Blue mountain jays flit between pine boughs. Trout dart through crystal streams, and late summer flowers bloom in wild meadows surrounded by granite edifices wondrous enough to make your heart stop. Lowering our single wagon down even the steepest slopes proves little burden when shared among us all.
In spite of all this, my soul is troubled. I keep to myself as much as possible, and I take every excuse to go off and hunt.
Becky walks beside me sometimes, content to endure my silence. She’s different now. Lighter on her feet, with an easy smile. Sometimes, she lets me hold the baby, who gazes up at me with bright-blue eyes as she blows little spit bubbles through her lips.
“What’s wrong, Lee?” Becky asks one afternoon as we trek through a spongy, alpine meadow. She has the baby against one shoulder, and pats her bottom as she walks.
“Why do you say that?”
“You’ve been so quiet. You don’t even talk to Jefferson much.”
I bend down to pick up a pinecone that has rolled into the grass from the tree line. It’s perfect and pristine, untouched by jay or squirrel.
“Still thinking about your uncle?”
“Yes.” I reach between grooves with a forefinger and snag a pine nut. “Hiram will find me. Somehow, he will.”
“Men can be relentless,” she agrees, “when they think a woman belongs to them.”
I don’t have a chance to ask what she means, because Olive calls for her, and Becky excuses herself. I stare after her, wishing I could tell her more. Wishing I could tell someone. It turns out that a girl with all the friends in the world is still lonely when she’s keeping secrets.
My gold sense is a tiny tickle on the eastern slopes, but once we cross the divide it swells, becoming ever-present, almost uncomfortable. I tell myself to pay it no mind, that there will be plenty of time for gold later. But once in a while, when no one is looking, I can’t help crouching down and sifting through stream gravel until I find the thing that sings so clear to me. By the time the mountains give way to rolling golden hills dotted with oak trees, I have almost seventy dollars’ worth in my pockets.
One afternoon, while we’re resting the oxen, I catch Jefferson scowling at me. He’s right to be angry. I’ve been avoiding him. Having him near reminds me that I’m keeping secrets, that even though I wear Lucie’s skirt most days, I’m still a liar.
The scowl on his face darkens when he notices me staring, becomes something deep and sorrowful. My chest squeezes with the realization: I’m hurting him.
My feet stride toward him even before my mind registers my decision. I grab his arm and pull him aside under the cover of a giant sprawling oak. It’s time. It’s past time.
“Lee—?”
“There’s something I have to tell you. A secret.”
His face goes blank. “I’m listening.”
Trust someone, Mama said.
My heart races. In my whole life, I haven’t told a single soul. Jefferson is a good person to try it out on. The best person.
“Lee?”
I inhale deeply and say, “Remember how I saved those ugly candlesticks?”
“Sure.”
I reach into the right pocket of my trousers. I pull out my hand and open my palm so Jefferson can see the fistful of tiny gold nuggets and flecks I’ve gathered. “Those candlesticks are made of gold. Just like this. And—”
“I know.” His mouth quirks.
“You do? Did Mr. Hoffman tell—”
“I mean I know that you’re . . . magical.”
I stare at him, mouth agape.
He stares back, like he can see right through me. “I’ve known you my whole life, Lee. Still took me a while to figure it out. But when you found that locket in the dirt, I got the most fanciful notion that you could sniff out gold the way Nugget sniffs out squirrels.”
“I . . . see.”
“Then I thought back to Dahlonega, how the Westfall homestead grew so fast, all those rumors about Lucky’s stash. My mother’s folk had dowsers, people who could find water or lost things. My da never believed my mama’s stories, but I did. I figured that’s how it was with you and gold.”
He doesn’t have to look so smug.
“You’re not mad?”
Jefferson considers. “Well, now that you’ve told me, I’ll get not-mad. Eventually.” He reaches up to brush some of my lengthening hair from my eyes. “It’s the strangest thing. People lie all the time, and it’s nothing. But one little lie from you makes me feel so small.”
“I . . . I’m sorry, Jeff.”
“Thank you for telling me, finally.”
I nod, swallowing hard.
His eyes narrow. “Your uncle knows, doesn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“Well, California is a big place.” He sounds as unconvinced as I am.
“So I keep telling myself.”
“We’ll deal with Hiram Westfall when we have to,” Jefferson says.
A smile slips onto my face. He said “we.”
Less than a stone’s throw away, a striped tawny squirrel skitters through the blanket of crunchy oak leaves, his cheeks puffed out with acorns, and I marvel at how golden everything is in this country—the squirrels, the fat marmots who spied on us as we crossed the Sierra Nevada, the wind-rippled velvet of these grassy hills.
Softly, Jefferson says, “You have the most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen.”
My heart stampedes in my chest.
“Did you know that sometimes they turn dark gold? Like the last edge of a sunset. I think it happens when you’re sensing something.”
“I . . . No, I didn’t know that.”
His eyes are so close, and the world disappears. There’s just Jefferson and his familiar, perfect face and his knowing gaze and the way he’s leaning forward as if to kiss me. My whole body thrums, as though I’m in a wash of glittering gold.
