How Much Of These Hills Is Gold

Part 3 spans the 20 years between 1842 and 1862. It is told by the ghost of Lucy’s father, and he speaks to her in the voice of the night wind. As she and Sam continue their trek to find a suitable burial plot for his body, Ba tries to explain his life to his daughter.

Ba says that gold wasn’t discovered by White men in 1848: “That history in your books is plain lie. Gold wasn’t found by a man, but by a boy the same age as you. Twelve. And it wasn’t found in ’48 but back in ’42. I know because it was me that found it” (162).

He explains that he was raised by a group of outcast Indians after he was discovered as a newborn alongside the bodies of his dead parents. He grew up along the coast of California, fishing in the streams with his Indian companions. When he was handed his first nugget of gold, he discarded it as a useless bit of rock. Later, White men came and stripped the land until there was no gold left.

By the time he reached adulthood, Ba was hired by a man planning to build a railroad. The man needed someone to talk to his immigrant workers and assumed Ba could speak their language. Never having seen any of his countrymen before, Ba is amazed when 200 Chinese coolies (unskilled workers hired at low wages) disembark from a ship. This is where he meets Ma for the first time. She is ambitious and mistakes him for the boss of the hired gunmen who have been sent to guard the coolie workers.

Ba immediately commences teaching English to the immigrants. At the same time, he begins a romance with Ma. She tells him that everyone on the ship was promised riches in America. When Ba explains that they will be working on railroad gangs and many will die, Ma comes up with a plan to free her countryfolk. She and Ba will start a grass fire to kill the gunmen. Then, they will free the 200 immigrants locked in a shed.

After the fire starts, it burns out of control, killing everyone except Ba and Ma. She suffers from smoke inhalation, and her voice never heals completely. Ma insists that they perform a ritual to bury the remains of the fire victims. She places pieces of silver in the graves, which Ba later steals back without telling her. For his crime, he is attacked by an unseen tiger that severs the tendon in his leg and leaves him with a limp for the rest of his life. The couple wanders east, and Ba tries unsuccessfully to find gold again. Ma both loves and hates Ba for the fire and judges him harshly for his poor decisions.

Ba reveals that Ma didn’t die on the night their son was born. She simply left, taking the last of the gold with her, hidden in her cheek. He couldn’t bear to tell his two daughters that their mother abandoned them. He also confesses that, despite his harsh treatment, he loved Lucy the best: “Maybe I even loved you better, though that’s a shameful thing to say. Shameful to love just because you needed the loving more, soft that you were” (189-90). He believes he managed to teach his two children how to survive in a harsh world and cautions Lucy to remember that family comes first.