California was swarming with white men of various nationalities in flannel shirts, pants tucked into their boats, revolvers in their belts; Chinese in quilted jackets and full trousers; Indians in ruined military jackets and bare behinds; Mexicans in white cotton and enormous sombreros; South Americans in short ponchos and broad leather belts in which they carried knife, tobacco, gunpowder, and money; travelers from the Sandwich Islands, barefoot and wearing brilliant silk sashes—all in a hodgepodge of colors, cultures, religions, and tongues, but with a single obsession. Eliza asked each of them about Joaquín Andieta and urged them to spread the word that his brother Elías was looking for him. As she moved deeper and deeper into that territory, she realized how enormous it was and how difficult it would be to find her lover in the middle of fifty thousand foreigners constantly on the move.
Eliza’s party of bone-weary Chileans finally decided to stop and set up camp. They had come to the valley of the American River in a time of baking heat, with only two mules and Eliza’s horse left: the rest of the animals had fallen along the way. The land was dry and cracked, with no vegetation but pines and oaks, although a swift-running, clear river rushed down from the mountains, leaping over large boulders and cutting through the valley like a knife. On both banks were rows and rows of men, digging and filling pails with sandy dirt they washed through a sluice, a contrivance that looked like a child’s cradle. They worked bareheaded in the sun, legs in icy water, clothes soaking wet; they slept stretched out on the ground, weapons in hand; they ate hard tack and salted meat, drank water polluted by the hundreds of excavations upriver and liquor so adulterated that many ended up with cirrhosis or the D.T.’s. Eliza watched two men die within a few days, writhing with pain and bathed in the foamy sweat of cholera, and was thankful for the wisdom of Tao Chi’en, who had taught her not to drink water that hadn’t been boiled. No matter how thirsty she was, she waited until evening when they camped to brew tea or mate. From time to time they would hear shouts of jubilation, which meant someone had found a gold nugget, but most were content with extracting a few precious grains from tons of useless dirt. Months earlier, it had still been possible to see gold particles gleaming beneath the clear water, but now nature was turned upside down by human greed, the landscape altered by heaps of dirt and rocks, great pits, rivers and streams diverted from their beds and the water caught in countless pockets, thousands of tree stumps where once there had been forests. Getting at the gold sometimes called for the determination of titans.
Eliza did not mean to stay, but she was worn out and knew that she could not keep aimlessly riding on alone. Her companions had staked a claim at the last of a line of miners, some distance from the nearest burgeoning town with its tavern and general store where miners could buy basic supplies. Their neighbors were three Oregonians who worked and drank with uncommon endurance and wasted no time greeting new arrivals; on the contrary, they let Eliza and her companions know immediately that they did not honor the right of greasers to exploit American soil. One of the Chileans countered with the argument that the Oregonians had no claim, either, since the land belonged to the Indians, and the two would have drawn their weapons if the others hadn’t intervened and cooled things down. The air was filled with a constant uproar of shovels, picks, rolling rock, running water, and curses, but the sky was limpid and the air scented with bay. Every evening the Chileans would drop with fatigue while the counterfeit Elias Andieta started a small campfire to brew coffee and water his horse. Out of pity, Eliza also watered the wretched mules, even though they weren’t hers, and unbuckled their loads to give them a rest. Fatigue clouded her vision and she could barely control the trembling of her knees; she realized that Tao Chi’en had been right when he warned her that she needed to build up her strength before setting out on this adventure. She thought about the little board and canvas shack in Sacramento, where at that hour Tao would be meditating or writing with pen and China ink in his beautiful calligraphy. She smiled, amazed that her nostalgia did not evoke Miss Rose’s peaceful sewing room or Mama Fresia’s warm kitchen. How I have changed, she sighed, looking at hands blistered and burned by the harsh sun.
In the morning, Eliza’s partners sent her to the store to buy the supplies they would need to survive, and one of those cradlelike things for processing the dirt, because they saw how much more efficient that contrivance was than their simple pans. The one street in the town—if that was what the cluster of buildings could be called—was a mud pit littered with garbage. The store, built of logs and boards, was the center of social life in that community of solitary men. Anything bought in the area was sold there, and liquor was served in large quantities, along with a little food. At night, when the miners came to drink, a violinist livened things up with his melodies. A few men would tuck a kerchief into their belts, a sign that they were playing the part of women, and the others took turns asking them to dance. There wasn’t a single woman for miles around, but occasionally a mule-drawn wagon would pass through filled with prostitutes. They were avidly awaited and generously compensated. The store owner was a talkative, good-natured Mormon with three wives in Utah, who offered credit to anyone who would convert to his faith. He never took a drink, and while he sold liquor, he preached against the vice of drinking it. He had heard about a man named Joaquín and he thought the last name might be Andieta, he told Eliza when she questioned him, but that man had come through quite some time ago and the proprietor couldn’t say what direction he had taken. He remembered him because he had gotten into a fight between some Americans and Hispanics over a piece of land. Chileans? Maybe. All he was sure of was that he spoke Spanish; he could have been a Mexican, he said, to him all greasers looked alike.
