, he’d doubled what she asked for.
She nodded. The sum must seem immense to her, who had never had access to money. For a Tibetan surely it was a vast sum.
“Sun Moon, I’m delighted to help you. Don’t you think, though, that you should tell Asie? It strikes me that he has a right to know.”
“You promise keep secret,” she said sternly.
He nodded. “And so I shall. Don’t you think, though …” He stopped his tongue.
Obviously you don’t
.
“What kind of life will your daughter have?”
“She will be a nun of the convent at Zorgai, her life dedicated to
moksha.
”
Burton pictured the convent in his mind, the huge prayer wheels turning, the prayer flags ever fluttering, the deep, nasal sound of the great brass horns, the chant of the nuns in the Lhakhang, the glow of the butter lamps. The ruined mother, the impeccable child.
He looked at the autumn sunlight flooding in the window. He listened to the silence dancing around them, full of meaning and mystery.
“Money,” she said hesitantly, “you have much?”
Burton nodded. Five hundred dollars would in fact pinch considerably, but he considered it a debt of honor.
“Sun Moon, you have both my affection and esteem. I will help you in every way possible.”
She smiled, and in that moment he knew perfectly the meaning of the word
beatific
.
Asie, though. Asie had struggled to save not only Sun Moon’s life but her spirit, her love of life. Now he was the instrument of her deliverance. Was he never to know?
I swore
.
Sometimes Burton despised fate.
Daniel took the next two mornings off from teaching. I clunked along practicing Chopin and Gottschalk on my own. When he got back, he put a proposition to me.
“I have a job for you.”
I looked at him peculiar. “What sort of job?” I mumbled.
The Heritage going to pay me to side you every noon and night? That’s a full-time job already, without wage
.
“I’ll pay fifty dollars a week.”
“Fifty dollars a week? Robbing the ore shipments?” It was double what a miner got paid.
“At Western Union Telegraph Company,” says he.
“At
the Telegraph Company?
” I squawked.
From Chopin to the Telegraph Company—how could you make those two play in the same key?
“So. Will you worm your way into the Virginia City Western Union Telegraph Company? Starting as soon as possible?”
Fifty a week? It was a stake. It was what a young half-breed wanderer needed to get a decent start in life. It had to be underhanded. “Until Sun Moon is healthy enough to go on,” says I.
She was still well one day, down the next.
“Then we’ll have tea with Tommy Kirk,” says Daniel. “He’ll explain.”
It wasn’t what Sir Richard described to me as a tea. Maybe it was more of a half-breed tea. Tommy had a cook that provided his eats the way he liked them, which was half from his father the John Bull diplomat and half from his mother the Shanghai courtesan. We had tea with scones and dim sum. Heckahoy, when I told Sir Richard, he thought it was funny as a dog with five legs. But to me it was new and fun.
When we’d done a few sips and munches and the socially proper time had passed, Daniel pitched in. “I have thought it out with care,” he said. He commanded my attention with that hawk look of his. “What is most valuable in Washo is information, good information. If a man knows what wildcat mine is going to make a strike, or when the Gould and Curry, Mexican, Ophir, or Sergeant is going to open into a rich new vein, he can make money. Real money.” The Ophir, Mexican, Sergeant, and Gould and Curry were the main outfits in Virginia at that time. “He would buy stock in those enterprises. Or sell it. When news of the strike became public, the stock would rise on the San Francisco Stock Exchange, and a man could take his profit.”
Tommy gave his generous smile. “Nothing is so common as information about what strikes are coming along. And nothing so unreliable.”
Daniel nodded. “I investigated paying for good information. Unfortunately, whatever the wildcatters tell you is blue sky. The managers know the truth but keep their mouths shut. The miners in the new shafts
talk sometimes, for money. But you can’t tell who’s telling you righteous and who’s not.
“After giving the problem considerable thought, and after discovering personally how difficult it is to make money trading stocks in the normal way, I have hit upon an approach.
“The principal owners of the four big mines live in San Francisco. The mine managers communicate with them constantly. By telegraph. They wire news of discoveries, news of busts. The owners wire back decisions to make announcements, to seek new capital, to buy new equipment, to expand or abandon shafts, and all other business ways.”
The transcontinental telegraph was new those days, and businesses played with it like a new toy.
