Where Two Rivers Meet Anthology
BOOK 1: AS HAPPY AS SUTTER
By H.A. Silliman
Part 1: That Eureka Moment
I’m telling this story to let you know how happy I am. Last fall, I found gold on my land. Not just a few flakes which anyone can pan out of a stream on a Sunday’s outing, but an amount so significant that I left my job selling insurance. I spend my days solely searching for more gold. If the market place goes higher, I probably will be a millionaire. I’m not yet, and I’m not complaining. As I write this, the price is on the rise, and this makes me even happier.
Well, enough of the money side of this. Let me tell you how I literally stumbled upon the first nuggets. Some might call my find an accident. Yet, I have observed several coincidences that I believe make my discovery, my fate—a divine design, if you will, and therein also lies my happiness.
It was a Saturday morning, one of those finely tempered mornings that make you believe there must be a Creator up there. My land is located on a bend in the Mountbank Creek. The stream curves around a small meadow about two-acres wide. My house sits overlooking the flatland and the creek. Behind the home stand aspens and elms, a wonderful and natural, foresty glade. As the sun rises over the mountain and sets over the house, light continually plays on and through the striking yellow, orange and red leaves. Several liquid-ambers I planted myself supplement this dazzling scene.
I was outside that morning, admiring the trees, feeling the solid, God-given land under my feet and letting my body tingle in the crisp morning air. Across the road, I could see my good friend and neighbor, George Barton, at his kitchen window. Smoke curled from the chimney. You could almost smell the coffee brewing over there. He waved at me, and I, down near the road by the creek, waved back, lifting my coffee cup in the air as a salute. I tell you, without finding gold that day, I was a happy man. My neighbors were so good and near, and my wife and son slept peacefully in a wonderful two-story, clapboard-sided home of my own design.
My son, Richie, collects beer and soda cans. He smashes them, and when he fills several large trash bags, brings them to the recycling center. An enterprising teenager. He’s trying to earn his way to college—and he’ll do it! I keep an eye out for cans, and that day spotted one bobbing in the water. People driving down our road toss them out of their cars, a constant problem anywhere and certainly one which most irks us residents of the Gold Rush Country here in California. We get a lot of tourists pouring down our roads and through our quiet hamlets in search of the Old West—that old timey weekend experience. Like ants they come. They toss litter out of their car windows, and when they find some nice soft spot of land, they’ll stop, make a picnic and leave even more trash. A couple of months later, they’re back with a real estate agent, buying up property and becoming your new, best friend and neighbor. Most of the people along our road are such city transplants. I forgive ‘em for it.
As I recall, I had on a good pair of Florsheim shoes that morning, not the kind of shoe you wear to traipse in around the woods, but sure-soled enough to get me down to the creek. Imagine! Because of the shoes, I’d nearly not retrieved that can, but I wanted to do something for my son that morning. The can floated midstream in the clear, gurgling water. And here’s the first coincidence: It was an Oly Gold!
Trying to pick up the can, I stepped on a small, dark gray rock with moss growing on the sides. The rock looked sturdy; however, when I put my foot down, it tipped over. I got the can, but my right foot slipped into the water. As I shook off the wet shoe, I glanced down into the creek where the overturned rock had been. Dirty water swirled over the disturbed creek bed. As the turbidity cleared, the water fairly glowed. I peered down, surprised at the spectacle, and saw gold nuggets scattered on the creek bottom. It was an uncanny iridescence, strange and marvelous, eerie in a way like pictures you see in an overdone Bible of the shining ark being carried by the Israelites.
“My God,” I remembered crying out. “Gold!”
I dropped the can and was down on my knees immediately—no thought for the nice corduroy trousers I had on—plucking seven nuggets out of the stream before they might disappear in the muck. I cupped the gold in my hand, trembling suddenly. You read about others finding gold coins or buried treasure, but to find gold in its raw, natural state is something with meaning, having force and power. And I had done it!
I guess George had seen me slip or heard my cry, for he was out on his decking, calling after me, asking if I were okay. I jumped up quickly and wondered if he’d seen what I had found or would notice me holding the nuggets. I closed my fingers over the gold for fear of its yellow brilliance radiating up to him. He wanted to come down, yet I declined the offer, waved him off, and immediately hurried back to the house. My wife and son were still in their beds. Saturday mornings are for sleep, those two say. Well, I coined a new phrase that day: The early bird gets the gold!
I tiptoed into the kitchen and placed the nuggets on my wife’s Weight Watchers food scale. They weighed in at 10 ounces. I leaned against the counter and stared at the scale. I had to touch the gold several times before I convinced myself it was real. Two nuggets were the size of round, flat pajama buttons. The other five looked like golden potatoes with little black dimples. I even bit one to make sure it wouldn’t fall apart. This was no fool’s gold—no I knew then from the feel and taste of it. James Marshall must have felt this way all those years ago, kneeling in the icy waters of that Coloma mill trace on the American River. And John Sutter, too. I was as happy a man as he must have been.
Part II: A Boot Full of Gold
Of course, the next thing I did after that fall morning when I plucked those first seven, lucky nuggets from the creek was look up the price of gold. Though I had not kept up with its current status, I was aware the metal had been on a roller coaster ride in previous years. From underneath my eaten grapefruit half and scraps of breakfast toast in the trash where I had thrown it, I had to dig out the weekly Ledger. Though the Business page was a bit soaked, I found the list for precious metals. The latest price listed was for Tuesday, Oct. 8. It stood at $1,508.85. Calculating the difference in troy weight, there on that scale lay more than $10,000—and more, maybe, for solid nuggets of unusual size can bring higher prices on the retail market.
