Bound for Gold--A Peter Fallon Novel of the California Gold Rush Read online

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  In Memory of

  KEVIN STARR

  my Harvard mentor

  and

  STEVE MARTELL

  my oldest friend

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Back in 1975, at the University of Southern California film school, I took my first screenwriting class. Our big assignment that semester was to write a treatment for a feature-length film.

  Though I had little writing experience, I had already rejected the advice that you should write what you know. I believed then, as I do now, that you should write what you want to know, or where you want to go, or who you want to meet when you get there. And operating on the principle that I should go big or go back to Boston, I decided to follow my ambition. I would write something historical and as big as I could make it.

  But whenever we write, we are writing what we know, because to create believable characters, we draw on our understanding of human nature, which emerges from experience and observation. I remember looking around at my USC friends and thinking that all of us had come to California to chase the Hollywood dream, but now we were learning to face the hard realities of making our way. Some of us would succeed. Some of us would be disappointed. And in that, we were a lot like the men and women who had been coming to California since 1849. We were living our own Gold Rush.

  Out of that sense of connection with the past grew the adventures of two characters named Spencer and Flynn in a screenplay called The Mother Lode, and out of that screenplay has grown this novel, four decades later.

  Though the screenplay was not produced (the fate of most screenplays), it won the 1976 Hal Wallis Screenwriting Fellowship, which meant that my name appeared on the cover of Variety, I signed with an agent, and for the first time in my life, people other than my wife called me a writer. So, while I should thank the legendary producer of such classics as Casablanca and True Grit for offering that fellowship, I must first thank my wife. She called me a writer long before there was any supporting evidence.

  Chris was there in 1975 and she’s still there today, my best friend then and now, ready to put up with long weekends of work, ready to share a nice dinner and a good bottle of wine when the work day is over for both of us, and always ready for research trips, which can be a lot of fun if you do them right.

  Like Peter Fallon, I believe that by visiting the places where history happened, I can feel the vibrations and maybe make sense of it for all. I also like to write books about places where our children live. When I wrote The Lincoln Letter, set in Civil War Washington, our daughter was living there. Now, both sons live in California, so we got to see a lot of them during the writing. Indeed, all of the Martin-related young people—Bill and Virginia, Dan and Keri, Liz and Will—have offered support, insight, expertise, commentary, companionship, and enthusiasm, especially in our explorations of California vineyards, San Francisco restaurants, Gold Rush historical sites, and the High Sierras.

  And our first research trip was our most fortuitous. It brought us to Sutter’s Mill, where gold was discovered in a tailrace on a January morning in 1848, and where we met Ed Allen, one of the most knowledgeable site historians I have ever encountered.

  Soon, Ed and his wife, Joanne, were welcoming us into their home, offering us their gracious hospitality, and devoting days—yes, days—to showing us the gold country that they know and love so well. We visited placer sites, hydraulic sites, mine shafts, head frames, dry gulches, tailing piles, and the stone foundations of mining towns long since dried up and blown away. We felt the heat. We heard the silence. We saw the ghosts. And I took a lot of notes. In the towns that survived and thrived, we also enjoyed some nice meals. If you feel the landscape in this book, if you see that world of a hundred and seventy years ago, it is in large part thanks to Ed and Joanne Allen.

  Since Amador County winemaking also figures in this tale, we just had to do our share of tasting, and wineries like Renwood, Terra d’Oro, and Deaver provided wonderful experiences. But I must mention William Easton, owner of Easton/Terre Rouge wineries, who took the time to give us a fascinating tour of his vineyard and discuss the work of growing Zinfandel in Gold Country.

  There are many others to thank, too.

  First, a few institutions, organizations, and sites: the California Digital Newspaper Collection, a project of U.C. Riverside, which has digitized a window onto the daily life of that distant era; the California Historical Society, where the librarians brought me document that amazed me; the Carson Pass Ranger Station at the El Dorado National Forest, which offers on-site lectures on the struggles of the overland immigrants; the Columbia State Historic Park; the Doheny Library at the University of Southern California, where I read so many Gold Rush journals so long ago; the Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park in Coloma, site of Sutter’s Mill; the Old Sacramento Historic District and the Sutter’s Fort State Historic Park in Sacramento; and the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park.

  Among fellow authors: Deborah Coonts checked out San Francisco locations for me when I couldn’t get there myself. David Morrell, cofounder of the International Thriller Writers and the man who gave the world the character called Rambo, saw that important research material landed on my desk. Willie Nikkel took me gold panning on the American River, just a mile or so downstream from Sutter’s Mill. I still have the gold flakes in a little bottle.