Daniel took a big breath and let it out. “Rumors are flying just now. The Mexican is supposed to be on the verge of a huge strike. The Gould and Curry is supposed to be discovering that its new shaft is a bust. They say it both ways about the Sergeant. Stocks have been rising and sinking for over a week on these reports. Bonanza is going long, borrasca is selling short. Guess right both ways and your fortune in stocks will be bigger than the one in the ground.” Of course, no one knew yet the one in this lode was the biggest in the world.
He put his elbows on his knees and leaned forward toward me. “But why guess? Why not intercept the reports to and from the mine owners? And invest before the news becomes public.”
“How?” I asks.
“That’s where you come in.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
It turned out easier than it sounded. I rambled round to the Company office and watched the operation. The fellow at the telegraph key wrote every message in dark pencil in block capital letters, then copied it out again and stuck it on a spike. The outgoing messages got stuck on another spike—a copy of every single message going out, a copy of every single message coming in, my snooping mind recorded.
Then he gave it to a kid, and a word on where to take it. In those days they didn’t have messenger boys hooting around town wearing cute little cap and on bicycles (which hadn’t even been thought of yet). No, those days boys hung around the telegraph office and carried the messages for tips. Right off I saw the sticky part—if I just hung out like those boys, I’d get just a portion of the messages that came in, and maybe not the ones we wanted.
So I lounged around the office and jawed with the operator, fellow name of Alvord Smith, about thirty, hair thick and stiff as a broom and totally gray. Main thing was the constant clatter of that fancy-looking key. Alvord could savvy its meaning without more than half-listening, but it didn’t make any sense to me at all. The very idea of sense from that racket reminded me of the nonsense lines from that song about the Celestials we’d learned on the trail:
O ching hi ku tong me ching ching
O ching hi ku tong chi do,
Having got the hang of what was up and what was down in the operation of the office, though, pretty soon I had my idea. Alvord needed a backup operator, another hand to run that key, and wouldn’t I be his boy!
Alvord, Sir, I think this telegraph business is just the jimmy-joomiest work I ever saw. What is Morse code anyhow? (Says Alvord, I happen to have a codebook right here.)
I don’t hardly see how anybody can hear sense in all that commotion the key makes. (Aw, shucks.)
I don’t hardly see how anybody can move fingers as fast as those code clicks and clacks go. (Aw shucks, aw shucks.)
Maybe, maybe, Alvord, Sir, could I just try tapping something? (Why, yes, try SOS. I happen to have a spare key in this cabinet.)
Clickety-clackety crash! Oh, Sir, it must take a devil of a fellow to do that.
That same afternoon I got apprenticed to learn the operating trade. Alvord didn’t even have to pay me to get the training, and in return I was so grateful I’d deliver any messages he wanted, anywhere he wanted.
So I had three ways to steal information. Take a message to deliver and sneak off and copy it. Get hold of the copy Alvord made. Learn to decipher that clacking with my own ear.
Though I had pretty good ears, I wondered how long it would take to figure out that clickety-clack like Alvord did. That would be the unbeatable way.
I made doodledy sure I was in that telegraph office every minute it was open, unless I was carrying a message somewhere. I figured out how to grab the messages for the mine myself and foist the others off on the hang-around boys. I slipped back to our rooms and scribbled down copies of whatever telegraphese looked good. A promising one might say, SIXTEEN GEARS SHIPPED STOP EXPECT DELIVERY 9-28 STOP. A not-so-promising one read, DO NOT THINK YOU CAN EVER COME HOME. Fearing I might miss something important, I got Alvord’s permission to come in at night and practice on the key. Then I read all of that day’s copies, and copied off the good ones. Alvord trustingly gave me a door key for coming and going.
Infiltrating wasn’t as much fun as playing piano, but it was kind of fascinating. I’d sit near the sleeping form of Sun Moon with my bootlegged copies and read happily. Wasn’t I a regular spy, just like Sir Richard!
After some thought, I took a little talk with Sir Richard that very evening. We spies don’t tell our conversation.
Had a good talk with my employers, too. After Daniel and I played through the late hours at the Heritage, we spent the extra-late hours visiting with Tommy Kirk in his office behind the opium den. We sorted and sorted the copies, and we read ’em and read ’em, and we surely did some learning.
Things were easier those days. Since the telegraph was brand-new, the Washo mine managements hadn’t yet started sending information in code. Later some boys tried to run the trick again and got stumped. But these were the early days, and all the mines and some investors did business by telegraph.
