Around four o’clock, I think, we were awakened by a knock on the door. Lewis and I both sat up in bed, wondering if we should answer. If it should be the doctor from the asylum, how would we explain who we were and what we were doing in Lorenzo Sawyer’s hotel room?

But after a few hesitant knocks, we heard a small voice say, “Messer Soiya? This Soon Hing. You tell me come your room, Messer Soiya.”

Right away we knew this was one of Sawyer’s Chinese clients. We opened the door to a small, pigtailed Chinaman, standing with his hands closed flat together and his head bowed. As we looked down at him, he rose up slowly and suddenly realized that neither of us was the man he was calling on. Looking confused, he took a few steps backward, bobbing his head as he did so. Lewis and I figured that was how Chinese people cancelled out a forward bow. About that time, Lorenzo came rushing up the stairs and ushered the confused old coolie into the room, shutting the door behind us.

“Sorry I’m late, Soon,” he told the old man. To us he said, “Gentlemen, this is Soon Hing, a gold miner from Chinese Camp, and now a resident of Nevada City. His is the legal case I’m taking, and after talking with him earlier this afternoon and then doing some research of my own, it turns out that your mission here in Nevada City may be linked with Soon’s own case.”

Soon Hing bowed low again, and Lewis and I did likewise, though Lewis’ hat fell to the floor in the process, and I bumped my head on the bed post, causing a knot that didn’t go away for three days.

We all sat down at a small table in the corner of the room, and Lorenzo went on to explain what he was talking about.

“Soon Hing here has worked in nearly every camp around Nevada City during the past year,” he began. “Since the American miners don’t have a great deal of fondness for the Chinese, he and his men are forced to move on pretty regularly. In any case, Soon has been a keen observer of who owns which mining claims around these parts, and he hasn’t missed any movement of these claims between one person and another. With the information he’s given me, I’ve discovered that a prominent Nevada City resident – a Mr. Nicholas Carlson – has been steadily buying up all the claims he can get his hands on, or else having his men buy them for him in their names. He’s been doing this for the past couple of years, ever since the Marshall strike at Coloma. But, let Soon tell you about it himself.”

I should mention here that Soon Hing, like most Chinese we met, had a problem with the letter L. Because of this, the way he said a lot of different words made Lewis and me smile. Sometimes we’d even chuckle right out loud. Words like “claim” became “craim” and Lewis’ name came out “Rewis.” At first, I thought I’d try to put down everything down just the way he pronounced it, but then I figured it would be too hard to read. Besides, after we spent some time with Soon, Lewis and I came to respect the old man and his people. Suddenly, it didn’t seem right to be poking fun at him. Anyway, after Lorenzo’s brief introduction, Soon Hing bowed a couple more times and then began to tell us what he knew.

“Messer Carlson,” began Soon, “he stake claim all along river, up into hills, and when other man own claim, Carlson he offer buy it from him. If man he no want to sell, Messer Carlson he hire other men, they come beat up owner of claim until owner decide sell. If owner still no want to sell, he suddenly gone next day.”

“Why does Carlson want to own so many small claims?” Lewis asked.

“A few months ago,” Lorenzo answered, “Soon and some of his friends observed a number of Carlson’s men working a hillside in an isolated ravine near the town of Auburn, which is south of here about 25 miles or so.”

“Many men carry long hose,” Soon said, “and hook it to big metal machine with other hose that go down into river. Then they point hose at hill and water from river come out of hose and wash hill away.”

“For the past few years,” Lorenzo said, "people have been predicting that if the power of the rivers here can be harnessed and channeled into a pressurized stream, the gold can simply be washed out of the soil and captured in sluices.”

“Jim Savage told us something like that," Lewis said. “Remember, Will? He called it hydro-licks, I think.”

“I do remember,” I said, “but Savage also told us he didn’t know if anyone could ever build up enough water pressure to make the thing work.”

“That’s been the long-standing argument,” Lorenzo said. “But it seems fairly clear that Carlson has latched on to some sort of system, and it’s one that’s awfully close to working. Soon told me that there were plenty of leaks in the hoses and the pump burst a few times and had to be repaired, but these were all minor difficulties, and he and his friends saw enough before they were chased off to know that Carlson was close to perfecting things.”

“So that’s why Carlson’s buying up all the claims,” I said. “He needs to own a whole hillside before he can wash it away.”

