In some ways, Louis Kent wasn't overfond of Captain Bart McGill. The captain treated Israel shabbily. But lying in the dark and listening to the murmurous voices beyond the curtain, this was one time he believed Captain Bart was right.

Because of the gold, Yerba Buena was changing. It was no longer a pleasant place. Maybe not a safe place, either. He'd seen some of the rough characters drifting into town. He'd felt the young deserter's knife against his own throat. He feared there'd be more of the same in the months to come- Right then, he altered his thinking about the east. It might be better if they left California- But they weren't going to leave. His ma had won the argument-as usual.

The gold was changing her too, though. Changing her into a new person. Someone even more forbidding than the stranger who spoke of Boston. That he feared most of all.

Chapter III.

Christmas Among

the Argonauts

i

"CONFOUND IT, AMANDA! FORTY-EIGHT thousand, then."

"Not for sale, Sam," Amanda said, handing cups of Thirty Rod to the miners elbowing Brannan at the plank bar. "Lord knows why you need another piece of property-"

"Not need, my dear. Want."

"Your wants should be well enough satisfied by the dozen plots you've already bought. Not to mention that shipload of carpet tacks which I hear you're selling to carpenters at four times cost."

"Don't act so damn virtuous. Wouldn't you do the same thing?"

"Of course. That's why pouring you a Christmas drink is the limit of my generosity for the evening."

"One side, one side!" Israel yelled, pushing past the crowd at the bar. He held two platters of grizzly meat with side helpings of oysters. Two more were precariously balanced on his forearms. He was jostled and shoved, but he managed to deposit the food on one of the tables. Out in the kitchen, Felix, the recently hired Frenchman, was screeching about the inhuman pace of his work.

Israel's expression made it evident he didn't enjoy the duties of a waiter. But the Mexican girl, Conception, had quit to work in a bordello for much higher wages. He scribbled a chit and flung it down. "Pay the boy when you leave." He pointed an elbow at the podium by one of the front windows.

Behind the podium, Louis Kent sat on a stool. On the podium stood a quill and inkstand, a balance and a set of weights. Immediately to Louis' left, six-foot Billy Beadle lounged at the front door, a big slung-shot conspicuously displayed at his belt.

Billy kept watch on the men packing away food and drink in Kent's public room. He was one of the lately arrived Sydney Ducks-Australians transported to San Francisco by a government desperate to rid itself of the criminals in its overcrowded jails. Bruises on Billy's face testified to his fondness for brawling. His size and obvious strength helped keep the customers from sneaking out without paying-or from wrecking the place. Virtually all the customers were miners down from the diggings on a holiday, or would-be miners heading for the camps. Hardly a one of them was sober.

The air in Kent's was heavy with tobacco smoke and the aromas of its eclectic menu. The miners demanded everything from the hottest Mexican chili to duck, plover, trout and antelope. The stink of sweat mingled with the more exotic odors; most of the miners were none too concerned about their grooming.

As he struggled back toward the bar, Israel reflected that white folks had always looked pretty similar to him. That certainly was true of the men who came down from the American and the Yuba and the Feather and all the other obscure forks and branches and intersecting creeks on which strikes were being made. The men the newspapers called the modern Argonauts tended to dress alike after a few weeks in the diggings: flop-brimmed hats that they never bothered to remove indoors; flannel shirts; dark pants; heavy boots. Their individuality was further blurred by an almost universal adoption of chest-length beards. In the whole noisy, smoky, smelly place, Amanda Kent was the only person who looked distinctive and halfway appealing this Christmas Eve in the year 1849. Of course she was also the only woman.

At the bar, Brannan was saying, "You should realize forty-eight thousand dollars is a damn generous offer!"

Israel stopped, leaned over the exasperated man's shoulder and said, "Don't you settle for less than a hundred thousand, Miz Kent."

"A hundred thousand!" Brannan exploded. "Your nigger's a bigger swindler than I am!"

Unexpectedly, that hurt more than Brannan's use of the word nigger. Israel had made his remark without thought. Now he realized he was unconsciously being caught up in the mood of avarice that pervaded Kent's these days.

He showed no anger at Brannan's term for a colored man. With the exception of Amanda and her son, every white person used it. He didn't like it, but shrugging off a word was a lot easier than avoiding outright trouble in San Francisco anymore. He thought he'd escaped that sort of trouble when he fled Mississippi- He walked warily wherever he went. Fear was his companion again, just as it had been on the plantation. There a man toted his cotton basket to the gin house fearing he'd be whipped if he brought in even a few ounces less than his quota. At the same time he feared that if he brought in too much, he'd be expected to deliver the same quantity the next night-and would be whipped if he failed. Israel had been free of that kind of constant fear for quite a few years-and now it was back.

"Sam," Amanda said, "do you want some Christmas whiskey or don't you? You're not going to buy Kent's this evening or anytime. I told you last month and again last week-the property isn't for sale."

She said it with a charming smile. Yet the smile somehow seemed less genuine than the ones Israel recalled from their first days together down south.

