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painful.
    The Masked Man Party departed drunk, singing and promising to return. They’d be back to have some more beer, and see if Walsh hadn’t had a little luck prospecting the area.
    Michael Walsh never did. It had never been his intention to prospect. But Timothy Johnson, the gold-seeker who had stayed behind, became a legend.
    In the dead of winter, in the middle of a howling blizzard, when the Walshes hadn’t set foot outside their cabin for weeks, except to fetch snow to melt for water, and after they’d had to butcher one of their oxen for food, Johnson banged on their cabin door. He’d gone off into the mountains by himself shortly after the others had left, and now he returned covered with snow and in the company of a short Indian woman with a solemn face.
    He also had with him a dozen nuggets of gold.
    Ranging in size from a raspberry to a baby’s fist.
    “She led me right to these,” Johnson told the wide-eyed Walshes. “She’s teaching me her language, and I just know when I understand it better, she’s going to take me straight to the mother lode.”
    The Indian woman said nothing. She didn’t speak a word in the four days that she and Timothy Johnson sheltered in the Walshes’s cabin.
    Before they left, when the blizzard had finally blown out, Johnson grandly traded his twelve nuggets of gold for all the beef and beer he and his female companion could carry. As the two made ready to leave, Johnson thanked the Walshes for their hospitality.
    “The next time you see me,” he said with a farewell smile, “I’ll be a rich man.”
    But that was the last any white person ever saw of Timothy Johnson or the short Indian woman. The only trace left of him was the gold he’d given Michael Walsh.
    Which was more than enough.
    In the spring of 1850, several of the Masked Man Party who’d failed to find gold further west returned. Along with them they brought others who’d been similarly unlucky in their search for riches. All of them thought to make one last stab at wealth by prospecting the mountain lake.
    Michael Walsh told them he’d named the lake in honor of his wife, Adeline. Nobody was about to debate the point with the man who made the best beer west of St. Louis. They accepted Walsh’s decision and the name stuck.
    Then Walsh told them the tale of Timothy Johnson. And he showed them the nuggets of gold to prove he was telling the truth. He did the same for the newcomers heading west who were among the tens of thousands caught up in the second year of the rush.
    He said he had no idea of where Johnson and the Indian woman had gone or where they’d found the gold. The mystery didn’t deter the gold seekers; it fired their imaginations. Just as staring at the twelve nuggets of gold renewed their lust for riches.
    The prospectors speculated aloud about what they knew of Tim Johnson, then made whispered plans with favored partners, and then stared some more at the golden nuggets, all while drinking Michael Walsh’s wonderful new beer.
    By the fall of that year, three hundred men and fourteen women lived in the vicinity of Lake Adeline. Michael Walsh prospered on their thirst. He built a large addition to the original cabin. He established a trading post that sold durable goods hauled in from San Francisco.
    Years later, for his own consumption and that of his sons, he brewed Walsh’s Private Reserve. The dark stout nobody else would drink.
     
    One hundred and twenty-three years later, a former Navy chief petty officer, trying to make a go of it in civilian life as a bill collector decided to take an acting class in Los Angeles. He didn’t aspire to a movie career. He just wanted to improve and diversify his collection technique. Jack up his take-home pay as much as he could.
    His name was Clay Steadman.
    Steadman had been knocked off his intended career path as a navy lifer after he’d beaten a lieutenant commander to a pulp. He took this drastic action when he caught the officer screwing the