Into the Bright Unknown

  “Oh, thank you kindly for offering,” Becky says. “It’s so dreadfully cold out. A cup of tea would be perfect. Do you want a cup of tea, dear?”

  I realize she’s talking to me. “Coffee, please.”

  “And sugar,” Becky says. “Lots of sugar.”

  We pass the morning supplied with a side table, and restored at regular intervals with fresh tea and coffee. Becky pretends to watch the lobby, deflecting conversations with the proprietor and anyone else who comes along. I keep an eye on the bank.

  Gold from last night’s winnings pokes at my mind from the rooms above our head. After the proprietor leaves to make his rounds, I feel some of it moving out of the rooms and away, disappearing without coming down the front staircase.

  By early afternoon, the rain has let up. We enjoy fresh sandwiches from the kitchen, while Becky pretends to enjoy the company of the hotel’s cook. Across the street, the bank’s clerks leave in small groups for lunch, and then return. It takes hours, but eventually even Becky’s mighty composure crumbles into fidgeting as she becomes bored and restless, ready to call it quits.

  But my daddy taught me how to hunt with that Hawken rifle Jim returned to me. He showed me how to hole up in a blind and wait for my quarry to come along, even if it meant staying for hours in the cold and snow. Days, if we were desperate enough.

  Sitting in the parlor of a hotel, even a low establishment like this one, is so much easier than sitting in a deer blind. Nobody ever brought me fresh coffee or sandwiches in a blind.

  Becky is deflecting a fresh round of questions from the afternoon manager when I finally see our target. “There he is,” I announce, rising.

  Becky nearly spills her cup of tea.

  “You’ve spotted the lady’s husband?” the manager asks.

  “Sometimes if you can’t catch them going, you get them coming,” Becky tells him, and we rush out the door. At the corner, we pause to catch our breath.

  “You’re sure it’s him?” Becky asks.

  “Absolutely.” I drop my voice to a whisper. “I sense his bag of gold. Also, he has two armed guards.” I point to the two men leaning against the wall beneath the veranda. One is pushing a wad of chewing tobacco into his mouth, while the other blows on his hands to warm them. “They were with Frank Dilley the other day. Which means they might recognize us. Are you ready to do this?”

  “As long as my constitution holds,” Becky says. “I should have taken the opportunity to relieve myself when I had the chance.”

  “If I’m right, we won’t be in there long.”

  “We weren’t counting on guards. How do we get past them?”

  “We’ve as much right to go to the bank as anyone. We’ll just lower our heads and—”

  A cry of “Tag! You’re it!” rings out at the far end of the building, and Sonia’s group of urchins tears around the corner, bumping into everyone below the veranda before scattering in all directions. The guards give chase, patting down their pockets even as they tear after the children.

  Sonia’s group must be well practiced at pickpocketing to bump and grab so quickly and easily. It couldn’t have happened at a better time. While the guards are distracted, Becky and I dash across the street and into the bank.

  The moment we pass through the door, a clerk rises to assist us. I pause to catch my breath, because the gold in this room is overwhelming. Here, it’s less like a choir singing and more like a giant crowd shouting at the top of its lungs.

  “How may I help you ladies?” the clerk inquires.

  I blink rapidly, trying to focus. As planned, I pull a handful of large gold nuggets from the plain leather purse I carry, then screw up my face like it’s hard for me to think, which is not entirely an act. “Found this. Prospecting.”

  He’s seen larger amounts of gold, but his eyes widen appreciatively.

  Becky steps in and covers the gold with one hand, placing her other on my shoulder. “My friend’s a hard worker, but a little . . . unsophisticated,” she says. “I’ve tried to tell her not to carry nuggets like these around—that’s just asking for trouble. I’ve told her that she should have it converted to coinage. And she ought to keep it in a bank, where it can be safe.”

  I take stock of the bank while she’s talking, trying to ignore all the gold weighing down my senses. A long counter divides the space. Behind the counter are a few desks, and behind the desks is an iron cage bolted to both floor and ceiling. The cage contains both a small strongbox and a larger safe.