Now the quandary: Should I wake my wife, Barbara, and tell her the news, or wait and return to the stream to investigate—see if more gold waited for me—or if this find were merely a fluke. I thought, why get her all excited? That would be so unfair. So, I quietly changed into my Levis and boots. In the garage, I found a shovel and a gold pan I’d bought for Richie several years before, but I suddenly was worried about looking too conspicuous to George across the road and passersby, so I set the pan aside and grabbed a bucket. I would say, if asked, that I needed gravel for a drainage ditch.
The morning sunlight filtered through the golden-leaved trees, creating a dazzling atmosphere. What a natural wonder, I thought, as I returned to the stream and that moss-covered rock. God was certainly smiling down on me that day! Just poking around, I found a dozen more nuggets. Upstream, there were even more. By the time an hour had passed, the bottom of the bucket was covered with gold. It was getting toward nine-thirty then. More traffic moved up and down the road, which passed right next to the creek. I fretted over attracting attention, lest someone stop or slow down and see what I was really doing. So, I quit and rushed back to the house. I transferred the nuggets into an empty jumbo-sized Planters Peanuts can that I’d been saving for nuts and bolts. Upstairs, I placed the can in the back of the bottom drawer of my filing cabinet in the den, where I had stashed my first find. I had wanted to weigh this new collection, but Richie was in the kitchen then making breakfast and rummaging in the garbage for that week’s Ledger—he’d made the top of the Sports page, a photo of him winning a cross country track meet. What a good boy!
Until I was exactly sure what I had, I surmised that to tell Richie, too, would be unfair. Best I learn that what I found was really gold and its actual value before getting someone all sweaty with excitement. I could afford the disappointment, not Richie or Barbara. They were the kind who, if you promised to take them out to fancy dinner or skiing or on a nice vacation and then had to cancel (when hasn’t this happened?), grew sullen, or cried a lot, or sulked around the house—miserable for hours afterward. I am made of sterner stuff.
Obviously the next step would take more thought, so I went back to the den, sat down to consider my options. I could return to the stream and remove as much gold as I could find—but to do so in broad daylight had risks. Richie didn’t have a soccer match that day (he’s quite involved!) and would be wondering what I was up to—might even want to lend me a hand. My wife, however, had a date to play golf. He could go with her to caddy, but that would extra require arm-twisting. I decided it best to leave the stream alone until tomorrow when they went to church. Maybe, I’d even suggest that they attend the seven-thirty service, and this way I could get a super-early start. For sure, Monday morning, I’d place the gold in my safety deposit box at the bank.
The real problem, I figured, would be finding a reputable and trusted jeweler who could analyze the ore and give me an idea of its price. Then, I worried that word might leak out that I’d found gold on my property. No doubt the jeweler would be inquisitive. A horde of snoopy reporters might wind up wading in my creek. Also, once I knew the price, I’d have to decide to sell or wait and gamble that the world market would improve. These were my thoughts at the time.
My work in the creek had tired me. I fell asleep in the chair. Barbara woke me before leaving to play golf and wanted some money, but I told her I had none. Richie was in the garage at the time fixing a junked Honda motorbike I’d brought home for him a week before. A friend at the office was cleaning out his garage and gave it to me. I guessed Richie would get a kick out of the thing—kids always do, especially when they had to fix them up by themselves. He came bounding up the stairs into the den, out of breath.
“Hey Dad, I only need one more part for the bike—would you take me to town?”
Suddenly, new options fell into my lap. If I took him to our little town of Two Rivers, I could visit the jeweler while Richie was busy in the auto parts store. On the other hand, if he went to town by himself, I’d have enough time to weigh my new find of gold and maybe unobtrusively check the creek for more. A brilliant plan! Except my son didn’t have his driver’s license yet—he’s only fifteen—though I’d taught him how to drive and he did relatively well. Here would be another kick for the kid—driving to Two Rivers on his own.
“Tell you what,” I had said, reaching for my keys. “You can go by yourself."
I handed him the set. He was ecstatic. The glee in the boy’s bright eyes is the only reward for fatherhood I need. There was happiness, gratitude, and pride, too, the pride of knowing his dad trusted him—even respected him as a man. He washed his hands and departed in ten minutes. I even gave him a couple of bucks for lunch at Jeremy’s River Eats cafe.
Once they left the house, I spent a half hour carefully weighing all of the gold, which I figured amounted to thirty-four ounces in troy weight or, conservatively, more than $51,000. After lunch, I headed for the creek again and inconspicuously began kicking my boot through the gravel, which I found to be littered with the precious metal. My heart beat so fast that I had to sit down creek-side and take off my boots to cool my feet in the water. From my sparse knowledge of geology, I knew the source had to be nearby—maybe even on my property since so much gold was sprinkled about. What a marvel is nature to supply mankind with such bounty!
The day had turned into one of those enchanted Indian summer afternoons, a scene of mesmerizing beauty—all the foliage backlit by the sun so that on close study you could trace the individual veins of the tree leaves. I started walking barefoot upstream, wading in the water, boots in hand. Falling leaves had drifted into the stream and floated like little boats along the currents. Every so often, I’d pause and play my big toe through the gravel on the creek bottom. After a few flicks, I’d see glitter and stoop over, pluck up the gold, drop it in a boot and move on. It came to pass that I filled nearly the entire foot of the left boot. What a feeling! All that gold in my hand in the boot. I stuck my nose into the boot, smelling the tawny leather, and I swear, the aroma of new metal. Such a sensation! Wild surmise is how I felt, like when Cortez discovered the Pacific Ocean, high on that peak in Darien. Oh, I was on an emotional mountain top, feeling like a hundred grand. That moment, I could see it: My life was in my hands now. For once, I knew I was in charge. I was my destiny!
