Staking a Claim Page 11

  When the mob finally came, they had torches, so I could see the bully faces in front. Behind the front rows, the faces looked different. Many looked embarrassed. They didn’t seem to want to be part of the mob.

  The Fox reminded us again to stay calm and not fight back. Then he announced to the mob in English that we were leaving.

  A dozen Americans began to grab our things and go through them. They began to take some stuff. Some of the Americans, though, were ashamed and pulled the looters back. We gathered up our scattered belongings, including the disguised gold.

  The mob kept the strongbox, but there was only a small amount in it.

  As I stumbled into the dark, all I could think was, Who will feed the swans?

  Later

  We’re taking another short rest. I should sleep but I can’t.

  I should be glad to escape a place so deadly. And yet I feel as sad as when I left Tiger Rock.

  I haven’t been here a year and yet I’ve come to think of Big Bend as home. And all the animals as my kin. Sometimes the land is so beautiful it takes my breath away. And the thought of leaving it makes me ache inside.

  If only we could get along with our neighbors.

  Still later

  Leave it to the Fox. He’s already come up with a new plan.

  He said the gold is getting too hard to find, and once you find it, it is even harder to get it out. It takes hydraulic equipment, and only a big company could organize that. I thought of the huge hose carving out the mountainside that I had seen on my way up.

  Prosperity suggested setting up a really big company with that kind of equipment. A lot of people know the Fox has a nose for gold. They would invest in his company.

  The Fox said he knows ways to find gold more easily. The trouble is the Americans. If we put in too many improvements, we would just make ourselves an even more tempting target for some group of claim jumpers.

  However, the Fox insists that there is other work for us in this province. He has heard that the Americans want to build levees and reclaim some of the Sacramento delta. The mountains have been pouring rich soil down the river for years. But that kind of work is too hard for Americans. Though it might not pay as well as mining there would be a lot of jobs for Chinese.

  That’s cheered up everyone. We’ll still be able to send money home. It’s not going to pay as much, but it’ll still be something. And American money will still be worth much more in China.

  The real important thing is that the American bullies won’t be jealous.

  What had the Fox said? One step ahead? He was dancing on nimble feet way in front of everyone else.

  April 22

  Califia

  We’re safe. We’re in another district called Califia. The Fox says that in the first few months of the gold rush, the hoards of miners stripped the gold from here. There are hardly any people in the district, American or Chinese.

  All of us are breathing easier.

  Uncle, though, is strangely quiet. That’s a bad sign.

  April 23

  We followed the river all day without seeing anyone else.

  It’s like the end of the world. The only signs that humans had been here were the rotting rockers and ruined shacks.

  We’ve camped for the night on an abandoned claim. The shack’s roof is gone. A broken rocker sits beside the bank. Holes dot the banks. It looks like a battlefield.

  The bank juts out like a finger, forming a breakwater. The river forms a lazy eddy behind it, which the Fox said would be a good spot for gold to drop out.

  It’s a good thing we’ve stopped, too. My feet are so sore that I soaked them in the river. For once, I’m grateful the water is icy cold.

  Uncle sat like a lump beside me. He said he didn’t see how we’d ever get really rich piling up dirt for levees. It’s like we’re in prison and every day we have to do hard work.

  I reminded him of what the Fox said — that we’ll still be sending home something. It might be less but it will still be a lot by Chinese standards. But Uncle just kept staring at the river.

  The cook fixed a quick meal. Since we can eat only what we could carry away, everything’s rationed. The meals are small — about what they’d be back in China.

  But we’re alive. That’s the important thing.

  April 24

  I can hardly write these words. Uncle’s left me.

  This morning he told the Fox that he was going to stay and prospect. He bought his own ticket here, so he was free to leave like any employee. The Fox didn’t need a carpenter anymore.

  The Fox thought he’d lost his senses. After all, we’d just gotten chased off our claim by a mob. Uncle might not survive the next mob.

  Uncle said he would search around here for a new claim. The Fox had said it was safe enough.

  The Fox tapped his nose and said, “That’s because there’s no gold, or this would have told me.”

  Uncle has plans for home. He can’t carry them out piling up dirt.

  The Fox shook his head but suggested that I go with him.

  I was scared at the idea of staying in the gold country. However, I thought of Uncle left alone in the mountains with his bad luck. He wouldn’t last a week.

  So I said I was going to help Uncle.

  Uncle tried to use his authority as the head of the family and tell me to go with the Fox.

  I refused.

  Uncle said I was useless to him. He didn’t want me hanging around his neck anymore like a stone.

  I started to cry. Even if Father and Mother didn’t need me, I had been sure Uncle did.

  Uncle kept saying a lot of hurtful things. I tried to remind him that he had been glad when I came.

  He insisted that had been a lie and said I was nothing but a burden on him.

  The Fox came over and put his hands on my shoulders. As we walked away, he told the cook to leave some supplies and a few tools with Uncle.

