What Gold Buys Page 4

  An elbow-tussle ensued only to be disrupted by a fifth with ragged curly black hair tufting from under a faded red cap. He batted the boater off The Herald newsie, sending it to the filthy boardwalk, and announced, “The Independent tells the news with truth and integrity! We don’t print lies. And we don’t just repeat the party line of politicians, local or national!” A pointed glare with this last statement sent the Chronicle ragamuffins scurrying after easier prey.

  Mark laughed, a touch of admiration coloring his surprise. “Looks like your silver tongue out-shamed the competition, son. Jed Elliston’d be mighty proud of your hawking on his behalf.”

  The boy looked more suspicious than gratified at the praise. His eyes, shadowed by the cap’s brim, narrowed. “You know Mr. Elliston?”

  “Of course. I happen to be part-owner of this here spit-and-sawdust, along with this fine lady you almost knocked into the street.”

  The urchin pushed up his cap, giving them the once-over. “You Mr. and Mrs. Stannert?”

  With the daylight now full on his face, the newsie, Inez noticed, had very disconcerting eyes—one brown, the other greenish, almost hazel. Inez bet the newsie got constant grief and comments about the oddity, which probably explained why he wore his hat yanked down.

  “We are.” Inez disentangled her arm from Mark’s grip and dusted off the side of her traveling coat where the newsies had bumped into her. “Any self-respecting businessman or woman in town better know all the publishers and chief editors of every one of the local papers.”

  “Doesn’t hurt to know the scribblers and newsies as well.” Mark winked.

  The boy shook his head. “I didn’t start no trouble. Just want you to tell Mr. Jackson that. Mrs. O’Malley, she can’t tell us one from another. So’s I just want you and Mr. Jackson to know that Tony Deuce—that’s me—didn’t start the bother and didn’t cuss out Mrs. O’Malley when she said to shush. That was Ace that done that.”

  So, we have an Ace and a Deuce. Inez guessed “Deuce” was probably for the eyes, unless he was second in command of the ragtag band. Inez was tempted to ask if the other three who had scurried off might be nicknamed Jack, Trey, and Four-Spot.

  Tony darted a glance at Ace in his checkered jacket, thrusting a paper under the hawk-like nose of a bespectacled gent. “Mr. Jackson, he’s always nice to us. Lets us in to hawk our papers and sometimes gives us biscuits ’n pennies for emptying the spitboxes when they get full-like and it’s really busy.”

  Inez stifled an urge to roll her eyes. Abe. Always a soft touch for orphans and strays—or those asserting to be such.

  Mark nodded “It’s a deal, Tony Deuce. So, how much?”

  “Two cents, and a bargain at the price.”

  Money and paper exchanged, the boy tugged his cap lower over his forehead, mumbled a barely intelligible “Thank you Mr. Stannert” and beelined toward his companions. The newsies were now hustling a cluster of well-dressed gentlemen that seemed to be contemplating the odds of crossing Harrison to reach the Merchants and Mechanics Bank on the other side of the street.

  “You shouldn’t encourage them,” Inez said. “It sounds to me like Mr. Jackson is letting kindness overrule good sense. I’d wager of the five at least two are pickpockets and probably a third is acting as someone’s outside man, looking for an easy mark to steer to some shell game.”

  “Darlin’, you are possessed of a magnificently devious and suspicious mind. No doubt they are just trying to make an extra couple pennies to put bread on the table for their families.” Mark pushed the door open for Inez and swept the folded newspaper forward with a slight bow, an invitation to enter. “After you, Mrs. Stannert.”

  Inez closed her parasol and stepped into the comforting gloom of the Silver Queen Saloon: her domain and domicile.

  Her first thought was that it was unusually quiet. All she could hear in those first few seconds was the squeak of chairs, a phlegmy cough or two, and the clink of cutlery on dishware. As her eyes adjusted to the light, she saw it was just as crowded as one might expect on a Friday before supper and quitting time. Satisfyingly populated, far from empty—the saloon was never empty except for the few brief hours when it closed in the wee hours before dawn. When the sun rose and the workday began, the Silver Queen reopened in time to supply flapjacks and a morning chaser for those who needed to dispel the fog before their shifts began.