Now, Mountbank Creek begins three miles up the road from my home. It hugs the side of the hill and twists down a little valley until just near my property line, where it curves away from the hill and sweeps to the other side of a long meadow, and then curves back again. The stream makes the bend because near the top end of my land is an outcropping of rocks. The rocks are bluish—maybe shale—layered but uplifted at an angle. A white vein of quartz streaks through this rock in stark contrast, so herein, I suspected, could be a source of gold, and there are formations like this all the way back up the little valley formed by Mountbank Creek.
This rock ledge was acting as a dam of sorts and behind it was a deep, wide trough of gravel—likely full of gold nuggets. The creek bed, then, served as a huge sluice box, and gold, being a heavy metal, sinks to the bottom. Running north and south, the rock ledge passes into my hill. Literally, the stream and mountain were storing all this gold. It was my own personal bank—a private Fort Knox at my fingertips! I just needed to open up the vault door. I surmised I could find more gravel in ancient deposits if I tunneled into the mountainside.
Part III: The Ecstasy of a Gold Mine
So digging a gold mine is exactly what I commenced to do—after some minor interruptions prevented me from starting immediately. At the time, I still had my job, and the day Richie went to town, he had an accident on the way back. He only broke his arm, so I kept him home for several weeks. His presence proved a godsend—another one of those coincidences. I put him to work guarding the property—but I get ahead of myself.
On Monday morning, I called into the office that I was sick, leaving me to visit some jewelers in Nevada City and Grass Valley. As I suspected, they told me the larger nuggets were worth two to three times their weight. By all accounts, I could have as much as $100,000 in gold in that Planters Peanuts can. The jewelers were most excited about my discovery, detailing the dealers and auction houses who would be interested. Naturally, I had to disguise the location of the find, and yet that proved futile for somehow word traveled—rather quickly—because soon there were people trying to sneak onto my property.
That’s my fault. I had been interviewed by the Ledger, the local paper. The reporter—an intern named Cara Lavitch—called, creating an uproar in the household for I had yet to tell Barbara or Richie about my discovery. My wife had answered the phone. I was late in getting back home as I stopped to buy supplies—picks, shovels, more gold pans, rock hammers, two rifles and some ammunition. However, I couldn’t find anyone local to sell me dynamite.
When I finally told Barbara how much the gold was worth—I hadn’t sold any yet—she nearly fainted. Richie jumped up and down so much that he banged his head with the arm cast.
“Why didn’t you tell me earlier,” Barbara asked, sounding, I thought, slightly indignant.
I carefully explained the reasons. She wanted to see some of the gold right then, but it was already in the safe deposit box.
“Go pick some out of the creek yourself,” I suggested, laughing. “There’s plenty for all!”
She flew out the door with saucepan in hand. “Don’t look too obvious,” I shouted after her, though it was just on dark by then.
Richie wanted to go down, too, but I said “no” because I didn’t want him to break his other arm. Besides, I had a present to give him: a rifle. I told him he’d better learn how to shoot and suggested he practice using some of his beer cans.
In a few days, he became a pretty fair shot. During that time off from school, he took up post on the front balcony off his bedroom. He lined beer cans along the far side of the creek. He could pick off any one of them. As time went on and, as people tried to trespass, he would give two shouted warnings and then fire up in the air. If they still wouldn’t leave, he would knock off one of the cans at the far end of the creek and work his way slowly toward them. After a couple of cans went flying, they usually got the message. Fortunately for Richie, living out in the country in such a rural county as ours, we have a sensible sheriff who lets boys be boys with their guns. In fact, Deputy Jack, who patrolled our area, was a personal friend of mine, and I had even sold him life and death insurance, so I knew he’d be on my side.
I wanted my wife to learn how to use my old army pistol, but she refused. She hadn’t found any gold that night, and didn’t believe I had either. You’d think the phone call from the newspaper would have been convincing to her. The next day when the reporter came out for the story and pictures, my wife didn’t want to be interviewed by her. I insisted, however, that she pose in the photograph that the reporter took of the three of us on the balcony.
I have the clipping right now in front of me: “Local Insurance Man Finds Gold,” the headline reads. There we are, the three of us, Richie in the oak rocking chair with the rifle across his lap, me standing behind him with my arm around Barbara. I call the photo “Modern American Gothic.”
I was a little displeased with the news story, however, for it mentioned the road I live on, the creek and the address. Well, the latter is my fault. I was so excited that I kept talking about the coincidence—something I never took in before: Our house number is 1849 Mountbank Creek Road. That historic address! The creek name! So foretelling! So fateful! The young reporter, Cara, was so enthusiastic about the story, too, so I got carried away with myself. Anyway, you’d think they’d have omitted these details. In fact, Mack, the editor called me up to verify the facts. I guess he thought his young reporter might have messed things up, or misconstrued what I said. I verified the address and the creek name. But I assured him I had indeed found gold—and a lot of it! From the way he talked, I thought, maybe, he even wanted to drive out and check for himself—actually see the nuggets and walk through the creek. He was very interested in my theory about where the gold might have come from—if its source was further upstream.
“You know, I think most people hope they find gold or treasure sometime,” Mack said. “It’s a fantasy everyone has. A lot of people have died searching for the Lost Dutchman Mine down there in the Arizona. And who doesn’t walk along an ocean beach keenly kicking the sand, hoping to find a Spanish doubloon? People around here even talk about an old stagecoach robbery where a strongbox of gold coins went missing—and so did the highwaymen. Our readers will enjoy this report a lot!”
