A rough California gold camp seems an unlikely place for two lonely people running from their pasts to meet. But when Sam Ransom first sees Zenobia Gray taking after a huge, bearded miner with a ladle, then delivery a baby and comforting a bereaved man, he decides that, while she might be a fussy prude, she’s worth emulating.

When Zenobia Gray first sets eyes on Sam Ransom, she’s sure he’s absolutely not the man for her, even though he’s of great assistance.

They’re both right … and they’re both wrong … and they’re going to discover more in each other than they bargained for, along with something else … enduring love.

Chapter One

Muddy Flats, California, May, 1852

Sam Ransom tried to ignore the smelly, scratching, spitting jumble of gold miners strung out behind him and concentrated instead on his mud-caked boots. Lord, he hated dirt. He’d had no idea it would be so abundant in his new home.

A sharp female voice jolted his attention from his footwear to the interior of the chow tent.

“Get your fingers off those biscuits right now, John Fogg! I’ll serve you and the rest of the ravening horde when I open up for supper, and not a second sooner.”

To his astonishment, Sam observed a tiny, pinch-faced woman, a ladle held aloft, charging toward an enormous man. She looked for all the world as though she aimed to slay him with her unlikely weapon.

When the ladle struck the back of a beefy hand and echoed a resounding thwack through the evening mist, the man named John Fogg bellowed, “Ow! You don’t have to kill me, Zee! I just wanted a goddamn bisc—”

“And I don’t serve blasphemers in here, either. So you’d best watch that foul mouth of yours, too, or you’ll eat somewhere else tonight.”

John Fogg jumped away from the biscuits and glared at her, cradling his hand against his heavy jacket.

It was a stand-off, and Sam’s curiosity was intense. He’d never seen a female take after a grown man that way. He felt a reluctant tug of admiration for this one. Sam respected grit. When he heard the comments swelling up from the crowd behind him, his interest surged.

“Heh, heh!” one bearded fellow chuckled. “Foggy don’t stand a chance now. Not with Zee Gray after him, he don’t.”

His fellow miners apparently agreed. “Not a chance in hell, fer sure.”

“By God, Zee Gray’s the only cook we got here in Muddy Flats, anyway. Foggy couldn’t eat nowhere else if’n he wanted to,” another beard chortled.

“And it ain’t just that, neither. Any one o’ you buzzards ever know Zee to go anywheres unarmed?”

A chorus of chuckles met the sally, and a forest of shaggy heads shook in the negative.

“Zee Gray’s been in Muddy Flats more’n a year and a half now, and she knows how to get along in this here world,” was rendered in a thick Swedish accent.

Chuckles and agreements issued from other beards, as well as bets as to whether the lady carried a knife, too, or only a gun and a ladle. Sam heard one enterprising miner begin to take bets on the matter, and wondered if Miss Gray wore her gun strapped to her thigh, or if she tucked it under her apron. He wore his own pistol stuffed into the waistband of his trousers.

The betting business was brisk until yet another pair of furred lips muttered, “Hell, we don’t got no way to find out one way or t’other. Ain’t nobody never got under that apron o’ hern.” Bet-taking slowed to a crawl.

Sam peered into the tent once more, fascinated.

John Fogg’s stomach won the day. With a modicum of swaggering bravado to show everybody he wasn’t really being cowed by a mere woman, he gave up his defiant pose. “Sheesh, Zee, all right. I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry, all right, John Fogg. You’re about the sorriest creature I’ve ever seen.”

Zenobia Gray scowled ferociously and the bearded giant ultimately gave up any pretense of saving face, slunk off, and headed to the back of the tidy row of untidy men lined up behind Sam Ransom. He cast baleful glances at those of his gold-camp companions who dared snicker, and muttered about how he’d get them later. His challenging words only earned him more snickers.

Sam craned his head back to read the sign lurching drunkenly over the tent’s tacked-back flap. “Zenobia Gray’s Stew Kitchen,” it said in splotched, blocky letters. It looked as though somebody had used the sign for target practice once upon a time. Maybe more than once.

God almighty, but California surely did seem to be a queer place.

Still, it was probably a safe one, at least for him. Oh, he’d heard it was plenty wild here in the gold fields, but wildness didn’t bother Sam Ransom. He could hold his own with the worst of them. As near as Sam could figure, though, there wasn’t anybody within hundreds of miles who’d ever heard of him. That was a minor blessing. The major blessing was that the benevolent influences of civilization—or, more precisely, the law—had yet to catch up with California.

And, aside from the fact that his belly had been empty for far too long, it was the other sign, the small one tacked up next to the big one, that had piqued Sam’s intrigue enough to weather the obviously formidable, albeit somewhat little, Zenobia Gray. In neat lettering on a torn scrap of canvas the sign spelled out, “Help Wanted.”