Amanda Kent was very alert, brisk and energetic for a woman of her age. In fact she drove her employees-and herself-twice as hard as a man might have. And she always looked handsome in the bargain- That was true tonight. Her hair was neatly done-though turning grayer, Israel had observed of late. Her dress of yellow taffeta was the sole spot of bright color in the restaurant. She had chosen the dress from the pages of a Godey's Lady's Book McGill had brought her. The dress itself had come with the captain's most recent cargo. He was on the lucrative New York-California freight run now; three round trips since that regrettable night over a year ago when Brannan had returned with his quinine bottle full of gold.

At the moment McGill was eastbound around the Horn. Israel was glad. He and the captain would never be friends. And while McGill made an excellent business partner for Israel's employer-and was also her lover, he knew-he wasn't sure the arrangement was doing Amanda any good.

Oh, she'd prospered-mightily. She'd realized four hundred percent from her first investment in a quantity of pickaxes and pans. Then she'd switched to lumber, which couldn't be milled fast enough up in the hills to feed San Francisco's construction boom. Kent's itself had used part of the lumber, adding a second floor-a thirty-man dormitory. For bed and breakfast, Amanda charged twelve-fifty.

Like everything in town, the price was inflated. But the hopeful, pathetically overequipped arrivals from the packets and clippers paid it without protest, staying a night or two before they bought passage on a river skiff, or set out on foot for the diggings. Right this minute, through the ceiling, Israel could hear one of the gold-hunters bellowing an exuberant celebration of his future: Then blow, ye breezes, blow! We're off to Californi-o- Brannan refused the drink Amanda had offered. "All right, Sam," she said. "I don't want to be rude, but you're taking up space for a paying customer." Shaking his head, Israel started on for the kitchen.

There's plenty of gold, So I've been told, On the banks of the Sacramento!

The singer slurred the last notes into a whoop and a couple of stomps that vibrated the flimsy planks overhead. The mulatto's frown deepened. A lunatic with no future except an imaginary one that fumed out of a liquor bottle was of no consequence to him. But Amanda was. And her behavior worried him. She no longer had time for anything but business. No time for the boy, for instance-Israel had taken over Louis' lessons.

"Israel? Hey, chum!"

The yellow-skinned Negro turned in response to the shout from Billy Beadle.

"There's a chap outside who'd like to talk to someone from the establishment."

Israel pointed to Amanda. But she was busy filling cups with Sixty Rod, the god-awful whiskey that was twice as strong as its counterpart, Thirty Rod. A whiff of either was supposed to flatten the unwary at the indicated distance, even around corners.

"See what the man wants, Israel," Amanda called as Brannan jammed his silk hat on his head and left.

With a sigh, Israel started for the front. He overheard snatches of conversation. One miner bragged he'd soon see color on his claim now that he'd teamed up with some partners and installed a long torn. Another complained that it was a crime the way greasers could walk the streets as freely as whites. Greaser was a catchall term for the Mexicans, Peruvians and Chileans pouring into the town along with Americans, Frenchmen, Englishmen, Australians and even a few Germans.

The remark put another scowl on Israel's face. Then he reminded himself that he was a free man. If he didn't like the situation in San Francisco, he could always leave- Yet he stayed, and would stay, because he was loyal to his employer, as well as fond of her. Amanda Kent was one of the few human beings who had ever treated him as a person. To most of the others he'd known during his thirty-two years, he'd been either subhuman, or property, or both.

His wife Cissie, whom he'd married at age sixteen in Mississippi, had been property. He'd been forced to stand by and see her whipped when she was pregnant with their baby. She'd brought in too little cotton to the gin house, so the big boss ordered a pit dug in the ground-a pit in which her bulging belly fitted as she lay facedown. He was whipped unconscious when he tried to interfere. When he woke much later, he learned that Cissie had lost the child. She was sold off within two months. No white person on the plantation had expressed one word of regret to Israel, and he'd never seen his wife again- Amanda Kent wasn't that sort of white woman. She was kind, thoughtful of others. At least she had been until the damn craziness struck the whole town- One more example of it was waiting outside. In the spillage of lamplight through the smoke-grayed plate glass windows, Israel spied a young, yellow-haired miner on muleback. Reeling drunk. Armed with a pistol and a knife, too. A bad combination.

At the door, Billy Beadle said, "Don't know what the bucko wants, but he's got fat saddlebags."

"So I see." As Israel stepped out to the plank walk, Louis gave him a wan smile. Isn't exactly the kind of Christmas Eve a boy should have, Israel thought.

He stopped at the edge of the walk Amanda had installed at her own expense. "Something we can do for you, mister?"

The stranger kept himself from falling by hanging onto the mule's neck. He squinted at Israel. "You a white man?"

Israel gnawed his lower lip. Christmas, he thought sourly.

"That make a difference to you?"

"Well, if you ain't white, you sure as hell ain't the owner of this place."

"The owner sent me out to ask what you want."

