The Forty-Niner

The Forty-Niner

Thom Whalen

Copyright (c) 2019 Thom Whalen

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction, either in whole or in part, in any form. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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Book One:

Sailing to California

Chapter One: Goodbye, Farm

Back when I was a young man of eighteen, I was a Forty-Niner. God’s truth. I was one of those fellas who hied off to California, looking for gold, blinded by dreams of easy riches.

Before then, I was a dairy farmer in Pennsylvania. I guess, if you’re a stickler for the facts, my Pa was the dairy farmer and me and my three brothers was his farm hands — us and the occasional hired hand that he took on when he needed some extra help. Which wasn’t too often as Pa was tight with a nickel and didn’t care to pay a hand when he had sons to do the same work for free. But, once in a while, when work was piling on faster than we could finish it, he’d have to shell out some wages for an extra man.

It was one of those hired hands who made a Forty-Niner out of me, which wasn’t a hard job for him, I must confess. I was young and brash as a new penny and bored half to death with life on the farm.

One fine day in August, my brother, Willy, was swinging the scythe and I was stooking the hay behind him when a fella that we come to know as Gimpy Dick came lurching across the field. He asked Willy who owned the farm. Willy didn’t even put up his scythe, just pointed across the way to Pa with his chin while he kept on swinging. He was a demon for work, my brother Willy. He couldn’t be happy unless he cut twice the hay as me, and he always made sure I knew it.

I don’t know what Gimpy Dick said to Pa that got him hired for the rest of the harvest, but it must have been a pack of lies, because Pa never hired anyone who wouldn’t carry his own weight from Day One, and Gimpy Dick wasn’t up for that.

It wasn’t because Dick had a gimp leg. Truth was he could get around just fine. His leg could bear his weight easy enough; it just didn’t bend much at the knee. Fact is, I don’t think it bent at all. Nor was it that Gimpy Dick didn’t work hard. He didn’t, but he didn’t slack off all the time, neither. When someone was watching, he did about as much work as me or my brother Bram — which as I said, was about half as much as Willy.

Nope. Gimpy Dick’s shortfall was that he didn’t know nothing about dairy farming. He didn’t know a rake from a pitchfork. Didn’t know hay from weeds. I don’t think he even knew a bull from a cow. If our old black bull hadn’t of kept his distance from Gimpy Dick, Dick would have tried to find some part of him to milk.

I’ll never know why Pa hired a man who didn’t know one end of a cow from the other because I’m never going to ask. Most times, Pa’s all right, but he can turn mean as a snake if he thinks someone is questioning his judgment. He’s sensitive about that, believe you me.

And hiring Gimpy Dick to help with the harvest seemed to be about as bad a call as Pa had ever made. It was a wonder that Dick never took off his good leg at the ankle, the way he thrashed about with a scythe, cutting more air than hay.

I got along good with him, though. For all that he didn’t know about dairy farming, he knew everything about the world beyond Snyder County. Or so it seemed to me when I was a lad of seventeen who’d never been past Beaver Springs to the south or Walker Lake to the north.

Gimpy Dick had more stories than a preacher, and better ones, too, and he loved to tell them to anyone who’d listen. Loved telling them a lot more than he loved doing farm work, that’s for sure. And me? I loved hearing his stories a lot more than doing farm work. Which is likely why I got along so good with him.

He told me stories about the places he’d been and the women he’d had, the things he’d done and the women he’d had, and the people he’d met and the women he’d had.

I was mighty impressed by Gimpy Dick and his stories.

But the stories that impressed me the most — even more than his stories about loose women — was the stories about California.

He told me that some fella named Marshall found gold at a place called Sutter’s Mill near to San Francisco and now that Marshall fellow was rich as old King Midas.

Gold was plentiful out west. Big, shiny nuggets of pure gold, laying all over the ground, just waiting for a young man to walk over, pick them up, and put them in his pocket. All a man had to do was to get himself over to California and he was going to be as rich as a king in less time than it takes to tell the tale.

When my pockets was bulging with gold, I could come back to my sweet Lottie and she’d look at me different. I’d be a man of means. A man who could buy my own farm and stock it with a herd of the finest Holsteins in the valley.

Sweet Lottie would never look at the Martin boys again. She’d pay me some attention for once, dancing with me every Saturday night and no one else. And when I get up the nerve to tell her that I want to make her my bride, she’ll smile like summer sunshine and embrace my proposal with open arms.

Then she’d be my sweet Lottie at last. All mine.

