Page 19 of Inventions of the Heart

Zane blew out hard, almost as if someone had punched him in the stomach. “In one morning?”

“Well, I’m estimating, and the work is by no means done, so no, not in one morning. I’d say what’s in that pile you made is all afternoon’s work. I’m going to quit digging and get the gold free of the quartz you knocked loose. That’ll fill the rest of my day. You can keep going with the pickax.”

“My pa’s been out here a long time. He came out for the gold rush and was smart enough to decide there was more gold on the hoof than there was in the ground.”

“My papa did the same thing.” Papa, how she missed him. The greatest loss in what had been her greatly blessed life. “He made a good, not great, strike and saw that the shopkeepers were going to take most of it when he bought supplies. He had left Mama and us girls back east. He wanted to build a home for us, and lumber was at a price, as he said, that only a madman would pay. Instead of buying supplies and making himself penniless, he decided there was more gold in the trees than there was in the ground.”

Zane smiled. It did something to her. Lifted her heart a bit. When thinking about Papa usually made her sad.

Zane’s smile remained, and his eyes lingered on her.

She remembered their one and only kiss when he was excited about the gold discovery.

“Pa had some really rich years once he got the herd started. Prices were crazy. He drove twenty head of three-year-old calves to San Francisco one year and made one hundred dollars per head. Two thousand dollars for a year’s work. Now I’m going to make more money from a day’s work. All for gold.”

He looked with some distaste at the gold.

“I could handle it,” Michelle said. “I know how to shoot a gun.”

“I’m just afraid you’d have to use it, Michelle. That’s the problem. And I don’t want that for you.”

“That’s the life I’ve been raised for, educated for.”

“But is it right? I can see you’re organized and smart—no, brilliant. Very capable. But what will you do when a burly, hungover man comes busting into your office up here shouting that it isn’t fair a rich man like Zane Hart gets the lion’s share of the gold while he does all the work?”

“What would a man do? Are you going to hire a fighter? What if he can’t win a fistfight with a burly, hungover man any more than I can? Are you going to post guards? And how will you choose those guards? How can you be sure you can trust them?”

Zane gave her a long, solemn look. “I don’t know.”

Michelle didn’t really know, either.