  “Long time no see, Mrs. Stannert!” said someone in the interior gloom. A sudden scraping of chairs heralded the prompt rising of the men in the large room, accompanied by greetings that included “God save the Queen!” It was a salutation that many of the regulars had adopted early summer, and much as Inez pretended to demure, she secretly enjoyed the honorific. It satisfied her to think that others viewed her and the establishment as inextricably intertwined, almost one and the same. It was even more important that this be the case now that Mark was back and moving easily into the accepted masculine role as chief architect and public face of the Silver Queen.

  A slightly rumpled fellow from the nearest table, standing with the rest, tipped his hat and said, “Glad you’re back, ma’am,” and added in an undertone, “and not a minute too soon. That Mrs. O’Malley, she drives a hard bargain and wields a mean stick.”

  Satisfied that order reigned in the absence of anyone more ferocious than Bridgette O’Malley, the saloon’s cook, Inez looked around the large shadowed room, finally spotting Bridgette behind the bar. Which was odd, as Bridgette didn’t hold with liquor and focused on the victuals end of the business. The other oddity was the rolling pin she held in one hand and was tapping lightly, but meaningfully, into the palm of the other.

  Mark brushed past saying, “Mrs. O’Malley, everything under control?”

  She turned toward him, her steel-rimmed oval glasses flashing with a stray sunbeam that snuck in the door with them. Her stern visage brightened. “Why, Mr. Stannert! And ma’am! Welcome back!” She edged out from beyond the bar, ceding her position to Mark. “No problem, no problem at all. I raised five boys by myself, and a handful they were, not to be cowed by threats of a switching. This lot are easy by comparison. A promise of special cheese biscuits if they behaved, and the threat of cutting them off of all but black coffee if they didn’t, plus a knock on the head if things got out of hand.” Clutching the wooden instrument of pain and cookery close to her ample bosom, she approached Inez while Mark busied himself with removing his outer coat and greeting the men who had moved forward to order something stronger than coffee.

  Bridgette continued, “And where is Sol, bless the boy? He was supposed to go to the station and meet you both. Did you walk all the way here?”

  “Oh, he’s on his way. I left him on Pine with the luggage and walked. He’s probably making his way up State now.”

  Inez glanced at Mark. He was smiling and nodding as Chet Donnelly, one of the regulars, regaled him with a story of how he’d just offloaded a worthless claim for a “pretty penny” to a greenhorn. “Was like takin’ candy from a baby, Mr. Stannert, you shoulda seen. I’d bought that hole in the ground for a spit and a song a whilst ago, hopin’ somethin’ had been overlooked, and was thinkin’ of lettin’ it loose anyways. I’d loaded up a shell with some high-grade cerussite, turned old Bessie to the drift face and let her go.”

  Mark said, “You know, Chet, someday someone’s going to catch you at that game and turn a shotgun on you.”

  “They gotta catch me first. Anyhow, no sooner done, well, I done it a bit ago, but anyways, I bump into one o’ those foreigner dandy types, all bright-eyed and hopeful, just across the street here. Tells me a prognosticator said that Lady Luck was smilin’ on him, but he has to act fast. Well, looks to me like he’s got gold burnin’ a hole in his pockets and mebbe Lady Luck was smilin’ at me, ’cause, Lady Luck’s the name of my claim, and that’s the truth. I showed him some assay papers that might or might not have been touched up a bit and
offered to take him up to the district right then for a gander. He said no need, his mind was made up.”

  Inez was intrigued. “He didn’t even bother to look at the claim?”

  “I tell you, Lady Luck, she wasn’t just smilin’, she was givin’ me for free what fellas gotta pay for on them fancy bagnios on Fifth.” Chet beamed a snaggle-toothed grin through his bird-nest beard, obviously much pleased with himself. “He didn’t want to wait another minute, just said, ‘How much?’ I named a lowish figure—was just aimin’ to get it off my hands, ya know—and he didn’t argue. Paid cash. That foreigner fella, just too greedy for his own good, probably thought he’d sneak somethin’ over this old-timer who don’t know nothin’ for nothin’. Guess it’s up to me to teach fellas like that a lesson, eh?” Chet caught Inez’s eye and winked. “Buyer beware, eh, Miz Stannert?”

