“Not for another six months.”
“I’ll send him a letter, but correspondence to the diggings is faulty,” Horace said. “You should try your luck in Columbia as well while you wait. They’re finding millions in gold out there.”
After cashing in most of his banknotes in San Francisco for gold coins, he had enough in his wallet to pay for a month in this town. If he spent it on transportation to Columbia—and didn’t strike gold—he wouldn’t have the money to return.
“I think I’ll wait here in Sacramento.”
“Suit yourself.”
“I need to find a room until Judah returns,” Alden said. “A hotel fit for a child.”
The man glanced down at Isaac. “There’s only one decent place in town, but I don’t know if they’ll take—”
Alden stopped him. “I’ll try our luck.”
The man’s directions took them to a hotel located near the river. The building was three stories tall, built of brick with a white granite façade on the front. There were two balconies above the sidewalk, and lacy curtains pulled over the windows.
Isaac whistled when he saw the place. “It looks like a plantation house.”
“I suppose it does.”
“If they won’t let me inside, I can sleep out back,” Isaac offered.
“If they won’t let you sleep here, I’ll join you outside.”
He hoped the people would be welcoming. And he hoped the accommodations were much different from the place they’d stayed in San Francisco.
Isaac hopped up onto the walkway, lugging his heavy bag with him. His new trousers needed to be hemmed, but he was quite proud of his store-bought clothing and neat haircut. Alden had purchased him calfskin boots as well, but Isaac refused to wear them, carrying them instead in his luggage.
A bell chimed when Alden opened the door, and inside the lobby, he found a woman sitting behind the counter.
“I wanted to inquire—” he began, but stopped talking when she looked up at him, his words jumbling in his mind. It had been months since he had been near such a beautiful, well-bred woman. A lady.
Her dark-brown hair was pinned back at the nape of her neck with curls draping over both of her ears, and she wore a pale-blue summer dress, the kind of dress the women back in Virginia would have worn to a garden party. The women back home would be aghast at her suntanned arms and face, but here it would be almost impossible to fight the rays of sun. And the sunlight did something magical with her eyes as well as it streamed through the window. Their caramel color was flecked with gold.
On second thought, the beauty of the women he knew back east didn’t even compare to the lady before him. He guessed the men in Sacramento were as intrigued by the gold in this woman’s eyes as they were by the dust they found along the rivers.
He managed a smile—the silence growing awkward between them as she moved out from behind her desk, then stood tall before him at the counter. Hostile.
Was she angry that he’d brought a Negro boy into her hotel?
Isaac stepped forward beside Alden, standing on his tiptoes so he could look over the counter. “This is a right pretty place you have.”
Her demeanor shifted as she smiled down at Isaac. “Thank you.”
Isaac grinned back at her. “It smells like lemons in here.”
“Do you like lemons?”
When he nodded his head, she rang a bell.
Her smile vanished again when she looked back at Alden. She didn’t seem to have a problem with a dark-skinned guest, but clearly she had a problem with him.
“Would you have a room available for us, Mrs.—”
She didn’t offer her last name. “Unfortunately, we are completely full.”
Isaac pointed up at a list of rules on the wall. “We won’t drink liquor or spit on the floor,” he said confidently. “And we’ll take a bath at least twice every week.”
