Chapter 17 - Gold In California

Caleb struggles with how to suggest to Elizabeth that they leave Providence.

          Caleb left the train yard that night knowing it would not be easy for him to face Elizabeth.  He did not go home right away but decided to go into the nearest tavern for a few drinks.  Perhaps some time to sit and sort out his thoughts would help, he thought.  Elizabeth would not want to leave and he did not know what reason to give her.  With their jobs, friends, and son’s grave being in Providence, it would not be easy to convince her they had to move on.

          Caleb sat and drank until his thoughts had become blurred and he forgot what he had come to think about.  It was dark when he finally headed for home.  When he got there, he left his horse tied near the door, as before, and climbed onto the porch, wobbling with each step.  As he reached for the doorknob his knees buckled under him and he fell hard on the porch.

 

          The next morning, Caleb awoke in his bed, unaware of how he had gotten there.  The light coming in his window stung his eyes and his head pounded.  He turned on his side putting the morning sun at his back and closed his eyes.  The door opened slowly, with a loud screech that he had never noticed to be so deafening.  He opened his eyes to see Elizabeth coming to his bedside with a bucket. 

Caleb sat up, slowly and began to ask, “What are…”

Before he could finish his question, she lifted the bucket and he was hit with a rush of icy water. 

She dropped the bucket to the floor with a crash that rattled him from the inside out, and stormed out of the room. 

Caleb sat in complete shock and bewilderment for several minutes.  His head pounded harder with each passing second until he thought it would burst.  Water ran out of his hair and down his face.

          He finally climbed slowly out of bed and made his way to the kitchen where Elizabeth was preparing the morning meal.

          “What was that for?” He asked angrily.

          She turned toward him and scolded, “Don’t track that water through my house.”

          “Well I wouldn’t if you hadn’t thrown a bucket of it on me!”  He took a deep breath and closed his eyes a moment, calming himself.  “What was that for?” He repeated.

          “The Stink!”  Elizabeth yelled back. 

Caleb put his hand on his head and took a step back. 

“You came home drenched in that…that awful stuff last night.”  She said lowering her voice slightly.  On the verge of tears, she turned back to her work and continued, “Harriet and her husband had to help me bring you in after you collapsed at the door.”  She glanced back at him and he caught the glisten of a tear rolling down her cheek.  “I was worried about you…afraid something was wrong.  That is, until Mr. Jacobson explained it looked like you had just had more than your share to drink.”

          Caleb opened his mouth to say something but felt a light tug on his pant leg and turned to see his daughter staring up at him.  Elizabeth stepped over and swept her up before Caleb could bend down.

          “Now, go change your clothes and fetch me some water.”  She directed, wiping her eyes with her sleeve.  “I’ll wash before I go to Mrs. Brown’s.”

 

          Caleb sat, on a stack of railroad ties.  A cool and welcome breeze blew in from the north.

          “Winter’s on it’s way,” James Conrad remarked.  James was a tall, wiry looking man, whom worked in the train yard with Caleb.  He had worked for the rail company since it’s start in Providence several years earlier.  “This work can be pretty grueling during the winter months,” he informed the newer men.

          Lawrence Walker was a young man, no more than sixteen, who had come to work at the train yard, only two months before.  Randall Thompson was a man of about 30.  He had worked for the railroad several years earlier, as they built a number of lines through New England.  He had taken a brief leave “in search of adventure” and had returned to the railroad in Providence only six months ago.

          “I was working on a line several winters back when we got caught in a snow storm,” Randall reminded James.

          James starred off to the north at the approaching grey sky. 

The men all sat silently a moment, then Joshua Rodgers, a thin scraggly looking man of about twenty-five, spoke up.  “Lawrence, you hear from your brother yet?”

“Got a letter in from him yesterday in fact.”  Lawrence’s older brother, Paul, had worked with the men briefly before Lawrence joined them.  He had a bit of a drifter’s soul, and had quickly become stir crazy with the rail yard.  One day he had come to work speaking of his new plans to go to California and the next day he was gone; on his way to cross the wilderness in search of gold.