“Exactly,” Lorenzo said. “There are lots of steep slopes around this area, and most of the miners’ claims are small in size, sometimes no more than a few dozen square yards. What’s more, the owners of these claims are severely limited as to how much they can get out of the ground by panning or digging or even using a Long Tom. In many cases, a good enough offer will convince them to sell their claim. In most cases, they’ll probably make more money selling it than they’ve ever taken out in gold. So if Carlson can buy a few hundred small adjacent claims and consolidate them into a single large holding, he’ll be able to go in there with his hydraulic device and get rich off all the gold that lies just a little bit farther beneath the surface. Unfortunately, it seems some miners would rather not to sell their claims. That’s when their troubles set in.”

“Except for his strong-arm tactics,” said Lewis, “I’d say he was simply a shrewd businessman. If he’s managed to come up with a pressurized water system that really works, it won’t be long before someone else is bound to come up with a similar one. And if this Carlson can buy up all the land and beat everyone else to the punch, it’s clear he’ll make the most profit out of it. What I don’t understand is how all this has anything to do with our immediate problem – getting Becky out of that place.”

“You’ll understand after I tell you a few things I discovered by looking over some old newspaper clippings,” Lorenzo said. “It seems Carlson is one of the richest men in the region, that he moved here from Georgia about two years ago, and that he was a strong proponent of – and primary contributor to – the establishment of the asylum. He also was the one who came up with the name ‘Safe House.’ He sold the idea to a town full of citizens who were tired of brawls in the streets and drunks in the gutters each morning. He sold them on the idea that many of the troublemakers in town were mentally unstable and the obvious solution was to lock them all up. Then he personally contributed $5,000 to begin building an asylum outside the city. He developed the plans and supervised the construction as well. He also recruited the superintendent, the man named Hadley, from some well-known Georgia hospital for the insane. The newspapers here have treated the whole thing as a positive, forward-thinking plan, and Carlson himself has been portrayed as a philanthropist.”

“So when Carlson runs into some miner who won’t go along with him by selling his claim, his men rough the miner up, carry him off, and dump him at the ‘Safe House,’ ” I said.

Lorenzo nodded. “And once inside,” he said, “the poor devil rots in a cage or, worse, he just disappears completely, depending how much trouble he’s caused.”

“But why haven’t the miners around here caught on to what’s happening,” Lewis asked. “Don’t they even notice that people are here one day and suddenly gone the next?”

“You have to remember that miners in California are a mixed class,” Lorenzo said, “from different backgrounds and for the most part disunited except for their dogged pursuit of gold. Even though many of the mining camps around here might look like real communities, most of the people in them have nothing in common save the fact that they own a claim in the same area. People drift in and out all the time, and no one keeps tabs on one another as people might do in a real town."

“Miners are so worried about their own claims that they don’t pay much attention to other people’s,” I said.

“Don’t get me wrong, Will,” Lorenzo said. “I have no doubts that there are some caring, concerned citizens scattered in amongst them, but these sometimes seem like isolated grains of grass that are smothered by noxious weeds. The majority of these men are transients anyway, every bit as much as the unfortunate souls who inhabit the innermost recesses of our largest cities – New York, or Philadelphia or Boston. Most miners have no place to call home. They move around from one camp to the next at a moment’s notice, solely on the basis of the color in their pans.”

“But how did Soon Hing, who’s also a miner, manage to catch on to these changes in claims?” asked Lewis.

“Soon Hing see everything,” Soon said with a grin. “Have big eyes!”

“Our friend Soon,” Lorenzo said, “belongs to a tight-knit family of Chinese countrymen. All of them are trying to put down roots here, to establish a second homeland. They want to create permanent communities where they can raise their families and escape the poverty of their native land. The fact that they are less than welcome in these parts has only made them more sharply attuned to the comings and goings of their fellow miners. If for no other reason, they need to be alert as a means for their own survival. As for Soon himself, I’ve found him to be unusually observant.”

“Carlson not good man,” Soon said. “His men chase us away from mining camps. He steal our claims and his men cut off our queues.”

“Cues?” Lewis said. “What are cues?”

Soon Hing reached back and grabbed his pigtail.

“This is queue,” he said. “To cut queue is to suffer damnation of soul.”

