The Touch (9 page)

Came the day when he received his piece of paper from Mr. Connell, who pleaded in vain that he stay. The paper said that he had served a three-year apprenticeship with satisfactory results; that he could weld, braze, operate a steam hammer and a rolling mill, bend pipes and sheet iron, and, if put to it, construct a steam engine from its component parts; that he understood the principles, theories and mechanics of steam and had a talent for hydraulics.

That his knowledge went far beyond that of anybody else at Lanark Steam, even Mr. Connell, was due to his studying in the Glasgow University library on Sundays; a more fruitful exercise, he was sure, than attending the kirk. To use this library was absolutely forbidden to all save university members, but, nothing daunted, Alexander had filched an accreditation from an undergraduate whose steady drinking prevented his using it.

WITH THE SECRET compartment beneath the false bottom of his tool chest loaded with gold coins, Alexander walked across Cumberland in the direction of Liverpool as if he carried a feather. For those few sweet days he reveled in the superlative beauty and peace of this loveliest of all English counties, then entered Great Britain’s second-largest city, quite as filthy as Glasgow, if a trifle healthier.

Not that he intended to remain in Liverpool. Alexander was looking for a ship bound for California and the goldfields, and found the Quinnipiac tied up. She was that new sort of ship, a wooden three-masted sailer with a steam engine driving a screw rather than a paddle wheel. Her Connecticut-born captain/owner was pleased to obtain the services of a young man who really did know marine steam engines, as he proved to Quinnipiac’s engineer when put through a rigorous examination on site. No Yankee trusted a piece of paper.

Quinnipiac’s cargo was mixed—mining equipment like battery stampers and huge cast-iron retorts whose purpose Alexander could not guess at, steam engines, rock crushers—but she also carried brass fittings, Sheffield cutlery, Scotch whisky, curry powder.

“It’s the Civil War,” the engineer explained. “All the iron and steel in the Union is going into guns and other war matériel, so the Californians have to buy what they need from England.”

“Will we be going to New York?” asked Alexander, dying to see that fabulous city of hopes and dreams.

“No, to Philadelphia, but just to take on more coal. We make sail only when we have to—steam’s quicker and straighter, no tacking to find a wind, no battling contrary currents.”

ONCE QUINNIPIAC emerged from the Irish Sea to enter the Atlantic Ocean, Alexander understood why the captain had been so delighted to have a capable second engineer; Old Harry, as he was universally known, succumbed to racking seasickness, staggering about his duties clutching a bucket into which he spewed.

“It’ll pass,” Old Harry gasped, “but it’s a fucken nuisance.”

“Go to your bunk, you cantankerous old donkey,” Alexander ordered. “I’ll manage.”

But, having found out that coaxing a mechanical beast under pressure to give of its best in a heaving sea was a full-time job for two men, Alexander was relieved when Old Harry reappeared two days later, apparently over his malady. The big end bearings on the con rods driving the crank-shaft had a tendency to run hot due to poor lubricating oil—not Old Harry’s fault, but a problem in all the available oils. The boiler had a habit of building up too much pressure, and one of the two stokers, having gotten into the Scotch whisky, almost drank himself to death. Which led to Alexander’s first observation about Americans: they were not as class-conscious as the English or the Scots. Though a master engineer, Old Harry cheerfully took his turn shoveling coal into the firebox, and so, after the second stoker mysteriously fell overboard after winning an acrimonious card game, did Quinnipiac’s three mates. No English or Scots engineer or ship’s officer would ever have demeaned himself by doing manual labor, whereas these practical men preferred to shovel coal than order the crew to do it; the crew were sailors in the true sense of that word, and resented the imminent death of their profession due to some panting, dangerous thing stuck down in the ship’s bowels.

They docked on the Delaware twelve days out from Liverpool, but Alexander never got ashore to see Philadelphia. Deputed to supervise the loading of coal, he spent his time watching colliers upend hessian sacks into the coal hold while Old Harry and the senior officers went off to dine on some sort of crab they craved.

Chugging south in better weather and calmer water, the trim ship burned less coal than Old Harry had expected because she had a good wind in the right direction, on the leading edge of her sails, thus augmenting her steam power; she was off Florianópolis in southern Brazil before the boiler had to be shut down.

