Calico Palace (36 page)

She picked up the wadded letter from the floor. She was not going to read it again. If she read it again she might lose all her courage. She tore the paper into shreds and threw them into the fire. Taking her candle she went out and made her way down the stairs.

The house was dark and ghostly. Outside, the wind blew hard. In spite of her woolen dressing-gown Kendra shivered as she went along the hall to Ralph and Serena’s room at the back. Thank heaven they had not yet gone to bed. She could see a line of light under the door, and she heard them moving around.

She knocked. After a moment the door cracked open and she saw Serena’s startled face.

“Why, Mrs. Shields! Is something wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong, but I’m afraid I’ll have to trouble Ralph to go to the door again. The messenger who brought this letter is waiting for an answer, but it concerns a matter of business that will have to wait till my husband comes home. I don’t know anything about it.”

From inside the room she heard Ralph’s voice. “Something you want me to do, Mrs. Shields?”

He sounded both dutiful and irritated. Ralph was no doubt almost or quite ready for bed.

“Yes, please,” said Kendra. “I hate to ask you, Ralph, but it’s getting very cold and if the poor fellow waits much longer he’ll catch pneumonia. Tell him I said there is no reply.”

“All right, Mrs. Shields, I’ll tell him. Soon as I can put on my shoes and find my overcoat.”

“Thank you so much,” said Kendra.

She turned and ran up the staircase and into her own room. The candle blew out as she hurried; she did not care. Her eyes were burning and her throat felt sore. She wanted to scream. She almost did scream. Throwing the candle on the hearth, she clenched her teeth on her sleeve to keep quiet.

Downstairs, Ralph was not trying to keep quiet. She heard him tramping along the hall and opening the front door. She waited tensely until she heard him come back. Glad his chilly chore was over, Ralph shut the door with a bang. She heard him push the bolt and tramp back down the hall.

Kendra had wondered why she could not cry. She did not know; she knew only that now she could. She was crying already. Now that Ted had heard her answer she broke down utterly, and fell across the bed while great wrenching sobs tore through her with a force like pain.

She was crying as she had never cried before and she could not stop. She cried until the sobs wore themselves out and she lay limp on the bed, exhausted, her cheek on the wet pillowcase.

After a while she realized that she was cold. The fire had died down, and there was nothing left in the grate but a few embers glowing among the ashes. Kendra turned down the coverlet and got into bed. The sheets were like slices of frost. From outside she heard the wind, that wild San Francisco wind, wailing and groaning around the hills.

Her body ached all over. She remembered Marny’s remark as they rode into Shiny Gulch that first afternoon. “I feel like I’ve been beaten up by experts.”

She had felt that way too, that day. But she had not minded because she had been so happy. She tried to remember what it was like, that expectant sense of adventure. She could not remember.

How dark it was. The moonlight was gone. The wind must have blown in more clouds from the sea, for now she heard the rattle of rain.

The rain had a sort of rhythm, a soothing sound. The sheets were getting warm. Kendra’s taut muscles began to loosen. After a long time she fell asleep.

When she woke, the rain was still coming down. Through the windows came a gray light that reminded her of the
Cynthia
’s cabin at Cape Horn. She could not tell what time it was. A clock stood on the bureau, but she had not thought to wind it last night and the clock had stopped at a quarter past three.

Kendra stretched and turned over. The air on her face was cold, but the bed was warm and comfortable. She had not slept enough and her eyes ached from last night’s tears, but she felt better than she had felt last night. She turned back the covers, shivering as the cold air struck her, and put her feet into her slippers. They were soft fleece-lined slippers made in Scotland, a gift from Loren when Chase and Fenway had bought some goods from a British brig.

How cold it was! Maybe Serena had coffee on the stove. Serena would no doubt have been up long ago to give Ralph his breakfast before he went to the store. —At least, thought Kendra, I’m glad I don’t have to go out in this rain.

Hugging her dressing-gown around her, she opened the door. Up the stairs drifted the odors of coffee and bacon, and the sound of footsteps. Kendra went to the head of the stairs and called, “Serena!”

