Travis stared at the vision in white and lost his breath entirely when she impetuously yanked the long skirt of her nightgown up around her thighs and sank down on the front step, shoving the fabric between her legs and pressing her knees together.
Travis ground his teeth so hard his jaws ached.
Damn her beautiful hide!
All the warning in the world hadn’t made one bit of difference. He had a good mind to march up there and haul her back inside.
Just then a big calico cat sauntered out of the house and over to her. Travis watched, disbelieving, as Kate stroked the cat’s raised throat.
That cat had been left behind when Mrs. Colfax moved away. He’d seen the creature running wild through the woods. Apparently it had taken up residence in the empty mansion.
The animal had turned feral years ago. Yet already this Boston blonde had made an obedient pet of it.
Travis’s eyes narrowed.
He stared at Miss VanNam, remembering how another golden-haired beauty had made a pet—and a fool—out of him.
Silently he vowed that would never happen again.
Nine
As Sheriff McCloud had suspected, Kate VanNam’s presence in Fortune caused quite a stir. In mining regions, men would travel a great distance for a glance at a newly arrived female, since, aside from the girls working in the bordellos, very few unattached women lived in gold camps, and none were as young and as pretty as Kate VanNam. She was, fortunately, such a novelty that most of the hard-bitten miners treated her with awed respect. She represented their mothers, sisters, daughters, wives and sweethearts back home.
But not all.
There were a number of dirty, foul-mouthed curs who would have loved to get their hands on a genteel woman like Kate VanNam. Sheriff McCloud put the word out that if anyone trifled with her, he would have to answer to him. Still, Travis worried for her-safety. She was, he knew, too much of a temptation to the lonely miners.
Travis enlisted the help of his deputy, Jiggs Gillespie.
“I need a hand, Jiggs,” Travis said early one morning as the two were drinking coffee at the jail.
“What can I do?” asked the always congenial Jiggs.
Travis took a sip of the steaming black brew. “The young woman up at—”
“Kate VanNam?”
“Yes, Kate VanNam. Jiggs, she’s up there by herself in that run-down mansion. Jesus, there’s not even a front door and—”
“Why don’t we take turns checking on her?” said Jiggs, anticipating Travis’s request.
“You wouldn’t mind?”
The skinny deputy smiled, rose to his feet and hitched up his trousers. “Lordy, no. It’s not like I have a wife and family to go home to at night.”
“I’d be much obliged to you, Jiggs.” Travis frowned when he added, “God knows she’s a royal pain in the ass, but I don’t look for her to be staying long in Fortune.”
“I do, Trav.”
Travis blinked, taken aback. “Why would you say a thing like that?”
He shrugged narrow shoulders. “I heard her talking to Doc Ledet on the steamer up from San Francisco. She told him she was going to stay here until she found gold in the Cavalry Blue. I’d say that should take about…um, well, put it this way. You and I will be dead and gone, and she’ll be a withered old woman, before an ounce of gold is brought out of the worthless Cavalry Blue.”
Travis nodded. “I’m betting she’ll tire of the futile undertaking.” He took another drink of coffee. “But until that happy day, we’ll have to keep an eye on the pretty Easterner.”
“I’ll wander on up two or three times tonight.”
“Thanks, Jiggs. Once you’re up there, stay safely out of sight. She’s got a gun and I told her to shoot and ask questions later.”
“She’ll never know I’m within a hundred miles of the place.”
There were no respondents to her “Miners Wanted” ad in the weekly Fortune Teller. Kate was disappointed. She was becoming increasingly frustrated by the fact that she couldn’t find anyone to work her mine. Obviously Sheriff McCloud had been right when he’d predicted she wouldn’t be able to hire any laborers. It seemed that all the men in Fortune were working their own claims.
Since she had been warned by the inflexible sheriff not to step foot inside one of the many saloons, Kate had to limit her hunt to placing the advertisement in the weekly newspaper and to checking at the Wells Fargo office when the mail carrier delivered the post.
After sending a letter to Alexandra Wharton, her dear friend back in Boston, Kate made an inquiry at Wells Fargo. No takers. Discouraged, she left and was heading down the sidewalk when she heard loud thudding sounds and muffled groans.
She stopped, turned her head and listened.
She heard the unmistakable moaning of an animal in pain. Kate hurried and peered down the shadowy alley between two buildings.
She gasped in horror.
Two big, rough looking men, the taller one with a black patch over one eye, the other sporting a bushy red beard, were mercilessly beating a helpless little Chinaman. The one-eyed man had his knife out, trying to cut off the Chinaman’s queue.
Kate didn’t hesitate.
She reached into her reticule, drew her uncle’s Navy Colt revolver, hurried into the alley, raised her arm above her head and fired into the air.
“Hit him one more time and I’ll blow your heads off!” she warned, lowering the gun and at the same time taking close notice of their faces and clothes so that she could describe them to the sheriff and help identify them.
The startled ruffians instantly released their victim and fled out the back of the alley. Kate put the weapon away and hurried to the suffering Chinaman, who lay crumpled on the ground.
“You speak English?” she asked, taking a hand-kerchief from her reticule to dab some of the blood from his pummeled face.
He grimaced, but nodded.
“Good. We’ll get you across the street to Dr. Ledet’s and he’ll—”
“No…no,” said the man through clenched teeth. “No doctor. Not need one.”
“Yes, you do! You’re badly hurt and—”
“Do not need doctor,” the Chinaman said again.
“You are going to the doctor!” Kate stated firmly. “Now, we’ll carefully sit you up and let you lean back against the building. Once we’ve accomplished that,” she told him, “I’m going to drape