Much to his surprise, Alexander learned that South America was rich in coal and every kind of mineral wealth. Why do we from Britain, he wondered, think that all the world’s industrial assets are limited to Europe and North America?

A paddle steamer took Quinnipiac in tow at the mouth of a long, placid inlet on the Uruguayan border called Lagoa dos Patos, and at Porto Alegre she took on a full load of coal.

“It used to be wet, gassy stuff because the better seams are up-country,” said Old Harry, “but some English company has the mining concession now and gets the coal down by rail.”

Rounding Cape Horn, however, was done under sail—that was a grand experience! Mountainous seas, howling gales; everything that Alexander had read about Cape Horn was true.

The boiler wasn’t stoked again until after Quinnipiac left Valparaíso in Chili, which the locals spelled Chile.

“Chilian coal is the last we’ll get,” Old Harry said sadly. “Even when we reach California, there’s no decent coal—just lignite loaded with water and low-grade bituminous coal loaded with sulfur—no good for marine steam engines, you’d die of the gases. We’d have to go on to Vancouver Island to pick up the best of a lousy choice, so it’s back down the western Pacific under sail all the way to Valparaíso.”

“I wondered why the steam engines we’re carrying are built to burn wood,” said Alexander.

“There sure is wood, Alexander! Thousands of square miles of it.” Old Harry’s shrewd grey eyes twinkled. “You’re planning to make a fortune on the goldfields, huh?”

“I am.”

“The alluvium’s all gone long since. It’s an industry now.”

“I know. That’s why I think a steam engineer has a chance to do well.”

SAN FRANCISCO had quadrupled in population since the gold rushes of 1848 and 1849, and displayed all the features of such a huge influx over such a short period of time. Shacks and huts abounded on its periphery, most long deserted. In the city’s hub it was easier to see the power of gold, for it owned some pretensions to architectural beauty. Many of those who had forged west had ended in settling there to do more prosaic things than prospect for gold, but with the outbreak of war between the North and the South on the other side of the Rockies, a certain number had gone back east to fight.

Yes, he was as careful with his bawbees as his uncle James, but Alexander knew that the best place to find a couple of willing seekers after gold was in a bar, so to a bar he went. Not at all like a Glasgow pub! No food was served, vulgar-looking women waited on the tables, and whatever the customers drank came in small glasses. He ordered a beer.

“You’re real cute,” said the waitress, thrusting out her breasts. “Want to take me home when this joint closes?”

He considered her through half-shut eyes, then shook his head emphatically. “No, thank you, madam,” he said.

She bristled with outrage. “What’s the matter, Mister Weird Accent, ain’t I good enough?”

“No, madam, you are not good enough. I’ve no wish to acquire syphilis. You’ve a chancre on your lip.”

When she brought the beer she slammed the mug down on the table, slopping it, stuck her nose in the air and flounced off. An action which had two men in a dark corner staring.

Alexander picked up his beer and strolled over; gold fever was written all over them. “May I?” he asked.

“Sure, have a seat,” said the slight, fair one. “I’m Bill Smith, and this hairy guy is Chuck Parsons.”

“Alexander Kinross from Scotland.”

Parsons chuckled. “Well, friend, I knew you were from real foreign parts. You don’t have the American look. What brings you to California?”

“I’m a steam engineer with an urge to find gold.”

“Say, that’s dandy!” cried Bill, beaming. “We’re geologists with an urge to find gold.”

“A useful profession for it,” said Alexander.

“So, friend, is steam engineering. In fact, with two geologists and one steam engineer on board, a gold train might not be a figment of the mind,” said Chuck, and waved his horny paw at the other drinkers in the bar, a morose lot. “See them? Down on their luck and trying to get home to Kentucky or Vermont or whichever state they came from. Wouldn’t know schist from shit, greenhorns pure and simple. Any fool can swill a pan or build a flume, but working vein gold is for men who know what they’re doing. Could you build a steam engine, Alex? Keep it going?”

“Given the parts, I could.”

“How much money have you got?”

“It depends,” said Alexander warily.

Bill and Chuck exchanged a wise nod. “You’re smart, Alex,” said Chuck, grinning through his wild bush of beard.

“In Scotland, the word is canny.”