At first the stuff seemed worthless. If you want to know the most boring stuff in the world, just look in on everybody’s secrets. Soon, though, Daniel and Tommy taught me what to look for. If I saw the word “assay,” I was to come running to Tommy’s place quicker than peas. I was to go perk-alert also about a strike in a new shaft, or petering out in an old one. Facts about needing to hire more miners, or lay some off. Any facts indicating bonanza or borrasca. Any facts savvy investors would buy or sell on. When they found out, which was supposed to be after we found out.
Sorry to say, we didn’t find anything like that the first couple of nights. I went home near dawn very sleepy, with a heart low in my chest and fifty bucks in gold in my pocket, which generally will improve a man’s outlook.
The third day my fingers were running ahead of my ears—I could tap that key so it made some sense—maybe the lack of sleep affected my ears. The fourth day I could send a message on the wire slowly but accurately. And that night I gave Daniel and Tommy their first useful bit. The Sergeant was expecting a shipment of eight oversized cars in a week.
They knew enough to make sense of this information. The Sergeant had sunk an extrawide shaft in a new direction. They’d brought up oversized cars to haul out all the country rock while they were looking for a rich vein. If they were receiving more cars, it meant they intended to haul a lot more of something out and a lot faster. Daniel didn’t think they’d make that investment without indications, damned good indications.
The next morning I watched the crowd outside the telegraph office when we posted the San Francisco Stock Exchange prices. The Sergeant opened slightly off, as folks in the stock game put it. Soon as everyone saw the prices, the curbside stock exchange got going, bidding, buying,
selling, and the rest of it. Tommy bought two hundred shares of Sergeant, I didn’t hear the price. I walked over to the Heritage with him and saw Daniel get half the stock certificates. So that was how they were working their end of the scam. Daniel was behind the scenes, Tommy out front. Daniel got hold of righteous information, Tommy put up the cash. They split the take. In the end Daniel would keep his windfall a secret, and Tommy would crow.
Watching them, I tucked my thumb in my pants and rubbed my gold coins. Last evening I’d split the waistband of my pants and sewed them in. I wondered,
When I get all my pay, should I buy Sergeant?
After a week or so I got into a routine. I worked until the office closed, made music with Daniel at the Heritage for a couple of hours, and then slipped back to the telegraph office to check the day’s messages, sort and copy, put them back on the spike to make things look right before Alvord missed them.
I was glad it was dark, though, when I left the office. What would I say after all, if someone caught me? What I was doing wasn’t against any Washo law, nor any other. But it might run against the notions of a mining-camp jury, which is the hardest-hearted kind. So on that Saturday night I put Alvord’s copies back on the spike, slipped my copies under my shirt, looked carefully out the window, and eased out of the door, nifty as you please. (Nifty was a mining-camp word, and I liked it.)
“I’ll take them papers,” says the voice.
First I felt a rush, a whooshing wind in my head that said, PORTER ROCKWELL.
Then the wind quieted, because Rockwell wouldn’t have asked for the papers.
The demand came from a under a big, black bandanna on the face of a tall man with slitty eyes. He was dressed all in black, with a black slouch hat covering his features. I knew what must be in his gun hand, pointing straight at me. And something was peculiar about that voice—it gave me the willywoollies.
I made a quick calculation of my wages against my lifeblood and handed over the papers.
“Now, Asie,” the voice said in a normal tone, “I’ll buy you a drink and we’ll look these over.”
The gun hand opened and showed me what it held, just a piece of scrap board about the right size. Off came the slouch hat and the bandanna.
Underneath was Sam Clemens, grinning like he’d cornered a rising market on fun.
I grabbed for those papers. He snatched ’em away and held ’em far back. I grabbed him like I was going to wrestle him down. Sam shook like a dog and threw me off. He was a big man. “Asie,” he said, “I’m gonna have a look at these papers.” I could see I’d got his dander up. “Regardless,” he said.
We went to the hotel rooms, where the whole world couldn’t look over our shoulders. I looked in on Sun Moon (it was one of her poor days) and turned the bodyguard loose.
When Sam had gone through the papers once, me steaming next to him, he leaned toward me and gleamed those eyes at me. I saw now that the gleam could give you a chuckle or the cajoolies, for he could put fun or malice in it. “Asie,” says he, “I’m gonna save you some lyin’. I got a tip you and Gentleman Dan was up to something. I been watching you in the telegraph office evenings, and you ain’t been practicing on that key. These papers are confidential information about the mines. You fellers got something going, a money-making scheme.”
