That’s what Eliza had said about Isaac, and it’s exactly what he would say about her after he inherited the plantation.
“How much is a ticket to Columbia?” he asked the agent, his voice calm again.
“A hundred dollars.”
“That’s outrageous!”
The man shrugged. “Gold prices.”
Victor reluctantly lifted the wallet from his coat pocket and opened the brass clasp. Then he counted through the coins inside. Blast Fanny Kirtland. He didn’t even have enough for one return passage to Boston, clear around Cape Horn, but right now, he’d spend every dollar left in his wallet if he must to find this semblance of a family.
He removed five gold coins and put them on the table. The agent slid them off the counter, into his till, then held out a ticket.
“The next ride to Columbia is in two weeks.”
Victor choked. “What do you mean, two weeks?”
“I mean that is the next time we have a seat available on a coach going to the town of Columbia,” the agent said, annoyed with him. “They’ve been finding gold out there by the fistful, and after the fire, it seems like half of Sacramento wants to go.”
“How about taking a boat?” Victor asked. “Or a train?”
When the man snorted, Victor snatched the ticket out of his hand.
He’d find Mallie, and then he’d figure out a way home. This trip had cost him dearly—all the money left from his inheritance—but he was almost finished.
He felt like Captain Ahab, sniffing the scent of the white whale in the ocean. Except no rope was going to take him down to the depths of the sea.
Unlike Ahab, he was going to conquer this whale.
Chapter 40
Columbia
August 1854
The cypress writing desk in Isabelle’s hotel room was similar to the one found in her aunt’s cottage, the narrow drawer at the bottom folding out for miners to hide their gold. She removed Aunt Emeline’s box from the hidden drawer and stared down again at the rose inlaid on the lid. Then she smoothed her hand over the skirt of her plum-colored working dress.
Unlike the silk and taffeta of a fashionable French woman, this calico was supposed to help her blend in on the crowded streets here in Columbia, but even dressed plainly, the miners and businessmen watched her and Isaac closely whenever they left the hotel to eat. Perhaps it was because she was a woman. Or perhaps it was because she was accompanied by a black boy. She’d only seen two other Negros since they’d arrived in Columbia, both of them freedmen working as miners.
She rested back in a chair, the trinket box on her lap. It would make Aunt Emeline so happy to know that she’d been reunited with her son—pleased that God was creating beauty from the ashes of her life.
Her window open, she could hear the crack of a wooden ball knocking down bowling pins across the street. Chickens squawked from a pen, men sang off-key in what she assumed was a nearby saloon, and in the distance, she heard what sounded like a trombone.
The town of Columbia was about the same size as Sacramento, but there were no tidy blocks or planked streets here. The town’s center hosted hotels, saloons, dry goods stores, a bank, an assay office, and several eateries. A lovely frame home with its picket fence and flower garden was the crown jewel, the residence of the bank president and his family, but a mishmash of ramshackle tents and wooden buildings fanned out from Main Street, bleeding down into the gulch and up into the forested hills.
Miners seemed to be everywhere, carrying their shovels and picks back and forth between the diggings and saloons in town. The air here was cleaner than in Sacramento, the mountains blowing down a light coolness that stifled the summer heat, and the streets seemed to buzz with optimism. These were the men who still believed in the power of gold, unlike so many back in Sacramento, who’d lost everything in their quest.
It felt strange to be the patron of a hotel instead of the matron, but the Broadway Hotel was the finest establishment in this town. With Alden off trying to stake a mining claim, it seemed like the safest option for her and Isaac as well. She’d secured two rooms for them, connected by an inside door in case Isaac needed her.
Isaac was readingUncle Tom’s Cabinin the next room, a book he purchased with the money she’d paid him for his work at the Golden. Over the past week, she’d been continually amazed that God had seen fit to bring them back together again. And she wished that Aunt Emeline were here so she could ask her how to be a mother.
She brought the crocheted baby blanket with her, but instead of it bringing her sadness, it filled her heart with a deep joy. What she thought she’d lost had been found.
Now she needed to do one last thing before she stepped boldly into this new season of life. She needed to find out what her aunt had given her.
Her hands were resting on the lid when Isaac poked his head into the room. “Are you hungry?”
She smiled, the joy flooding her heart again. “I am if you are.”