“And how did it turn out?”
“The Americans ended up with the land and the others had to move on. How else would it be? This Joaquín and another man stayed here at the store for two or three days. They laid out some blankets there in a corner, and I let them take it easy until they mended a little because they were pretty well beat up. They weren’t a bad sort. I remember your brother, he was a young fellow with black hair and big eyes, pretty good-looking.”
“That’s the one,” said Eliza, her heart galloping.
PART THREE
1850–1853
El Dorado
Four men, two on each side tugging at heavy ropes, led the bear into a ring where a fired-up crowd sat waiting. They dragged him to the center of the arena and tied one hind leg to a post by a twenty-foot chain and then spent fifteen minutes undoing the ropes while he clawed and snarled with world-stopping rage. He weighed more than thirteen hundred pounds, his coat was dark brown, one eye was blind, he carried the rakes and scars of old fights on his back, but he was still young. Foaming slobber dripped from jaws filled with yellow teeth. Standing erect, slashing futilely with his prehistoric claws, he looked over the crowd with his one good eye, jerking desperately at his chain.
This town had sprung up from nothing in a few months’ time, built in a sigh by transients who never intended it to last. In place of a bullring, such as those in California’s Mexican settlements, it had a large cleared space that was used for breaking horses and corralling mules; the fence was reinforced with boards and wood bleachers had been added to accommodate spectators. The late November steel- colored sky threatened rain, but it wasn’t cold and the ground was dry. From behind the barrier, hundreds of spectators answered the animal’s every roar with a chorus of jeers. The only women, a half dozen young Mexicans wearing embroidered white dresses and smoking their eternal cigarettes, were as conspicuous as the bear, and the men greeted them with shouts of “Olé!” while bottles of liquor and bettors’ bags of gold dust passed from hand to hand. The gamblers, in their city clothes, fancy vests, wide neckties, and top hats, stood out among the rowdy, unkempt rabble. Three musicians were playing favorite tunes on crudely made violins, and as soon as they spiritedly attacked “Oh! Susanna,” the miners’ hymn, a pair of bearded clowns dressed l
ike women leaped into the ring and athletically danced a jig amidst obscenities and thunderous clapping, lifting their skirts to show hairy legs and ruffled drawers. They were rewarded with a generous shower of coins, cheers, and raucous laughter. When they left, a solemn bugle call and drumroll announced the beginning of the contest, followed by the guttural roar of an electrified crowd.
Lost in the throng, Eliza watched the spectacle with fascination and horror. She had bet the little money she had left, hoping to multiply it in the next minutes. At the third blast of the trumpet a wooden gate was raised and a young, gleaming, black bull trotted into the ring, snorting. For an instant the gallery was silenced with awe and then a full-throated “Olé!” engulfed the animal. He stopped, dazed, uplifted head crowned by long, unblunted horns, his intelligent eyes measuring distances, his rear hooves pawing the sand, until a growl from the bear caught his attention. His opponent had seen him and was scratching out a hole a few steps from his post, in which he lay flat, hugging the ground. At the cries from the crowd, the bull put his head down, tensed his flanks, and, raising a cloud of sand, charged, blind with rage, snuffling, steam issuing from his nostrils and slobber streaming from his lips. The bear was waiting. He took the first hook of the horn in the back; it tore a bloody furrow in his thick fur but he did not budge an inch. The bull trotted completely around the ring, confused, while the crowd egged him on with catcalls; he charged again, trying to lift the bear with his horns, but the bear took its punishment without moving, until he saw his chance and with one sure slash tore open the bull’s nose. Pouring blood, crazed with pain and disoriented, the attacker made a series of blind thrusts, wounding his enemy again and again but unable to rout him from the hole. Suddenly the bear rose up and grasped the bull’s neck in a terrible embrace, clamping his teeth in its flesh. For long moments they danced together around the circle described by the chain while the sand grew red with blood and the galleries echoed with the yells of the men. Finally the bull broke free, staggered a few steps, his legs wobbly and his gleaming obsidian hide stained crimson, until he collapsed onto his knees and sank to the ground. A great clamor celebrated the bear’s victory. Two horsemen rode into the ring, shot the loser squarely between the eyes, roped him by the hind legs, and dragged him from the ring. Eliza pushed her way to the exit, nauseated. She had lost her last forty dollars.
