Besieged: Stories from the Iron Druid Chronicles(38)



It was not a plan without risk, but at that time in San Francisco, the only way to inspire more greed than winning big at gambling was to walk in with a huge haul of gold. Every new strike was cause for feverish excitement, and word got around fast when miners came in with their ore. My load of nearly pure nuggets and the gold dust on my clothes would cause instant excitement, and it did. I made it to the bank of Henry M. Naglee on Portsmouth Square just before close of business, and I had a significant crowd following me by that time, walking alongside Sally, eyeing the saddlebags, and licking their lips with thoughts of what must be in there. Their auras all churned with the angry orange tones of avarice, but none was a demon walking around in a meat suit. I didn’t give the name of Algernon Percy to the man who asked, “What’s your name, mister?”

“Silas Makepeace,” I told him in a drawl I hoped sounded like the sheriff’s, making the name up on the spot, because you could still do that back then. Nobody in the crowd knew me as Algernon Percy, the Duke of Northumberland, so there was no reason to wear that mask.

“You’re probably wearing a hundred dollars of gold dust on your coat. That must be some claim you have.”

“I’d say it is,” I allowed, giving him a grin, even though I wasn’t too sure what he meant.

“Where’s your claim?” someone else asked.

“Same place as everyone else’s. In the Sierra Nevada.”

“Yeah, but is it your claim or someone else’s?”

“Mine, of course.”

“So where is it?”

“That’s my business.”

“You gotta have it filed with the county anyway. Might as well tell us.”

That was alarming news. I had not filed any claim or even known that was something I was supposed to do. That’s the danger of living away from the world: You’re going to have to come back to it sometime, and customs and laws seem to always change to your disadvantage. I’d expected and prepared for someone to try to take my gold by force, but the idea that someone could use a legal maneuver to take it had never occurred to me. But it sounded as if I had at least a delaying tactic at my disposal. “You might as well go look up the file, because I ain’t tellin’.”

The man grumbled at that, but others laughed at him and said I was under no obligation to do anything but file my claim within thirty days of staking it out.

Once the bank was in sight, I reached out to Sally and told her to run for it, leaving the crowd behind. If I let them walk with me all the way there, it wouldn’t end well. One or more of them would offer to help me carry all that gold in. And when I refused, they’d find a way to escalate. There’d be a fight, and my gold would be stolen by one or more of them. So this was my chance to leave them behind, and they had no warning of it since I’d given no audible command to Sally. A couple of them were knocked down, having drawn far too close.

They shouted and chased after me, and in truth I had only fifty yards on them once I reached the hitching post, but it was enough to dismount and sling the saddlebags over my left shoulder, slip inside the bank, and close the door in some angry faces, shooting home a sliding bolt. Their shouts of dismay and fists hammering the door made me smile.

“Hey now,” a querulous voice said. “You can’t just bar the door like that. This is a business, and these are business hours.”

I turned my head and beheld a man with epic swaths of dark mustache sweeping down to billowy muttonchops on either side of his face. His chin was shorn clean, but his mouth would have been invisible under that mustache except that it was currently frowning at me, giving me a peek at a drawn lower lip. Predatory eyes glared at me over a long, straight nose, giving him the appearance of a hairy eagle. That was Henry Naglee, who eventually got out of the banking business and went on to be a vintner and a Union Army general in the Civil War.

“I’ve got a whole lot of gold here, mister,” I hollered over the pounding on the door, shrugging my shoulder once to indicate the heavy saddlebags, “and these gentlemen were fixin’ to take it off me. If I could sell it to you first, I’d sure feel a lot better about opening the door.”

Despite his insistence that the door remain open for business, there weren’t any customers besides me. He rose from his chair, which was situated behind a counter with a locked entrance, and emerged moments later with the jangling of a key, calling to someone unseen to come forward and help. Two men shortly appeared from the back, both impressively armed and bearded and ready to defend the riches inside the building. The three of them loomed behind me and shouted at the men outside to cut it out, the bank was closed. My pursuers gave up eventually but promised they’d see me later. That’s precisely what I wanted, so I taunted them and said through the door, “You do that.”

Word would get around now: Some punk named Silas Makepeace brought in one hell of a haul, and they were going to find out where he got it. They’d be loud about it, and their collective greed would draw the attention of the demon for sure. One way or another, we’d run into each other. There was no chance he’d go anywhere else when so much greed was concentrated in this city.

Satisfied that no one would be busting into the bank now, Henry Naglee pointed to my saddlebags. “May I?”

“Sure.” I flipped open one of them and watched his eyes as he peered inside at the nuggets. They widened, but only a bit, before he confined himself to a short nod.

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