  Mr. Keys sits at one of the desks. Across from him is a gray-haired man with heavy jowls, who appears to frown even when he smiles. Likely Mr. Owen, the owner of the bank.

  “I don’t see many prospectors of the female persuasion,” the clerk notes. “It’s too hard a life for the weaker sex.”

  Becky bristles. “I’ll hear no more from you about the weaker sex until you’ve birthed three babes.”

  “I . . . of course. Apologies.” He wisely changes the subject. “Is that all the gold that your friend has?”

  “Oh, no, sir, I got lots more,” I say, and I flip my purse, like I’m going to dump it on the floor. I can tell the clerk is trying to gauge its weight with his eyes. Becky grabs my hands and stops me again.

  “You have to forgive her,” Becky says. “She works day and night. I think the mercury has affected her some. She uses so much of it, refining the gold she finds.”

  “Some people have a knack,” the clerk says with a shrug.

  He doesn’t know the half of it.

  “Let’s retire to the privacy of my desk,” he offers, signaling to the far end of the room.

  “I like that desk over there,” I whine. “It’s by the pretty window.” Which is just about the daftest thing to say, but I can’t think up another excuse.

  Becky shrugs, as if to say, “What can you do?” The clerk accommodates my request by taking us to the desk beside the window. Becky proceeds to ask him a number of pertinent questions about turning gold into coinage and the protection of this bank compared to others.

  From here, I have a perfect view of everything behind the counter, everything inside the cage. Which is where the bank’s owner is leading Mr. Keys.

  Mr. Owen inserts the key into the cage’s lock. The iron door creaks open, and everyone stops work for a moment. You’d think the bank would oil the hinges.

  “We have one of the strongest cages in the city,” the clerk is saying. Then he recites a flurry of details about its manufacture, installation, and maintenance.

  The owner steps aside, and Mr. Keys pulls out his namesake ring and sorts through a dozen options, looking for the correct key. I reckon he knows them all by sight, because he slides one into the small safe, and it opens correctly the first time.

  Mr. Owen removes himself from the cage and looks discreetly in the other direction. I have no such compunctions and gawk like a child at a carnival.

  Before we came, I warned Becky that I wouldn’t be at my level best, not surrounded by so much gold, and we decided I would act a bit touched to cover any lapses. Good thing we did, because there there’s enough gold in that safe to ransom a kingdom. Stacks of coins and ingots. Hundreds of pounds. More than I have ever seen—or sensed—in one place at one time.

  Mr. Keys removes even more gold coins from his little bag and stacks them carefully inside. When finished, he makes a notation on a ledger inside the safe; then he pulls a small notebook from his bag and writes what is certainly a matching entry. He locks up the safe and exits the cage. Mr. Owen latches the cage behind him. They shake hands, and Mr. Keys passes us on his way out. Becky has her back to him. I lean against my hand to hide my face. If he recognizes either one of us, he gives no indication.

  “So you’re saying you can turn these nuggets into gold coins for a small percentage of the weight?” Becky says, pulling me back into the conversation.

  “A nominal fee. The Pacific Company is known to charge up to twenty percent, and many other banks in town will requi
re a similar amount. Our fee is only ten percent.”

  “What about impurities?”

  He smiles. “Yes, our assayer determines the level of impurities in the gold, and that amount is also charged against the weight.”

  I imagine that it amounts to at least another ten percent.

  “But everyone does the same,” he assures us. “Did you know that forty million dollars in gold was collected by miners last year?”

  It boggles the mind. “How many gold coins is that?” I ask.

  “Let’s use the fifty-dollar eagle as the standard. In that case, the total number of coins would be . . .” He pauses to think.

  “Eight hundred thousand gold coins,” Becky says.

  “No, it’s . . .” The clerk counts his fingers. “Oh, yes, it’s about eight hundred thousand gold coins. You guessed right.” He smiles at her like she’s a performing dog.

  “That seems impossible. Where would people keep it?” she says.