During the summer and autumn months of 1849, Eliza rode the length of the mother lode from south to north, from Mariposa to Downieville and back again, following the ever fainter trail of Joaquín Andieta from the rivers to the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. At first when she asked about him very few remembered anyone with that name or description, but toward the end of the year his figure began to take on real proportions, and that gave the girl strength to continue her search. The rumor had circulated that Joaquín’s brother was looking for him, and several times during that month the echo returned her own voice. More than once when she inquired about Joaquín she was identified as his brother even before she could introduce herself. In that broad region, mail from San Francisco arrived after months of delay, and newspapers took weeks, but there was no shortage of news that spread by word of mouth. How could Joaquín not have heard that she was looking for him? Since he had no brothers, he must be wondering who this Elías was, and if he had an iota of intuition, she thought, he would associate that name with hers. Even if he didn’t catch on, at least he must be curious to know who was posing as his relative. At night Eliza could scarcely sleep, fretting over various theories and haunted by the persistent doubt that her lover’s silence could be explained only because he was dead—or didn’t want to be found. And what if, in fact, he was running away from her, as Tao Chi’en had hinted? She spent her days on horseback and slept at night on the ground, anywhere, in her clothes, with her Castile blanket as a cover and her boots as a pillow. Dirt and sweat no longer bothered her; she ate when she could, her only precaution not to drink water before she boiled it and not to look Anglos in the eye.
By that time there were more than a hundred thousand argonauts in California, and more kept arriving, scattered all through the mother lode, turning the world upside down, moving mountains, diverting rivers, destroying forests, pulverizing rock, displacing tons of sand, and digging monumental pits. At the places where gold was found, the idyllic land, which had remained untouched since the beginning of time, was turned into a lunar nightmare. Eliza was constantly exhausted, but she had gotten her strength back and lost her fear. She started menstruating again when it was least convenient, difficult to disguise in the company of men, but she welcomed it as a sign that her body was finally healed. “Your acupuncture needles served me well, Tao. I hope to have children some day,” she wrote her friend, sure that he would understand without further explanations. She was never without her weapons, although she didn’t know how to use them and hoped she would never find herself in a spot where she had to. Once only she had shot into the air to frighten off some young Indians who came too close and looked threatening to her, but if she’d had to fight she would have come off badly because she couldn’t hit a burro at five paces. She had not refined her marksmanship but had improved her talent for making herself invisible. She could ride into a town without attracting attention, blending into groups of Hispanics where a boy of her looks would go unnoticed. She learned to imitate Peruvian and Mexican accents to perfection and so pass for one of them when she was looking for company. She also changed her British English for American and adopted certain indispensable swearwords in order to be accepted among them. She learned that if she talked their lingo they respected her; the rules were to not offer any explanations, to say as little as possible, to not ask for anything, to work for her food, to stand up to provocation, and to hold tight to the small Bible she had bought in Sonora. Even the crudest among them felt a superstitious reverence for that book. They were amazed by the beardless youth with a woman’s voice who read the Holy Scripture every evening, but did not make fun of him openly; just the opposite, some became his protectors, ready to beat up anyone who did. Among those solitary and brutal men who had sallied forth in search of fortune like the mythic heroes of ancient Greece only to find themselves reduced to an elemental existence, often sick, prone to violence and alcohol, there was an unconfessed tenderness and longing for order. Sentimental songs brought tears to their eyes; they would pay any price for a piece of the apple pie that gave them a moment’s respite from homesickness, and they rode miles out of their way to pass a place where children lived, and then sit watching them in silence, as if they were some kind of miracle.
“Don’t worry, Tao, I don’t travel alone, that would be insane,” Eliza wrote her friend. “It’s best to go in large groups, well armed and on guard, because the gangs of outlaws have multiplied in recent months. The Indians are fairly peaceful, although they look frightening, but when they see an unprotected rider they may take his most prized possessions: his horse, weapons, and boots. I join up with other travelers: salesmen going from town to town with their merchandise, miners looking for new veins, families of farmers, hunters, the speculators and land agents who are beginning to overrun California, gamblers, gunmen, lawyers, and other scoundrels who tend to be the most entertaining and generous travel companions. There are preachers about; they are always young and look like holy madmen. Imagine how much faith it takes to travel three thousand miles across virgin prairies for the purpose of battling others’ sins. They leave their towns filled with strength and passion, determined to carry the word of Christ to distant California, with no worry for obstacles or dangers along the road because God is marching at their side. They call the miners ‘worshipers of the golden calf.’ You have to read the Bible, Tao, or you will never understand Christians. Those pastors are defeated by broken spirits, not material reverses; they feel impotent before the overpowering force of greed. It is comforting to see them when they have just arrived, still innocent, but sad to meet them when they have been deserted by God, dragging from on
e camp to the next under a burning sun, thirsty, preaching in squares and taverns to an indifferent audience that listens with hats on and five minutes later is getting drunk with the whores. I met a troupe of itinerant actors, Tao, poor devils who stop in every town to entertain with pantomimes, off-color songs, and crude comedy. I traveled with them for several weeks, and they worked me into the show. If we could find a piano, I played, but if not, I was the ingenue of the company and everyone was amazed by how well I played the part of a woman. I couldn’t stay with them, though, because the confusion was driving me crazy; I didn’t know whether I was a woman dressed as a man, a man dressed as a woman, or an aberration of nature.”