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Tilda’s cheeks pinked up. “My adoptive father was a history teacher in a big school in New York City. He had a library full of books, and I loved to read. I have always had a fascination with Californian history, especially the stories about Spanish explorers.”

Josh studied her. Dark hair, dark eyes. Could she be Spanish maybe?

Michelle’s eyes narrowed. “Could it be one of the ships in his armada somehow got separated from the rest of the fleet in the fog? Could they have been left behind in California? Maybe they ran aground and then followed a river inland and became stranded. So they set out to explore, planning to rejoin Captain Cabrillo later, but then their ship sank and they were trapped there. That must be what happened, or something close to it.” She looked up, her eyes gleaming. “How fascinating.”

“Or maybe they deserted. Jumped ship. Swam to shore.” Josh knew sailors who’d done such things. “They could have run off from Cabrillo, done with seafaring, hoping no one would ever find them, especially if they found the bay and the water route inland by accident.”

“Cabrillo was the first of his kind to journey up the coast of California.” Tilda sure spoke like someone who’d memorized a history book.

“But San Francisco Bay wasn’t charted for hundreds of years.

Whoever left that journal and those coins might have been driven into the fog by a storm.

Maybe their ships were wrecked, and they were left to wait for help, which never came.

Or maybe it came but they had to leave things behind, like the journal. ”

Josh shook his head. “A man might abandon a leather book, but he’d take his gold.”

“Maybe,” said Tilda, “they set out to hike all the way back to Mexico where Cortés was, then looked around at this lush, beautiful land and decided to stay.”

“You do know a lot about history.” Michelle studied her as if she had her under a microscope.

Tilda shrugged. “I guess my father inspired me. I caught his love of American history, and I read most every history book I could find at the New York City Public Library.”

Michelle’s eyes sparked. “We need a history teacher at the school. Tilda, you could teach history.” Michelle sounded like it was all settled.

“Maybe other subjects as well, but history for sure to the older students. Zane’s library in the ranch house has quite a few history books.

I wonder if Captain Cabrillo is listed in any of them. ”

Michelle patted Zane on the shoulder. “If we can prove a bunch of Spanish conquistadors traveled inland in California...” She paused and looked at Tilda. “When was all this?”

“Cabrillo explored the coast in 1542.”

Josh tightened his arms around Tilda and was glad he hadn’t returned her to her horse. She probably needed support if she was going to deal with Michelle. Most people did. Not that Michelle didn’t have great ideas. They just usually had the relentlessness of an incoming tidal wave about them.

“I want to see that journal.” Michelle’s eyes lit up, not with the fever to find treasure or gold, but with an interest in something so old.

“I want to see the journal, too.” Josh knew Michelle thought she knew everything, but surely he could do a better job of recognizing information that dealt with seafaring than anyone else.

Tilda said quietly, “I’d love a chance to study something connected with Captain Cabrillo and the conquistadors.”

The woman really did love history, it seemed. An odd preference to Josh’s way of thinking. Better to pay attention to the present, such as if the cows had enough grass and water.

“The journal itself is old,” Lock said. “But the many pages of writing in the journal were all done by Grandpa. He must have found it, included in what he called ‘a treasure’ and used it to take notes, then he mailed it to us. Then he went back to his treasure and died before he could let us know more. The notes we are talking about, including the Spanish about Los Pinos and Captain Cabrillo, don’t seem to be in Grandpa’s words—we think he copied them from somewhere else.

For one, he wasn’t much of a speller. Never had any schooling, I don’t think.

And as far as Brody knows, Grandpa didn’t speak a lick of any foreign language, except maybe a few words from his Scottish ancestors. ”

“Brody called it Gaelic, I think,” Thayne noted, guiding his horse alongside Josh as they rode toward the Two Harts. “What about the papers we found with Grandpa’s body, Lock? Were those written by Grandpa, too? Or were they written three hundred years ago?”

Thayne scratched his chin. Josh noticed for the first time that Thayne had a fair amount of stubble on his chin. He wondered if the boy knew about shaving yet. Josh should probably teach him. He’d’ve told Brody to show him, but Brody was gone—and might be for a while, all things considered.

“Let’s get back to the ranch and look at that journal.”

Zane said, “I need to check how things have been running at the ranch.”

Josh felt a bit annoyed by Zane’s comment. “The ranch is being run just fine—we know what we’re doing.”

Zane gave him a sharp look, and Josh wondered what he’d sounded like.

He had spent a lot of time away from the ranch the last few days, but it’d been the weekend when they’d gone treasure hunting, and they usually worked lighter days then, especially on Sunday.

Today was Monday, and Josh had talked to the men before they’d headed to town with their prisoners.

It wasn’t time yet to drive the cattle to market, so even though Josh had brought plenty of men along to handle the prisoners, he’d left a crew back at the ranch to keep up with all the chores.

Zane shifted his horse around so he was riding on Josh’s left.

Thayne was too close on the right, probably to keep an eye on Tilda.

Zane clapped Josh on the shoulder and said, “I haven’t got a worry in the world about you keeping things running, Josh.

I’m just curious. I’ve been gone for nearly two months.

I can’t wait to see how the spring calves have grown. ”

Josh nodded. “I know. I’m anxious to have you around again. You do have a knack for stepping right in to boss this place, though. I know you ran things alone for a long time while I was sailing the seven seas. But I’m back now. And I’m a full partner, not a junior partner, not anymore.”

Zane smiled. “Agreed.”

Josh heard the words, but he knew Zane and knew his big brother had a bossy streak.

“Let’s pick up the pace for home. Josh, if it’s too much for your horse, do you mind if we ride ahead? It’s only a few minutes more.”