“To the Chinese,” Lorenzo said, “their braided pigtails, or queues, link them with their souls’ destinies. To cut these off is to lessen their chances of reaching heaven. Carlson’s men, besides stealing claims and threatening the Chinese miners, have been known to descend on them in during the night and cut off these locks of hair. This serves to demoralize them and makes it easier to force them off their land.”

"So, the long and the short of it,” Lewis said, “is that the man we’re after with our complaint is the same man you’re after for stealing the Chinese claims.”

“Exactly,” Lorenzo said. “And though he has men under him in whose names most of these illegal acts are being carried out, he is certainly behind it all and is the one we need to bring to justice.”

“But now that we know what we do about Carlson,” I said, “why can’t we just go to the sheriff here in town?”

“I wish it were that easy,” Lorenzo said, “but the matter is complicated because Carlson has the Nevada City sheriff in his coat pocket. He virtually financed the man’s entire re-election campaign, he’s put money into improvements at the jailhouse and he’s seen by the community as a public-spirited town father. There’s not a person in town who wouldn’t call Nicholas Carlson a proponent of public safety and city improvement.”

The room fell silent as each of us considered the problem.

“The way I see it,” Lorenzo finally said, “is we have only two options. First, we could try to help Becky to escape from the asylum, which would mean we’d need help from the inside.”

“The doctor?” Lewis asked.

Lorenzo nodded. “Even then, it might be next to impossible,” he said. “The other option would be to try and get help from someone so high up that even the sheriff would have to cooperate.”

“Someone like who?” I asked.

“Someone like the territorial governor, Peter Burnett,” Lorenzo said, “or maybe one of the justices on the Territorial Supreme Court.”

“Do you know any of them?” I asked.

“Not at present,” Lorenzo said. “But I had hoped to make my introduction at some point/ I suppose this is as good a time as any. Chief Justice Hastings might be a good person to write, or perhaps Associate Justice Henry Lyons, who’s also a fair-minded individual, from what I’ve read. In any case, it would have to be done soon, since the impending statehood could bring in a whole new sea of faces to the governor’s office and to the courts as well.”

“When you talk about writing a letter,” Lewis said, “wouldn’t it be weeks or even months before we got a response?”

“I’m sure the gravity of this situation would merit a quicker reply than that,” Lorenzo said. “And when you consider that Becky’s father was to be the new judge amongst their ranks, I’d expect the justices to have more than a casual interest in seeing this case resolved and the perpetrators brought to justice.”

“But what do we do in the meantime?” I asked. “I couldn’t just park myself here in Nevada City and sit on my hands while I knew Becky was still in that place.”

“It would still help if we could find this Skeeter Daniels fellow,” Lorenzo said. “If we could convince him to confess that he dumped Becky there, I don’t see how they could get out of releasing her. Of course, it’s by no means a sure bet that we can even find him. But it’s worth pursuing nonetheless.”

“That’s fine by me,” I said. “I’d like to see that guy face to face anyway and tell him what I think of him.”

“The problem,” Lewis said, “is that we still don’t know where he holes up between his business deals. Don’t forget, Lorenzo, that a whole posse from Sonora hasn’t been able to track him down. How are we supposed to?”

“That brings us once again to Dr. Zeissler,” Lorenzo said.

“But how could he help?” I asked. “Besides, do you really think he’ll show up here? Why should he go out of his way to look you up?”

“Because,” answered Lorenzo, “he seemed anxious to talk about his work with someone. I also believe he is genuinely interested in treating the insane, and that if given the chance, he might be inclined to turn witness on his present employers. I believe Zeissler is basically a good man, and I am gambling on that gut feeling. As far as how he could be helpful, I’d like to try and get him to talk about Becky’s remarks again – you know, about the rushing river and the insects she had to ward off. Somehow, I think her words might give us a clue as to where we might find this Skeeter Daniels.”

“One thing we might do,” Lewis said, “is to contact Mr. Granger again and update him on our situation. Who knows, maybe Capt. Hunt knows someone in the California territorial government. In any case, the more he’s aware of our plans, the better.”

“Mr. Manly, you have a most productive idea,” Lorenzo said. “As for myself, I will get to work on letters to both the governor and a few of the court justices I mentioned. Then, let’s all just hope and pray that the good doctor decides to pay us a visit.”