Reckoning of Boston Jim (10 page)

For the span of over three hours I rang & called out: “Yale! Yale! All gold seekers on board. Last call. Last call!” You would have thought me a regular costermonger. For this service the captain paid me two dollars & though this may seem a princely sum for such a minor task here it will barely buy a loaf of bread. But that was not all, my dearest heart, for we paying passengers were expected to lend a hand with loading wood & cargo & when we became stranded on a sand bar we were called upon to leap out & pull the sternwheeler along with a tow line—at which you can imagine the disgruntled mutterings, that is until I leapt out onto the sandy shore & made a fine example that the others soon followed—even though we were hardly needed for the great wheel walked her charge over the sand & it was the strangest sight, as if a fish had suddenly pranced up on shore!

He pauses. Yes, he can see the stranding scene as clearly as if it actually happened to him and was not merely something of which he had heard. Inspired, he adds in an Irishman who was nearly swept overboard as they charged through the riffles. Fortunate that Eugene grabbed him by his belt.

He signs
Your beloved Eugene
with a flourish, blows the ink dry, wishes the pale, smooth page were her skin, wishes he could have written endearments, ribald jokes, of the way his soldier stands at attention for her each morning whether he wills it or no. But Dora depends upon Mrs. Smitherton to read his letters aloud, she being no reader. She sees his looping, ornate hand, his tremendous Fs, his Hs (that a tutor once said indicated greatness) as a script as mysterious and intricate as that of the Persians, the Chinese. As for writing, so far Eugene has only been able to teach her how to write her name and his. The first time she legibly wrote the words Mr. and Mrs. Eugene Hume (for he has assured her they are as good as married) she stared at them as if they were a talisman, as if she thought, as the Indians were said to, that writing had some magical properties (for why else would the Whitemen depend upon it so?).

She practiced writing
Mrs. Eugene Augustus Hume
until Eugene said it looked as casually done as the signature of a barrister, and then he tucked the paper into her bodice. She was not shocked; nothing of that sort shocked her. For days after, whenever she presented the paper to him it was a signal for trundling off to their bed, and this often as not in the full light of day. They would wallow in each other for hours while the chickens clucked hungrily outside and the fence holes remained undug, the garden untended.

“At ease, soldier,” Eugene now commands, to no avail whatsoever, and so resorts to imagining Mrs. Smitherton. She is adjusting her spectacles. She is pronouncing each word of his missive as if it were an item in a quotidian list. No, she would not do justice to his endearments and ribald jokes, and neither would her husband, though they are kindly, irreproachably honest people to whom he is now firmly in debt. And at least he can trust them not to speak of him disapprovingly. He must find something with which to thank them for taking care of Dora. A nugget would do nicely. He will put one aside.

He makes an oath now to the inkwell that one day he will teach Dora to properly read and write. He will teach her to speak with the cadences of his class, to dress with a simple elegance. He can clearly see himself, sometime in the middle future, leaning over her as she sits at a fine desk. Before them a window hung with velvet drapes holds a view of Victoria's Oak Bay in which sails glint and steamers puff out fat clouds. Governor Douglas and his wife will be calling soon, but for now they have time. He is teaching her to write the names of their children: Euphenia, Thaddeus, Leander, Persis, Octavia, Jules. A musical roll call and all are hale and hearty and tumbling about in the rooms nearby.

≈  ≈  ≈

From the saloon below someone scrapes at a fiddle. A quarrel begins, then fades as the men are sent to grapple in the murk of the street. Eugene has earned his evening now. He takes the narrow, treacherous steps to the saloon. From five paces calls to the barkeep: “Mr. Culky! A glass of
HB
, no, of your finest cognac.”

“Try your luck at the Frog's place, then. All we got is Old Tom and grog. We don't put on the frills here.”

“The question was not meant as a criticism of your establishment, sir. I merely assumed . . . ah, a glass of your finest Old Tom then.”

Culky's expression does not change as he pours. His face seems, indeed, to have long ago frozen into a wince.

Now, Eugene Augustus, how will this evening progress? Concen-trate, man. He surveys the room. Sees seated men and standing men and milling-about men, sees stumbling men and fiddle-playing men and billiard-playing men there in another small room. Sees men of all nations united by a thirst for gold. A masculine landscape inhabited by not even one example of the fairer sex. Ah, what Eugene would give for a whiff of rosewater, a sea swirl of skirt.

