Page 5 of Blowing Off Steam

A month earlier

Thomas Field Trueworthy was fuming.

First, he had finally admitted defeat in the gold fields. It was enough to toil in the roasting sun that reflected off the waters of the Merced River, frying men’s faces as red as their threadbare shirts that lined the banks of every river in the foothills. The filth, the belches, the farts—these were not the sights and sounds acceptable to a graduate of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York.

Gold had been petering out lately. The days where a man could pan out a thousand dollars worth of gold from his riffle box were coming to an end. Children handing their mothers seven-pound nuggets, or a man and his slave dreaming of finding twenty thousand dollars in gold under their floorboards—and finding it the next day—those times were gone. Field had come to California after hearing tales of men rolling barrels of gold dust into swank San Francisco hotel lobbies, and now he was lucky to see a fellow in the mines who could afford a bottle of whiskey.

Of course, that wasn’t a sight one was eager to see, either. Man was the only beast who drank to get drunk, and they drank out of horns with pointed bottoms so the drinker had to gulp it all before setting down the cup. The morning after a three-day spree was the worst, men with breaths as foul as that sultan who lived on poison, his breath causing instant death.

So Field had returned downcast to San Francisco, only to be bullied by some highfalutin former classmate, Ted Judah. Cursed by a letter from Judah declaring they would be the “pioneering railroad engineers of the Pacific Coast,” Field now haunted San Francisco’s embarcadero awaiting arrival of some steam engine parts Judah claimed he’d shipped.

This was Field’s only hope now that gold had given up the ghost.

And it would have been a gleaming beacon of hope, if only Field didn’t buck under the condescending assumptions Judah seemed to make. Mainly, that Field would do all the work assembling this engine prototype and setting up meetings with future railroad barons. These would have all been worthwhile pursuits if Field had thought of and instigated them himself. But he was doomed to wear the yoke of pride, and it wasn’t in his character to labor for any hoity-toity New Yorker, even if the railroad idea was a damned good one.

“The Henry Miller? She’s supposed to be arriving tomorrow.”

Field pounded the counter. “Yesterday it was today. Today it’s tomorrow? What, did the captain shout into the speaking horn all the way from San Diego? How do you know her arrival has changed?”

The shipping clerk must have been accustomed to irate, shouting men, for he merely glared at Field. “Says right here.” He jabbed his hammy forefinger at a piece of paper.

Field felt like arguing. He had nothing else to do. “Oh, so someone comes along and handwrites on that piece of paper and suddenly it’s gospel?”

The clerk shrugged. “You can wait for the Henry Miller. Outside.”

Field wanted to go outside anyway, so he wasn’t taking the clerk’s suggestion when he wound through the crowd of disembarking passengers and stevedores shouldering giant crates of oysters and bags of coffee beans. Finding a wooden post where only a chicken perched, Field leaned his butt up against it and lit a match from his match safe, puffing with enjoyment on his cigarro.

The anchorage was a field of raked and broken masts, emanating sizzling heat waves at this time of day. As land was at a premium here—citizens were constantly creating new land by dumping crates of sardines, bags of flour, and chamber pots at the edge of the shore—the vessels in harbor had been turned into hulks, floating stores where one could paddle a little skiff over and have a pound of sugar tossed down onto one’s head.

Field amused himself watching the doings aboard these hulks. Aboard one, two hookers ganged up against an offensive patron, hurling him over the rail and into a slick of chamber pot offal. Aboard a flat-bottomed Celestial vessel with a very high poop deck, many ricemen smoked their long opium pipes. Field remembered that he had wanted to sample that commodity but was afraid to venture into the Celestial section of town.

But finally, it was a seemingly ordinary event that changed the course of Field’s life. A side-wheel paddle steamer chugged serenely into the bay, her lacey stacks standing out in sharp relief against the cloudless sky, giving a toot on her whistle. Field had always wanted to go on a steamer. He had arrived in San Francisco on a clipper through the Chagres River in Panama, where he had proceeded to fall to a virulent case of the Chagres fever, along with nearly everyone else on board. He would like to try a steamer. They seemed more genteel, dependable, solid. And river travel certainly wouldn’t have you hanging over the rail puking the entire time. Maybe this steamer would continue to Sacramento. Field could bring his steam engine to Sacramento to his ostensible meeting with the magnate Mark Hopkins.

The steamer—the El Dorado, according to the giant letters painted on her side-wheel paddle box—approached the customs house as close as she could, dropping anchor about sixty yards from the wharf. A fellow who looked like a captain, from his hat with the patent leather brim, appeared at the stern. He was a rather handsome fellow from what Field could see from this distance, about his own age of thirty, very athletically made. As skiffs crowded the boat’s hull to see what goods were aboard, an odd thing happened.

The captain fell overboard.

Field was looking at him when he fell. The chap merely toppled, like a tree being felled. No flailing about, no shrieking, no cries for help, just plop.

Even odder, none of the three deckhands visible seemed to notice or care, and two Celestial stewards continued their determined padding about the decks with no concern. Some of the San Franciscans in the skiffs shouted out and pointed, but no one rowed over to see what the problem was. Field was about to dive in and save the fellow—he had maybe just come from the Chagres River and was ill—when he surfaced, spitting out great mouthfuls of salty water, gliding elegantly for the customs house.

Field frowned in consternation. Did the captain not wish to wait for a skiff to take him ashore? He would need to present his bill of lading before he could sell any of the items he was hauling.

His curiosity roused, Field wandered to where the fellow would haul himself ashore. When the captain reached the wharf’s ladder, Field even squatted to reach a hand down. Yes. He was the pilot, Field could tell from the dandy military bars stitched onto the shoulders of his burgundy frock coat. Water streamed off his long eyelashes and the tip of his aquiline, artistic nose, and he had retained his captain’s patent leather cap. His longish sandy hair flopped over one crystal-clear hazel eye. A very hearty, hale, broad-chested fellow obviously accustomed to the rough out-of-doors work of rigging lines and turning cranks, this man was the epitome of what Field wished to be. A man who made a successful living at a manly pursuit.

“Thanks for the hand, partner.”

“What happened out there?” Field inquired. “You sick?”

As though the idea had just occurred to him, the captain held a quavering palm to his belly and frowned something fierce. “Sick, yes. These here cyclone hurricanes off the coast near Monterey. Made everyone sick as dogs, vomiting off the rails. A sight to scare the witches. I’ve been in a bad way for several days now. And dang if I didn’t lose my papers in this saltwater bay.” He slapped his sopping pockets, as though he could tell instantly that his ownership papers were missing. “The fact of the business is, they must’ve floated off. Guess I’d better get the customs master to write me up some new ones. Thanks for the hand up, buddy.”

And he stalked off, his boots squishing, his nicely turned rear end shapely under the clinging coattails.

Yes, this fellow was masculinity personified, but an evil plot began to foment in Field’s brain.

Field liked to be in charge, in control. Pandering to Judah’s railroad scheme didn’t sit well with him. It was a splendid idea—San Francisco was obviously not fading into the bushes any time soon, even when the gold vanished—but since Judah would insist on being the president of whatever railroad company they concocted, with Field doing all the actual work, this idea was repellant to him. Judah had not invited Field to partake of this railroad scheme right out of university, and the only reason he was allowing him to join the venture now was that he was the only fellow Judah knew who happened to be in California at the moment.

It was time for Field to start concocting schemes of his own.