She wasn't even a "her"; she was a he, a great, awkward Swede with mouse-colored hair and a Yon Yonsen accent--you know the kind--slow to anger; slow to everything, without "j" in his alphabet--by the name of Olaf Knutsen.
Now Olaf was a dreamer.

Not the conventional sort of a dreamer, who sees beauty in everything but an honest day's work, but a brawny, pick-swinging dreamer who had dug holes in the ground at the end of many rainbows.

That he had never yet uncovered the elusive pot of gold didn't seem to bother him in the least; for him, that tender plant called Hope flowered perennially.

And now he was bent on following another rainbow; a rainbow which; arching over the mountains, ended in that arid, pitiless waste known in the south country as Death Valley.
He wouldn't fail this time.

No, by Yimminy! With Dad's three burros, and plenty of bacon and beans and water--it was to be a grub-stake, of course--he would make both their fortunes.