Serena ran out of the kitchen and came to the bottom step. “Oh Mrs. Shields, you’re up at last! I was getting worried about you. Are you all right?”

“Oh yes,” Kendra assured her. “The rain kept me awake last night, that’s all. What time is it?”

“Why, it’s after ten,” said Serena. She added, “I hope Ralph got to work all right. He said if the mud should be too bad this evening he’d sleep in the store.”

“Good idea,” said Kendra. “Is there any coffee left, Serena? Will you bring me a cup?”

Serena nodded, and a minute later she brought the coffee. Not the most polished of attendants, as she came upstairs she had spilt some coffee into the saucer, but frontier living had made Kendra less fastidious than she used to be.

But though not urbane, Serena was a kindly soul. “Don’t you want to come down and let me fix you some breakfast?” she was asking. “You can get warm in the kitchen.”

Much as she would have liked to get warm in the kitchen, Kendra did not quite yet feel able to bear Serena’s cheerful chatter. She said she would like to wash before breakfast, and asked Serena to heat a pot of water. Serena went down, and Kendra began to sip her coffee.

She looked at the ashes in the grate. Somewhere among them was Ted’s letter. Setting down the cup she went to the front window, drew back the curtain, and stood looking out at the rain and the mud. Out there, Ted had been waiting for her last night.

—Now he’s gone, she thought. I sent him away. I suppose I’ll never see him again.

All of a sudden she found that she did not care.

It had happened. What had happened to Pocket, what he had promised would happen to her, had happened at last. She did not love Ted any more. Nor did she hate him any more. She simply did not care.

Amazed at her own self, Kendra let the curtain drop. She went to the washstand and bathed her burning eyes with the icy water in the pitcher. What, what had become of the yearning she used to feel?

She could not answer. She did not know. But whatever the reason, that old ache was gone. She thought of Ted. She remembered how he looked, the tone of his voice. She remembered how he had disillusioned her, and the self-pity of him as he tried to say it was everybody’s fault but his own. She remembered how she had fallen in love with him and how she had stayed in love with him. Why had that love taken so long to go? Again, she could not answer. All she knew was that she was not in love with Ted any more.

But neither did she bear him any ill-will. Ted had ceased to matter. She was free.

Kendra sat down on the foot of the bed, not thinking, but merely being aware of things around her—the fragrance of coffee, her warm dressing-gown, her soft fleecy slippers, and in this town of shacks and tents, her own house firm against the rain. And Loren.

She asked herself, now did she love Loren?

No, she did not. But she respected him and she trusted him.

—I am not in love, she thought. I suppose I’ll never be in love again.

She missed being in love. Something was gone out of her, something vast and important. But in its place had come a curious kind of peace.

N
OW THAT HER THOUGHTS
were no longer full of Ted, Kendra was surprised to notice how much was going on around her. In these first weeks of 1849, every man, woman, and child in San Francisco was tingling with expectancy.

She could sense it everywhere. At home, on the street, in the trading posts, people were talking about one subject and only one. The steamer from New York. They were talking about the steamer and wondering who would be on board. “Wouldn’t it be fun,” exclaimed Marny, “if the steamer should bring somebody we know!”

For at last, at last, the gold fever had reached their countrymen on the Atlantic side. At last, real Yankee Americans were on their way from the States to look for gold in California.

True, during the past year hundreds of newcomers had poured in. Among them had been many Yankees. But these Yankees had not come directly from their own country. They had come from Hawaii, Oregon, Mexico. True again, some men had come here from the States since the gold fever began. But these were men who, like Warren Archwood, had not heard of gold before they left home. They had come out for other reasons, and heard about gold after they got here. A workman named Jim Marshall had found gold at Sutter’s sawmill in January, 1848; now it was January, 1849, and so far not one single person had come from the United States to look for gold.

But now they were on their way. They had learned about gold from the two military couriers who had been sent to tell them.