In fact, the Ledger mined my story for all its worth to sell a few more papers. That’s what they did. Myself, I got even by swiping extra Ledgers from the news rack . I went at night, put 50 cents in and took out a dozen copies—that’ll show them!
No doubt, the newspaper story made me famous. Well, I forgive ‘em for it, as I figure it might help Barbara have more respect for me and my amazing feat. I know that for a woman it’s prestigious to be married to someone famous. I had been once—as a kid appearing in The Hare and the Hound Hour that ran on TV, and now I was again! Since the news article appeared, my phone has been ringing off the hook, sometimes every hour—even at midnight. Breathless reporters digging for facts. The story went over the wire services, and the London Times even called me. They made a dignified apology, for it was one thirty five in the morning here, and Barbara wasn’t so happy. I gladly talked to the reporter, whispering into the phone receiver. When it comes to gold, dead men tell no tales, so I take care!
My neighbors have been pretty good about the fuss and bother and onlookers stopping by the creek. My friend George doesn’t seem to mind. He got a little testy when Richie accidently shot his five-year-old son’s cat. The stupid kitty was crouching in some bushes along the stream—right behind one of Richie’s beer cans. The bullet went clean through cat and can. I went to the animal pound a few days later and said I’d accidently run over my neighbor’s cat and talked them into giving me one free of charge. So George got a new kitty to patch things up.
The third week after my discovery, I ran into a problem because Richie returned to school. In the daytime, gun in hand, he had guarded the land faithfully. What I had then been doing at night for four or five hours was picking over every inch of the creek while Richie held the Coleman lantern for me. I found another $16,000 doing that! So, with him going back to school, I took a leave of absence from my job. I don’t have any vacation or sick days selling insurance.
Now my full-time job is patrolling the creek in the daytime and digging that mine at night. It’s all-consuming and can’t be done properly with a full-time job. I gave notice at work—effective the next day. The agency owner gave me a lecture on responsibility—to me a grown man!—but I told him I now had my own business (named Wyder Mining for our family) to which I was responsible. This is The American Way! And besides, I needed more time to spend for shopping, doing the laundry and all those other household chores since Barbara decided to take a vacation back east for a bit to visit her mom and dad. While Richie stays behind to guard the property, I’m going to church now, too. You’d be surprised how religious wealth makes one feel. I’m even considering giving a small percentage of my profits to the parish. I'm sure Rev. Gagnon can use the extra cash in the donation plate!
In fact, the dear reverend paid us a visit a day ago. He stopped by on Saturday afternoon. Richie was on the balcony, on patrol, as it were, and let him come onto the property and demonstrated his target practice skills by knocking of a few beer cans near the creek. The reverend was mighty impressed and they spent some time together chatting. It’s nice to see my boy taking some interest in religion. When I served Rev. Gagnon coffee, we had a nice gam around the table. He said folks in Two Rivers were asking about us—how we were doing in our new adventure, and what was Barbara up to these days. He hadn’t seen it her at the Sunday service. I’m not sure if she had told him about her impending trip back east, so I let him know she was visiting family. I promised to get him the phone number out there.
“We sure miss her coffee cakes at the Sunday receptions and her playing the piano during the Sunday evening service,” he said. “Vespers is not the same without her.”
He then he began asking about how Richie was doing—with his mom absent, and whatnot. Having heard he’d been out of school for a few weeks, he was naturally concerned that he’d not been seriously injured in the accident that day coming back from town. Deputy Jack was a neighbor of Rev. Gagnon and had no doubt kept him up-to-date on this kind of gossip.
“He’s fine,” I assured. “I think he likes working with me. Not many sons get to work side-by-side with their dads.”
I told him about my granddad, who had actually been a mining engineer, but would never let my father come down into the mines—and how I thought that unfair—and how it caused my dad to join the army.
“Well, fathers have a way of looking out for their sons that sometimes defies logic, and your granddad is a good role model.”
Rev. Gagnon thought it notable that I had given up my day job and said being on my own would no doubt draw me closer to my faith. “Don, you have to develop a new concept of trust,” he counseled. “I’ll be praying for both of you.”
I promised to attend service the next day, and he said he’d be looking forward to that, and also offered Richie a part-time job in the evenings doing light work around the church. He said he was impressed by my son’s work ethic and could pay him a decent hourly wage. I doubted my boy had enough time after school to do anything more than homework. After all, I did let him have that time to himself, but it was a decision that I knew Richie could make on his own.
Richie certainly has been a big help to me. Nice boy, he is. Does anything I tell him. He’s become quick a good cook, too, though I don’t eat much. He’s a real talented kid, and he’ll do well someday. On the weekends, I also have him tunneling into the mountain. (His arm is all healed from the break that happened.) We’ve made substantial progress digging since he has two hands free to swing the pick-axe. It’s great therapy for an injury. Right now, we’re already forty-five feet back into the mountain. The gravel deposits and a quartz vein still continue!
I have a lot of work still to do. Richie is running out of ammo, so I have to go to town to get more bullets. The people in Sacramento must be interested in my discovery because I have numerous phone calls that I have to return from folks at the Bureau of Mines. Got to write a note to remind myself to buy some four-by-fours so we can shore up the tunnel. Richie’s down there right now shoveling the dirt. I found $3,000 last week. I tell you, I’m a happy man. I keep finding gold, so I’m going to keep digging that hole!