  “They should certainly beware when you are the seller, Chet,” answered Inez.

  Bridgette nudged Inez’s elbow with the rolling pin and said in a stage whisper, “Ma’am, a private word?”

  Inez nodded and turned to Mark. “I’ll go help Bridgette pull those biscuits out.” She regarded Bridgette. “No word from Mr. Jackson?”

  Bridgette nudged her again, toward the kitchen. “There’s some things better not talked about in the company of men, ma’am.”

  Once through the kitchen’s swinging door, Inez was hit with the seductive scent of melted cheese melded with warm biscuits. Bridgette dropped the rolling pin on the scarred, massive pine table, which was littered with pans of cooling biscuits. “Mr. Jackson, he came by a wheel of cheese at a bargain price, and now I know why, because it’s starting to turn blue. I’m putting it in everything I make, before the mold eats it away. Cheese in biscuits, cheese on eggs, cheese in flapjacks, cheese sprinkled on the stew…I’m of a mind to make a cheese soup and be done with it. It’s getting to the point when I can’t stand the sight or smell. And I loved cheese, once. No finer delicacy back in forty-nine, when Mr. O’Malley and I were new to California and the goldfields.”

  “You brought me into the kitchen to have a private word about cheese?” asked Inez, as she reached for a biscuit.

  “Oh no, ma’am, not at all, but please, help yourself, eat a dozen if you want.” Bridgette ran a critical eye over Inez, from the top of her hat to the toes of her shoes. “You know, ma’am, I think that trip did you good. You look like you put a little flesh on those bones, which you certainly needed, and there’s a nice color in your cheeks. And your hair has a nice shine. My lands, I do believe it’s grown several inches in those two months you were with your sister and your boy down in the Springs.”

  Inez touched the chignon at the nape of her neck, wondering how Bridgette could infer anything about her hair length, being that it was cranked into a tight knot. Since she’d hacked off her “crowning glory” last December, Inez had been fighting the impulse to pick up a pair of scissors and do it again. As her chestnut hair attained a feminine length, Inez found that she mourned the loss of freedom that had accompanied short hair. “They fed us well in Manitou and Colorado Springs, all that rich food for the consumptives. Lots of cheese, butter, milk, fresh meat. Now, Bridgette. What did you want to tell me?”

  Bridgette cleared her throat, and glanced nervously at the door. “We’re worried about Mrs. Jackson, we being Mr. Jackson and me. She’s well past her time, no matter how you count the months, and we all know, don’t we, that she was in a family way before Mr. Jackson married her. Didn’t matter a speck to him, he makes that clear, and who knows who the father is, what with her,” Bridgette flushed, “well, with her past. But that’s water under the bridge.”

  Bridgette took a deep breath. “Mr. Jackson, he doesn’t hold with midwifery, and he’s been saying that all manner of women—I can’t really say whether ladies or not, but I expect more not than otherwise—keep showing up at home and offering advice and potions and such. Drives the poor man crazy, he calls it ‘tomfoolery of the worst sort.’ I don’t know that I agree, I’ve done my share of helping with birthings in my day and know a few things myself. I offered to do what I can, but he’ll have none of it, says he’ll only allow Doc to see her, now that things are getting so out of hand.”

  Inez swallowed the last bite of the biscuit she’d consumed during this wandering speech and said, “What do you mean things are ‘getting out of hand?’ Is she delivering at last?”

  “Well now, we don’t know, do we? Mr. Jackson left in a hurry earlier today, and he’s not back yet, and there’s been no word one way or another. I’m nearly beside myself with worry. Mrs. Jackson, she’s such a wee thing, and oh my, last time I saw her, well, I’m surprised she’s still able to walk, that’s all.”

  Inez had started unbuttoning her travel coat in the warmth of the kitchen, but now reversed her activity. “I’ll go right away and either return with a report or send a runner.”

  “Bless you, ma’am. I just didn’t want to go into all this with menfolk present. You understand. Speaking of menfolk…” her voice lowered again, although there was none but the two of them present in the cheese-filled kitchen. “Reverend Sands, he’s back in town. He came in asking about, about…Well, he didn’t know that Mr. Stannert and you were…” Bridgette stopped, uncharacteristically at a loss for words. “I didn’t know what to tell him, ma’am. And he came back several times, asking if we’d heard anything from you, more impatient each time.”

