How Much Of These Hills Is Gold

Part 4 takes place five years after Lucy and Sam part ways. Lucy lives in the town of Sweetwater. She finds work in a laundry and rents a room in a boardinghouse. She even makes friends with a wealthy girl named Anna, who looks identical to her from the back. Anna’s father is a wealthy prospector, just as Ba dreamed he would be. Lucy thinks, “It is as if Anna waved a wand over her friend—only the wand was a dowsing rod, and the rod held by Anna’s father, and the magic only gold. Transformation into the same girl” (203).

Anna is afraid because there are rumors of a wild tiger prowling around town. The girls find a partial paw print in the mud, but Lucy laughs at Anna’s fears. They go to the train station to meet Anna’s fiancé Charles.

Lucy recalls when she first came to Sweetwater. She spends many hours swimming in the river for which the town is named. This is where she first meets Anna. The rich girl gives Lucy gifts of clothing and food. She wants Lucy to move into the mansion that Anna occupies with her father.