Because Sam Ransom finally, after much too desperate and uncomfortable a career, had decided to go straight. He was going to get himself a real job. For once in his worthless life he was going to work for his bread and not steal it. He knew that if he could manage to hold onto a real, honest-to-God job for longer than however long it took him to get peeved at his employer, his life would turn over like the proverbial new leaf.

He hadn’t yet gone so far as to figure out what to do if the law in any of the states or territories in which he was wanted should happen to show up in California looking for him. He reckoned he’d cross that bridge when it came to him.

Just then Zenobia Gray stepped outside the tent. Ignoring Sam as if he were invisible, she almost tramped on his muddy boots before she stopped. Then she lifted a huge metal triangle into the air and whacked it so hard and so long that Sam was sure he was going to go deaf before she took mercy on him and stopped. When she was through torturing him, she executed a militarily precise turn and stalked back inside the tent.

That’s when the shoving started.

“Git on in that thar tent, tenderfoot. I ain’t aimin’ to get no older whilst you fart around out here.”

Suddenly, Sam found himself inside the tent. His entrance was so precipitate, in fact, that he bumped into a plank table and nearly upended it before he managed to right himself.

“Watch your manners, you!”

Lifting his gaze, he found Zenobia Gray standing at the flap of her kitchen door, glaring straight at him, and he wondered if he’d already lost the job he’d come here for. Well, hell. As much as her attitude galled him, still more did he aim to hold onto his temper. He tipped his hat and mouthed an apology. In return, she honored him with an even blacker scowl. Sam frowned back and wondered if she was irked at him or at life in general.

Following the obvious precedent of the place, he picked up a tin plate at the end of a long wooden counter and stood in line. He held his plate in front of a tall, broad-faced Chinese fellow who looked every bit as rough as the rest of the population hereabouts. The Chinaman slopped a huge mound of stew onto Sam’s plate, added two enormous biscuits, whacked out a slab of butter from the crock at his side, and plopped it atop the biscuits.

Then, with a little bow, he said, “God bless you, sir,” thus assuring Sam’s complete bewilderment about this mysterious gold camp culture.

He shook his head and aimed for one of the splintery plank tables, hoping he wouldn’t irk anybody by sitting in the wrong place. It soon became evident to him, however, that there weren’t any wrong places. Men took their tin plates anywhere and everywhere in the huge tent and parked themselves.

He’d have expected tight friendships to develop out here on the edge of nowhere but as he peered around, each man seemed to have his eyes directed at his plate. There was even less chatter than there had been after Zenobia Gray hit John Fogg with the ladle. Sam noticed John Fogg was silent, too, and shoveled his food into his mouth without looking to the right or to the left.

So be it. His was not to wonder why.

He did notice Zenobia Gray, however. The woman reminded him of nothing so much as one of the big black-and-yellow bumblebees that used to torment the morning glories back home. She swooped here and swooped there, landing occasionally to snatch up an empty plate or to admonish a diner for the use of vulgar language. The lady was clearly a real stickler on the issue of profanity. Sam decided with a sigh that he’d have to bear it in mind.

He also decided she was neither as old nor as homely as he’d first believed. Inside the well-lighted tent where he could really see her, he realized she couldn’t be more than in her mid-twenties. She had a well-favored face, too, although it was far too grim for Sam’s taste. Her big eyes were more gray than blue and held a vigilance that boded ill for trespassers into her personal boundaries.

She was a little bit of a thing, too. She zipped down aisles and around tables, a tiny, dominant presence in her black dress and white apron. Her hair was yellow, confined to a couple of braids, and wrapped around her head in a tight coil. It looked to Sam as though she were trying her damnedest—blessedest—to look matronly. She had a sting, too. He’d already noticed that.

Then, after his second mouthful of Zenobia Gray’s stew, Sam stopped thinking about anything except how this was the best stew he’d ever eaten in his life, even if it had cost him an entire dollar. He’d been prepared for the expense, though.

Before he set out for California, he’d solved any money worries in one final, frenzied splurge of larceny that had nearly been his undoing. He’d had to elude one of the finest U.S. Marshals in the country to make his escape west afterwards. Sam considered it an irony that his father would have been proud of him.

But Pappy had been hung for a horse thief three years earlier, a circumstance that had come as a real surprise to Sam, who never expected his parent’s criminal career to be the end of him. It had surprised Pappy, too. Sam could still remember him climbing up to face that noose, looking for all the world like a man who’d awakened from a dream to find himself on the gallows.

As he savored his stew, Sam allowed himself a brief, ironic grin. “Criminy,” he muttered as he reached for his coffee, recalling all those times his father used to berate him for being too damned much like his mother.

