The Sheriff. Nan Ryan

mansion, she allowed herself only a few short minutes to rest. Then, covering her hair with a cloth, she rolled up her sleeves and went to work. She spent the remainder of the day making the large front parlor as livable as possible. She swept the hardwood floor, sneezing and coughing from the dirt she stirred up. She mopped with water brought up in a pail from the lake. She cleaned the marble fireplace.

      Kate returned to the back room where she’d found the faded sofa. She batted the dust from it and polished the wooden trim. Then, puffing and groaning, she dragged the heavy sofa through the wide center hallway and into the spotless drawing room.

      Come nightfall an exhausted Kate blew out the coal oil lamp. She tiredly climbed onto the sofa, which was now made up with the newly purchased sheets. Wishing she had a pillow, she folded an arm beneath her head and turned her face toward the tall front windows looking out on the untended yard and turquoise lake beyond.

      Kate was grateful for the full moon that shone with an almost day-bright radiance. The light made her feel safe and secure. No one could possibly slip in and surprise her.

      Kate lowered a hand and touched her uncle Nelson’s Navy Colt revolver where she had placed it on the floor. Then she laid her arm across her waist and closed her eyes.

      She was almost asleep when a noise from the back of the house shattered the silence. Kate snatched the gun and sat up. She lit the coal oil lamp with shaking fingers, and then, gun in one hand, lamp in the other, she moved down the wide hallway in search of the intruder.

      “Who’s there?” she called out, expecting to encounter a bear or man any minute. “Show yourself or I’ll shoot!”

      No response.

      After a thorough inspection of all the downstairs rooms turned up nothing, Kate began to relax. She told herself the noise she’d heard had probably been nothing more menacing than a field mouse. Laughing at herself for being so easily frightened, she went back to bed.

      She returned the revolver to its place beneath the sofa. She exhaled tiredly, yawned, and again gazed out the windows to the placid lake beyond.

      The moon was full.

      The gun was loaded.

      Kate was soon fast asleep.

      After spending several fruitless days trying to hire help to work her mountainside diggings, Kate was becoming exasperated.

      She had thoroughly combed the community for laborers, finally realizing that she was looking in the wrong places. She knew exactly where she had to go. There was no use delaying any longer. She needed to go where men congregated.

      In the saloons.

      Kate waited until well after sunset.

      Then, making sure the loaded Colt revolver was in her reticule, she walked the short half mile to town. Once there, she headed directly to the largest, liveliest saloon on Main Street.

      The Golden Nugget.

      As she approached she heard loud music, men’s voices, thunderous laughter, and what could only be a fierce fistfight in progress.

      Kate slowed her steps. Then blinked in astonishment when a man with a bloody nose and a bruised face came flying out the saloon doors and landed flat on his back in the middle of the street.

      She gasped and put a hand to her mouth. Hesitating, she strongly considered abandoning her mission. She knew she should just turn around and go right back home.

      But she couldn’t do that.

      Kate squared her shoulders and marched forward. She had never been inside a saloon, but she had to go in and find men willing to work the Cavalry Blue.

      Kate reached the saloon.

      She drew a quick breath, stiffened her spine and placed a hand atop the slatted bat-wing doors.

      But before she could push them open, a low, masculine voice warned, “Hold it right there.”

      Seven

      Kate’s head snapped around.

      She found herself looking squarely at a shiny silver badge resting on a man’s broad chest.

      Kate tipped her head back and looked up.

      Sheriff Travis McCloud stood with his booted feet apart and his thumbs hooked into his low-riding gun belt. His facial muscles were drawn tight and his dark eyes cold.

      “You’re not going in there, miss,” he informed her in soft, low tones.

      “And why ever not?” she retorted. “There are ladies inside. I hear feminine laughter.”

      He looked at her and his expression changed. His lips widened in a slow smile and his dark, daring eyes held the probing scrutiny of a highly virile man. Kate was instantly unnerved by him.

      After a pause that seemed interminable, he said, “They are not exactly ladies. I imagine you are.” There was another pause. “So you’re not going inside.”

      “You know nothing about me, so how…?”

      “I know a great deal about you,” he said, taking hold of her upper arm and firmly turning her away from the saloon’s swinging doors. “You are Miss Kate VanNam from Boston and you’ve come to take up residence in the house your late great-aunt Arielle VanNam Colfax left you.”

      “The house is the least of it, Sheriff.” Kate attempted to pull her arm free of his encircling fingers.

      He refused to let her go. “Ah, yes. So you’ve seen the elephant.”

      “Seen the elephant?”

      “Never mind. You’re here for gold,” he said, shaking his head.

      His air of egotism was offensive. Kate gave him a sharp look. “Why, yes, if you must know, I intend to bring gold out of the Cavalry Blue. Which is why I was going into the Golden Nugget. I need to find laborers to work my claim.”

      Travis quickly set her straight. “That’s not going to happen, Miss VanNam. You won’t find anybody willing to work at the Cavalry Blue.”

      “Why not?”

      “The people in Fortune are dreamers, just as you are. They work at their own small claims and diggings, hoping to strike it rich. That’s why they came to California, the ‘land of second chances’.”

      “Does that include you, Marshal?” She smiled when she saw the slight narrowing of his eyes, then told him, “It really shouldn’t matter to you why I’m here. My presence in Fortune is none of your concern and I—”

      “You’re wrong there, Miss VanNam. It is very much my concern,” Travis said. “I’ve been hired by the Committee of Vigilance to keep the peace in Fortune. That’s exactly what I aim to do.”

      “Well, I should hope so,” she retorted. Glancing up at his handsome face, she immediately felt the same frightening tingle she’d experienced when she’d looked out from the riverboat’s porthole upon arriving in Fortune. She mentally shook herself, and then flippantly teased, “I promise not to cheat at cards or get into fistfights or shoot up the saloons.”

      She laughed.

      He didn’t.

      Stopping in midstride, he yanked her to such an abrupt halt her head rocked on her shoulders. Drawing her close, he fixed her with his dark eyes. “Listen to me, Miss VanNam, and listen well. In case you’ve failed to notice, there are at least fifty men to every woman in this community. Any idea what that could mean to you?”

      “No, I—”

      “Word has already spread that you are to be living alone up there in the Colfax mansion. How safe do you suppose you are?”

      “I don’t see—”

      “No, you don’t see. If you did you’d