Free The Gold Seekers by William Stuart Long Page A

anxious to leave here. Did he tell you why?”
    Claus shook his head. The boy, he was forced to concede, had given no reason for his anxiety to leave San Francisco, and Saleh was right in suggesting that he was overly anxious. He had said that he had worked a claim on the Sacramento River with his elder brother and two others—Australians— who had been killed in an accidental collapse of a mine shaft. But he had not enlarged on his story, had “given no details, and had apportioned no blame—and there was the sister. Few gold miners brought their wives with them to the field, fewer still their sisters, and Murphy was young—eighteen, he had said, his sister a year younger.
    “I told the boy that he must bring his sister out to the ship this evening, Saleh,” he offered defensively, “before I could agree to give her passage. They are living on a hulk on the foreshore, it seems. I sent a boat for them—they will be here soon. You can question them if you wish.”
    Saleh spread his hands in a negative gesture. “It is not for me to question them, master. But if you will permit me, I will be present when you speak with them.”
    “What do you fear—that the boy is a criminal, a fugitive from justice?”
    The old Javanese repeated his shrug. “It is possible. This is a lawless place. One hears tales of vigilantes, who dispense summary justice and are greatly feared. Those they call the Hounds are said to kill and rob. Their victims are said to be Mexicans and Spaniards, people with dark skins, such as ourselves, who have been shown no mercy. And daily there are drunken brawls in the streets and in the saloons. In the fields, if rumor is to be believed, the gold miners make their own laws. There are many bad people here, with no respect for religion or the church.”
    “Luke Murphy told me he was brought up in the Mormon faith,” Claus argued. “Mormons are good, God-fearing folk, Saleh. Besides, I liked the boy, and I fell sorry for him.”
    Saleh’s bearded lips twitched into an indulgent smile. “You have not changed since your boyhood. Always you permit your heart to rule your head! I would not have you otherwise, master, but sometimes it is wise to exercise caution.
    In your desire to befriend this American boy, you are perhaps recalling your own youth and the cruelty you suffered at the hands of your father and Mevrouw Van Buren, the wife of your father.”
    Perhaps he was, Claus reflected ruefully. Perhaps he had seen himself in the thin, wiry boy who had pleaded so earnestly to be given the chance to work his passage to Australia, for all his admitted lack of nautical skills … and who had then begged, even more earnestly, to be allowed to bring his sister with him.
    His own initiation into seafaring had been harsh enough, the Dolphin’s master recalled. He had been barely eleven when his father, who had for so long refused to acknowledge their kinship, had taken him to the Dutch East Indies as a member of the old Dorcas’s crew and had expected him to work as a man. He had done so; he had always done whatever his father had asked or expected of him, anticipating neither praise nor reward and receiving none. But the big, arrogant Dutchman who had sired him had, in the end, made reparation. Dying, he had acknowledged him at last as his lawful son and heir and had bequeathed to him the Van Buren name and the three trading ships on which his present prosperity was built.
    Claus met Saleh’s quizzical gaze and echoed the old man’s smile. He was a rich man now, the three ships grown to a sizable fleet, which did a profitable trade with the Indies and China. In the early days, Sydney’s elitist society had been reluctant to accept him because of his color and background and the fact that, during his father’s lifetime, he, like Saleh, had been a servant in the fine house that was now his own.
    But with the education he had acquired at the church school in Windsor—a township on the Hawkesbury River—