But only if I was a man of means. A man whose pockets bulged with California gold.

After hearing Dick’s stories, I’d look over at the sunset and figure the reason the sky was colored gold was because the sunbeams was reflecting off those California nuggets.

Yes, sir, I had to get out west and get rich. No question about it.

All I had to do was get to California. Which was a problem to ponder, being as Gimpy Dick said it was just about on the other side of the world and would take a year to walk there.

But Gimpy Dick had the answer. I already knew he’d never been that far himself because he wouldn’t be milking Pa’s herd every morning, noon, and night if he had a carpet bag full of gold under his bunk. But he’d talked to plenty of fellas who had, so he could tell me how it was done.

You could go overland, but that was an uncertain path. You had to sign on to a wagon train and fight red indians every mile of the way. Them red indians wasn't so forgiving to the white folk who’d taken their land and slaughtered their buffalo, which was understandable.

Besides fighting indians, you had to suffer through droughts and deserts and blizzards and mountains. You had to ford raging spring floods and drag your wagons through chest-deep mud.

Gimpy Dick knew all about the dangers because he’d been an indian fighter and a cattle driver and a cavalry scout. He’d done it all. Everything but be a gold miner, only because that Marshall fella hadn’t yet discovered the gold when Gimpy Dick had been out west. But Dick’d been to the Texas Panhandle, which was more than halfway, and he told many a story about how there was little to recommend the overland route.

No. The way to go was by sea. Don’t head west; head east for New York, find a boat that was sailing around the Horn and up the West Coast and get off in San Francisco. A piece of cake. You got hired on as crew, weighed anchor, hoisted the sails, and then set back and let the wind blow you to the land of gold. And they’d pay you to do it, to boot.

What could be easier?

§

Come September, I’d made up my mind. I told Pa I was going to California.

Pa told me I was a fool and I wasn’t going nowhere but to the north field to start mowing. The hay always grew slowest there because it was on the shadow side of Willis Hill where the sun didn’t shine so strong, but it’d finally matured and needed harvesting before we got another rainstorm.

I don’t know why Pa even bothered planting the north field. We always stored up plenty of fodder from the other fields — more than enough to last the winter — but he was determined to squeeze every nickel out of his land, no matter how much extra work it took. Which isn’t surprising, I guess, being that he got the work of his four sons and three daughters for free.

But he wasn’t getting any more of my work for free. Not a lick. I wasn’t going to mow the north field; I was going to California, no matter what Pa said. And sooner rather than later.

I had but one problem. Pa wasn’t going to stake me, and I didn’t have no ready money. It’s hard to save money for a rainy day when you don’t get paid.

I asked my older brothers, Willy and Finn, if they had any money and they said they didn’t. I figured that Finn wasn’t flush — when he got his hands on a nickel, he spent it prompt — but I was pretty sure Willy was lying to me. He’d been hiding money away for the last couple of years because he was sweet on Maud Martin and he’d been seeing her in secret for a while and wanted to marry her, but she wouldn’t go for that until he could support her.

He was in a bind because he stood to inherit the farm when Pa passed on, but Pa was only thirty-eight and in good health and wouldn’t give up the ghost for another thirty years most likely. He was too stubborn to die young. Willy couldn’t wait that long to propose to Maud, so he was socking away every nickel and dime he could find.

I offered him a better deal. If he staked my trip to the gold fields, I’d bring back a few nuggets for him and he’d be rich enough to buy his own farm.

Willy wasn’t biting. He’d heard Gimpy Dick’s stories, but Willy wasn’t a trusting fellow, which was to his own disadvantage, as near as I could figure. It was a shortsighted man who couldn’t avail himself of a golden opportunity when it was all laid out in front of him, clear as Gimpy Dick and me could tell it.

You got to understand that I didn’t need a whole lot of money to get started. I didn’t have to pay my passage to California, only to New York City. When I made it to the harbor there, I’d sign onto a clipper and start drawing a wage and the shipping company would pay the rest of my way. I’d already make a profit from my trip even before I saw my first nugget.

I couldn’t lose, according to Gimpy Dick, who was the only one that approved of my plan whole heartedly.

I knew where Pa kept his savings — in an old coffee tin under a loose board in his bedroom — but it never occurred to me to take an unauthorized loan from him. I was no thief — never have been and never will be. Even if I’d left a note for him, promising to pay him back, taking his money would have been stealing, pure and simple.

