Hard Gold (20 page)
Authors: Avi
“Two years,” she amended.
So it was that I returned to Iowa and Wiota, keeping Jesse’s box of gold real close. As I looked so young, no one could have guessed what a fortune I was carrying. In the end, I just walked into our house and set the gold on the table.
First, they were amazed. Then, glad to see me. But the questions had to come.
“How did you get it?” demanded Adam.
“It was just how Jesse said: got it with an ax, hatchet, and a frying pan! Easy.”
“But where is Jesse?” Ma asked.
“I never found him,” I said.
I stayed in Iowa only a short time. Truth is, I no longer felt as if I belonged there. It seemed so much the same, whereas I knew I had changed. But most of all, I was anxious to get back to Cherry Creek. I kept thinking of the mountains, the huge blue skies, the flowers—and most of all, Lizzy. My fire girl.
I went to Judge Fuslin’s bank and had the satisfaction of giving him three hundred dollars worth of gold. Said I got it out of the Cherry Creek mines, which was true enough. I insisted on a receipt.
Once I had attended to that, I told my parents and brother that I was going back to Cherry Creek. “The farm is safe and Adam will have it,” I told them. “I’ve got to find my own way.”
They argued, of course—my ma, mostly—but I had made up my mind.
So once more I set out for the Pike’s Peak diggings. This time it wasn’t gold I was seeking, nor Jesse. It was Lizzy I wanted to see, and while she was many things, she was no elephant. I knew she’d be there and that she would sing her sweet songs, call me Mr. Early when she was mad, toss her red hair, make her green eyes shine, and do things that would surprise me enough to keep me glad to be alive.
I guess what I wanted—needed—most of all was to be alive.
I never saw Mr. Mawr again.
Or Jesse.
But I did think about Jesse, often. When I did, I always recalled Lizzy’s question:
What do you think will happen to him?
Truth is, I had an answer even then, but that was one of the few times I didn’t tell her what was in my mind. I couldn’t. Not then. Not ever. I suppose in every heart there’s a secret sadness. True for me. I had decided it was the minister’s words that said it best:
Gold looks like a god’s eye, bright, bold, and beautiful. It’s smooth and soft, the way a god’s touch should feel. You can bend it, shape it, and darn near chew it. It won’t change on you. It won’t rust. Get enough gold in your hands, and you can buy yourself a palace.
But, gold can make a person crazy. Because if you get gold seeping into your heart and mind, if you let it take over your soul, it will turn you into a hard devil. Then the only thing your gold can buy you then is a cold coffin in a colder grave.
Jesse, I keep you in my mind, alive and shining. The way you used to be.
To Cherry Creek We’ll Go
Then, Ho! Boys, ho! To Cherry Creek we’ll go.
There is plenty of gold out west we’re told
In the new El Dorado.
We expect hard times, we expect hard fare,
And sometimes sleep in the open air;
We’ll lie on the ground and sleep very sound,
Except when the coyotes bark all around.
The gold is there most anywhere,
You can take it out rich with an iron cro-bar;
And when it’s thick, with a shovel and pick.
You can take it out in lumps as big as a brick.
Now, ladies, don’t you be alarmed,
For we’re the boys that are well armed.
Don’t you fear nor shed a tear,
But patiently wait about one year.
Then, Ho! Boys, ho! To Cherry Creek we’ll go.
There is plenty of gold out west, we’re told
In the new El Dorado.
ARASTRA WHEEL: A large stone wheel, usually turned by a donkey, used for crushing gold laden ore, so that the gold could be extracted.
BUFFALO CHIPS: Dried buffalo manure used as burnable fuel when wood was not available.
CALICO: A kind of cheap cotton fabric with figured patterns. Originally from Calicut, India, from which it derives its name.
CLAY, HENRY (1777–1852): Highly influential and controversial Whig statesman and member of Congress.
COLT REVOLVER: Weapon invented in 1836 by Sam Colt that was capable of firing five or six bullets without reloading, by use of a revolving cylinder. In the nineteenth century, Colt guns were the best known in the world.
EL DORADO: Refers to a legendary American tribal leader who covered himself in gold. By extension it came to refer to a fabled city of gold. There are many cities and towns with that name.
EMIGRANT: Someone who travels from one part of a country to another.
FINGERPOST: A directional sign which, at one end, has a pointing finger.
FREMONT, JOHN CHARLES (1813–1890): Teacher, explorer, soldier, politician. Early traveler in the Rocky Mountains and California. Instrumental in the establishment of California’s independence (from Mexico) movement, and Republican candidate for president of the United States in 1856.