  “We estimate that half of it went out of the country, back to Mexico, or Peru, or Australia, maybe Sweden or China—wherever the miners came from. They struck it rich, packed up their money, and took it home. Once California is a state, we’ll pass more laws to keep foreigners out in the first place. We want as much of that gold as possible to stay right here in the United States where it belongs.”

  “We’re all foreigners here,” I point out, forgetting for a moment that I’m supposed to be a bit addled by mercury.

  Becky shoots me a warning look. “If my friend wants to keep her money safe until she needs it, she can store some of it here?”

  “Absolutely.” He twists in his seat and indicates the cage. “Our strongbox is the most secure in the whole city.”

  The strongbox is little more than a traveling trunk, with breakable hinges and a flimsy padlock. It doesn’t contain a quarter of the amount in the safe that sits beside it. There’s so much gold in the safe that I feel slightly sick, like I would after eating a whole pie, when all I needed was a single piece.

  “But the safe,” I say. “The safe looks safe. I want my money safe. In a safe.”

  “My friend likes the safe,” Becky says. “The big black one. Is it available to customers?”

  “That’s a Wilder Salamander safe, one of only a few in the entire state of California,” the clerk says. “It’s got double walls, insulated, to protect the items inside in case of fire. State of the art. But that’s the personal safe of one of our most elite customers.”

  “But I just saw somebody put something in there?” I say.

  The clerk smiles at me. “As I said.”

  Becky says, “He must be a very good customer.”

  “He’s very nearly a bank unto himself,” the clerk exclaims, and then, glancing at the gray-haired owner, decides that circumspection is called for. “But let me assure you that your friend’s money will be triply protected here. First by the strongbox itself, which only the manager has keys to. Then by the cage, which is similarly locked. And finally by the guard who patrols our building at night.”

  “That’s a lot of protection,” Becky says.

  “It’s not safe if it’s not in the safe,” I say, failing to sound angry.

  Becky puts a hand on my arm. “Why don’t you go outside and get some air? I’ll join you shortly.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” She knows I want to lay eyes on Mr. Keys if I can. I give her a grateful look and exit the bank without another word. Beneath the veranda, I scan the square for Mr. Keys and his guards, but they are already gone.

  Becky joins me outside a few minutes later. “You’ve upset the poor gentleman. He’s very concerned that if you take your business to another bank, they’ll take advantage of you. On the positive side, young Mr. Owen—he’s the son of that other fellow—is impressed by my mathematical abilities, considering that I’m a woman, and he asked me to tea, which I reluctantly declined.”

  I grin, in spite of the churning in my belly. “I’m getting sick from being near so much gold,” I whisper. “Let’s walk.”

  We stroll into the plaza, and I feel a little steadier with each step. Halfway across the square, Jefferson slides in beside us.

  “Hello, Lee, Becky. How’d you like the distraction? I ran into Sonia’s little gang and paid them to make a ruckus so you could slip past Mr. Key’s guards.”

  “That was clever,” Becky says.

  “We saw where Hardwick keeps his gold,” I say, and I describe everything we observed in the bank. “It’s more gold than I ever imagined. More than one man could ever spend or need.”

  “Then I have some bad news for you,” Jefferson says.

  “Worse news than ‘He has more money than we could ever steal’?”

  “Yes, worse than that.” We cross the street and head downhill toward the Charlotte. The scent of saltwater marsh rises to greet us. “I found Hardwick’s main business office, which is at his house. His mansion, I mean. Takes up half a block. And I started following our pal, Mr. Keys, first thing this morning. This bank wasn’t his first stop. It wasn’t even his second.”

  “Where was he going?” I ask.

  “To other banks,” he says. “He took a large bag from Hardwick’s office, went to a couple of banks, made deposits, and then went back to Hardwick’s house to collect another bag.”

  “I counted forty-seven gold coins in his deposit,” Becky says. When I look at her in astonishment, she says simply, “Well, something like that. It was hard to count and talk at the same time, so I might be off a coin or two. Assuming they were all fifty-dollar coins, which seems to be the most common denomination, that’s a deposit of two thousand three hundred fifty dollars. Three of those comes to more than seven thousand dollars! Just this morning.”