After a hesitation as quick as a blink, he brushes his lips across my cheek. It’s brilliant and breathtaking and not nearly enough.
He steps back quickly. “Um, well, I guess you have to decide if you want to tell anyone else your secret. But we have some good people with us, and I think you might be surprised.”
“Maybe so.”
“And Lee?” His eyes dance. “You are going to be so rich.”
On October 10, we reach Sutter’s Fort. It’s not as big as Fort Laramie, but it’s a lot busier. Walls form a huge square. They’re almost twenty feet high, but an even taller building peeks out from behind them, capped by a waving American flag. Three little girls play with corn-husk dolls just outside the entrance, and men and women kneel over cook fires. Laundry flaps in the breeze between wagons, and dogs run from camp to camp, begging for scraps.
Guns thunder constantly—men discharging their rifles to be let inside. As we approach, I see signs of wear on the fort itself: cracked adobe, a tilting well cover, gates that don’t quite hang straight.
“Any sign of Frank Dilley?” Jefferson asks as we dismount.
“None,” I reply, scanning the crowd. “It wouldn’t make me sad to never see him again.”
“Agreed,” says Mr. Hoffman, walking beside the wagon. “Though I want him to see me. I want him to know we made it.” Then, in a softer voice, “Most of us, anyway.”
We park the wagon outside the walls and gather together. “I’ll stay with the children,” Mrs. Hoffman says. “You all go inside and figure out this claim business.” Luther and Martin agree to help Mrs. Hoffman keep an eye on things, and the rest of us head up the slope toward the fort.
We haven’t gone three steps before a voice rings out. “That’s my horse!”
It’s like being socked in the gut. My lungs refuse to draw breath, and my hands holding the rifle begin to tremble.
Slowly, inevitably, I turn.
Uncle Hiram
stands straight and tall and impeccably groomed, wearing a shiny top hat and a black suit with silver buttons. Abel Topper stands at his right shoulder, a tall Negro at his left. Hiram took the sea route and arrived ahead of me, just like Jim said. Wouldn’t surprise me one bit to learn he’s been right here at Sutter’s Fort for weeks, charming everyone in sight, knowing I’d show up eventually. By now, the entire territory of California probably thinks him a fine, upstanding gentleman.
I’ve been wondering what I’d do when I saw him again. Run like the wind? Shoot? Burst into tears?
Instead, I say, cool as ice, “Hello, Uncle Hiram.”
That name gets everyone’s attention. Becky moves to stand beside me. Jefferson calmly begins loading his rifle. For a moment, the only sound is that of a ramrod sliding down a barrel.
My uncle puts up his hands, “Now, now, I don’t want any trouble. But that’s my girl you’ve got there, and I’ve come a long way to fetch her, so I’ll be taking her back now.”
“No, sir,” says Henry Meek, stepping forward. His thumbs are cocked in his vest pockets like he’s a man who knows his business.
“You’ve no legal claim here in California,” Tom adds. “And I’d be happy to see that adjudicated in the nearest court.”
Uncle Hiram’s answering grin holds no humor. “Maybe we’ll solve this matter outside of court.”
Mr. Hoffman steps up, crossing his arms. “Try it,” he says. My uncle suddenly doesn’t seem so large.
“It would be a strategic error,” Major Craven adds.
Jefferson sets the rear trigger.
We stare one another down: Hiram and his two men, me and my traveling companions. A few passersby stop to see what the fuss is about.
Becky is the one to break the silence. “You see, Mr. Westfall, sir,” she says, bobbing her unnamed daughter in her arms. “Leah is ours now.”
Hiram deliberates, his eyes roving our small company, resting for the space of a moment on every single face. “I see,” he drawls, slow and Southern and altogether false. “You realize, don’t you, that you’re harboring a runaway? She belongs with her family.”
Becky laughs. “I knew she was a runaway the first time I laid eyes on her! But I’ll thank you to leave us alone, regardless.”
“She’s with her family now,” Jasper amends.
Hiram holds my gaze, and I hold his right back. It gives me an ache to see him; he’s so like my daddy, except straight and strong and healthy. But he’s half the man my daddy was. Less than half.
He seems to come to a decision, and his face darkens with determination. At last, he tips his hat to me. “I’ll be seeing you again, my Leah. Very soon.”
He means to scare me, but my breathing is just fine, thank you, and the hands on my rifle are steady enough to take him at two hundred paces. “For sure and certain,” I reply.
Uncle Hiram turns his back and strides off, the other two men at his heels. He still wants what I can do, and he won’t stop trying to get it. Mama and Daddy never saw him coming, but my new family knows what kind of man he is. We’ll be ready.
I’m about to say thank you, and maybe hug someone, but everyone has already turned away like my uncle isn’t worth another moment’s attention.
“I still think you should call her Therese,” Olive says to her mother as we resume our walk to the fort. It’s a game everyone has been playing, trying to find a name for the Joyner baby.
“Or Lee,” Andy says, with a shy glance at me.