"Simple. I want a good swallow of Sixty Rod-"

Puzzled, Israel shook his head. "Then bring in the bags. You've got dust in them, haven't you?"

"Damn right I have. I been up at Sullivan's Creek, pulling out a hundred, two hundred dollars in every pan."

Israel rolled his tongue in his cheek. If the young miner was telling the truth, he was one of the lucky ones, the few lucky ones. There were supposedly fifty thousand men in the diggings-men who had come by ship around Cape Horn, or over the Panama isthmus with a change of vessels, or the whole way across the continent in wagon trains from Westport and Saint Jo back in Missouri. Israel had heard that more than seven thousand wagons had rolled toward California during the good weather this year.

"You want a drink, come on in," Israel said, still not understanding the delay.

The miner leaned forward. He would have tumbled into the mud-it was San Francisco's rainy season now-if Billy Beadle hadn't dashed from the doorway and propped him up.

"For"-the miner belched-"for a coon, you're a mighty dumb one. I don't want to walk in and drink. I want to ride in and drink."

Billy said with a grin, "I don't think your mule would fit through the door with those bags hanging on him."

"I don't want to ride through the door," the young man replied. "I want to ride through that."

He jabbed a finger at one of the two glass windows.

Billy looked dumbfounded. Israel started back inside; the windows were recent additions, and costly.

"You better find someplace to sleep, mister. You're already dreaming."

"No goddamn coon's gonna tell me-" the miner began, reaching for his pistol.

"None of that, chum," Billy exclaimed, seizing the miner's wrist just as another voice interrupted.

"What on earth's taking you so long out here?"

Amanda stood in the doorway. The miner saw Billy's other hand lift the slung-shot from his belt, and all at once lost his urge to fight.

Grinning again, Billy took the heat out of the situation. "Why, nothing much, Mrs. Kent. This laddy just asked to ride through the window and have a drink."

"Ride through?"

Amanda stopped, studying the miner. Thunderstruck, Israel watched her smile.

"That's a pretty peculiar request. Why do you want to ride through a window, young man?"

"Ain't ever done it before. Ain't ever seen a window that big, either."

"Don't you have glass windows where you come from?"

"I come from a farm in Illinois and, no, we don't, 'cause my papa's poor."

"But that doesn't really explain-"

"Listen, are you the owner?"

"That's right."

"Well, we're making progress, anyway. I wasn't gettin' anywhere with the coon." He swept off his filthy hat. "They call me Flaxtop up in the diggings, ma'am-"

"I don't give a damn what they call you-you get!" Israel said, reaching for the mule's bit.

"Calm down, Israel!" Amanda snapped. "If you can't keep your temper, go inside."

Astonishment sapped Israel's anger almost instantly. He rubbed his eyes. Lord, he was tired of this upside-down existence, where you never knew what to expect next. He was tired of working seven days a week. He was tired of the noise in town-even on Christmas Eve, shouting and laughter and piano music poured from the plank and canvas and brick hotels and gambling dens and brothels that spread out from Portsmouth Square, lighting the peninsula with hundreds of glowing lanterns. The night was so bright, he could even see the masts of the abandoned ships in the bay-seventy or eighty of them, left to rot at the end of one-way trips from Panama or New York. Their crews had rushed to the diggings right along with their passengers- It was mass insanity! And Amanda had fallen victim to it. Why, she'd even considered hiring four Chilean whores for the second floor until he talked her out of it, convincing her it wouldn't be suitable with young Louis on the premises.

As further proof of the way her wits had deserted her, Amanda was actually treating the miner's request seriously. "You really want to ride through one of my windows?"

"I sure do. I struck pay dirt and I want to celebrate. I got the dust to pay for the privilege"-he reached back to slap a saddlebag-"plenty of it."

Israel headed inside. No doubt she was just being courteous to the young fool- He pulled up short at the sight of her face. Lord God in heaven. She was considering it!

With a cool smile, she said, "Your fun won't come cheap, Flaxtop."

"I guessed not, ma'am. How much?"

She pondered. "Seven hundred and fifty dollars for the window-there's no plate glass manufactured in the United States, you know. It's imported from Europe. Add another two hundred and fifty for general damage. The Sixty Rod will be on the house."

Even Billy Beadle gaped. Israel performed some quick calculations. Allowing for freight charges, Amanda could order a new window from the east coast for maybe five hundred, repair some broken furniture for a hundred or a hundred and fifty. Her terms were outrageous; but she'd presented them with an absolutely straight face. His stomach started to hurt.

"You're sayin' a thousand?"

"One thousand," she repeated. "If that's too steep for you-why, Merry Christmas."

She pivoted away from the miner. Israel marveled at the way she bluffed. It worked.

"Hang on! I-I guess I can afford it. You got yourself an arrangement, ma'am."

Amanda acted unruffled, as if what was happening was an everyday occurrence. "Fine. We'll give our guests a little holiday entertainment with their suppers. Billy, you carry those bags inside. Weigh out the equivalent of a thousand dollars. Flaxtop, you wait right here until I move a few tables."