Josh looked down to see the alarm on Tilda’s face. She needed riding lessons, and Josh was just the one to teach her. “Go on, Zane. We’re gonna keep riding at a slower pace.”

With that, Zane urged his horse along faster.

Michelle and Lock kept up, Lock leading Tilda’s horse.

Thayne looked torn. He wanted in on studying the journal with Michelle, but he also seemed to want to ride alongside Tilda.

Finally, his treasure-hunting enthusiasm won out, and he kicked his horse into a ground-eating trot.

He soon caught up to the others, and before long they were all galloping.

Josh looked down at the armful of woman he carried and remembered his fumbled talk of her staying in the school dormitory with the girls while he stayed with the boys. He clamped his mouth shut so that nothing stupid would come blabbing out again.

Tilda said quietly, “Do you think I’d be doing the right thing to stay out here? I felt like I had a true calling from God to ride on the orphan trains. He put it in my heart to care for orphans after I became one.”

Josh stopped losing himself in the pleasure of carrying a woman around and focused on her words. “You’re an orphan?”

“Yes, didn’t anyone mention that to you? I’m sure Michelle knows.” Tilda’s brow furrowed. “I did tell her, didn’t I?”

“She didn’t say a word to me about that.”

“And Thayne and Lock know. I talked about it with the orphans.” Tilda frowned. “Although those two were such scamps. They might well have not been paying attention.”

“That sounds like them. Did your parents die? Do you remember them?”

“No, my earliest memories are of being alone on the streets in New York City. I heard much later that there was an outbreak of fever, and a lot of people died from it. The orphanage I went to live in speculated my parents might’ve died in that fever.

I was left running the streets with so many other children. ”

“My parents died, too.”

Tilda’s hand clutched the front of his shirt. “Josh, I didn’t know you’d been orphaned as well.”

“Truthfully, I was a grown man who’d gone to sea. I came home for a visit and found out then that they’d died. That’s not the same as being an orphan. I wasn’t left fighting for my life with no food and no roof over my head. But it’s mighty sad all the same.”

Tilda’s eyes brimmed with tears. “I was so busy trying to survive it, I wasn’t given much chance to think of how sad it was.

I don’t remember my parents. I don’t even know their names.

That all got lost in the cold and hunger.

” She blinked back her tears, seemingly interested in smoothing out the wrinkles she’d crushed into his shirt.

“I was later adopted by a couple whose surname was Muirhead.”

Josh patted her hand and felt a few moments of danger that his own eyes might fill with tears. That would never do. Thankfully, they rounded the last corner toward home. “Look,” he said, “that’s our ranch. See the big white building down from the house, past the barn and bunkhouse?”

Tilda twisted in the saddle to look. “The white building is where the orphans live?”

“Yep, the north side is the girls’ living quarters—Michelle calls it a dormitory—and the south side is for the boys.

There’s no door connecting the two sides on the second floor.

The first floor is where the classrooms are.

Most of the time I sleep on the boys’ side.

There’s a small private bedroom for each adult who stays with them, one for a man supervising the boys, another for a woman with the girls.

Ellie used to do most of the turns on the girls’ side, though Annie, my big sister, would fill in for her on occasion.

Her daughter—you met them at the wedding, remember? ”

“Yes, I sat next to Caroline when we ate. Her pa died, someone said.” Tilda’s eyes got all moist again.

Josh tried desperately to think of a new topic.

“Caroline is school age now. Annie does a lot of teaching now that Caroline goes to classes. Some nights, when Ellie’s forced to be away until later, especially now that she’s been a nurse to Brody, Annie would put Caroline to bed in the ranch house, then go sleep at the dorm.

But that wasn’t usual. It was Ellie’s job for the most part.

Now Ellie’s going to want to stay with Brody, I reckon.

You’d really help us out if you joined us.

You could write to the orphanage in New York and tell them to hire someone else.

Lots of folks looking for work in a big city like that. Out here, teachers are scarce.”

Tilda nodded silently for a bit. “I do feel a calling to help orphans. God opened the door for me to help with the orphan trains, but now a new door is open.” She turned again to look at the Two Harts Ranch. “It really is a beautiful place. So many houses.”

“When one of our cowhands gets married, we build them a house. We’ve got a blacksmith shop and farrier, too.

Of course, that’s mainly for keeping up with the ironwork at the ranch, shoeing horses and repairing wheels and tools and such.

We’ve always had that. We even got a doctor’s office.

And Michelle made sure we had a telegraph wire.

Anyway, it was a nice, but normal ranch before Zane married Michelle.

Michelle’s sister Jilly loves to build.”

“I met Jilly and Laura, her other sister, in San Fransisco. They came to the mission where I was helping with the children. Jilly loves to build? Really?”

“Yep, she doesn’t do all the building herself, but she bosses the work and the workers. She also built a railroad.”

Tilda quit looking around and stared at him. “A woman built a railroad?”

“A line up a mountainside. And Michelle is an inventor. She’s got several patents.

But because she tends to work with molten iron and such, she’s set her inventing aside until the baby comes.

Their sister Laura is a chemist, with training in dynamite.

Michelle and Jilly did a lot of the work organizing our little village.

The cabins welcome family men rather than footloose cowpokes.

That gives us a steady work crew. We have some single cowhands as well—they live in the bunkhouse. ”

“You call it a village, but I can’t help but compare it to New York City. That’s the only town I’ve ever really known.” Tilda studied the ranchland with what sounded like quiet wonder. “I think this is a big improvement.”

“Then you’ll stay?” Josh tried to act like this was all about needing her help at the ranch and not about how nice Tilda felt in his arms.

“I think I will,” she replied. “I’ll pray about it, but this place calls to me. I find it very appealing.”

Tilda glanced at him for just a moment when she said that, her cheeks faintly flushed, before twisting quickly away to look around the ranch once more.