So, what it came down to the end was that my only choice was between either staying and spending the rest of my life on Pa’s farm, working for him until he kicked it, then working for Willy until I kicked it; or leaving without a penny in my pocket, and trusting to God and my wits to survive and prosper.

For a boy of seventeen, that was no choice at all. There was only one thing I could do.

Every morning, Pa and the boys get up as soon as the dark begins to break so as to make use of every minute of daylight. Ma and the girls get up even earlier to get the stove warm and breakfast cooked for the men. The second Monday in September, I got up earlier than any of them, which was easy because I didn’t sleep a wink that night, so excited was I with fear and hope. It was full dark when I grabbed a canvas bag with a spare change of clothes, a loaf of bread, and a hunk of cheese, and hit the road.

I was going to New York City.

I was a farm hand no more. I was a man of adventure on the road to fabulous wealth.

Chapter Two: Hello, New York City

For a young man without a penny in his pocket, the road from Snyder County, Pennsylvania to New York City is neither a straight nor a simple one.

It’s a fair piece to walk — near to two hundred miles as the crow flies and a sight longer when you’re skirting lakes, fording streams, and hiking through forest and field.

Pennsylvania in eighteen forty-eight wasn’t the frontier. There was roads with some cart and buggy traffic, so I didn’t walk much of it. When folks saw me walking east, plenty of them was happy enough to give me a ride for a bit. No one was going all the way to New York, though. Most of my rides was but for a mile or two to the next farm.

It was only natural to make conversation when I was sitting in the back of a wagon on a pile of hay or sometimes riding on the bench if the driver was alone. I didn’t get a seat up front too often because most wagons, if they was going anywhere, would have a wife or a son or a hired hand come along for the ride, for to help load and unload, if for no other reason.

I’d tell folks I was going to New York City to get a berth on a clipper sailing around the Horn. They’d ask if I was a sailor and I’d say I was, because, to my mind, I wasn’t a dairy farmer no more. That life was behind me. Now I was a sailor on the high seas, even though I’d never seen the ocean in my life, much less set foot on a ship. But I rowed the Jenner’s boat across Wessel’s Pond once, so I figured that had to count for something.

They’d ask a few questions, like where I’d been, and I’d make up a few lies, mostly remembering stories that Gimpy Dick had told me and passing them on. That way, I wasn’t really lying much, you see. I was telling a truth that just happened to be someone else’s truth, not mine. Not yet, anyway, but someday soon, I was sure I was going to have the same adventures as Dick.

The important part was that it entertained the folks who was giving me rides and made them glad that they’d lent me a helping hand.

Near to the end of the first day, I was sitting on a pile of fresh mowed hay in the back of a wagon, telling the folks about London town. Telling how big it was and how crowded and how I mostly just stayed by the docks and drank some ale with them Englishers, waiting for the tide to turn so as we could sail on to Paree with a load of coal from Newcastle. I was omitting all the bawdy bits from Gimpy Dick’s story, so it sounded kind of ordinary, but that was all right because it sounded more believable that way. I got to admit that some of Gimpy Dick’s stories did stretch a man’s credulity somewhat, though never more than my imagination could handle.

On this last ride of the day, the man and his wife was riding up front on the bench and I was sharing the hay pile with their daughter — a girl named Eva who was darn near as pretty as my own sweet Lottie back in Beaver Springs. Eva liked listening to my stories more than Lottie ever had — maybe because I’d never said more than a couple of words at any one time to Lottie — which made me like Eva all the more. Of course, that was a little unfair to Lottie because I never even told her stories about mowing hay and milking cows, and now I was here, telling Eva about sailing across the seas to foreign lands, which was a lot more interesting for sure.

I’d made almost thirty miles that day, which was good time, mostly because I’d got a lot of rides from kindly folks. I didn’t know any of the farmers this far from home. These folks went to town in Danville, where I’d never been, nor had anyone that I knew.

It was getting near to sunset — the golden rays was bouncing off those nuggets out in California and warming my back — and I figured I was going to have to find a place to bed down.

I still had most of the loaf of bread and hunk of cheese that I’d taken that morning because some kindly folks had shared some of their lunch with me back around noon, but I was going to have to eat my own food tonight if I couldn’t find some other supper. That was going to leave me hungry tomorrow.

