California Gold Read Online Free PDF

Sierra slopes and, above, the sharp snowy peaks proud against a sky clean and blue like none he’d ever seen before—made his heart surge. He felt new in a way he could not put into words. All of the blind hope of the past was at last made real.
    A huge shadow flashed across his upturned face. It was a golden eagle flying back to its mountain home. How wide were its wings? Three feet? Four? He’d never seen such a magnificent bird. Tears sprang to his eyes and, for once, he wasn’t ashamed, though it was fortunate Wyatt had run to the next hill. This feeling of exaltation shook Mack profoundly. The mountains and the forests and the golden plain said this place demanded the best of a man.
    He’d try to be worthy of that heart-pounding beauty. He was being reborn. He was becoming a Californian.
    Three nights later, by a comforting campfire of brush and pinecones, they dined royally on two brown trout Wyatt had caught and cleaned with his clasp knife. Mack was envious; a combination of poverty and cold weather had confined him for eighteen years, and he knew nothing of fishing, hunting, the outdoors. Wyatt knew a lot. He said the wild mustard plants were edible, so they had a small tangy-bitter salad of greens on the side.
    They fell to talking about their respective pasts, something they’d been too tired and desperate to do before. Mack described his father, the Argonaut breaking his back day after day in the anthracite mine and living for one thing: to pass on to his son the dream of going to California and making the fortune he’d failed to find.
    “Pa had a lot of books about California, but this was his favorite.” He showed Wyatt the guidebook. “It’s kept me going because it promises that you don’t have to be hungry or poor out here. And you don’t have to mess with snow .”
    Wyatt’s blue eyes regarded him with a mixture of amusement and—perhaps—scorn. He asked to see the book and Mack reluctantly handed it to him. Wyatt leafed through the pages.
    “ ‘As I continued my pere…peregrinations’—what’s that mean?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “ ‘…from camp to camp, and saw the hoards of gold, some of it in flakes but the greater part in a coarse dust, it seemed as if the fabled treasures of the Arabian nights had suddenly been realized. Of course those already here expect to be…’ ” Vexed again, he showed Mack the word.
    Mack sounded it out. “In-un-dated.” He shrugged. Wyatt seemed pleased by Mack’s ignorance.
    “ ‘…inundated with emigrants from every part of the globe. But truly, based upon my experiences, I pledge to you that there is gold enough for all.’ ”
    He closed the book and Mack was relieved to take it back. “Do you believe all that stuff?” Wyatt asked. “I mean, the way my old man believed in the Bible?”
    Mack shrugged to hide his embarrassment. At a very deep level, beyond words, he did believe. “Don’t you?”
    Wyatt studied the stars. “I believe I’m going to do things differently than my old man. I believe that I can, out here.”
    “What do you mean?”
    The swarthy young man brushed fish bones and skin from the flat rock at his feet. “My old man never made a dollar that he kept. He was a part-time preacher in Kansas, and of course he was too damn righteous to take any pay for that. He had a trade on the side—rainmaker. He had a whole collection of brass rods and forked sticks, and he said he’d talked to God and God approved of the calling.”
    “Did he make a lot of rain?”
    “Never any that I remember. God didn’t either.” Wyatt was amused by his own wit, but it made Mack uncomfortable. “My old man earned about as much cash from rainmaking as he did from shouting about Jesus and the Holy Ghost. Of course it didn’t make any difference in our house if you prospered, so long as you were righteous.” He pronounced the word sarcastically. “That was my mother’s attitude. She was worse than the old man. She got my two older