  “More than three banks,” Jefferson says.

  “Exactly how many banks?” I ask, my voice rising to a near-panic register.

  “Eleven,” Jefferson says.

  Becky and I stop in the middle of the street to stare at him.

  “This was his eleventh bank visit of the day,” he assures us. “In and out within a few minutes at each stop. Like it’s something he does every day. But that’s not possible, right? There’s not that much gold in all the world.”

  “Maybe there is,” Becky says. “According to Mr. Owens Junior—who seems a reliable compendium of details, even if he’s a bit slow at multiplication—California is home to at least twenty million dollars in gold.”

  “No wonder I was so distracted when our boots first touched this territory,” I say. “It was like a constant ringing in my ears.”

  Jefferson nods. “And Hardwick is trying to get it all.”

  Becky resumes her journey toward the Charlotte and gestures for us to keep pace. “This job just got a lot more complicated,” she says.

  “Yep,” I say. “We need to think bigger.”

  “And smarter,” Jefferson adds.

  Chapter Ten

  When we paid Hardwick four thousand dollars to settle my uncle’s debt, we thought it was a lot of money. But it was nothing.

  Four thousand to settle a debt.

  A few thousand to auction off the pieces of someone’s house.

  A few thousand more for a man’s freedom.

  These little bits and pieces add up. No doubt this is how Hardwick’s fortune started. But it’s clear that the big money in San Francisco is now being made in property, through land sales and rents. If Hardwick is filling safes in eleven banks, then this is how he’s doing it.

  Jim Boisclair has been in San Francisco for months, and I figure if anyone can help me suss it all out, it’s him. So I arrange to meet Jim early the following morning at Portsmouth Square.

  I spring out of bed and scarf down a quick breakfast, eager to see my friend. Even though it’s not raining, the air is so damp with fog, it might as well be. I don a wool coat over a flannel shirt and sturdy trousers, and I’m still cold.

  Jim is already waiting for me, leaning against a lamppost. He tip
s his hat and grins.

  After we exchange greetings, I say, “Are you sure we can’t ride? Peony could use the exercise.” She’s taken well to being stabled in the hull of a ship; it’s the not smallest or worst place I’ve had to keep her. But I know she likes to stretch her legs.

  “You don’t see as much when you’re riding,” Jim says, pausing to blow on his fingers and rub them together for warmth. “You rush by, in too much of a hurry. Might as well hire a carriage with curtains on the window—that way you don’t have to see the truth or talk to anyone at all.”

  I sigh, but I don’t disagree.

  “But I’m real glad to hear that pretty mare of yours is all right,” he adds. “I remember the day she was foaled.”

  “I couldn’t have made it here without her,” I say. “Which way are we going?”

  “Up,” he says. “We’re going to tour some of the city’s most profitable areas, where Hardwick makes most of his money.” He leads the way west, up the city’s hills. The steep climb warms me quickly. “Pay attention as we go, and tell me what you see.”

  “And what are you going to do?” I ask.

  “I’m going to point out the things you’re not seeing.” It’s exactly the kind of thing my daddy would say, and it puts a lightness in my heart.

  Everywhere we go, people are already up and working. Clearing land and roads. Loading wagons full of dirt, unloading wagons full of supplies.

  “I see a lot of people working hard,” I tell Jim.

  He smiles. “That’s a good start.”

  Jim has always been one of the most sociable people I’ve ever known, and traveling across a whole continent has not changed him one bit. He stops and talks to everyone who will speak to us, and he isn’t shy with his questions. Do they own the land or rent it? Some rent it. More say they own it, but when Jim asks about prices, it sure seems like they’re paying installment plans at rates that sound a lot like rent. Why are they working so hard to improve it? So they can sell it for a profit once they’ve paid off the loan. A handful of the laborers are Negro, and they take plenty of time to answer Jim’s questions and give specific answers. We spend almost half an hour talking with an enthusiastic fellow named Isaac who hails from Cincinnati.