I’m telling this story to let you know how happy I am. Last fall, I found gold on my land. Not just a few flakes which anyone can pan out of a stream on a Sunday’s outing, but an amount so significant that I left my job selling insurance. I spend my days solely searching for more gold. If the market place goes higher, I probably will be a millionaire. I’m not yet, and I’m not complaining. As I write this, the price is on the rise, and this makes me even happier.
Well, enough of the money side of this. Let me tell you how I literally stumbled upon the first nuggets. Some might call my find an accident. Yet, I have observed several coincidences that I believe make my discovery, my fate—a divine design, if you will, and therein also lies my happiness.
It was a Saturday morning, one of those finely tempered mornings that make you believe there must be a Creator up there. My land is located on a bend in the Mountbank Creek. The stream curves around a small meadow about two-acres wide. My house sits overlooking the flatland and the creek. Behind the home stand aspens and elms, a wonderful and natural, foresty glade. As the sun rises over the mountain and sets over the house, light continually plays on and through the striking yellow, orange and red leaves. Several liquid-ambers I planted myself supplement this dazzling scene.
I was outside that morning, admiring the trees, feeling the solid, God-given land under my feet and letting my body tingle in the crisp morning air. Across the road, I could see my good friend and neighbor, George Barton, at his kitchen window. Smoke curled from the chimney. You could almost smell the coffee brewing over there. He waved at me, and I, down near the road by the creek, waved back, lifting my coffee cup in the air as a salute. I tell you, without finding gold that day, I was a happy man. My neighbors were so good and near, and my wife and son slept peacefully in a wonderful two-story, clapboard-sided home of my own design.
My son, Richie, collects beer and soda cans. He smashes them, and when he fills several large trash bags, brings them to the recycling center. An enterprising teenager. He’s trying to earn his way to college—and he’ll do it! I keep an eye out for cans, and that day spotted one bobbing in the water. People driving down our road toss them out of their cars, a constant problem anywhere and certainly one which most irks us residents of the Gold Rush Country here in California. We get a lot of tourists pouring down our roads and through our quiet hamlets in search of the Old West—that old timey weekend experience. Like ants they come. They toss litter out of their car windows, and when they find some nice soft spot of land, they’ll stop, make a picnic and leave even more trash. A couple of months later, they’re back with a real estate agent, buying up property and becoming your new, best friend and neighbor. Most of the people along our road are such city transplants. I forgive ‘em for it.
As I recall, I had on a good pair of Florsheim shoes that morning, not the kind of shoe you wear to traipse in around the woods, but sure-soled enough to get me down to the creek. Imagine! Because of the shoes, I’d nearly not retrieved that can, but I wanted to do something for my son that morning. The can floated midstream in the clear, gurgling water. And here’s the first coincidence: It was an Oly Gold!
Trying to pick up the can, I stepped on a small, dark gray rock with moss growing on the sides. The rock looked sturdy; however, when I put my foot down, it tipped over. I got the can, but my right foot slipped into the water. As I shook off the wet shoe, I glanced down into the creek where the overturned rock had been. Dirty water swirled over the disturbed creek bed. As the turbidity cleared, the water fairly glowed. I peered down, surprised at the spectacle, and saw gold nuggets scattered on the creek bottom. It was an uncanny iridescence, strange and marvelous, eerie in a way like pictures you see in an overdone Bible of the shining ark being carried by the Israelites.
“My God,” I remembered crying out. “Gold!”
I dropped the can and was down on my knees immediately—no thought for the nice corduroy trousers I had on—plucking seven nuggets out of the stream before they might disappear in the muck. I cupped the gold in my hand, trembling suddenly. You read about others finding gold coins or buried treasure, but to find gold in its raw, natural state is something with meaning, having force and power. And I had done it!
I guess George had seen me slip or heard my cry, for he was out on his decking, calling after me, asking if I were okay. I jumped up quickly and wondered if he’d seen what I had found or would notice me holding the nuggets. I closed my fingers over the gold for fear of its yellow brilliance radiating up to him. He wanted to come down, yet I declined the offer, waved him off, and immediately hurried back to the house. My wife and son were still in their beds. Saturday mornings are for sleep, those two say. Well, I coined a new phrase that day: The early bird gets the gold!
I tiptoed into the kitchen and placed the nuggets on my wife’s Weight Watchers food scale. They weighed in at 10 ounces. I leaned against the counter and stared at the scale. I had to touch the gold several times before I convinced myself it was real. Two nuggets were the size of round, flat pajama buttons. The other five looked like golden potatoes with little black dimples. I even bit one to make sure it wouldn’t fall apart. This was no fool’s gold—no I knew then from the feel and taste of it. James Marshall must have felt this way all those years ago, kneeling in the icy waters of that Coloma mill trace on the American River. And John Sutter, too. I was as happy a man as he must have been.
Part II: A Boot Full of Gold
Of course, the next thing I did after that fall morning when I plucked those first seven, lucky nuggets from the creek was look up the price of gold. Though I had not kept up with its current status, I was aware the metal had been on a roller coaster ride in previous years. From underneath my eaten grapefruit half and scraps of breakfast toast in the trash where I had thrown it, I had to dig out the weekly Ledger. Though the Business page was a bit soaked, I found the list for precious metals. The latest price listed was for Tuesday, Oct. 8. It stood at $1,508.85. Calculating the difference in troy weight, there on that scale lay more than $10,000—and more, maybe, for solid nuggets of unusual size can bring higher prices on the retail market.
