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some years in the hill country herding sheep, but that wasn’t of his own choosing. And, of course, tending a grazing flock was an entirely different vocation than sitting in the saddle of a sloped-back pony, punching an ornery herd of longhorned cattle. Unlike steers, sheep tended to run together, and one man and his dog would have no trouble moving a herd of considerable size. Cows required much more control, and a crew of mounted cowboys was needed to drive a herd. But it wasn’t the solitary nature of sheepherding that troubled George; that part suited him fine. It was just that he had grander aspirations. All George ever really wanted to do was to follow proudly in his father’s footsteps. He wanted to find gold.
    Like so many other dreamers of the golden dream, Perry Carmack had traveled across the continent in 1849 by covered wagon from the farmlands of Pennsylvania to the gold fields of California. It proved to be a feckless adventure. All his energy, all his high hopes, all his deprivations, all his sweaty, backbreaking ambition—and in the end, only frustration and an overwhelming sense of failure. He never panned a nugget worth bragging about.
    Perry didn’t have the funds to return to the East, and anyway, he doubted there’d be any work waiting for him. So he found himself homesteading a rocky, inhospitable bit of land in the foothills above the small wheat-shipping center of Port Costa, about thirty-five miles north of San Francisco. The wind coming off San Pablo Bay would lash like a mule skinner’s whip, and there was always the unsettling threat of marauders like the Joaquin Murrieta gang preying on lonely ranchers. It was a demanding, unsatisfying life, but he did his best to make a go of it.
    He met Hannah Shiles, an Illinois native so sour-faced that it appeared as if all the fun had been wrung out of her, and very quickly they married. They had a daughter, Rose, and then five years later, in September 1860, George was born. In the hot summer before her mother took ill, Rose would remember, the young family would picnic on the grassy banks of the winding San Joaquin River. But even these dalliances could not have brought Perry much amusement. The San Joaquin was busy with swift side-wheeler steamships carrying gold from the Sierra mines to San Francisco. The specially constructed “treasure rooms” in these gold ships famously held millions of dollars of newly mined metal, and the sighting of each big vessel no doubt stung Perry like a rebuke—a reminder of his failure and, no less cruel a taunt, what other, more fortunate prospectors had achieved.
    The couple’s life together was short, and perhaps that was a mercy. Hannah took to bed a year after George was born and never left. When she finally died, it was as if Perry, too, had been struck down. The burdens of two young, motherless children and a hardscrabble ranch left him overwhelmed. Rose, a thin, sad-eyed girl of fourteen with tight black braids that reached past her waist, escaped by marrying James Watson, who at thirty-eight was the same age as her father. The photograph of the couple on their wedding day shows a seated Watson, dressed for the occasion in a black suit with a somber waistcoat, his thin, dark hair slicked down and a straggly walrus mustache dangling beneath a prominent nose. He’s not smiling, merely looking puffed up and self-important. Young Rose, in a calico dress with a bustling petticoat, stands next to him, her hand resting on her new husband’s shoulder as if to steady herself. She is staring out at the camera with a look of pure, wild-eyed fear.
    Two years later, days after turning forty, Perry just seemed to have had enough of life and fell down dead. George’s sole inheritance was his father’s broken dream: One day he’d strike the mother lode.
    GEORGE MOVED in with Rose and her husband, and although he was just eleven, a fifth grader, this was the end of his childhood. He had a sharp, inquisitive mind,