He stomped toward the assayer’s office, across from an ice cream parlor and bookseller, ready to resume his inquiries. The two miners in front of him took an eternity to weigh their gold before he was able to step up beside the brass scales displayed on the counter.
“I’m looking for a man,” he told the assayer.
“There are more than ten thousand men in town,” the assayer said with a shrug.
“This fellow’s named Alden Payne. He came to town just a few weeks ago with his wife and a slave boy.”
The man wiped off the scale with a white cloth. “I saw a man with a Negro boy.”
Victor leaned closer, trying to keep his fervor penned inside. “Where can I find him?”
“Last I spoke to him, he was mining in one of the gulches.”
The last thing he wanted to do was stomp around the wilderness, searching among thousands of miners. “Any idea which gulch?”
“Nope, but if you wait long enough, he’ll come back into town,” the assayer said. “I’ll tell Mr.Payne that you’re looking for him.”
“No need,” Victor replied. “I’ll find him myself.”
He stepped back outside and scanned the street, looking at the felled trees on one side of town and the hills on the other.
In the past seven months, when he wasn’t on the ship, he’d combed through towns and cities, hotels and boardinghouses. He’d quizzed countless clerks and assistants and visited all manner of offices.
It was finally time to end this search and go home.
Chapter 42
Near Columbia
August 1854
Alden loosened the dirt around rocks on his mining claim. When he first arrived in Columbia, he’d gone straight to the assay office to ask about Judah, but the assayer didn’t know him. So he bought a wooden rocker and two bedrolls from a Vermont man who said he was done with mining.
Two weeks ago he staked a claim along a gulch that channeled snow and rain runoff in the spring. This area seemed to be the heart of gold country, with quartz veins threading from every direction, entwined in the creases around the boulders.
After Alden claimed his patch of land, Isaac had begged to help him dig for gold. Since there was no school for him to attend in Columbia, Alden thought it healthy for Isaac to work. Isabelle agreed, as long as half the findings went to his care.
In the past weeks of mining, they’d barely made enough to care for either of them, but he and Isaac worked hard, like they had back on the ship, except this time they worked for themselves. Together, they could operate the rocker—Alden dumped in shoveled dirt, and Isaac poured pails of water into what was called a riddle box to trap the large rocks. Then they’d rock the long cradle for as long as it took for gold to free itself from the gravel and fall into cleats called riffles below.
It was Isaac’s job to open the slat and retrieve the gold.
Because the gulch was dry, they paid five dollars a day to the Tuolumne County Water Company for a ditch of water used to flush the gold away from the dirt. He and Isaac were bringing in about eight dollars in gold dust and flakes each day. There wasn’t anything left after they bought beans, a tin of crackers, and salt pork, but at least, as Isaac once said, they were both fortunate enough to eat. And they didn’t have to pay for lodging. After a hard day of digging, they washed off—thanks to the water company—and slept soundly in bedrolls under a tent housed between their four stakes.
If he didn’t find Judah before the rains, he’d look for other work until they’d saved enough for passage up north. He hoped that Isabelle would remain in Columbia. He was getting quite used to the idea of seeing her in the evenings when he and Isaac walked into town.
The sun was beginning to set, but they could work another hour in the flicker of twilight. They’d found enough today to reward their labor with a decent meal at one of the eateries. Hopefully Isabelle would join them.
As he shoveled another round of dirt into the rocker, he thought back again to those sacred moments along the riverbank where Isabelle had wept for Isaac’s childhood. And he wondered again about her years in Baltimore. Surely she’d seen slaves there, when she was a girl. Perhaps, until she’d met Persila and then Isaac, she hadn’t realized the cruelty of what a slave owner could do.
California was a new beginning for many people, yet they all carried the burden of their past with them, molded by the experiences of their youth. Isabelle had been cold to him back in Sacramento, but he’d glimpsed something from the depths of her heart on their trip here. And he couldn’t stop thinking about her.
She’d said she was leaving Sacramento because someone from her past wanted to harm her. Was this the Mr.Kirtland that Mr.Walsh referred to back at the Golden? Or was it someone upset that she had sympathized with the plight of runaways?
As he and Isaac rocked the cradle, both mud and gravel poured down into the gulch. Then Isaac checked the riffles. “Look at this!” he shouted.
Alden kneeled down beside him as Isaac reached in through the cleats and pulled out a water-smoothed nugget of gold the size of a walnut.
A few of the nearby miners glanced their way, and Alden swiftly picked up the pewter flask where they stored their gold dust and flakes. The mouth was too narrow for the nugget, so he pulled open the burlap bag where he kept coffee beans.
