Authors: Avi
Hard Gold
A LETTER TO MY READERS
Dear Friends,
I love to read good, strong stories with lots of adventure, action, and emotion
—
and plenty of detail. No surprise it’s the kind of story I like to write, too.
That’s what this series, I Witness, is all about: exciting stories about fictional young people during real events in history. I Witness stories will make you feel as if you are right in the middle of the action. The illustrations will show what things really looked like.
There have been many gold rushes in American history, but since I live in Colorado, the one I’ve heard most about is the gold rush of 1859—the days of “Pike’s Peak or Bust.” Hard Gold is as true to what happened to those Fifty-Niners as I could make it. I don’t know if there actually was a teenager by the name of Early Wittcomb, but I am sure there were a good many like him.
Here we go …
If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped” book.
Text copyright © 2008 by Avi
All rights reserved. Published by Disney • Hyperion Books, an imprint of Disney Book Group. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher.
For information address Disney • Hyperion Books,
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First Disney • Hyperion paperback edition, 2009
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Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data on file.
eISBN: 978-1-4231-4026-9
ISBN: 978-1-4231-0520-6
Visit
www.hyperionbooksforchildren.com
Illustration credits appear on page 230.
ILS No. J689-1817-1
110 2009
For Bev Robin and Leslie Blauman
CONTENTS
Late Winter, 1858
M
Y NAME is Early Wittcomb, and I’m the teller of this tale. I was given the name
Early
because I was born in the first hour of the first day of 1845—the same year the Republic of Texas joined the Union. While I can’t say I was
always
early, I did stay—otherwise I wouldn’t be telling this story, now would I?
This tale really begins when “Old Buck” James Buchanan was president, the one just before Lincoln. That was about the time that a drought had settled on the whole middle part of the country, including Iowa state, where my family had a farm.
Our seventy-five acres were in Cass County, east of the town of Wiota. We grew wheat, corn, and oats and kept some sheep, hogs, and cows.
Just a glimpse of how the prairie looked.
To my eyes it wasn’t nearly so cultivated, not back in 1858.
Having less rain meant we weren’t able to grow much, so money was scarce. Markets were so bad they were calling it a “panic.” Even if you had money, it was hard to keep. Lots of farm folks couldn’t make mortgage payments to the bank. If you couldn’t pay, the bank took the farm. Called “foreclosure.” Perfectly legal, in a kind of low-down, thieving, rascally way.
Pa and Ma used savings to pay our mortgage, but with no cash coming in, our money was dwindling. We didn’t know what might happen.
Then, on a cold morning in February, a gig pulled by a glossy brown mare drove up to our house. That didn’t happen often, so the whole family—Pa, Ma, Adam, Uncle Jesse, and I—went out to see who it was.
At the reins of the gig was Mr. Fuslin, our local banker. Fuslin was not only head of the local Whig party but a county judge. A portly man, he had a gray beard that edged round his long face like an upside-down crown. Hatchet-nosed.
Sitting next to him was a tall, skinny fellow dressed in top hat, a long black frock coat, black vest, and fine boots. Never saw him before. They both climbed out.