  The others made their farewells to Uncle, but I stood by the path ready to go. When we left Uncle, I didn’t even look back.

  We‘ve made camp for our noon meal. However, I’ve had no appetite. I have to talk to someone, even if it’s only my diary.

  How could Uncle say those things? How?

  Evening

  I am writing this quickly by moonlight. I tossed and turned for hours. I can’t let Uncle die in the mountains. Even if he doesn’t love me, he is still family.

  Everyone is asleep. I’m going to leave a note for the Fox and then sneak away and find Uncle.

  April 25

  About an hour after midnight last night, I reached the shack where we had left Uncle.

  Uncle was sitting by the river. His shoulders were silvery in the moonlight.

  I hesitated, expecting him to say more hurtful things. However, I’d had time to rehearse a speech. So I told him I’d try my best not to be a burden.

  Uncle came rushing toward me before I could finish. He gave me a big hug. He told me he hadn’t meant what he said.

  I asked him why he had said it, then.

  Uncle thought I would be safer with the Fox. Those hurtful words were maybe the hardest things he’d ever had to say.

  I’m not ashamed to say that we both wept. When we finished, we decided to look for gold in the morning.

  To change our luck, I spun on my heel and recited, “Spin around, turn around, luck changes.”

  With a chuckle, Uncle copied me.

  When we entered the shack to go to sleep, I had to laugh. There isn’t any roof. We might just as well sleep outside.

  However, the shack does have a fireplace. After we had gathered branches, I got a good fire roaring in the fireplace. Then we lay down in our blankets.

  As I stared at the flickering flames, I thought of Mother. I used to squat by the front of the stove feeding the fire while she cooked. She used to like to hum, and the flames seemed to dance to her tune.

  When will I see her again?

  Later

  Just had the
worst nightmare. The mob was chasing me. I tried to run, but there was mud all around. I kept slipping and sliding and the mob kept gaining.

  I must not have slept for very long, though, because the fire is just now dying. There are little dots of light all over the dirt floor of the cabin. They look like the torches the mob carried.

  We’re safe. We’re safe. For now.

  Still later

  I’m trembling so badly I can barely write these words.

  As I stared at the glittering floor, my curiosity got the better of my fear. What was reflecting the light?

  So I crawled out of my blanket and crept across the floor with my nose almost touching the dirt.

  I smelled gold. After spending all that time drying it and weighing it with the Fox, I know its smell by now.

  That’s it. Drying it!

  The owner of the claim probably got the gold from the river. That means he had to dry it at night just as the Fox did with his gold.

  There is gold dust scattered all around us.

  I’ve got to wake Uncle and tell him.

  Night

  When I first told Uncle my theory, he didn’t get excited.

  Instead, he said it was an interesting idea, but why didn’t the owner pick up the gold?

  I said that maybe the light had to be just right from the fireplace.

  Uncle looked thoughtful. He admitted that he hadn’t noticed it when he first came in here. And it had still been day then.

  I tried another explanation. The Fox had said this area had been worked in the early months of the gold rush. There was still plenty of easy gold then.

  Uncle eagerly agreed. He said that maybe the owner thought the floor wasn’t worth the time.

  I said that the owner had probably thought there would be nuggets just waiting to be picked upriver.

  “Maybe even big as melons,” Uncle had to laugh.

  His boast in the village seems so long ago now.

  We’ll wait until sunrise. One of the walls should give us the lumber to build a rocker. Then we’ll know.

  I don’t know how much sleep I’ll get, though.

  April 26

  It took half the day to build the rocker. Then Uncle dug up a shovelful of soil by the fireplace. Carefully he carried it over to the rocker. I used my hat to pour water in.

  Gently we began to make the rocker sway. Water ran through the holes at the bottom.

  Then we held our breaths as the water poured out.

  Uncle got discouraged right away when he didn’t see anything.

  I leaned my head this way and that, studying the wooden cleats from all angles. “Wait,” I said. There was a faint gleam of light.

  I ran my fingertips along the edge and held it up. Bits of gold clung to it.

  April 27

  Evening

  We’re rich!

  It took only one and a half days to get a small pouch of gold! Uncle says we’ll make our melon-sized nuggets the hard way, one flake at a time.

  April 29

  We went into town to buy supplies and tools like pails and things, but we were careful not to bring too much gold with us. Uncle let me do the talking since I’ve learned more American than he has.

  The Americans laughed at us when we registered our claim. Then they told us there is no gold up there.

  Uncle was curious when I insisted on buying a big chamber pot but he gave in.

  Later, when I told him what the Fox used his chamber pot for, Uncle had a good chuckle.

  May 4

  We’ve cleaned out the cabin floor.

  Uncle says our method of mining is worth more than the gold itself. We have to protect it.

  I agree, so we’ve filled in the holes and smoothed over the dirt floor with branches. When we were finished, it looked just as we had first seen it.

  Now it’s on to the next abandoned claim.