“Or California!” Hampton says. “You can call her Cali for short.”
“Elizabeth is a fine name,” I put in. “It was my mother’s name.”
We continue to throw names out until we reach the gates, where we pause a moment.
Jefferson drapes an arm across my shoulders. “We made it,” he says, gazing up at the walls. “We actually made it.”
I’m smiling, fit to burst. Feeling richer than a king, I say, “Let’s go find us some gold.”
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Author’s Note
Eight years before the publication of this book, I moved from California to Ohio to marry the man of my dreams, a reverse migration, if you will. We loaded all my possessions into my car and drove across the United States, making the trip in six days—one day for every month it took a covered wagon to trek the same distance. The landscape we traveled was sometimes inspiring, sometimes tedious, always vast. I spent hours gazing out the window, already missing my home state desperately, even as I thrilled at the adventure of starting a new life in a new place.
It was then that the idea for Walk on Earth a Stranger germinated, but it would be years before I felt ready to write it. Sure enough, combining history and fiction is its own fraught adventure, and in order to best tell Lee’s story, I took a few minor liberties. For instance, Dr. M. F. Stephenson’s famous speech in Dahlonega’s town square really took place in the summer of 1849, not in early winter as portrayed in the book. And it’s likely that the real-life citizens of Dahlonega would have received word of gold’s discovery in California some months before Lee and Jefferson do. Occasionally, I allowed them to use words that probably hadn’t found popular usage in the eastern United States, such as “nugget” and “mother lode” and “palomino.”
Most significantly, I allowed Jefferson to propose to Lee when she was not yet sixteen, even though the average age of first marriage for women was twenty to twenty-two at that time. I allowed this because there is anecdotal evidence that women on the California trail married early, often out of necessity. Lee’s circumstances seem to me to qualify.
I wanted the flexibility of choosing and directing my own characters, so very few historical personages appear in Walk on Earth a Stranger, and then only in cameo roles. The one character I couldn’t resist, however, was James “Free Jim” Boisclair, an entrepreneur from Dahlonega, Georgia. Not much is known about him, though he probably set off for California in 1850, rather than 1849 as portrayed in the book. By all limited accounts, he was well respected, ambitious, and full of conviction. I hope I have done him justice.
Lee, Jefferson, and their contemporaries refer to Jim and other African-Americans as Negroes, as that was the polite term of the day. Likewise, they refer to Native Americans as Indians. I choose to use “African-American” and “Native American” in general conversation, but I will always honor someone’s personal preference when informed of it.
There is some controversy over whether the term “confirmed bachelor” was used during Victorian times to refer to a gay man. While this euphemism may not be the phrase’s only meaning, there are enough examples in the academic literature and within the LGBTQ community that I chose to use it with this implication. For more insight into specific terminology of the day, as well as some delightfully subjective commentary, I highly recommend the Dictionary of Americanisms, by John Russell Bartlett (New York: Bartlett and Welford, 1848).
No book is written in isolation. I am grateful to the following people for their many insights and expertise: Angela Thornton of the American Indian Library Association, who read an early draft; Marlena Montagna, an accomplished equestrian, who provided expert advice on horses and horseback riding; Jaime Lee Moyer, a critically acclaimed author of historical fiction, who helped me identify and sort through an avalanche of primary sources—diaries, lithographs, newspaper articles, daguerreotypes, etc.
For readers interested in learning more about the journey to California from the emigrants themselves, I recommend the following books, which I found invaluable:
Covered Wagon Women: Diaries & Letters from the Western Trails, 1840–1849, edited and compiled by Kenneth L. Holmes, with an introduction by Anne M. Butler (Lincoln, Nebraska: Bison Books, University of Nebraska Press, 1995)
Women’s Diaries of the Westward Journey, edited by Lillian Schlissel, with a forward by Mary Clearman Blew (New York: Schocken Books, 2004 edition)
Most of all, I am grateful to my husband, C. C. Finlay, for reading this book multiple times, for applying his training as both editor and historian to key portions of text, and for listening patiently as his displaced Californian spouse waxed endlessly about her native state’s many wonders and the Gold Rush that shaped it.
Walk on Earth a Stranger is so much better for these contributions; any errors that remain are mine alone.
Today, you can hardly visit any place in California without seeing evidence of the Gold Rush. I’ve rafted down the Tuolumne River through steep cliffs of layered sediment—the result of dredging. I’ve chanced upon ancient wagon wheels, half-buried in sod, while backpacking through Emigrant Wilderness. I’ve cheered the 49ers on to multiple Super Bowl wins, toured the mines and orchards of the Sierra Nevada foothills with my friends, spent days wandering the Golden Gate. Though this book deals primarily with the overland journey in 1849, there is much more of Lee’s story—and California’s—yet to be told.
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About the Author
RAE CARSON is the author of the New York Times best-selling Girl of Fire and Thorns series, as well as three novellas set in the same world. She lives with her husband in Arizona.
www.raecarson.com
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Credits
Cover design by Neil Swaab
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