“He gotten to California yet?  Gone and made himself rich?”

“He was in Omaha.  He said there’s just hundreds of miles of free, unclaimed, and uncharted territory.  A man could just pick himself out a nice piece of land and live his whole life out there in tranquility.  There’s not too many folks around to give you trouble, like there is out here.  The land is fertile and the animals for hunting are abundant.  A man could really live well out there.”

“He still planning on going to California or is he just going to sit out there?” James asked.

“Said he was still headed to California because the temptations of gold was just too much to give up.  The winters aren’t supposed to be near as bad in California neither.  He said it’s like summer all year around in California.”  Lawrence paused a moment and thought to himself, then spoke up again.  “I’m beginning to think he might have had the right idea, heading out west.  I might be going out there to join him pretty soon.”

“It’ll just be a waste,” Randall remarked.

“Well, what you mean by that?” Joshua asked curiously.

“There ain’t nothing left there,” he answered.  “Too many people come along to claim too little gold.”

“Well, how do you know so much,” asked Wayne Dickens, the foreman.  Wayne maintained a skeptical outlook, believing in very few of the stories that were passed among the men, and easily dismissing them as rumor or “fairy tales”.

“I was there,” Randall shot back with annoyance in his voice.  “Went out there when the whole thing started.  Man named Marshal found gold and men flocked in from all over to get in on his own little piece of the treasure.  Hell, I was one of them,” he told them shaking his head at his own foolishness.  “I heard all the stories, just the same as you, about mountains in California full of gold.  I figured if there was that much, well hell, there was enough to go around.  I never thought it would be possible to run out.  I sold off everything I had that I could sell off, let go of my work with the railroad, saddled my pony, and rod out west.  I went looking for adventure and wealth.  When I got there, all I found was dirty mining camps, w****s, lawlessness, and entire families starving to death because I couldn’t find enough gold to eat on.”  He took a deep breath and looked around at the group of men who sat listening intently to what he told them.  He then focused his attention back on Lawrence and continued, “There ain’t nothing there in Californina but that.  You go on out there if you want.  Don’t let me stop you.  You go on out there and see for yourself what it’s really like.  I don’t expect you to just take my word on it.  I just think I have a duty to share what I’ve seen…give you warning.  I’ve seen myself, those mountains been wiped clean.  Nothin’ but gold dust left…and not too much of that neither.  A man could pan his whole life and still never eat a decent meal on what he found.  S**t, I came back with less money than I left with.”

 

          Caleb sat quietly in his chair watching Elizabeth sewing by the lamplight.  Hannah had been put to bed and now the house stood dark and silent.  He sat trying to figure how to tell her he wanted to leave Providence, but no combination of words seemed right.  Nothing he could say to her could possibly make her willing to leave this place.  Even the brief memory of a lost child would not make her want to leave.  That was the one thing, above all else, that kept her bound to Providence.  He knew she would not want to leave the place where they had buried their son.

          “Elizabeth,” he said finally.  “I think it’s time we move on.”

          She looked up at him a bit bewildered.  “Move on?”

          “Away from Providence.  Start somewhere new.”

          “But…but why?”

          “There are just so many bad memories here.  So much I just want to get away from,” he explained.

          “Bad memories?  But, what about the good?  Hannah was born here.”

          “And our son died here.”

          Elizabeth glared back at him then returned to her sewing without speaking.

          “I just think it would be best for all of us if we left and never looked back.”

          “But, I don’t.  Caleb, we can’t leave here.  Everything is here.  I’m happy here. We have made a good life here. ”

          “I’m not happy,” Caleb told her reluctantly.

          She put her sewing away and got up from her chair.  “Then you can leave and let us be,” she told him as she left the room.

          He got up and followed her.  “You know I can’t do that.  You know I would never do that.”

          She spun around.  “I don’t…” she paused a moment then continued, “we’ll talk about this later.”

 

          Caleb watched silently as Elizabeth poured his cup of coffee and returned to the sink to finish washing the morning dishes.  Neither had spoken a word to the other since the night before.

          “I know you’re not happy here,” Caleb spoke up.

          She said nothing, but continued to work, keeping her back turned to him.