GIG: A light, open, two-wheeled, one-horse carriage.
GOLD HILL: A small mountain town in current-day Colorado. In 1859, it was part of the Nebraska Territory. Large quantities of gold were found there.
IMMIGRANT: Someone who travels from one country to another.
JERKED MEAT: Meat preserved by cutting it in long slices and drying it.
JOHN BROWN (1800–1859): Born in Connecticut, Brown became a militant abolitionist. His anti-slavery efforts in Kansas made him nationally known, even as he was honored and hated.
THE KANSAS TERRITORY: Originally part of the Louisiana Purchase 1803, known as the Great American Desert, and designated permanent Native American country. The territory was established in 1854, and quickly became a battleground for anti-and pro-slavery politics.
THE NEBRASKA TERRITORY: Part of the Louisiana Purchase, whose Platte River became the central trail west to Oregon, California, Salt Lake, and Colorado. The territory, established in 1854, originally reached the Canadian border.
PANIC: The old term for a severe economic crisis. Today we speak of an economic recession or depression.
PIKE’S PEAK GUIDES: There were numbers of these written. A great many reflected no true knowledge of Pike’s Peak, how to get there, or prospecting for gold.
PEPPERBOX REVOLVER: A multi-shot handheld pistol. It was invented in the 1830s and meant primarily for self-defense at close quarters, but was famously hard to aim and often erratic in its firing. With the emergence of the much better Colt revolver, it went out of use. It got its name from the black gunpowder it used.
PIKE’S PEAK: Located near Colorado Springs, Colorado, it was named after the first American who recorded it (1806), a military officer named Zebulon Pike. Pike’s Peak is the thirty-first highest peak out of fifty-four Colorado peaks at 14,110 feet above sea level.
ROCK FEVER: Also known as undulant fever, or by its medical name, brucellosis. Causes irregular fevers, pain, weakness, sweating, and depression.
SEEING THE ELEPHANT: A popular phrase meaning to go west, to look for gold. It also could mean going west,
not
finding gold, and coming back the wiser.
SINKHOLE: A depression or hole in the land made by water or other geological shifting. They vary in size and depth and may form suddenly or gradually.
SOD HOUSE: A house built of bricklike squares of earth and grass, or sod.
WHIG PARTY: A political party which came into existence in the mid-1830s in opposition to the Andrew Jackson Democrats and the politics they represented. Whigs were associated with manufacturing, commercial, and financial interests. In the mid- 1850s, they were succeeded by the Republican party.
There have been many gold rushes in American history: in Georgia, California, Idaho, North Dakota, and Alaska, to name a few. These “rushes” caused many thousands to migrate and helped establish the United States as we know it today.
Part of the legacy of these migrations is countless letters and diaries, which constitute the source for many a history. The accounts are by turns inspiring, sad, exhausting, and astonishing. It is these personal accounts which, in the main, I have used to tell the fictional story of Early Wittcomb.
Colorado’s gold rush had a number of phases. The first, which began it all, came about when traces of gold were found in and about the South Platte River—present-day Denver. “Pike’s Peak or Bust,” was the rallying cry for the 1858–59 rush to Cherry Creek, then part of the Kansas Territory. It proved very disappointing, and many who went returned to their eastern homes. But some of those who stayed trekked into the Rocky Mountains, and there, great quantities of gold were found. The gold rush resumed, quickly drawing in more than sixty thousand prospectors and their families. In 1876, Colorado became a state, assembled from parts of Kansas, Nebraska, New Mexico, and Utah territories. The native peoples, the Utes and Arapaho, were driven out or forced onto reservations.
Over the years, more than a billion dollars in gold was found, so much that a mint had to be established in Denver. When the state capitol building was erected in the 1890s, its dome was covered with 24-karat gold to honor the state’s original source of wealth. Gold is still being mined in Colorado today.
Although the mile-high city of Denver looks quite different today than it did in 1859, you can still see traces of that gold rush city. Cherry Creek still flows through Denver. A fair number of the downtown streets are just where they were laid out in the nineteenth century, many with their original names. The unmarked spot where gold was first found is near a small bridge over the much-reduced South Platte River. Gold Hill was and is a real place, albeit a tiny mountain village forty miles from Denver. And fittingly, Denver’s professional basketball team is called the Nuggets.
A final word: Having done all this research about gold, I decided to try a little gold panning myself. I went high into the mountain wilderness and searched for a creek. With prospector’s pan in hand, I spent a few hours panning. Then I brought what I had found to a Denver jeweler. He said, “Looks like you got yourself a few flakes of gold.”
Sculpture of a miner in Denver