He held me tight. His voice was gruff as he said, “Come on. We’re wasting precious time. We’ve got gold to find.”
I pulled back, my heart beating hard, laughing and hopeful. I slipped the gold nugget into a pocket of my skirt, wanting to keep it as a reminder of the real gift Sam had given me.
The hours slipped by, and the work was backbreaking. For every pan with a nugget of gold, there were five or six with nothing. Thankfully, each pan contained flakes, hundreds of them, but it was the nuggets that we wanted and needed. I took the time to collect every fleck we found because eventually they would add up, but it was time-consuming work.
We panned one section and then another, and it soon became obvious where more gold was deposited: the inside of the bendsof the river. My hands were raw with blisters from the shovel, and they became dry and cracked from hours of being in the water.
At lunchtime, we stopped for cold beans and a short break, and then we were back in the riverbed.
The sound of the water, which had been soothing and peaceful the night before, began to wear on me. My back ached from bending over, my arms hurt from shoveling and panning, and the hem of my gown was heavy from the weight of the water.
I’d rarely been so miserable in my life.
“Why in the world do the men come into San Francisco after panning for weeks at a digging just to gamble and drink away all their hard work?” I asked as I stood to push my hair out of my eyes. “It’s insanity.”
“We’ve already collected at least fifty dollars’ worth of gold,” he said. “A blacksmith in Massachusetts, working hard all day, might make a dollar. This is easy money for them, and what comes easily is spent easily.”
My lips parted. “You think we already have fifty dollars?”
“And then some.”
“Sam!”
He laughed. “That’s not going to get us far when a meal at my San Francisco Hotel will cost a man five and a bed will cost ten.”
My face fell as I realized he was right.
“That’s why it comes and goes so easily from these men,” Sam said, bending over with another pan of sediment. “Fifty dollars isn’t worth much in California.”
As I worked, I noticed a crevice up ahead. The sun hit the rocks at such an angle that it gave me a clear view, and my breath hitched. “Sam, look.”
I pointed toward the crevice and then began wading upriver, my pan in one hand and my shovel in the other. It wasn’t easy walking in the rubber waders, but they kept my feet dry and warm.
Sam finished washing his pan and then followed me.
There in the crevice of the rocks were several large gold nuggets. Twice as many as we had panned out of the river that whole day.
Excitement filled my heart, and it felt like it might burst as I reached down and picked up the biggest one I saw.
It was the size of a plum.
With a squeal of delight, I turned and showed it to Sam. His smile was so bright and so happy, but he wasn’t looking at the gold.
He was looking at me.
18
September 30, 1929
Hollywood, California
For five days, I had kept the discovery of gold on the Yuba River a secret from my parents. Sam and I had worked from sunup to sundown, filling every bag and container we had brought with us. Sam estimated that we were collecting over ten thousand dollars apiece each day, which meant that we had a hundred thousand dollars in gold. I wanted to stay as long as possible to keep working, but I had promised Father and the children, not to mention Sam, that we would be gone for only three weeks.
And I was always conscious of Sam’s worry about chasing money. It was easy to see how gold fever could take over, especially when we were having such success. But I had agreed that in the morning, we would head back to San Francisco. The last thing I wanted to do was disappoint him. He had worked so hard, and he had insisted I was supposed to keep every nugget and flake of gold for both my families.
I didn’t plan to tell Mama and Papa until the gold was in the safety-deposit box at the Wells Fargo Bank in San Francisco. Sam and I had a long way to go before we reached that destination, and anything could happen. It was all I could think aboutafter days of working in the river. Every night when we went to sleep, I prayed God would protect us from thieves and marauders. We hadn’t seen a single person since the miner we’d passed just before arriving in Downieville, but that didn’t mean we weren’t being watched.
Whenever my family asked me about our progress, I told them we found gold, but I downplayed it, not wanting them to get their hopes up. Secretly, though, I couldn’t wait for them to find out. I had no idea how much gold prices had risen since 1849. How much would four hundred pounds of gold be worth in 1929? We wouldn’t need to worry about anything again, and I wouldn’t have to accept Mr. Mayer’s offer.
