Blood Gold Read Online Free Page B
Author: Michael Cadnum
said.
Ben never hesitated.
We unearthed our hard-saved money and left heartfelt, loving notes for our families. It was a simple matter, in my case, with both my parents dead of fever, and Aunt Jane worn with the trouble of cooking my meals. Benâs family had two older sons, already happily busy in the family drayage business. Perhaps the Pomeroys had hoped, without saying so in words, that Ben might leave for the West, and come back to them with chests of placer gold.
We departed on the Express Line from the Walnut Street wharf. We ferried across the Delaware River, took the railway to South Amboy, New Jersey, and rode a steamboat to New York. It cost three dollars each, the trip lasting just under five hours.
Now Aaronâs sobs were subsiding, and the early-morning sun was just beginning to weaken the darkness, bird life stirring all around us.
The injured man was carried tenderly to a wagon in the early light. Two other men lay down with himâthey had been overcome by fever in the night. Anxious rumors had swept through the gold seekers, of a mysterious fever that was swallowing men in the prime of life. There was a hospital in Panama City, we were told, run by a German physician named Hauser and his daughter. The more optimistic among us enjoyed the first morning chew of tobacco and agreed that no doubt Dr. Hauser would have a tonic that would break every fever.
âI bet itâs not as bad as we imagine,â I heard my own voice say, as though I knew anything about it.
âI bet youâre right,â several voices agreed. Folks chewing tobacco often appear ruminative and wise. You chew, shift your quid, lean forward and spit, and feel like a philosopher. We had ourselves convinced we were in no danger at all.
The truth was, we were terrified to think that this disease might catch up with us. No man dared to whisper the three-syllable curse.
Cholera .
There was no known defense against it, and no cure. Whole villages succumbed to it, all around the world, and ships arrived in port, their crews devastated.
I said a special prayer for the shot man, and for the others, too.
Including Ben and me.
CHAPTER 7
Flocks of raucous parrots broke from the trees overhead as we made our way along the trail. Dr. Merrill rode beside his patient, putting out a steadying arm when Aaron Sweetland tried to sit up in the back of the wagon.
Isom Gill walked alongside, offering encouragement. âWeâre all coming back rich, Aaron,â he said.
It was proper for Isom Gill to show concern for Aaron, and the company was more forgiving now. Men began to share anecdotes from back home, accidents with firearms and farming equipment that had proven less than fatal.
The medication gave Aaron the spirit to sing in a weak voice, a pretty hymn about walking with Jesus.
The jungle began to grow sparse, and we began to pass the simple cane-hut buildings of farmers and the broad thick fields of sugarcane. Children playing in sandy streams watched us as we passed, their mothers and older sisters protected from the sun by white shawls.
The adults, loading bunches of bananas into oxcarts, driving scrawny mules, did little to acknowledge our passage, but I waved to a little boy as naked as a toothpick, and he pointed at us and uttered something in Spanish. A pretty dark-eyed woman, in a sweeping, blue-fringed mantle, came forward to take the little boyâs hand, no doubt thinking we were marauders, and a sure threat to the countryside.
I shifted the tobacco in my mouth and tipped my hat, and the woman lowered her eyes and gave the gentlest of smiles. One glance back at Ben, to see if he had observed this civility, made me realize once again how rough we all looked. My friend, who could name the great scientists of history, from Aristotle to Newton, looked like the lowest sort of character, his features shadowed by his broad hat, his youthful chin in need of a razor.
But he stopped to speak to the woman in the
Ben never hesitated.
We unearthed our hard-saved money and left heartfelt, loving notes for our families. It was a simple matter, in my case, with both my parents dead of fever, and Aunt Jane worn with the trouble of cooking my meals. Benâs family had two older sons, already happily busy in the family drayage business. Perhaps the Pomeroys had hoped, without saying so in words, that Ben might leave for the West, and come back to them with chests of placer gold.
We departed on the Express Line from the Walnut Street wharf. We ferried across the Delaware River, took the railway to South Amboy, New Jersey, and rode a steamboat to New York. It cost three dollars each, the trip lasting just under five hours.
Now Aaronâs sobs were subsiding, and the early-morning sun was just beginning to weaken the darkness, bird life stirring all around us.
The injured man was carried tenderly to a wagon in the early light. Two other men lay down with himâthey had been overcome by fever in the night. Anxious rumors had swept through the gold seekers, of a mysterious fever that was swallowing men in the prime of life. There was a hospital in Panama City, we were told, run by a German physician named Hauser and his daughter. The more optimistic among us enjoyed the first morning chew of tobacco and agreed that no doubt Dr. Hauser would have a tonic that would break every fever.
âI bet itâs not as bad as we imagine,â I heard my own voice say, as though I knew anything about it.
âI bet youâre right,â several voices agreed. Folks chewing tobacco often appear ruminative and wise. You chew, shift your quid, lean forward and spit, and feel like a philosopher. We had ourselves convinced we were in no danger at all.
The truth was, we were terrified to think that this disease might catch up with us. No man dared to whisper the three-syllable curse.
Cholera .
There was no known defense against it, and no cure. Whole villages succumbed to it, all around the world, and ships arrived in port, their crews devastated.
I said a special prayer for the shot man, and for the others, too.
Including Ben and me.
CHAPTER 7
Flocks of raucous parrots broke from the trees overhead as we made our way along the trail. Dr. Merrill rode beside his patient, putting out a steadying arm when Aaron Sweetland tried to sit up in the back of the wagon.
Isom Gill walked alongside, offering encouragement. âWeâre all coming back rich, Aaron,â he said.
It was proper for Isom Gill to show concern for Aaron, and the company was more forgiving now. Men began to share anecdotes from back home, accidents with firearms and farming equipment that had proven less than fatal.
The medication gave Aaron the spirit to sing in a weak voice, a pretty hymn about walking with Jesus.
The jungle began to grow sparse, and we began to pass the simple cane-hut buildings of farmers and the broad thick fields of sugarcane. Children playing in sandy streams watched us as we passed, their mothers and older sisters protected from the sun by white shawls.
The adults, loading bunches of bananas into oxcarts, driving scrawny mules, did little to acknowledge our passage, but I waved to a little boy as naked as a toothpick, and he pointed at us and uttered something in Spanish. A pretty dark-eyed woman, in a sweeping, blue-fringed mantle, came forward to take the little boyâs hand, no doubt thinking we were marauders, and a sure threat to the countryside.
I shifted the tobacco in my mouth and tipped my hat, and the woman lowered her eyes and gave the gentlest of smiles. One glance back at Ben, to see if he had observed this civility, made me realize once again how rough we all looked. My friend, who could name the great scientists of history, from Aristotle to Newton, looked like the lowest sort of character, his features shadowed by his broad hat, his youthful chin in need of a razor.
But he stopped to speak to the woman in the
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