“Right, then let’s talk turkey,” said Bill, hunching over the table furtively and lowering his voice. “Chuck and I have two thousand dollars each. Match that figure, and you’re in.”

Four dollars to an English pound: “I can just match it.”

“Then it’s a deal?”

“It’s a deal.”

“Shake.”

Alexander shook their hands. “How do we go about it?”

“A lot of what we need we’ll get for nothing on abandoned workings along the American River,” Bill said, sipping his beer.

None of us, thought Alexander, is fond of the drink. That augurs well for this partnership. They’re a sanguine pair, but not fools. Educated, young, hardy.

“Exactly what do we need?” he asked.

“The parts for that steam engine, for one thing. A rock crusher. Wood already cut to make flumes and the like. A battery mill. Those we can pick up on workings where miners hoped to find reef gold. Also extra mules—the abandoned ones are still up there,” Chuck said. “Our money will go on what we have to buy here in Frisco—kegs of black powder, which is made locally and kinda cheap, considering the war back east. The salt-peter comes from Chili, there’s plenty of sulfur in California, and good charcoaling trees grow everywhere. Cartridge paper to hold the charges. Fuse. The biggest expense will be flasks of mercury, but luckily it’s found on this coast too.”

“Mercury? You mean quicksilver?”

“That’s it. If we’re going after gold embedded in quartz, we have to get it out of the quartz, and you can’t do that with a tom or a rocker. You break up the quartz to two-inch pieces in a crusher, then pound those to powder in a stamper mill. It’s fed with a constant stream of water in which mercury is suspended in fine droplets. You see, gold amalgamates with mercury, and that’s how it’s leached out of the quartz.” Chuck frowned. “We won’t be able to drag the cast-iron retorts that separate the gold from its mercury amalgamation—they weigh literal tons and can’t be broken down into component parts. Besides, I doubt any will be lying around for us to grab. So when we find a vein, we’ll have to keep our gold amalgamated until we run out of mercury.”

“Mercury’s very heavy, I know that,” said Alexander.

“Yeah. One flask of it weighs seventy-six pounds. But that amalgamates a helluva lot of gold, Alex—up to fifty pounds of it. We’ll be rich before we need to separate,” Bill said.

“What else is bought here? I have my own tools, by the way.”

“Food. Much cheaper here than in Coloma or any other gold town. Sacks of dried beans and coffee beans. Bacon. Edible green stuff grows wild, and there are plenty of deer. Chuck’s a crack shot.” Bill lifted an eyebrow. “One of us has to be. The bears are bigger than a grown man, and the wolves hunt in packs.”

“Should I have a gun?”

“A revolver, sure. Leave the rifle to Chuck. No man goes unarmed in California, Alex. Pack it where folks can see it.”

“And six thousand dollars will buy all of that?”

“Sure. Including three horses for us to ride, and mules to carry what we buy in Frisco.”

IF ALEXANDER was skeptical about any of these logistics, it was the blind faith Chuck Parsons and Bill Smith had in the propensity of disappointed prospectors to abandon immensely precious machinery. But as they rode toward the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, he began to see why they were so optimistic; already the terrain was cut up into gorges they called canyons, an indication that indeed a consortium of disillusioned men might be tempted to leave most of what they owned behind.

Sure enough, wherever the American River foothills suggested the presence of a quartz vein, they found the remains of steam engines, rock crushers and battery stamper mills, not so much rusted as abused, as if the men who had operated them didn’t know enough about them to keep them working. The country of the river’s course looked as Alexander imagined country would look after a terrible war waged with cannon had gouged it up, scattered its rocks and gravels, deflected its streams, blasted out holes, pits, caves. Fallen flumes, sections of pipe, spintered toms, rockers, cradles. A profligate land: if it couldn’t be made to work, walk away and leave the thing to rot, melt, disintegrate.

Of the men who had wrought this destruction they saw no signs; some had gone back to San Francisco, some had gone up into the high gravels, there to get at the buried placer with huge jets of water projected against a gravel wall, while yet others had gone even farther afield in search of the mother lode, the elusive veins of quartz that harbored free gold. These last were the most determined men, the real sufferers from gold fever.

As they rode, the two geologists taught the avidly listening Alexander the basics of their science.