As Hiram had said to Kendra when they rode in from Shiny Gulch, these two men had set out last summer with reports for the national government in Washington. Commodore Jones of the navy had sent Midshipman Beale, Colonel Mason of the army had sent Lieutenant Loeser. Both men carried official letters. They also carried samples of gold.

Beale got there first.

He made a toilsome journey down to Mexico, across to the eastern side of Mexico, and up to Washington. He reached Washington in September. Here he gave his letters to the authorities, and showed them the sample he had brought with him. They said the stuff looked like fish-scales, but they sent it to the Mint. The Mint reported that the fish-scales were twenty-two carat gold.

Rumors of gold had already seeped into the States. Seamen who had left the west coast last spring before the storm really broke had told the yarns they had heard on the waterfront. Landsmen had shrugged and said, “Oh, you know how sailors talk.” Men in the army and navy, sending letters home by the ship captains, had mentioned that some fellow had found gold in the hills. Several such letters had been printed in the home town papers. The homefolks had remarked, “California sure does sound like a fine place.” Nobody had been excited.

Even after Beale got there, the homefolks did not get really excited. Not right away.

His news was announced by a Washington paper, the
Union.
A few days later it was repeated by the Baltimore
Sun.
Somebody brought a copy of the Sun across Mexico, and a week after Mrs. Chase’s party a vessel came from a Mexican port to San Francisco with this copy on board. The new weekly paper, the
Alta California,
quoted what the Sun had to say.

(Kendra thought the new paper was aptly named. Alta meant Upper. The Mexicans had long used the word to distinguish this region from their own province of Baja, or Lower California.)

The
Alta California
was published every Thursday in an office on Washington Street, a short way down the hill from Kendra’s home. On the third Thursday of January, 1849, Kendra read what the Baltimore
Sun
had said about Mr. Beale and his report of gold.

The
Sun
’s article was deceptively calm. The man who wrote it was either dazed or doubtful. Without exactly saying so, he seemed to be warning his readers—Now let’s not lose our heads over this.

Kendra was not surprised. She thought of Morse and Vernon telling her about the crackbrain who had come to town with his box of gravel. She thought of the quartermaster, saying this so-called gold was yellow mica. And Mr. Fenway, looking at Pocket’s rag of gold dust and saying it didn’t mean a thing.

But that man in Baltimore had been writing last September. Now it was January. Another vessel had brought news that the army courier, Lieutenant Loeser, had reached the port of Callao in Peru. From there he had gone on to Washington, carrying a box of gold and letters in which Colonel Mason described his own visit to the mines. Kendra said to Marny, “That column in the
Sun
must have been like a puff before an explosion.”

And any day now they would be hearing about the explosion.

They had long known about the steamboats that were going to connect the east and west coasts. On the fourth Thursday in January the
Alta
announced that the first of these steamers had left New York last October. The steamer had sailed three weeks after Beale had reached the States with his news. In San Francisco, everybody began exclaiming to everybody else, “There will surely be some gold-hunters on board!”

Through the wind and the rain they waited for the steamer. They climbed the hills and strained for sounds over the foggy water, hoping to hear the steamer chugging toward the bay. The rain kept on pouring. One day they even had a flurry of snow. January sloshed into February, and still the steamer had not come.

They passed the time somehow. Every night the saloons and gambling tents were full. Marny said men were gambling even more recklessly than they had gambled at Shiny Gulch. Warren Archwood came back from Honolulu with his cargo of brick and lumber. He brought enough to put up a building several stories high, with living quarters on an upper floor, but this was not possible as long as the ground was a sea of mud. For the present he built what people in San Francisco were beginning to call a “cloth house”—a frame of wooden beams with heavy canvas nailed over it. The “house” had a board floor, and several extra rooms divided by “walls” of canvas, which men could rent for private games.

Archwood also built a smaller cloth house for Lolo and her Blackbeard, Troy, and their baby son, born the first week in February. A few days before his birth a schooner had brought news from the States that General Zachary Taylor had been elected President, so they named the baby Zachary in the President’s honor and called him Zack for short.