Eliza loses the little money she possesses by desperately gambling on a brutal bear-and-bull fight in a mining town. Eliza has been riding the length of the Mother Lode section in California during the summer and autumn of 1849, searching for any news of Joaquín. Dressed in men’s clothes, Eliza imitates Mexican and Peruvian accents, blending invisibly into large groups of travelers to avoid bandits. She writes to Tao by the infrequent mail service to Sacramento, describing how she has fallen in love with freedom. Eliza realizes that she “had grown up clad in the impenetrable armor of good manners and conventions, trained from girlhood to please and serve, bound by corset, routines, social norms, and fear” (275). Eliza views the miners as “masters of their destiny” (277), bowing to no one in their sense of equality under the California sky, and she wants to be like them. The more Eliza confronts danger, the more she experiences her strength and the less fear she feels. In the undeveloped country, Eliza believes she can have a fresh beginning.

Always told that she needed a man to support her, Eliza discovers that she can work for her livelihood. She briefly travels with a group of itinerant actors but finds it too confusing when she is praised for her ability to play the role of a female.