  Others from across the country: Joseph Amster, who gives great tours of San Francisco in the character of the Emperor Norton; Christopher Brewster of Washington provided insights into foreign investment in the United States. Margherita Desy of the Naval History and Heritage Command and Gary Foreman of the U.S.S. Constitution Museum offered details on the handling of a nineteenth-century sailing vessel. Over lunch in the famed Tadich Grill, Mike Green of San Francisco discussed international gold funds. And Steve and Mary Swig of San Francisco welcomed us into their handsome Victorian home, a pre-earthquake classic, showed us their grand city, and provided copious primary source materials.

  A few old friends: Rick Jewell, a retired USC cinema professor, read the screenplay four decades ago and never stopped telling me that I should turn it into a novel. John Hamilton and Joe Riley, whom I met in high school long ago, are still dispensing wit, wisdom, and humor. Tom Cook does the same thing, with the added insights and commiserations of another lifelong novelist.

  In publishing: Robert Gottlieb has been my agent of thirty-four years (and there aren’t many writers who can say that). Tom Doherty and Bob Gleason, my publisher a
nd editor at Tor/Forge, and their team of talented professionals keep me in print in the digital age. It was Bob Gleason who said a few years back, “You know, Bill, there’s a great story in the California Gold Rush.” I said, “I’ve been thinking the same thing for a long, long time.”

  And finally, a word about the two men to whom this book is dedicated:

  Kevin Starr was perhaps California’s most famous historian. At Harvard, back in 1970, he taught a course that opened my eyes to the connections between American history and literature, and he later became my thesis advisor. We renewed our friendship when I started this novel, which led to long lunches and pleasant dinners with our wives, visits to the Bohemian and the Pacific Union and the other clubs where Kevin was a member, and a powerful sense that when I sat with him, I was sitting at the fountainhead of San Francisco history. He was a beloved teacher, a prolific writer and scholar, and the grand possibilities of California and of the America dream were always evident in his writing and his outlook.

  Steve Martell was my first friend in high school, which made him my oldest friend. He was godfather to one of my sons, as I was to his. He was a sounding board for my story ideas and a cheerleader for my books, and no matter how long you have been at this work, you need cheerleaders. Steve and I talked often about this Gold Rush adventure. More than once he said, “Bill, if we were alive back then, we would have gotten on a ship and sailed to California, right along with your characters.”

  Both of them were in line to receive the first draft of this book. I wanted their opinions before I rewrote. But on one sad Sunday in January of 2017, I learned that both had passed away, one in Boston, one in San Francisco. I think of them often and miss them both. But, as I hope this book demonstrates, while life may be fleeting and fragile, friendship is not.

  WILLIAM MARTIN

  October 2017

  PROLOGUE

  San Francisco

  April 18, 1906

  JAMES SPENCER DID NOT sleep well in the hours before dawn. Old men seldom did. So he was half awake when the first shock struck.

  It came from somewhere out in the deep Pacific. It rolled in under the Sutro Cliffs, then ran along California Street, rumbled through the foundation of his big house, climbed the grand staircase, and vibrated right into the springs of his four-poster bed.

  Everything shook, as if the ice wagon had missed the porch and backed into a corner post.

  Nothing more than a good, hard jolt, he thought. Just part of living in California.

  But that was not his only thought. In the fitful darkness, James Spencer’s mind worked like one of those cheap Chinatown kaleidoscopes. Every twist of his body on the bed and every turn of his head on the pillow brought a new image to his brain.

  Was it the jolt that woke him? Or the dog barking down in the street? Or was it the dream? The recurring Boston dream? The nocturnal journey to the Arbella Club, where James Spencer’s father hung forever in a full-length portrait. He could see the eyes scowling down from that portrait even then, even there, three thousand miles and almost six decades away.

  And why were so many dogs barking now, up the hill and down and inside the house across the street?

  Then he realized what had awakened him. Not the dogs. Not the dream. Not the jolt. He had to piss … again. The never-ending need of an old man to piss was a merciless thing.

  And what time was it, anyway? Still too dark to see the clock by the bed. But a little after five, he figured, because the sky was brightening. It was springtime in San Francisco, which meant it was springtime in the Sierra, too. The rivers would be running fast, pushing gold flakes over the gravel as they had for thousands of years, long before a sluice-tender plucked a pea-sized nugget from the tailrace at Sutter’s Mill and brought the world to California.

  Maybe if he thought about those rushing streams, if he imagined the sound of that flowing water, it might help him to piss.

  Then he could get dressed and go down to the office and spend a few quiet hours with his Gold Rush journal. He had been transcribing it, and the transcribing had become rewriting, and in the rewriting, an eighty-three-year-old man had found what might be his final purpose. He would tell his descendants about himself and his wife and their role in the building of California. He would tell them about the Chinese. He would tell them about the Irishman who lived now like a spirit in his memory. He would even tell them about the Irishman’s lost river of gold.

  But first he swung his feet onto the floor and slid his toes about in search of his slippers. He could not find them. No matter. Cold feet might help him to let go if visions of fast-flowing snowmelt failed. So he picked up the chamber pot and, following the principle that men always pissed standing up, he stood.