After I finished spinning a yarn about sailing a boat up the Sane River to Paree, I set to talking about something of more immediate importance. Specifically, I asked if they might have some odd jobs that I could do around their farm for a day or two in exchange for a bed and meals. I hastened to tell them that I’d be happy to sleep in the barn. A pile of hay was a fine bed for a world traveler like myself. And I wouldn’t ask for much by way of pay, but maybe they could spare a couple of bits to help me out when I’d done my work.

The man turned to look over his shoulder and asked what a sailor fella might do on a dairy farm. There was no anchors to weight or sails to trim around these parts.

I assured him that I’d learned a bit about farming during my travels. I could milk a cow with the best of them, separate the cream, churn butter, feed and water the livestock, slop pigs, or muck out a barn. For that matter, I was pretty handy at mending fences and stooking hay.

He looked skeptical, but Eva spoke up on my side, saying to her pa that he must have something useful I could do.

Her words must have carried some weight with him, because he sighed and agreed that he could find me a day’s work, but he’d only spare the two bits if I proved to be as useful as I claimed.

Eva looked pleased at that, so I figured that I’d struck a pretty good bargain.

It had been a long day and I was looking forward to a good night’s sleep, even if I had to sack out on a bed of hay in some old barn.

§

I’d barely laid down on a musty layer of last year’s hay, when I saw lantern light dancing through the cracks in the barn wall.

I asked who was there, and a soft, sweet voice shushed me, telling me that her pa thought she was still in her own bed in the house and she didn’t want him to know different.

I froze solid, my heart beating like a bunny rabbit’s and my throat swelling shut. Why did she need me to be quiet? And why did she care that her pa thought she was still in the house?

It didn’t sound like this was all on the up and up to me.

I watched the light bounce through the cracks all the way to the barn door; then it creaked open and Eva slipped inside, her face glowing like a harvest moon from the light of her coal oil lamp.

Her feet was bare, and she was wearing a night shirt. Nothing else. Just that light cotton shift, which I guess she slept in. I’d never seen any girl but my sisters dressed so immodestly, and my sisters never had the effect on me that Eva did that night.

She set her lamp down on the chopping block. You got to be careful with a coal oil lamp in a barn full of hay. If you knock it over, the whole place will flame up before you can make it to the door. I heard of it happening once back in Beaver Springs. One of the Johnston girls got herself burned up back in forty-five. It had been a shame, even if all the Johnson girls’ faces was on the long and horsey side.

Not like Eva’s face. Hers had a fine form with big eyes and a cute, turned up nose.

When she came to me, walking kind of slow and liquid, like oil flowing over slow-moving water, she got between me and the lamp. The light shone through her cotton shift, showing me the shadow of her curves. I about died of joy right then, seeing the way she ebbed and swelled inside her night shirt.

My face felt like it was on fire. It’s a wonder that the hay beneath me didn’t burst into flames from the heat of my blush.

She saw and giggled a little as she settled into the hay next to me.

I didn’t know what to do, but she did. She took my hand and whispered soft into my ear that she wanted to hear about what the girls was like in Paree. She said I’d forgot to tell that part of my story when I was in the wagon with her ma and pa.

I was sweet on Lottie back in Beaver Springs, but the sad truth of the matter was that I’d never been alone with Lottie, never kissed her, had only ever touched her one time when there’d been some dancing after a barn-raising bee at the Vanderberg farm. Matt Vanderberg had played a couple of reels on his fiddle while his brother, Michael, kept time on a hand drum and we kicked up our heels. I’d had occasion to take Lottie’s soft hand in passing four times that night. I can still recall each time with surpassing clarity, and my hand still tingles with the memory. Though, I do wonder now, how soft her hand could have been, considering the amount of butter she had to churn every day.

When Eva came into her barn that night, I put Lottie out of my mind. Lottie was a girl for a dairy farmer, and I was a sailor now, traveling the world and breaking hearts in every port. That’s what Gimpy Dick said sailors did, so that was what I had to do now.

The problem was I had no idea how to break Eva’s heart. In retrospect, I figure it was mine that was at risk more than hers, seeing that my young and inexperienced heart was as fragile as blown glass.

So, when she asked about the girls in Paree, I didn’t know what to tell her. Gimpy Dick’s stories about the women he’d met was not of the romantic bent, mostly featuring painted women who had to be paid for their favors. Not only did I not have a penny in my pocket to pay Eva, but even in my inexperienced youth, I knew that she wouldn’t want to hear about any mercenary transactions.

Instead, I made up a quick tale about seeing a girl on a street in Paree and how she was almost as beautiful as Eva but how I couldn’t say anything to her because I didn’t speak no