He drinks and the whiskey is a pale burn in his throat. Difficult to predict this evening, difficult indeed.

At the faro table the dealer sweeps up cards from the green felt. The case keeper, a Chinaman, records the cards on an abacus. A simple game, the odds against the house. One merely has to bet which card will now turn up and in which order. All it takes is a good head for numbers and an honest table for one to eventually win. Unfortunate that Eugene has never had a good head for numbers. It is why he avoids the cards and the dice and the wheel, bets only on those outcomes over which he has some control. Now Dora, she could have been a regular sharper, for though she can barely read and write she can add, subtract, divide, even juggle large sums. “I see them falling into place,” she said with an irresistible shrug that engaged her entire form. “I see them like it were raining numbers.”

≈  ≈  ≈

The faro dealer gestures to an empty space at the table. Eugene smiles and shakes his head, calls over to Mr. Culky for another shot. “And two for the gentlemen at the end of the bar.” He points to the Welsh brothers who are holding onto the bar railing as if assailed by a whirlwind. They stare dubiously as he approaches. When he met them on board the
SS
Champion he had not realized their English was so poor. Finds he must rely on broad gestures and loud, clearly spoken words. After they are finally made to understand they shake their heads. They are meeting their brethren in Camerontown, Eugene gathers. A mine is started there already. They have no need for partners. Eugene sighs. Looks about again. The Italian is not in sight, neither are the Missouri men. Les Canadiens are at the faro table now. They are cursing in their peculiar French. Their backs form a barricade. At the chuck-a-luck table an Indian man in a cocked hat tosses dice with a practiced hand. The light is fading and for a time the raucous crowd is half-figured and ghostly. Now an Indian boy lights tallow candles that are speared upright in wax-heaped bottles and give off trails of black smoke. They smell more foul than most tallow candles—of burning sheep fat, of carcass. Nothing like an odour to stir the pot of memory—a battlefield in the gloaming and all about corpses of horses and men are afire like a scene from some medieval poet's hell. Eugene mouths a curse. He is excellent at forgetting many things, why not that scene? He gestures to Culky who fills his glass without a word. Eugene straightens. The evening is not yet over. There is still hope, still reason to stay.

The door cracks open. Oswald. Behind him is Herr Boots. He is grinning foolishly, is in need, obviously, of some kind of protection from this Oswald, who is waving his arms as if he has just walked into a line of drying petticoats, who won last night's bet by a hair.

“They're horse-shitting, them that says it's sitting around. It ain't like the Fraser, wheres any harebrained fucknit can get at it with a pan. It ain't like California in '
49
neither. It's more hidden than a nun's twat. You gotta read the land, see. Gotta dig through rock to get the motherlode. Need more than sluices and such shit. Need shafts and a pump to keep the water out. Gotta have money for all that. Gotta have a company. Boys on their own are turning up dead and bear-chewed in the hills. Ain't no place for a man alone, less you're a god-blamed Indian. Don't be listening to them fucknits that tell you otherwise. Listen to me. . . . Yeah, can we do something for you?”

“Ah, Mr. Hume,” Herr Boots says. “I happy to see you again.
Sitzen
. Here. Mr. Oswald he is speaking of mining. He knows much of it. He make big strike in Sierra Nevadas.”

Eugene smiles. “Truly? Then why the deuce are you here?”

Oswald stares grimly at his hands. Eugene sits.

“He here because he have bad partners. Bad men,” Herr Boots says.

“I trusted the wrong ones, see, sons-of-whores and mongrel bitches. I got too goddamned good a nature. Not this time.”

“Mr. Oswald is expert at mining. He look for investors.”

“But what of your boots? Herr . . . what of your venture?”

“Oh, I sell boots and then have money. Maybe I look to buy in a mine. I not sure.”

“Call the mine The Jessica Bell, after my fiancée. Won that whoreson bet, didn't it? There's a sign for you.”

“Herr . . . ah, Schulmiss.”

“Schultheiss,” the Prussian says, chuckling, always chuckling, as if life were some great joke.

“Quite so, Herr Schultheiss. May I speak with you in private?”