He paused for breath. “No harm in that, now. Hardly a man in Washo without a money-making scheme, ’less he’s a sky pilot or a dimwit, and I’d judge you to be too smart for either.”
He leaned back expansively, delighted with himself. “So let’s not go circling around about morality or shame, which neither of us gives a fig for. Just come straight out with the truth.”
Now he gleamed his teeth, too, and they shined even from behind the bush of mustache.
“I can’t,” says I. I was nervous that Sun Moon would wake up and want to know what was going on, or Sir Richard would walk in on us.
“You can’t? You can’t
not!
” says Sam Clemens. “You want me to tell Alvord Smith in the morning what I caught you at? You want me to take them papers you stole and hand ’em back to him?”
I considered Tommy Kirk. Sam didn’t know about him. If I gave up the game, Daniel would merely be mad as a bear. Tommy Kirk might cut my jewels off with a wee dagger.
I shook my head. “I can’t,” I said.
“So,” said Sam Clemens, “you’d sooner be cashiered and maybe run out of town than talk. So there’s something you’re more afraid of. What would that be?” He was talking to me, but his mind was off spinning notions, juggling possibilities like balls in the air. He hadn’t found anything
he liked yet. “What say,” he started in, teasing out word after word, pulling me along with his style, “you tell me the truth and I keep my mouth shut until you’ve got the boodle?”
“I can’t.”
He tilted his chair back and regarded me from afar, between bushes of mustache and eyebrow.
I had the willywoollies. Maybe Sam and me were friends, but he was also after the news, and by God that makes a newsman crazy. It’s like getting the story is a higher morality.
“Friend,” he says, “you don’t leave me a lot of choice.” He nodded to himself awhile, cogitating. “OK. I’ll tell everyone I’ve seen you with. Alvord, of course. Gentleman Dan. Captain Burton. The Tibetan woman. And the sovereign of Chinatown, Tommy Kirk.”
The cajoolies did cartwheels in my belly.
Burton’s martial energies rose as he strode. They saluted and stood at port arms. He loved danger.
They were walking downhill into Chinatown, Clemens on the left, the Missourian of easy manner and a quick but vulgar wit. Asie walked in the middle and Burton on the far side—it was Burton’s task on this excursion to protect them. He cast his eyes about for trouble—rooftops, windows, corners, shadows…. He didn’t expect difficulties yet. The sovereign of Chinatown wanted something, had asked for a meeting. If he chose, the bugger could simply have done Clemens in. Nothing was more common in Virginia than a dead man for breakfast.
That was how Burton had struck his deal. Instead of giving an interview, Burton would save Clemens’s hide.
The captain wore a long coat, and under it held a pistol in one hand and his
assegai
in the other. He whirled about and gazed uphill, his eyes probing the darkness restlessly. At this absurd hour any movement would be suspicious.
He faced downhill again. He listened, which was often more informative than watching. He smelled. He sensed. He breathed the cold mountain air in and out. He was ready.
In a higher state of readiness than necessary,
he thought.
If our fate is trouble, it will come on the return journey
.
The Missourian told a ribald story about the moon, then another about the Virgin Mary. Burton imagined him the first man in America in
his storehouse of ribald stories, but the captain was busy running his eyes through the dark, hunting assassins.
As they came into Chinatown, Burton sucked the smells in deep, the spicy, alien aromas of Asia that to him always meant danger, drugs, sex, and delight.
Asie led the way around a corner, slipped down a narrow way to a door, and entered. Immediately Burton recognized the bittersweet odor made by the opium smokers. As they passed through the room, he worked his fingers on the hilt of the
assegai
within his coat. Men lay in every bunk, apparently in the lotus state. But any one, or any half dozen, might be ready to spring upon the visitors.
Asie led the way past the old man at the table with the smoking paraphernalia—Burton felt a pang at the sight—and to an obscure door and thus to a back room.
After all the men acknowledged Asie’s introductions, a low voice spoke in Chinese behind them.
“Captain Burton,” said Tommy Kirk in English, “will you set your weapons aside? You are among friends here.”
Burton hesitated for effect and stared at the Celestial leaning against the wall, a villainous-looking thug, probably a mate of Q Mark’s. Such men were loyal to whoever paid them.