  That was when it hit him, hit him so hard that it took the legs out from under him, hit him as surely as if someone had smashed him in the back of his knees with a shovel.

  The chamber pot flew into the air. James Spencer flew onto the bed. And a night’s worth of cold urine flew everywhere. The bed seemed to rise, then drop. Spencer rose with it, then he dropped.

  That jolt had been just a foreshock, followed by maybe half a minute of quiet before the infernal engine humming deep in the earth had loosed a flywheel that spun off its mounts and whirled upward with the force of a hundred million steam locomotives.

  Now the light from the streetlamp was dancing on the wall because the streetlamp was swinging in the street. And the window itself was moving because the walls were moving. And the bed was moving because the floor was moving, too.

  James Spencer sank his fingers into the mattress and held on.

  The bedroom door flew open and the shadow of Spencer’s servant, Mickey Chang, appeared. “Mr. James! Mr. James!”

  “Stay there!” shouted Spencer. “Stay in the doorframe. Hold on!”

  Chang braced himself against the rocking, his eyes wide white in the half light.

  The roar grew louder, the shaking more violent.

  The bed danced to the terrible symphony of sounds playing now like a prelude to the moment when the whole house would collapse in a thunderous cataract of wood and plaster and chimney bricks. The room echoed with the woodwind shattering of glass and china, the mid-range groan of nails and studs and floorboards straining to hold onto one another, the percussive clanks and bangs and rattles and booms of doors and drawers slamming open and windows shaking loose and furniture toppling, and beneath it all, a deep, relentless, terrifying basso profundo rumble rising from the core of the earth itself.

  And over the close-by sounds came the noise of something collapsing up the street, something big.

  And bells were ringing everywhere, ringing above the roar and below the shattering, ringing in a range of tones and rhythms so wide that it sounded as if every bell in every church in San Francisco was trembling with the fear that God had deserted them, as if every steeple was swinging like the lampposts on California Street.

  The bed jerked to the middle of the floor, then jerked back again and banged into the wall. In another room, something fell over. On the street, someone was screaming and the dogs were still barking. And just outside the window, something was snapping. A tree was snapping. Many trees were snapping. But there were no trees on California Street. What was snapping? What the hell was snapping?

  And before he could answer, it was over.

  The roaring receded, like a train rumbling off into the darkness.

  The shaking settled to stillness.

  Spencer lay silent and listened as, one by one, the church bells stopped ringing. Now he heard only the barking of the dogs and the whimpering of Chang’s wife in the attic bedroom above. He glanced at his bedside clock. He could just make out the hands: five thirteen. The earthquake had lasted an eternity in not much more than a minute.

  Mickey Chang still stood in the doorframe, arms braced, eyes wide.

  James Spencer spoke as calmly as he could, “Put on the light, Mickey.”

  The servant’s eyes s
hifted from side to side and rolled upward to watch a trickle of plaster dust drift down. Then he slid his hand along the wall to the faceplate and flipped the switch. Nothing.

  “Damned electricity.” James Spencer sat up and began fishing under the bed.

  Chang scurried over and found the slippers, which had done their own dance across the floor. “Wet. You piss on them again?”

  “There’s piss everywhere, Mickey. We’ll clean it up later. Go and see to your wife.”

  “Wear your slippers … or put shoes on.” Mickey Chang had served James Spencer for decades and stood on no ceremony. “I bet we got broken glass downstairs, too.”

  James Spencer slid his feet into the slippers and went to the window. In fifteen or twenty minutes, the rising sun would illuminate the devastation, but from his bedroom on the corner of California and Gough, with Van Ness below and Pacific Heights above, he could already see it.

  To his right, up the hill, the brick façade of a new house had simply dropped off, and three stories of masonry now lay in the street, shrouded in a fog of dust.

  But to his left, just down the hill, the Colemans’ fine mansion stood foursquare and stalwart. That gave James Spencer some hope, because the same craftsmen had built his house.

  Then he squinted down at the tracks and the steel plate in the middle of the street. He cocked an ear to listen for the hum of the cable that started spinning at precisely 5:00 A.M. at precisely 9.5 miles per hour, but he heard nothing.

  As for the utility poles climbing up from Van Ness, every last one of them had snapped off, snapped like saplings. Now a great Aeolian harp of wires, the copper-alloyed symbols of modernity that carried electricity, telegraphic messages, and the telephonic sound of the human voice, lay in long, slack, useless strands. One of the wires was sparking on the pavement, sending up a little cloud of blue smoke.

  A door opened across the street. Spencer’s neighbor, Matt Dooling, in bare feet and nightshirt, staggered onto his veranda and looked about, as if to convince himself that it was not a dream. Then he scratched his bald head and went back into his house.