Sample chapter from Across the Great Divide

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Chapter Twenty-five
A Singed Cat is Better Than He Looks

It is a lovely summer morning; one filled with great promise. The miners are looking forward to shining rewards from their dry diggings and coyote holes. Sam Grush and Howard Bicknell are off to their claim at Woodpecker Ravine south of Grass Valley; it is a new partnership. Kiba Aku is opening up the Pacific Restaurant, setting tables with plates and silverware Sam recently received from his brother back in Beverly, a good-wishes gift. Edward Elliot, the cook, is in the kitchen prepping lunch. George Kidd is with George Marsh surveying for a ditch they are building to bring water from the Yuba River to the Coyote Diggings near the town. Phoebe Kidd is visiting Mrs. Phelps at her home along the ravine. Above the hills east of the city a conspiracy of ravens is circling over a fresh deer kill, waiting for the wolf pack to have their fill and move off.

William Anderson, editor, is sorting papers on his desk at the Nevada Democrat. His brother-in-law, George A. Young and William Pearson the printer are there as well. The paper is housed in the brick Hamlet-Davis Democrat building on Broad Street, a few doors from the United States Hotel corner. Mrs. Frisbie is in the Kidd and Knox building on Broad Street. People are coming to work at the Court House, newly constructed at a cost to the county of nearly sixty-thousand dollars. Sheriff Wright is seeing to his prisoners in the jail in the courthouse basement. Sam Parsons is feeding the horses at the Whitehall Stables next to the United States Hotel. Jay Hamlin is in his Bookseller and Stationer store in the Alban Building on the corner of Broad and Pine. Peter Hendrickson is in his grocery store on Broad Street doing an inventory of his goods. Eddy De Young, his clerk, is late for work.

It is Saturday so there is no school. Children play in the streets: kick the can, ducks fly, jump rope, hide and seek. They linger sometimes just down the street from No. 79 Broad Street where Mrs. Holbridge, Doctress, runs a home for the sick in her house. Perhaps the curiosity of young about the aged. Perhaps a morbid interest in end-of-life circumstance, far removed from youthful reality. Soon death will enter that reality. They see Helen Bellingham, their teacher, coming from the Pacific Restaurant where she boards. They scamper.

William Hughes is in his blacksmith’s shop at 13 Pine Street at the rear of Dr. Alban’s brick building, adjacent to the brewery, and just across from the stable at Kidd and Knox’s building. Hughes had come to California with his brother Thomas in 1853 and established the forge here but Thomas had died last year. William carries on, crafting tools and horseshoes, collecting scraps of iron to fabricate into useful items. He is well liked and is considered something of a folk philosopher.

The shop has a large collection of horseshoes of various sizes displayed on the wall. An assortment of tools is at the smithy’s disposal: ball peen hammers, tongs, chisels, files and rasps, cutters, and of course, the anvil. A great slab of metal, Hughes’ anvil has the classic shape: a flat top with rounded edges, the curved horn for shaping, the square hardie hole to secure chisels and swages, the round privet hole for punching holes in metal—a most universal and indispensable tool.

At the back of the shop is a brick chimney where the forge is attacked. There is a large bucket filled with coal which Hughes shovels into the forge. Hanging above is a two-stage bellows. Hughes can raise the top of the bellows by pulling a cord, then release it, causing the collapsing bellows to blow air at the fire through a hose.

It is two o’clock in the afternoon now, and William Hughes has shoveled more coal into the forge than usual, as he needs a very hot fire for working on a wheel covering for one of the Wells Fargo Wagons. He works the bellows. Flames leap up from the coals, an unexpected circumstance, but one he has under control in minutes. In these old wooden buildings one cannot take chances. He does not notice, however, the sparks that fly up the chimney. Combined with hot air and coal tar that has accumulated over the years, and leaks between the stones of the chimney, the sparks present a dangerous situation. At the juncture of the chimney with the roof dry leaves and dry shingles become fuel for the hungry fire. They catch. The roof is ablaze and Huges still has not noticed.

Hughes’ blacksmith shop connects with a long row of wooden buildings: all of the business portion bounded by Broad, Pine and Spring streets. The wind is blowing from the west and flaming embers from the roof blow across the street to the large stable of the Kidd and Knox building and the United States Hotel. The horses are first to sound the alarm, neighing frantically and kicking at their stalls. Sam Parsons, smelling smoke and sensing danger, throws blankets over the horses’ heads and leads them out of the stable and up the street toward the safety of Deer Creek. The cry, “Fire! Fire!” is now echoing through town. The streets are filled with people, ready and willing to fight the flames licking now at the hotel and threatening other buildings. But there is little they can do.  Dr. Alban’s brick building alone offers-an obstacle to the flames. Since that first fire of 1852, structures have risen in the city made of brick—deemed fireproof. But now even the Alban building is attacked by the fire storm, fanned by a relentless wind and gaining intensity.

Jimmy Hamlin who occupies a portion of the building as Bookseller and Stationer, covers himself with a wet blanket and rushes to the front of the store. With the assistance of Martin Luther Marsh he grabs a ladder and climbs to a window in the upper story. The building is on fire around the skylight, and flaming ingots are falling, burning a hole through the floor.  In the lower story is a large quantity of camphene, a chemical insoluble in water and highly flammable. A bucket of water is brought and Marsh and Hamlin throw it on the burning floor to extinguish the flames. They are nearly overcome by the ensuing smoke.

