1
August 29, 1849
San Francisco, California
I needed help, and I didn’t have much time.
“Can someone assist me?” I held my father upright in the small rowboat that had taken us from theEugeniato shore. “My father is not well.”
Hundreds of men moved along the shores of San Francisco. Every conceivable race of humanity pushed and shoved as cargo was unloaded from the incoming ships and dozens of men scrambled from the boats to descend upon the city. Countless vessels sat in the harbor, abandoned and forgotten as their crews made their way to the goldfields in the Sierra Nevada foothills a hundred or more miles to the east. Their masts reached toward the cloudless sky as their anchors dug into the muddy bottom of San Francisco Bay.
“Please,” I said as my father’s limp body weighed heavy against me. “Anyone.”
“Our daddy is sick.” Hazel’s small voice was lost in the din of confusion.
“Looksee here,” a man in a blue flannel shirt said as he stopped on the dock nearest our boat. “It’s a sunbonnet and a child!”
All the men who came with us from the Isthmus of Panama on theEugeniahad been so excited to get to California that they hadn’t stopped to ask if we needed help. They’d recently been in the east with their wives and children. But these men on the dock, clearly starved for the sight of a woman and child, were suddenly eager to assist.
“Do you need a hand up?” the first asked me.
“Yes, please. Our father took ill with malaria in Panama City,” I explained. “He hasn’t been well since.”
It was an understatement. Father had been near death for six weeks. His illness had prevented us from taking the first ship that had come to Panama City after our arrival, and it had been another month before the next was available. Thousands of people had been waiting because so many of the ships that sailed into San Francisco were abandoned by their crew and only a few made the return trip. The space was so limited, the ship had three times the number of passengers it should have carried, and we had spent ten times the reasonable amount for passage.
Which meant we were late to California and had no money left.
Several men stepped into the rowboat and lifted Father out as Hazel moved close to me. At the age of six, my half sister was far braver than I felt. She’d weathered the voyage from Boston to Colon, the city on the northern shores of the isthmus, and then laughed and sang her way through the eighteen-day trek by boat and pack mules to Panama City. Not once had she complained or whined.
Even now, she stared at the teeming mass of men with a look of awe but not concern. I hoped it was because she believed I would take care of her, even though I was having my own doubts.
Thankfully, she was too young and naïve to understand our dire circumstances.
Another miner in a red flannel shirt offered his hand to me, and I stepped out of the rowboat with Hazel not far behind. The sun scorched my neck as the brim of my bonnet shaded my eyes. From the dock, I had a better vantage point of San Francisco.
It looked nothing like the city I knew in 1929.
“This old man can’t be your husband,” one of the miners said as he motioned to my unconscious father.
“He’s our father.”
“You’ll be looking for a man, then.” He took off his stained bowler hat, revealing a tan line on his forehead and greasy, thin hair. “I’d have need of you, miss. We can go to the parson right now.”
I stared at him as my father was manhandled onto the dock. Not knowing what to say, I simply stepped around him and went to Father’s side. Though he was unconscious, sweat beaded on his ashen brow.
“Can someone tell me where I might find a room to rent?” I asked the men who were congregating around us. “Preferably close, since my father is unable to walk. And I’ll need a doctor.”
Even as I said the words, I had no idea how I would pay for anything. We didn’t have a single penny to our name.
Hazel slipped her hand into mine as the men crowded closer. Some touched her golden braids or patted her head.
“Please,” I said as I moved her away from one man who was far too familiar, “we need a place to stay. Preferably fifty cents a night. Could someone point us in the right direction?”
“You won’t find anything for less than ten dollars a night,” a rough-looking man with a British accent said as he stepped forward. He had a strange gait, and ragged scars wrapped around his neck and into his jaw. A large bowie knife hung from one side of a holster around his waist, while a pistol protruded out of the other.
The men parted, though whether in respect, awe, or fear of the menacing man, I wasn’t certain.
“Bess will put you up.” He nodded to the men who were holding my father by the arms and legs. “Take the old man to Bess’s Place.”