Now the quandary: Should I wake my wife, Barbara, and tell her the news, or wait and return to the stream to investigate—see if more gold waited for me—or if this find were merely a fluke. I thought, why get her all excited? That would be so unfair. So, I quietly changed into my Levis and boots. In the garage, I found a shovel and a gold pan I’d bought for Richie several years before, but I suddenly was worried about looking too conspicuous to George across the road and passersby, so I set the pan aside and grabbed a bucket. I would say, if asked, that I needed gravel for a drainage ditch.
The morning sunlight filtered through the golden-leaved trees, creating a dazzling atmosphere. What a natural wonder, I thought, as I returned to the stream and that moss-covered rock. God was certainly smiling down on me that day! Just poking around, I found a dozen more nuggets. Upstream, there were even more. By the time an hour had passed, the bottom of the bucket was covered with gold. It was getting toward nine-thirty then. More traffic moved up and down the road, which passed right next to the creek. I fretted over attracting attention, lest someone stop or slow down and see what I was really doing. So, I quit and rushed back to the house. I transferred the nuggets into an empty jumbo-sized Planters Peanuts can that I’d been saving for nuts and bolts. Upstairs, I placed the can in the back of the bottom drawer of my filing cabinet in the den, where I had stashed my first find. I had wanted to weigh this new collection, but Richie was in the kitchen then making breakfast and rummaging in the garbage for that week’s Ledger—he’d made the top of the Sports page, a photo of him winning a cross country track meet. What a good boy!
Until I was exactly sure what I had, I surmised that to tell Richie, too, would be unfair. Best I learn that what I found was really gold and its actual value before getting someone all sweaty with excitement. I could afford the disappointment, not Richie or Barbara. They were the kind who, if you promised to take them out to fancy dinner or skiing or on a nice vacation and then had to cancel (when hasn’t this happened?), grew sullen, or cried a lot, or sulked around the house—miserable for hours afterward. I am made of sterner stuff.
Obviously the next step would take more thought, so I went back to the den, sat down to consider my options. I could return to the stream and remove as much gold as I could find—but to do so in broad daylight had risks. Richie didn’t have a soccer match that day (he’s quite involved!) and would be wondering what I was up to—might even want to lend me a hand. My wife, however, had a date to play golf. He could go with her to caddy, but that would extra require arm-twisting. I decided it best to leave the stream alone until tomorrow when they went to church. Maybe, I’d even suggest that they attend the seven-thirty service, and this way I could get a super-early start. For sure, Monday morning, I’d place the gold in my safety deposit box at the bank.
The real problem, I figured, would be finding a reputable and trusted jeweler who could analyze the ore and give me an idea of its price. Then, I worried that word might leak out that I’d found gold on my property. No doubt the jeweler would be inquisitive. A horde of snoopy reporters might wind up wading in my creek. Also, once I knew the price, I’d have to decide to sell or wait and gamble that the world market would improve. These were my thoughts at the time.
My work in the creek had tired me. I fell asleep in the chair. Barbara woke me before leaving to play golf and wanted some money, but I told her I had none. Richie was in the garage at the time fixing a junked Honda motorbike I’d brought home for him a week before. A friend at the office was cleaning out his garage and gave it to me. I guessed Richie would get a kick out of the thing—kids always do, especially when they had to fix them up by themselves. He came bounding up the stairs into the den, out of breath.
“Hey Dad, I only need one more part for the bike—would you take me to town?”
Suddenly, new options fell into my lap. If I took him to our little town of Two Rivers, I could visit the jeweler while Richie was busy in the auto parts store. On the other hand, if he went to town by himself, I’d have enough time to weigh my new find of gold and maybe unobtrusively check the creek for more. A brilliant plan! Except my son didn’t have his driver’s license yet—he’s only fifteen—though I’d taught him how to drive and he did relatively well. Here would be another kick for the kid—driving to Two Rivers on his own.
“Tell you what,” I had said, reaching for my keys. “You can go by yourself."
I handed him the set. He was ecstatic. The glee in the boy’s bright eyes is the only reward for fatherhood I need. There was happiness, gratitude, and pride, too, the pride of knowing his dad trusted him—even respected him as a man. He washed his hands and departed in ten minutes. I even gave him a couple of bucks for lunch at Jeremy’s River Eats cafe.
Once they left the house, I spent a half hour carefully weighing all of the gold, which I figured amounted to thirty-four ounces in troy weight or, conservatively, more than $51,000. After lunch, I headed for the creek again and inconspicuously began kicking my boot through the gravel, which I found to be littered with the precious metal. My heart beat so fast that I had to sit down creek-side and take off my boots to cool my feet in the water. From my sparse knowledge of geology, I knew the source had to be nearby—maybe even on my property since so much gold was sprinkled about. What a marvel is nature to supply mankind with such bounty!
The day had turned into one of those enchanted Indian summer afternoons, a scene of mesmerizing beauty—all the foliage backlit by the sun so that on close study you could trace the individual veins of the tree leaves. I started walking barefoot upstream, wading in the water, boots in hand. Falling leaves had drifted into the stream and floated like little boats along the currents. Every so often, I’d pause and play my big toe through the gravel on the creek bottom. After a few flicks, I’d see glitter and stoop over, pluck up the gold, drop it in a boot and move on. It came to pass that I filled nearly the entire foot of the left boot. What a feeling! All that gold in my hand in the boot. I stuck my nose into the boot, smelling the tawny leather, and I swear, the aroma of new metal. Such a sensation! Wild surmise is how I felt, like when Cortez discovered the Pacific Ocean, high on that peak in Darien. Oh, I was on an emotional mountain top, feeling like a hundred grand. That moment, I could see it: My life was in my hands now. For once, I knew I was in charge. I was my destiny!
