Dynamite

Everyone in my small settlement town had written me off from day one.  I was the immigrant, the outsider, the child.  No one gave me a chance in hell for survival.  With my parents dead from the fever raging through town, I had no choice but to strike out on my own.  I needed to make a discovery to mark my place in California.  The gold rush was upon me and I was an orphan struggling to find my place in the world.  If I didn’t take a risk, make my own opportunities, I would starve. 

It just needed to be the one to make the discovery of gold and take my riches from the cowboys who flooded into our small California settlement.  If they knew what I had found and the gold I could find, there would be an explosion.  An explosion of new faces sparked by the idea of newfound gold and riches.  I needed to come up with a plan.  A plan that could send the new settlers away from my find.  My spot.  At only fourteen, I needed to find someone who I trusted.  I knew I couldn’t run the river and gold by myself.   

There were plenty of other settlers who were bigger, stronger and more powerful who would take over my plot and discovery.  I knew I had struck it rich, I just needed to figure out how to collect safely.  I knew my parents had left me a dynamite spot, I just needed the spark to be somewhere else so I could collect and hide. When I saw the wagon train coming into town, I knew what I had to do and where I could lead them. Only when they were settled could I enact my surefire plan.