Black Fire by Robert Graysmith

Author:Robert Graysmith [Graysmith, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-307-72058-0
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2012-10-29T16:00:00+00:00

Yes, the blaze had been a diversion to allow strong-arm toughs to loot the great stores of gold dust that miners had in safekeeping awaiting transportation back east. Prospectors keenly missed the presence of any secure banks in the mining regions. While they panned and shored up tunnels, they had to leave their ore unguarded and stood pickaxes in their holes so no one would meddle with their claims. Astonishingly, the markings were commonly honored. An El Dorado gambler lost $45,000 at the turn of a card but said only, “I left my tools in the hole and I’ll get plenty more gold when I get back and the water falls.” Ethics in these uncommonly dishonest times were confusing.

Just before dawn, Mayor Geary announced that $200,000 worth of gold was missing. Later he would leave the city with an unexplained $200,000 fortune he had somehow accumulated on the job during his three years in office. Yet his wealth had not been derived from trade—he had none—or from illegally buying city lots or any of the other doubtful city transactions in which both Brannan and Broderick indulged.

Red Davis and Curly Bill sailed from Rincon Point at the height of the conflagration to bury looted gold. Lit by the burning city, the two Sydney Town Ducks felt the Lightkeeper’s Wind at their backs and heard the California Engine Company bell ringing on Market Street and the odd cadence of the Monumental firehouse bell in the Square. As they progressed on their two-mile journey, a low white fog crept across the bay and covered over the red waters surrounding the burning city. Sheriff John “Coffee Jack” Hays, a tough customer, might be hot on their watery trail. He once led his volunteers against fifteen-to-one odds to smash a Comanche war party. The former Texas Ranger, greatest of them all, could outride and outshoot almost anybody except Billy Mulligan, who scared even the Ducks. Between the Ducks’ present position and Sand Island was Goat Island, to the south. Abruptly the 140-acre island rose steeply from the water silhouetted against a bank of white fog. Using Goat Island as a seamark, they lined up its north end with a grove of redwoods on the East Bay hills, which guided them safely past the sunken ledge of Blossom Rock, a secret and deadly obstacle to ships northwest of Goat Island. They saw a fifty-foot-high cliff and summit of trees and pulled hard for a curving white beach on the eastern side. Cautiously they circled to the island’s tiny cove. Along the coastline was a peaceful stretch of beach and beyond that tangled thickets. Smugglers often buried opium and contraband there until their confederates could row out to the island to retrieve it. They heard a flutter of wings and raucous cries as a pelican flock flew up the island slope. They beached their boat, hauled out bags, and went to bury their stolen gold. Goat Island, a perfect temporary bank for miners, Spanish pirates, wise chiefs,

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