          “I know you’re not happy here,” he repeated.  “I know you don’t really want to stay in Providence.  We both know moving on would be best for all of us.”

          “And how do you know so much?  How do you know I’m not happy here?  What would possibly make you think I would want to leave?”  She asked irritably, turning toward him.

          He thought a moment.  “Because the light is gone.”

          She looked at him cross and shook her head.  “What?”

          “The light in your eyes is gone.  That’s how I know you’re no longer happy here.  Your eyes don’t sparkle like they used to.”

          Elizabeth turned back to her work.

          “Ever since…Ever since the accident,” he continued, “the sparkle has been gone from your eyes.”

          “I don’t want to leave.  I don’t want to start over.  I want things the way they are.”  She pled.  She stood still a moment and then turned back to Caleb.  “Besides, where would we go?”

          “West,” he said getting up and walking to her.

          “West?”

          “West.  As far as we can go.”

          “We don’t know what’s west.  We don’t know anyone in the west.  What would we do out there?”

          “Anything our hearts desire,” he said with a smile.  He took her around the waist and spun her around.  “It’s uncharted, unclaimed.  Free land for miles and miles.”

          “Caleb…I just don’t know.”  She looked up at him with concern in her eyes.  “What is it that makes you want to leave so badly?”

          “Everything, especially losing our son and now Jack has been murdered.  It just doesn’t seem worth it to stay here any more.  If we move on we can put everything up to this point behind us forever.  We can start fresh.”

          She forced a smile and laid her head against his chest.

 

          Caleb thought long and hard about where they would go when they left.  He knew he had no knowledge of anything beyond Providence.  In fact, until just over three short years ago he had not even the slightest idea of what lay beyond Boston.  How could he take his family west without knowing what laid west? 

He recalled what Frank Call had spoken about the last time he had seen him.  “I heard about Mountains in California full of gold.”  He also thought of what Lawrence had shared about his brother, Paul, at the train yard.  If he could get to California and get in on some of the famed gold mining, he thought, he and his family could live in comfort for the rest of their lives.  He then, however, thought about what Randall had claimed to have encountered in California when he had been there at the beginning of the rush.  He had said that “those mountains been wiped clean.  Nothin’ but gold dust left…and not too much of that neither.  A man could pan his whole life and still never eat a decent meal on what he found.”  Caleb knew the dream of gold in California was far too risky.

Where could they go?  How would they even get there?  They had little money and staying in Providence long enough to save that much was out of the question in Caleb’s mind.  Elizabeth’s words from that morning came back to him, “We don’t know what’s west.  We don’t know anyone in the west.  What would we do out there?”  He knew she was right, but he was desperate to leave Providence before Jack’s murder could be solved.  If anyone were to find out who had done the deed, everything they had would be gone.

At dinner, Elizabeth and Caleb spoke little.  After putting Hannah to bed, she sat in her chair in the sitting room with her sewing.  Caleb watched as she carefully fed the needle back and forth through the fabric.  Suddenly she stopped and looked up at him.  He noticed a faint twinkle in her eye that made him smile.

“New York,” she said with a grin, almost as though she were answering the question he had been asking himself all day.

“New York?”  He asked.

“New York,” she verified confidently.  “We can go to New York.  It isn’t too awful far, but it is also not Providence.  It would be a fantastic place to start new…and I have an uncle who lives there.  Maybe he could help us.  Perhaps he could give you work.”

He was suddenly reminded of a conversation he and Mr. Meyers had when he was still working for the family.  He had been instructed to take the family to his brother’s home in New York if anything were to happen to him. 

“Your father’s brother?” He asked.

“Yes…how did you…”

“I don’t think that would be a good idea.”

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

“I’m sure he knows about you and I, especially myself.  If your father has told him, as I’m sure he has, he would certainly never employee me.”

 “Uncle Jacob is a much more understanding and sympathetic man than father.  He would never be so cold hearted to turn his own family away when they are in need.”

 

Within a few weeks Caleb, Elizabeth, and Hannah had packed all the belongings they could fit into a wagon and were on their way to New York.