Chapter 9 #2
Breakfast was frantic as we made flapjacks and bacon and served coffee.
The dining room was filled to overflowing, and there were more men waiting outside for their turn.
Paddy and I served while Sam cooked, but he explained each step to me as he worked, and I realized it would be much easier than I had thought.
It really wasn’t the technique but the timing that I would need to worry about.
We had to feed as many men as possible in a short amount of time.
I watched for Cole, though I would have been surprised if he showed up now that Bess was gone. I wanted to ask around to see if anyone knew him, but I didn’t want to upset Sam or draw too many questions from others.
As we were washing up after breakfast, Father appeared at the kitchen door, his white hair mussed and his clothing wrinkled. He was pale and weak, and he’d lost a great deal of weight, but his eyes were shining with joy.
“Father!” I said as I wiped a plate with a clean cloth and set it on the stack before me.
He leaned against the door frame, as if getting out of bed had sapped all his energy. “I wanted to eat at the table today. The sooner I can join the land of the living, the faster I’ll get well.”
Sam left the cupboard where he’d been stacking coffee cups and helped Father the rest of the way to the table.
“Thank you kindly, Mr. Kendal,” Father said. “Not only for your help, but for giving us a place to stay and a job for Ally.”
“It’s my pleasure.” Sam lifted his brown-eyed gaze to me. “I don’t know what I would do without her.”
“Do you think it’s a good idea for you to get out of bed?” I asked Father quickly, not knowing what to do with Sam’s praise.
“I couldn’t say for sure.” Father sat on a stool as Hazel joined him and gave him a big hug. “But I’m bored to death in that room all by myself, and that’s no way to live.”
“If we had a kitty, you wouldn’t be bored, Father,” Hazel said.
“Indeed.” Father smiled and glanced at me. “We’ll need to start talking about where we might find one of those.”
“A cat?” Sam asked, moving back to the sideboard where a stack of dishes waited to be dried.
“It’s Hazel’s dream to finally have a kitten,” I explained quickly. “But I’ve told her we need to wait until we have a place of our own.”
“What kind of a kitten do you want?” Sam asked Hazel.
“An orange one with white paws,” she said, excitement lighting up her eyes. “And I’ll call him Whiskers.”
“What happened to calling him Snowball?” Father asked with a teasing smile.
“I can’t call an orange kitty Snowball.” Hazel laughed as if it was a ridiculous idea.
“Then we’ll have to get you two kitties when the time comes.” Father didn’t seem as concerned as I was about promising his young daughter something he couldn’t guarantee.
I grabbed the plate of food I’d prepared for him earlier and brought it to the table, hoping to shift the conversation. I hated disappointing Hazel. “It does me good to see you up, Father.”
Leaning over, I placed a kiss on his forehead, thankful that God had spared his life thus far.
Coming to California had been my idea, and if he’d died on the way, I didn’t know how I would have lived with the guilt.
It was still my hope that he’d gain enough strength to make it to the Yuba River by the end of September, but that dream seemed out of reach now.
I might need to do a little research and see where the next gold strike would happen and try to get him to that one. If he gained his strength.
“I’ll be back to my old self sooner than you think.” He looked up, and I saw my reflection in his smile. I looked like Mama the most, but I’d inherited parts of my parents’ features from 1849, as well. “And we’ll get that school started, Ally. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
“I miss teaching,” I agreed, not wanting to encourage him about the school when I had other plans for him. At least for the short-term.
“Ally was a fine teacher,” Father said to Sam as he poured maple syrup on his flapjacks. “One of the best I’ve ever had the privilege of working with. She’s intelligent and patient—two important qualities for a good teacher.”
Sam’s gaze found mine, and the admiration I saw there warmed my cheeks.
As Father ate, he kept up a lively conversation with Hazel about the different kinds of animals she’d seen on the trip from Massachusetts to California.
He tried drawing Johnnie in, but the little boy just stared at him.
Though Johnnie didn’t speak, I knew he was absorbing everything he heard.
Father loved to teach, and he especially enjoyed engaging conversation.
Paddy listened, working quietly alongside me and Sam.
When I left the kitchen to retrieve the last of the dishes in the empty dining room, Sam followed.
As he pushed chairs into place around the tables, he said, “I need to purchase supplies today. I was wondering if you’d like to come.” He hesitated for a moment, then added, “I could show you the new hotel and restaurant I’m building.”
His invitation surprised me, but I wasn’t sure why. “What about the children?”
“Paddy can stay with them.”
I paused as I reached for a plate, uncertain.
“He may not speak much,” Sam said, as if reading my thoughts, “but Paddy understands everything. He was an intelligent man before—” He paused. “He’s still smart and very capable. He would not let anything hurt them. You have my word.”
I sensed that Sam’s word was one of the most important things he had to offer, and I found myself trusting him.
Best of all, after I nodded, I was rewarded with another smile.
When Hazel and I had been looking for a different place to live, we hadn’t made it to Portsmouth Square, but seeing it now, I stood in amazement.
It was the most civilized part of San Francisco I’d yet seen with wooden buildings, real glass windows, and men in business suits.
There were even a few respectable women with children in tow, carrying baskets for shopping.
The square was large and sat on a leveled spot of ground on the sloping hill toward the bay. It had taken significant effort to walk up Washington Street from Montgomery Street, but the reward was worth it.
“Do you see that building over there?” Sam asked, pointing to a corner of the square and a building partially completed.
“Yes.”
“That will be the San Francisco Hotel. My hotel.”
The way he said “my hotel,” with pride in his voice, made me glance up at him in the bright sunshine. He wasn’t looking at me, but at the building, and I could see how much it meant to him.
