Even though Diego had been in Angels Camp for almost two years, he could not remember ever being as cold as he was at that moment. Unable to feel anything below his knees, and afraid of losing his balance because of the numbness, he maneuvered cautiously toward the edge of the swift-flowing stream. Grabbing onto an overhanging limb of an alder tree to steady himself, he stepped out of the water. Sitting on a large streamside boulder, with a scrub jay marched from side to side on a branch high above screeching at him, he searched both banks of the river, up and downstream, to make sure no one had seen him. He slapped at his thighs to stimulate some warmth. As the blood began flowing back into his legs, it felt as if hundreds of knives were stabbing him. He knew he’d been foolish to spend so much time in the icy water, but he had to take as much gold from this gravel deposit as he could before the snowmelt from the higher peaks left it underwater. He had to hurry, no matter how cold the water.

“Hey!” A voice behind him called out, “What are ya doing there?”

He hadn’t expected anyone to come through the forest behind him. He struggled to his feet, jammed his hands into his pocket, protecting the little nuggets. He started moving back from the stream as fast as his aching legs could walk, angling away from two men approaching through the trees. He recognized one of them as a man named Blodgett. Still wincing from the pain, and berating himself for not being more guarded, he called back. “Just walking the river.” He kept walking. “Looking for color, but found none here.”

“Stop a minute, will ya?” Blodgett shouted, hurrying up to him. “Just trying to be neighborly, ya know?” He stopped to catch his breath. “Wanted to make sure you was okay.”

“Of course I’m okay. Just walking the river.”

“What ya doin’ up here?” Blodgett’s partner asked. “No color up this way, is there?”

“There’d be a crowd here if’n there was, Ike,” Blodgett mocked his companion. “The color’s downstream a ways, closer to camp, right?”

Diego shrugged ignorance. “You’re right, I guess. Nothing here I could find. Just thought I give it a try before the runoff starts.”

“You find any color around here you be sure to let us know,” Ike, taller and younger, but more thinly built than Blodgett, told Diego. “This is our stream now. Shucks, the whole damn state is ours now since the war. So if there was gold to be found a good Californio boy like you would let us know. Wouldn’t ya?”

Diego fingered the gold deep in his pocket. He worried Blodgett and his buddy could tell it was there. Finally, a spot that looks promising, away from the Yankees downstream, and these two have to come along, he thought. Got to keep it secret. Moving deeper into the trees away from the stream, with Blodgett and Ike keeping stride with him, he stayed silent. Then he stopped to face them. “My father was a Yankee, from New York originally.”

“He was?” Blodgett said, mockingly. “If you ain’t-a Californio I’ll eat my hat. Sure enough, you’d be mistook for a damn Sonoran with your dark skin and black hair.”

“You hear me?” The younger man walked alongside him now and stared into his face. “The gold belongs to us. We’d run all damn foreigners off if there wasn’t so damn many of ya, ‘specially Sonorans and Chileans.”

His legs still aching, Diego walked faster, leading the Americans away from the stream bank. He kept a tight grip on the gold. It felt to him as if his pocket was bulging, but he pulled his hand away so they wouldn’t get suspicious.

“You sure there ain’t anything worth diggin’ up here?” Blodgett called out, as he and the other man dropped behind.