Mr. Thomas Whartenby lets loose his large reservoir sending torrents of water rushing through the Deer Creek Ditch which his brother James owns jointly with George Kidd and others. Mr. D. Belden, Frank Cleveland, Will N. Rabbitts and Jeremiah Tucker quickly form a bucket brigade and the building is saved. But the notion that brick buildings are fireproof is about to be disproved with devastating results. There are twenty-eight supposedly fireproof buildings here and a few cellars and vaults which seem to provide protection from the fire, and some foolhardy individuals who seek shelter in them.

The Kidd and Knox building, brick, has iron shutters which can be closed and barred. A. J. Hagan, a banker and partner with Jessie Wall, William B. Pearson, a printer in the Democrat office, Sherman W. Fletcher, formerly District Attorney of the County, Thomas Ellard Beans, Deputy County Clerk, and Jay Johnson, former County Surveyor, have entered here and are closing the shutters, thinking to keep the fire from entering. The building is surrounded on three sides by large wooden buildings, and the flames from the United States Hotel now completely envelope it. There are twenty kegs of gun powder stored here; the men’s position is precarious.

Fletcher and Beans go-to the second story to close the shutters there. They can now see the fire climbing the sides of the building. Mr. Beans, fearing retreat will be cut off, leaps from the back window onto a shed below, He calls to Fletcher to follow. Fletcher is afraid to leap, and closes the shutter, taking his chances in the building. It is brick, therefore it is fireproof, isn’t it?

Mrs. Frisbie is in the upper story of the building. The doors in front are shut and all the shutters are closed. She is trapped. She feels her way down stairways and through darkened hallways to the rear of the building and tries to unbar the shutters of the windows. The bars are not giving way. She searches for something to help and comes upon a can of axle grease. She greases the bars and is able to push the shutter open. She escapes. Attempts are made to rescue the others still inside but the powder kegs explode. Walls collapse. Hagan, Johnson, Fletcher and Pearson are probably already dead from smoke inhalation. Their bodies will be found in the ruins.

Peter Hendrickson had come to California from Albany, New York. In 1853 he opened a grocery store at 82 Broad Street. He also owned the Eagle Bakery opposite his store. In September of 1854 he torn the building down and rebuilt it in brick—fireproof brick. Eddy De Young, Hendrickson’s clerk tries to get his boss to leave the building, fire has already taken the boarding house next door. “You may leave if you are fearful,” Hendrickson tells him. “This building is fireproof. I am perfectly safe here.”  Except he is not. The building blows up, burying its owner in the rubble.

Other unfortunates: John Yates, of the firm of Yates and Tallman, is in a brick building on Commercial Street and does not escape; Mr. Thomas, who has a saloon on Broad Street and William Wilson, a plasterer, are so badly burned that they die the next day. William Anderson, editor of the Democrat, and his brother-in-law, George A. Young, making their escape are badly burned on their faces and hands, but will recover. The building owned by Greer and Skillman on Main Street explodes. That of Rogers Hamilton and Company is saved from the same fate by Rogers having removed the powder kegs stored inside. The walls of the three-story brick building of Abbott and Edwards on Commercial Street collapse from the heat. Mr. Dickerman], a paper hanger has a sewing machine shop in a small brick building on a hill near the Court House. Although surrounded by wooden houses that burst into flames, his house survives, and only the wooden front doors are scorched.

The streets are smoke-filled, and ash falls like dirty snow. Flaming shards are wind-born and find easy targets in the wooden houses and stores. Fire surrounds the Court House. Valiant attempts to save it are meeting with failure; men climb ladders, through buckets of water through windows, but this is futile. Inside the smoke is thick and toxic. Sheriff W. W. Wright unlocks the jail cells of the prisoners in the basement. The smoke confuses him. His throat hurts, his eyes water and close against the biting hot breath of the fire. A prisoner being held for murder, George Lewis, takes the sheriff’s arm and leads safely from the burning building. Lewis will be released on bail sometime later. In early November, Wright and a posse will be perusing some escaped prisoners near Gold Flat. There will be a shoot-out and in the confusion in a darkened ravine the sheriff and one of his deputies will be shot; Wright will die, killed accidentally by friendly fire.

Most of the town is up on Phelps Hill, looking down at the blackened remains of their town. It is almost completely destroyed. The Pacific Restaurant is gone. Kiba Aku and some of the boarders including teamster Nathan Comstock, schoolteacher Helen Bellingham, and stone mason William Moore have barely escaped with their lives. Phoebe Kidd hugs the young Paiute girl. Both are overcome with emotion—horror and uncertainty. So soon after the horrible fire at Grass Valley. Is it the end of the world?

Of the twenty-eight fire-proof buildings only six have not been totally destroyed, yet four of these are still on fire. Only Dr. Bicknell’s on Broad Street, and Dr Lark’s on Main Street are intact. Ten people have died or will soon die from their burns. There will be six unidentified bodies found the next day. A singed cat will be found inside the bank vault of C. W. Mulford.