Now, Mountbank Creek begins three miles up the road from my home. It hugs the side of the hill and twists down a little valley until just near my property line, where it curves away from the hill and sweeps to the other side of a long meadow, and then curves back again. The stream makes the bend because near the top end of my land is an outcropping of rocks. The rocks are bluish—maybe shale—layered but uplifted at an angle. A white vein of quartz streaks through this rock in stark contrast, so herein, I suspected, could be a source of gold, and there are formations like this all the way back up the little valley formed by Mountbank Creek.
This rock ledge was acting as a dam of sorts and behind it was a deep, wide trough of gravel—likely full of gold nuggets. The creek bed, then, served as a huge sluice box, and gold, being a heavy metal, sinks to the bottom. Running north and south, the rock ledge passes into my hill. Literally, the stream and mountain were storing all this gold. It was my own personal bank—a private Fort Knox at my fingertips! I just needed to open up the vault door. I surmised I could find more gravel in ancient deposits if I tunneled into the mountainside.
Part III: The Ecstasy of a Gold Mine
So digging a gold mine is exactly what I commenced to do—after some minor interruptions prevented me from starting immediately. At the time, I still had my job, and the day Richie went to town, he had an accident on the way back. He only broke his arm, so I kept him home for several weeks. His presence proved a godsend—another one of those coincidences. I put him to work guarding the property—but I get ahead of myself.
On Monday morning, I called into the office that I was sick, leaving me to visit some jewelers in Nevada City and Grass Valley. As I suspected, they told me the larger nuggets were worth two to three times their weight. By all accounts, I could have as much as $100,000 in gold in that Planters Peanuts can. The jewelers were most excited about my discovery, detailing the dealers and auction houses who would be interested. Naturally, I had to disguise the location of the find, and yet that proved futile for somehow word traveled—rather quickly—because soon there were people trying to sneak onto my property.
That’s my fault. I had been interviewed by the Ledger, the local paper. The reporter—an intern named Cara Lavitch—called, creating an uproar in the household for I had yet to tell Barbara or Richie about my discovery. My wife had answered the phone. I was late in getting back home as I stopped to buy supplies—picks, shovels, more gold pans, rock hammers, two rifles and some ammunition. However, I couldn’t find anyone local to sell me dynamite.
When I finally told Barbara how much the gold was worth—I hadn’t sold any yet—she nearly fainted. Richie jumped up and down so much that he banged his head with the arm cast.
“Why didn’t you tell me earlier,” Barbara asked, sounding, I thought, slightly indignant.
I carefully explained the reasons. She wanted to see some of the gold right then, but it was already in the safe deposit box.
“Go pick some out of the creek yourself,” I suggested, laughing. “There’s plenty for all!”
She flew out the door with saucepan in hand. “Don’t look too obvious,” I shouted after her, though it was just on dark by then.
Richie wanted to go down, too, but I said “no” because I didn’t want him to break his other arm. Besides, I had a present to give him: a rifle. I told him he’d better learn how to shoot and suggested he practice using some of his beer cans.
In a few days, he became a pretty fair shot. During that time off from school, he took up post on the front balcony off his bedroom. He lined beer cans along the far side of the creek. He could pick off any one of them. As time went on and, as people tried to trespass, he would give two shouted warnings and then fire up in the air. If they still wouldn’t leave, he would knock off one of the cans at the far end of the creek and work his way slowly toward them. After a couple of cans went flying, they usually got the message. Fortunately for Richie, living out in the country in such a rural county as ours, we have a sensible sheriff who lets boys be boys with their guns. In fact, Deputy Jack, who patrolled our area, was a personal friend of mine, and I had even sold him life and death insurance, so I knew he’d be on my side.
I wanted my wife to learn how to use my old army pistol, but she refused. She hadn’t found any gold that night, and didn’t believe I had either. You’d think the phone call from the newspaper would have been convincing to her. The next day when the reporter came out for the story and pictures, my wife didn’t want to be interviewed by her. I insisted, however, that she pose in the photograph that the reporter took of the three of us on the balcony.
I have the clipping right now in front of me: “Local Insurance Man Finds Gold,” the headline reads. There we are, the three of us, Richie in the oak rocking chair with the rifle across his lap, me standing behind him with my arm around Barbara. I call the photo “Modern American Gothic.”
I was a little displeased with the news story, however, for it mentioned the road I live on, the creek and the address. Well, the latter is my fault. I was so excited that I kept talking about the coincidence—something I never took in before: Our house number is 1849 Mountbank Creek Road. That historic address! The creek name! So foretelling! So fateful! The young reporter, Cara, was so enthusiastic about the story, too, so I got carried away with myself. Anyway, you’d think they’d have omitted these details. In fact, Mack, the editor called me up to verify the facts. I guess he thought his young reporter might have messed things up, or misconstrued what I said. I verified the address and the creek name. But I assured him I had indeed found gold—and a lot of it! From the way he talked, I thought, maybe, he even wanted to drive out and check for himself—actually see the nuggets and walk through the creek. He was very interested in my theory about where the gold might have come from—if its source was further upstream.
“You know, I think most people hope they find gold or treasure sometime,” Mack said. “It’s a fantasy everyone has. A lot of people have died searching for the Lost Dutchman Mine down there in the Arizona. And who doesn’t walk along an ocean beach keenly kicking the sand, hoping to find a Spanish doubloon? People around here even talk about an old stagecoach robbery where a strongbox of gold coins went missing—and so did the highwaymen. Our readers will enjoy this report a lot!”
In fact, the Ledger mined my story for all its worth to sell a few more papers. That’s what they did. Myself, I got even by swiping extra Ledgers from the news rack . I went at night, put 50 cents in and took out a dozen copies—that’ll show them!
