Besieged: Stories from the Iron Druid Chronicles(39)

“Very well, I see we have business to conduct, Mr….”

“Makepeace.”

“Welcome, sir.” He asked one of the armed men to remain at the door and told the other to watch the back door. “If you’ll meet me at that window, Mr. Makepeace, we can begin to assay your find.”

It was a lot of waiting around after that as Henry Naglee weighed my nuggets on his scales, but I had thirty pounds of solid stuff there and then another few ounces of gold dust on my clothes, which we laboriously brushed off once I surreptitiously unbound it from the material.

“Where you from, Mr. Makepeace?” Naglee asked me as he worked. “Sounds like you might be from the South.”

“Middle of nowhere, Texas.” I hoped my accent sounded convincing. Mr. Naglee, being from the North, might not be able to tell the difference between Southern accents very well, and I only needed the identity to hold up a little while longer. “Got tired of cows and decided to come west and see what all the fuss is about.”

“Looks like you’ve found the fuss.”

“I sure did. Don’t know much about this claim business, though.”

The banker paused and looked up at me. “You didn’t mine this from your own claim?”

“Well, what if I didn’t?”

“Then you must first prove that it wasn’t from someone else’s claim, and if it’s from unclaimed land, then you can file claim to it to prevent others from mining on it.”

“Oh. And how do I claim land?”

“First you must mark the boundaries of your claim with stakes—”

? ? ?

<Whoa, Atticus, wait. Steaks? You would just claim land by leaving delicious steaks around to rot?>

“No, Oberon, stakes, as in a wooden stake you drive into the ground. It’s a homophone.”

<Oh, good. I was going to say I’d never claim any land if I have to give up steaks to do it. And also? English is stupid. And I’m still waiting on a vintage poodle.>

“And you’ve been so patient too.”

Naglee continued, “And once you’ve finished staking your claim, you have thirty days to file the boundaries with the county and pay associated fees and so on. I assume you’re an American citizen?”

“Yeah,” I said, though of course I wasn’t. He didn’t question me, though, since I didn’t sound like I was from Europe.

“That’s very good. The city passed a foreign miners’ tax a couple weeks ago that comes to twenty dollars a month.”

I made no comment but learned later that that law was the first measure of many designed to discriminate against the Chinese, though of course it also would have affected men like Stefano Pastore. That might have been what pushed him to summon a demon rather than try to make a living at mining. Twenty dollars back then was like five hundred now.

Once I’d satisfied him that I hadn’t jumped someone else’s claim, Naglee eventually named a figure, and I didn’t argue but just took what he gave me. It was plenty for my purposes, which was to draw greedy eyes in my direction. A certain pair in particular. And I’d thought of how to use the claim laws in my favor.

When I emerged from the bank, clothes all clean of dust, saddlebags empty, but flush with disposable wealth, some of the unwashed men who’d followed me were waiting nearby. The sun was setting and I saw them silhouetted against the sky.

“There he is,” one said, and another said, “Let’s go.” I was still a target. The wealth had changed from gold to various coins and bills, but I was a newcomer who didn’t have any friends or even a gun. And they had come to California thinking they’d get rich quick but didn’t, which meant I was the best opportunity they would have for a while. All they had to do was roll me. But I still had my sword, and once I threw the saddlebags over Sally’s back, I drew it. That slowed them down. They weren’t all wearing guns: Only two of the five approaching me had them.

“If y’all wanna talk, talk from a distance, or I’ll open you up.”

“Sure,” one of them said. “That’s all we wanna do. Talk.” Their body language said different, but I pretended he was being sincere.

“Fine. I don’t know about you, but I’m thirsty. First round’s on me, gentlemen. Where’s can a body get somethin’ good to drink in this town?”

“The U.S. Exchange is pretty good,” one of the figures said. “They only water down their whiskey a little bit.”

“Sounds good. Maybe they’ll have a bottle hidden somewhere that isn’t watered down at all. Lead the way.”

It was only a couple of blocks or so to the U.S. Exchange, which sounded like a bank or a financial institution but was really a gambling hall that served liquor. Like everyplace else in San Francisco at the time, it had been hastily constructed out of wood, because when a boomtown is booming, you don’t want to miss a night of profit by building to last—the booms only last so long, and then the wooden structures are easily abandoned when the money dries up.

It was at least making pretentions of being fancy: They had a piano player, and I could only imagine where they’d shipped that piano in from. Surely not over land.

They had a couple of blackjack tables, faro tables, a roulette wheel, and plenty of other tables for poker or other card games. There were three women pouring whiskey and flirting with the miners. One of them came around to our table with a tray of glasses, and I bought one round to shoot and then another to sip.