  May 24

  We stop only at abandoned claims where there was likely to have been gold at one time. Uncle and I have picked up a lot from the Fox and his nose for gold. We look for spots where the river widens and the water slows, or behind breakwaters like our first claim. Sometimes we look inside the bends of the river or in the pool of slow water that forms just before the rapids.

  So far we’ve tried ten more abandoned claims on this side of the river. Not every miner was careless, but two more have paid off. One of them was the richest of all.

  Every time we file a new claim in town, they laugh at us some more. We’re just the crazy Chinese to them.

  We just smile.

  While we work, I tell Uncle about some of the investment schemes I heard from my friends and some of the miners’ letters. Uncle agrees with me that a store might be a good idea sometime in the future.

  Uncle says that maybe once we have the store, we’ll bring some of our cousins over from China.

  May 26

  We’re going to take our gold into Sacramento. It’s time to bank it.

  May 27

  En route to Sacramento

  It’s so strange to be riding a wagon back to Sacramento. The wagon’s going directly there, so the trip is much shorter than when I first went into the gold fields.

  Our gold is in a basket that I’m sitting on. No one looks twice at two dirty, raggedy guests. And we muddied up our basket to look just as run-down as us.

  The hills are green from the winter rains. In the dells where the water gathers, flowers are blooming. I think you could grow anything here.

  Hiram’s right. It’s the soil here that’s the real gold in America. Once the metal’s gone, it’s gone. The earth will keep bringing up new crops each year.

  I wonder what happened to Hiram and his dream of a farm?

  May 31

  Sacramento

  I am writing this while the clerk in the American bank finishes weighing and recording our deposits.

  When we arrived on the wagon in Sacramento, I saw that it was all new. About a month after I came through here, a terrible fire burned down everything.

  When we opened our basket in the American bank, the bank clerk was very curious. He kept wanting to know if we had made a big strike. On the way down here, though, Uncle and I had already decided to just smile and say as little as possible.

  Once we get our bank draft, we’ll go over to Chinatown to the headquarters of our district back in China.

  Then we can send some of the money in the American bank back to China. I wish I could hear the clan when our money gets there. They’ll say Uncle must have luck as big as a mountain.

  Later

  I am writing this in the boardinghouse. It’s in Chinatown, but it has real American beds! No straw mats on the floor. The bed is as soft as a cloud. Finally I feel rich.

  The room is above a restaurant. Such wonderful smells are coming from the kitchen. My mouth is watering.

  Uncle says we’re going to order everything on the menu and a lot of things that aren’t.

  Guess who we bumped into at the district headquarters? The Fox was sitting in the office doing some business.

  His jaw dropped, and he stared at us like we were ghosts. Uncle promised him we were real enough.

  The Fox shook his head in disapproval. He thought we must be starving because we are so bony.

  However, it is my cooking. I am better at finding gold than at making meals.

  The Fox looked like he felt sorry for us. He urged us to work for him on the levees. All our friends are doing well.

  Uncle winked at me and told the Fox that he’d think about it.

  The clerk just curled his lip up at us. He didn’t even offer us a chair.

  However, when Uncle handed him the draft from the American bank, the clerk’s eyebrows shot up. He held the paper up to the window and studied the signature every which way to see if it was a forgery.

  Uncle told him to check with the bank. The clerk immediately sent an assistant scooting over there. In the meantime he offered Uncle a seat. This time he called Uncle �
�sir.”

  When Uncle demanded a chair for me, the clerk got up and gave me his chair!

  Soon the assistant came back from the American bank. Our draft was good, he told the clerk.

  The Fox had stayed in his seat. Now he leaned over and sniffed us. “I smell gold.”

  Uncle said truthfully that there is nothing left in the rivers.

  The Fox wondered if Uncle had found the secret of turning rocks to gold, then. Uncle just complimented the Fox and said he had taught us well.

  The Fox took off his hat to scratch his head. He couldn’t have been that good a teacher if he didn’t have a clue as to what he had taught us.

  We had outfoxed the Fox!

  When Uncle offered to take him to dinner later, the Fox accepted but said he’d rather know the secret.

  Next we ordered some food and supplies. Then the clerk nodded politely to Uncle’s ragged and patched coat and informed us that the store carried a full line of clothing.

  Uncle fingered the worn material of my sleeve. I could see he was weakening.

  However, if robbers see us in new clothes in the gold fields, they will come after us. I whispered to Uncle that if we show up in Califia with new clothes, we’ll wind up being buried in them.

  So Uncle sighed and told the clerk not yet.

  As the Fox said, a guest has to be nimble of foot.

  Then we told the clerk that we will pick up our purchases in a few days. After that, we checked into the boardinghouse and had baths. Uncle figures we can be clean while we’re in Sacramento — even if we have to get dirty again before we leave for the gold fields.

  Then we went to the barber. Uncle had a shave and we both had the crowns of our heads shaved and the sides trimmed. We even had the wax scooped out of our ears. The real deluxe job, just like rich gentlemen!