No doubt, the newspaper story made me famous. Well, I forgive ‘em for it, as I figure it might help Barbara have more respect for me and my amazing feat. I know that for a woman it’s prestigious to be married to someone famous. I had been once—as a kid appearing in The Hare and the Hound Hour that ran on TV, and now I was again! Since the news article appeared, my phone has been ringing off the hook, sometimes every hour—even at midnight. Breathless reporters digging for facts. The story went over the wire services, and the London Times even called me. They made a dignified apology, for it was one thirty five in the morning here, and Barbara wasn’t so happy. I gladly talked to the reporter, whispering into the phone receiver. When it comes to gold, dead men tell no tales, so I take care!
My neighbors have been pretty good about the fuss and bother and onlookers stopping by the creek. My friend George doesn’t seem to mind. He got a little testy when Richie accidently shot his five-year-old son’s cat. The stupid kitty was crouching in some bushes along the stream—right behind one of Richie’s beer cans. The bullet went clean through cat and can. I went to the animal pound a few days later and said I’d accidently run over my neighbor’s cat and talked them into giving me one free of charge. So George got a new kitty to patch things up.
The third week after my discovery, I ran into a problem because Richie returned to school. In the daytime, gun in hand, he had guarded the land faithfully. What I had then been doing at night for four or five hours was picking over every inch of the creek while Richie held the Coleman lantern for me. I found another $16,000 doing that! So, with him going back to school, I took a leave of absence from my job. I don’t have any vacation or sick days selling insurance.
Now my full-time job is patrolling the creek in the daytime and digging that mine at night. It’s all-consuming and can’t be done properly with a full-time job. I gave notice at work—effective the next day. The agency owner gave me a lecture on responsibility—to me a grown man!—but I told him I now had my own business (named Wyder Mining for our family) to which I was responsible. This is The American Way! And besides, I needed more time to spend for shopping, doing the laundry and all those other household chores since Barbara decided to take a vacation back east for a bit to visit her mom and dad. While Richie stays behind to guard the property, I’m going to church now, too. You’d be surprised how religious wealth makes one feel. I’m even considering giving a small percentage of my profits to the parish. I'm sure Rev. Gagnon can use the extra cash in the donation plate!
In fact, the dear reverend paid us a visit a day ago. He stopped by on Saturday afternoon. Richie was on the balcony, on patrol, as it were, and let him come onto the property and demonstrated his target practice skills by knocking of a few beer cans near the creek. The reverend was mighty impressed and they spent some time together chatting. It’s nice to see my boy taking some interest in religion. When I served Rev. Gagnon coffee, we had a nice gam around the table. He said folks in Two Rivers were asking about us—how we were doing in our new adventure, and what was Barbara up to these days. He hadn’t seen it her at the Sunday service. I’m not sure if she had told him about her impending trip back east, so I let him know she was visiting family. I promised to get him the phone number out there.
“We sure miss her coffee cakes at the Sunday receptions and her playing the piano during the Sunday evening service,” he said. “Vespers is not the same without her.”
He then he began asking about how Richie was doing—with his mom absent, and whatnot. Having heard he’d been out of school for a few weeks, he was naturally concerned that he’d not been seriously injured in the accident that day coming back from town. Deputy Jack was a neighbor of Rev. Gagnon and had no doubt kept him up-to-date on this kind of gossip.
“He’s fine,” I assured. “I think he likes working with me. Not many sons get to work side-by-side with their dads.”
I told him about my granddad, who had actually been a mining engineer, but would never let my father come down into the mines—and how I thought that unfair—and how it caused my dad to join the army.
“Well, fathers have a way of looking out for their sons that sometimes defies logic, and your granddad is a good role model.”
Rev. Gagnon thought it notable that I had given up my day job and said being on my own would no doubt draw me closer to my faith. “Don, you have to develop a new concept of trust,” he counseled. “I’ll be praying for both of you.”
I promised to attend service the next day, and he said he’d be looking forward to that, and also offered Richie a part-time job in the evenings doing light work around the church. He said he was impressed by my son’s work ethic and could pay him a decent hourly wage. I doubted my boy had enough time after school to do anything more than homework. After all, I did let him have that time to himself, but it was a decision that I knew Richie could make on his own.
Richie certainly has been a big help to me. Nice boy, he is. Does anything I tell him. He’s become quick a good cook, too, though I don’t eat much. He’s a real talented kid, and he’ll do well someday. On the weekends, I also have him tunneling into the mountain. (His arm is all healed from the break that happened.) We’ve made substantial progress digging since he has two hands free to swing the pick-axe. It’s great therapy for an injury. Right now, we’re already forty-five feet back into the mountain. The gravel deposits and a quartz vein still continue!
I have a lot of work still to do. Richie is running out of ammo, so I have to go to town to get more bullets. The people in Sacramento must be interested in my discovery because I have numerous phone calls that I have to return from folks at the Bureau of Mines. Got to write a note to remind myself to buy some four-by-fours so we can shore up the tunnel. Richie’s down there right now shoveling the dirt. I found $3,000 last week. I tell you, I’m a happy man. I keep finding gold, so I’m going to keep digging that hole!
THE END
Copyright 1985 & 2020 H A Silliman. A version of As Happy As Sutter is included in Silliman's Master of Arts Thesis, Sacramento State University, Dec. 1985. A serialized version appeared Aug.-Sept. 2020 in The (Downieville) Mountain Messenger. All characters mentioned are fictional or fictionally portrayed.
Cover by Diana Rich
Cover by Diana Rich