“I’ve saved every penny I’ve made since I arrived here in April,” he continued, “so I could purchase the best piece of property in the city. The lot cost fifty thousand dollars, and the hotel will cost thirty-five thousand to build.”
I stared at him, dumbfounded. In Concord, a building like that, on a nice piece of property, might sell for four or five thousand dollars.
But I knew he was charging the men five dollars for a meal at Bess’s Place, and the cost of everything was exorbitant in San Francisco.
No doubt he’d get his money’s worth out of it in no time.
“Would you like to see inside?” he asked, sounding more like a child on Christmas morning than a large and intimidating man in one of California’s most dangerous towns.
“Of course.”
We walked across the square. The sound of hammers and saws, an ever-constant companion in San Francisco, dimmed in the background as people stopped to stare at us. I had become used to being ogled by the men, but this time, they weren’t staring at me.
“Just keep walking,” Sam said, putting his hand on the small of my back as a group of men in business suits glared at him.
“Get back to where you belong,” one of them said.
“We don’t want your kind on the Hill,” said another. “We got enough trouble up here as it is.”
Sam continued to walk as if he hadn’t heard them.
I wanted to ask him about it, but I didn’t want to embarrass him.
Soon we were at the entrance to his building. It was framed, and there was a shingled roof, but there was no siding, windows, or doors yet.
“I don’t want to borrow money to finish it,” he said as he grasped the door frame. “So I’ve been working at it slowly.”
“Wouldn’t it be easier to get a loan so you could finish it and start making money?”
“Not when the banks in San Francisco are charging fifteen percent interest.” He shook his head. “I’ve never liked banks, anyway.”
The way he said it suggested his feelings toward banks went deeper than just dislike. It sounded personal.
“Come on in.” He motioned toward the building. “I’ll show you around.”
It was a large and impressive structure, three stories tall with a generous kitchen in the back, a dining room in the front, and a commodious parlor for meetings.
“The third floor will be a men’s dormitory,” Sam said as we walked through the dining room. “But the second floor will be individual rooms for families. Right now we mostly have men in town, but one day soon families will start to arrive, and I want to be ready for them.”
The group of men who had heckled Sam walked toward the hotel, talking amongst themselves, disgust and anger on their faces as they watched us tour the building.
I glanced at Sam to see if it bothered him, but he didn’t look in their direction or show signs of being disturbed.
The men’s behavior made me wonder if Sam was the only Sydney Town man trying to break into business on Portsmouth Square.
“It’s getting late,” he said. “Let’s purchase our supplies and head back home.”
We left his building and had to pass the men who had congregated. They didn’t move aside for us but leered and jeered as we walked around them. Sam held his head high, but I could see anger in the lines beside his eyes.
Did they know he was a convicted murderer? In their opinion, he was a Sydney Duck, and that was probably all that mattered. They didn’t see the difference in one man from the other.
Was that what I was doing? Judging him harshly for the same reason?
We were quiet as we left Portsmouth Square and walked down Washington Street to Montgomery Street, turning left to head back to Sydney Town.
It was less than a mile to walk, but with the hills, it felt longer.
He didn’t speak about the men or try to convince me that they were wrong to say such things.
He walked with quiet dignity, though I could tell it had bothered him.
There was no question when we entered Sydney Town.
Unkempt men stood on porches and in doorways, their tattered cabbage-tree hats, unique to the Sydney Ducks, sitting low over their foreheads as they watched me.
Sam took a step closer, and when we had to pass a group of rowdy, drunken men, his hand rested on the small of my back again and didn’t leave.
Despite the danger, his presence was reassuring. In Portsmouth Square he might be despised, but in Sydney Town, Sam Kendal was respected.
“This is no place for you,” he said under his breath. “Or the children. When we first came in April, it was a respectable place to live, but since then, they say fourteen thousand men have arrived from Australia. Add to that the other gangs who have come and it’s now unlivable.”
We passed the Fierce Grizzly Saloon, where a live bear was kept chained next to the front door, and past dozens of brothels, where scantily clad women called out to Sam for attention. He ignored them much like he had the businessmen earlier.
“Why do so many of the men walk with such a peculiar gait?” I asked, watching a group amble down the street. “I noticed it first when I met English Jim on the dock.”
Sam was quiet for a moment, then said, “It’s from the years they spent in leg chains in the penal colony.
” He stopped just outside the general store across the road from Bess’s Place and lifted the hem of his pants leg, revealing scars around his ankles.
“I wore the shackles for two years. Long enough to be scarred, but not long enough to let it affect my gait.” He glanced at the group.
“All it takes is a day in those shackles to change you forever.”
He was a complex man, and his story intrigued me more with each passing day. I wanted to know what Sam was like before he’d gone to Australia.
A familiar figure exited the general store, causing Sam to pause.
Cole Goodman.
Both men stared as if daring each other to make a move.
“Bess told me you were leaving for Sacramento first chance you got,” Sam said, his voice flat. “You’re a fool to join Jim’s gang.”
“He made an offer I couldn’t resist.” Cole glanced at me, his gaze hooded and hard to read. “I see you replaced Bess without trouble.”
Sam took a step toward Cole, and for a split second, I saw fear in Cole’s eyes.
“It would have been better if you’d left San Francisco,” Sam said through gritted teeth.
“For who?”
One of the women in a neighboring building called out to Cole, inviting him to come into a hotel that looked like it might double as a brothel.
“I see you’re still living at Sadie’s,” Sam said.
“I had to move somewhere after you kicked me out of Bess’s Place.”
“I would have done more if I could.”
Cole let out an unimpressed snort and pushed past Sam to join the woman, running his leering gaze over me before he disappeared into the brothel.