  Inez’s throat closed up. It felt as if a hand had reached into her chest and was slowly squeezing her heart, forcing all breath away. She gave herself a shake. First things first.

  “The good reverend will have to be patient,” said Inez. “After all, what’s that passage from the Bible?”

  “Love is patient and kind?” offered Bridgette. Then, seeing Inez’s expression, she tried again. “Be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer? Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial?”

  Inez pulled her glove on. “I was thinking ‘Admonish the idle, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with them all.’ Patience is a virtue, and who better to practice it than one who preaches it?”

  She gave Bridgette’s sleeve a little pat. “Besides, whose side are you on? When Mr. Stannert first returned, you flirted shamelessly with him and seemed to plead his case. Now that Reverend Sands has returned from his time away, it sounds as if you are taking his side.”

  “That’s not a question for me,” said Bridgette, peering at Inez over her glasses, “but one for you.” She lowered her gaze to the biscuits. “I’d better take these off the pans and get them out to the tables. They all behaved themselves in there, and I did promise cheese biscuits if they did so. Now, ma’am, you should go.”

  Inez waggled a finger at her. “Bridgette, don’t think for a minute that you can scold me and send me away like an errant schoolgirl. And don’t meddle in things that aren’t your affair.” Wincing a little at her own choice of words, Inez added, “Please tell Mr. Stannert where I’ve gone, and ask Sol to put my things upstairs in my rooms when he arrives.”

  With that, she left the kitchen, passed through the saloon and out the State Street door. Setting her face toward the Arkansas Valley and the high mountain peaks beyond, she proceeded at a brisk pace toward Abe and Angel Jackson’s home.

  Chapter Five

  Shadows were stretching up the street, which was beginning to refreeze into an unstable icy mush as she paused outside the saloon. A flash of red caught her eye, and she recognized the determined newsie, Tony, nimbly dodging traffic across State, weaving in and out amongst the churning wheels and hooves. He made it to the far side of State, and then, with a quick look around, vanished into one of the small openings between buildings. That path, Inez knew, spilled out into Stillborn Alley, the older and even more disreputable sister to Tiger Alley, which ran behind the Silver Queen.

  What would such a young newsboy want with Stillborn Alle
y?

  It certainly wasn’t a place where anyone would buy a newspaper. At most, the denizens of Stillborn would scavenge discarded papers to stuff in the chinks of the sad hovels they called home.

  It wasn’t any of her business.

  It wasn’t on her route to the Jacksons’ home.

  It wasn’t even particularly safe—although, she reasoned, it was safer now in the waning sunlight than after dark.

  Still…

  Almost as if under by a spell, Inez found herself crossing State and marching down the well-trod path between Bedford & Reed, Lawyers, and the Grand Central Theater, straight into Stillborn Alley. The alley was a labyrinth of irregular small hovels and shanties that formed French Row at the top of the block and Coon Row at the bottom. The occupants of these two pockets of prostitution and attendant vices were separated by color of their skin but united in poverty and desperation. Most of the quarter’s denizens were not visible, either gathering strength for the business that darkness would bring or still recovering from the previous night’s commerce. A small slight shadow topped with red darted between two ramshackle structures. Inez stopped in her tracks. Tony froze almost at the same time as she, and they exchanged wary stares from a distance.

  He broke eye contact first, pulling his hat lower over his brow and disappearing around the corner of one of the cabins. Inez pushed herself into motion and, as she passed the cabin, she took its measure, partly out of curiosity, but also out of caution. This was not her territory, and if it was the boy’s, well then, best to be vigilant. There was no telling if he might be alerting a confederate to the fact that a well-dressed woman, not of the area, was wandering about…alone.

  A board nailed above the door held the carefully painted legend FUTURES AND FORTUNES TOLD. She kept walking, keeping an eye out for the easiest way to head back onto State Street and out of the row. A creak of protesting hinges caused her to back into the shadow of one of the small shacks. The ill-fitting door to the fortuneteller’s abode swung open. Tony stepped out, frowning, and looked around. His scrutiny passed over Inez without stopping. He either didn’t see her, or dismissed her in favor of some more pressing concern.