“Say your mind, Pume, don't be sneaking around like a mongrel with its head up its arse,” Oswald says, grinning.

“Hume, the name is Hume, I say, and no. It is just . . .”

It is just that the Prussian is a fool to trust this swine-tongued Oswald. Oswald is a diminutive powder keg, a not-so-eloquent liar. Good natured? Eugene would have laughed if it had been appropriate. Mongrel? Eugene would have called him out for a duel if Oswald had not been jesting.

“Just that I, too, will be starting a mine and . . .”

“Yeah, and how you gonna choose the fuck what spot? I knew a gentleman-sir like you who thought if he horked snot on the ground it'd come up gold.”

“I shall study the lay of the land,” Eugene says with dignity. “I am not a green hand.”

“You ain't? What's a stringer then? What's the fuck difference 'tween a sluice and a cradle?”

“I am not interested in proving myself to you.”

Oswald laughs, shows a mouth of chipped, tobacco stained teeth. “Can't take some jibing, can you? Well, if you don't know bum squat about mining, maybe you got some capital. Maybe you wanna invest in The Jessica Bell. I might consider it. Christ's clinkers, but I might.”

“Your confidence is remarkable, Mr. Oswald. And now, if you will excuse me, gentlemen.”

“I ain't no gentleman looking for a lickfinger. Bumtags are more use 'round here than gentlemen. Most of you got less money than a fucknit shoeshine. Here's my advice to you, Pume, or Hume, or whatever it is. Don't be putting on god-blamed airs. Don't be thinking gold'll be jumping out at you just cus you got some dandy-ass name for your mine. I'll tell you this. It's us that run the show here.”

Oswald sits back and grins. Schultheiss mops his brow and smiles apologetically. The moths rise at the back of Eugene's neck. He is tempted, nay, determined, to return to his room for his revolver and take out this dwarfish fiend with one shot. Easy Eugene Augustus. Consider how that would set the evening on a course entirely different from the course which you had planned. And was the insult so great? Perhaps in the staid environment of the Old World it might have been. But here the old rules no longer apply. And look. The men about Oswald are not taking it so seriously; rather they are chuckling and snorting.

Let the Prussian be taken in with this piglet-brained Yank, then. In any case, what profits can he expect from such a quotidian item as boots? Some novelty might bring him fortune, but
boots
?

Eugene makes his way outside. The air smells of pine and wood smoke. The night is cloud-dark, edged with winter. Men jostle past him on their way from one saloon and grog shop to the next. There is the California House, the American flag lifting feebly in the breeze. There is the dirt street and then the sandy bank sloping sharply to the river. What happens at high water? Perhaps the denizens huddle in that diminutive church higher up. Perhaps, indeed, another line of buildings once faced these. It almost appears so. Perhaps the opposing street was seized by the thick muscle of the river and smashed to pieces, leaving only the steep sandy bank. He straightens his shoulders, his hat. Another man, without his confidence, might well be discouraged by that troglodyte, Oswald.

“Over here! Find the lady! Find the lady!” The man calling this is setting up three cards on a crate. Now holds up a candle lantern. “Easy to do. Anyone can win. Come look. Just look. You there, and you.”

Men pause. Glance. One steps to the challenge. He loses the first attempt, then the second. On the third he wins three dollars. The tosser hands the money over grudgingly. “Good eye, sir, good eye. How about another round while your luck holds?”

The winner shakes his head, stuffs money in his pockets.

A man steps up. He has an impressive dark beard that falls near to his belly. He sways slightly. “My father won a quid at Find the Lady once. At a fair it was.”

“Play a round for free. For your father's sake, then.”

Eugene watches from just out of the circle of lamplight. The man at play is young, he notices, and the beard only a young man's attempt at a fierce countenance. He also notices a man leaning against a nearby stable wall, and then another man by the river, squatting near a tree.

The tosser shifts the cards one over the other. He is hatless, his features there for all to see—the greying hair reduced to a monk-like fringe, the sloping chin that gives him the appearance of weakness, of indecision. As for his accent. Some hint of the emerald isle in his ancestry. The colony of Nova Scotia? New Found Land? No matter, such dealers are a race apart whatever colony or country they have scrabbled from.