Sam guessed his father had been right in the end. Sam was so much like his poor mother, he finally couldn’t tolerate the family business a second longer. He’d come out West to escape.

As he rose from his place and settled his hat back onto his head, he uttered what might have been a prayer that things would work out for him here. All he knew for sure was that he hoped as he had never hoped before that Zenobia Gray could use his skills, such as they were, in her stew kitchen.

Zee was so tired she wasn’t sure why she was still standing up. By all the laws of nature, she should be flat on her back from exhaustion. She’d never be able to open up a real restaurant in Marysville or Sacramento if she collapsed and died here in Muddy Flats. With what had become characteristic cynicism in the last year or so, she decided that would be all right, too.

At least, thank the good Lord, the dinner hour was over and the horde had finally left. They’d swooped in, fed in a frenzy that would have done justice to a herd of wild boars, and gone away again.

“Thanks, Yung,” she murmured to the Chinese man who had served up the stew.

“No prollem, Missy.” A smile creased Yung’s broad face.

Zee smiled back. Lee Yung had been her staunchest friend—at times her only one—for three years now. She knew she’d never have survived without him. Still, she’d not yet figured out whether when Yung said “Missy,” he meant “Missy” or “Miss Zee.” She’d wonder about it sometimes since there wasn’t anything else to think about around here.

A sigh leaked out when she surveyed this little kingdom she’d created for herself. Some kingdom. A ragged canvas tent in a benighted gold camp in a wild state. State? If she’d had the energy, Zee would have snorted with derision. It would be a long, long time before California behaved like any state she’d had anything to do with before she came here, fool that she was.

The inside of the tent was gray with smoke and streaked with dirt and food stains that would never come clean off the canvas. Her lips pursed into a tight knot that foretold of wrinkles to come if her disposition didn’t sweeten up. She knew it, and she didn’t care.

She’d never understand how grown human beings could be such pigs when they ate. Food stains on the walls, for the good Lord’s sake.

Maybe she should hire Pauly Prince full time to help out around the place. He was only a child, but he wanted to work. That was more than most of the idiots in Muddy Flats wanted to do.

When Zee saw the flap of her food-stained tent lift and the man who had bumped the table walk in, she frowned. Her frown turned into a glower when he stepped forward, hat clutched in front of him in rough brown hands, and cleared his throat.

“Miss Gray?”

He had a deep voice. It sounded smoky and a little rough, although it wasn’t at all unpleasant. In fact, if Zee were of an inclination to be dispassionate, which she wasn’t, she’d have had to say it was a handsome voice; as handsome as he was. She narrowed her eyes into two suspicious slits.

“That’s me.”

She deliberately kept her tone of voice less than inviting because she wanted nothing whatever to do with the hard men in this filthy camp. She fed them; they paid her; that was enough for her. She’d learned her lesson about men the hard way and didn’t need to be taught twice.

When she saw the scrap of canvas the man held in his hand, her glower deepened. She saw a look of annoyance pass over his face, before he rearranged his features into a placid mask. Her insides sparked a little. She was glad she’d managed to vex him, blast his soul to perdition. Men. Zee hated them.

“I saw this sign and wondered if the position had been filled yet.” He held out the scrap. It looked tiny and pale in his large hands, and it fluttered in the evening breeze.

Zee’s eyes popped open. Wondered if the position had been filled yet? Who was this person? Nobody talked like that in Muddy Flats. The good-for-nothing dreamers who came to these parts had no truck with honest jobs for honest wages. If it weren’t for Lee Yung, she’d be handling the whole operation alone. “It’s not been filled,” she said crisply.

She wasn’t at all sure she’d like for this man to be working for her. For one thing he was big. Zee didn’t favor big man because when they got stubborn there was no doing anything with them. For another thing, he was too good looking. His dark brown hair hadn’t been cut for a while and a lock of it fell over his forehead in an artistic fashion that irritated her. He had brown eyes, too, chocolate brown and deep. They possessed a twinkle Zee didn’t trust.

No. Zee didn’t like his looks one bit.

“I’m interested in the job, if you’ll have me.”

On the other hand, if she didn’t get help soon, she might just fold up and die. She was getting way beyond tired.

“What can you do?” She eyed him up and down and decided he wouldn’t do. Nobody who looked like he did truly aimed to work for a living.

“I’m an able-bodied man, ma’am. I reckon I can do anything that needs doing. I can fetch and carry, cut and haul, ride a horse and doctor a cut. I can build most anything, repair bridles and saddles. I can handle a gun, if you need protection.”

“I can handle my own gun,” Zee told him tartly. “What I need is somebody I can trust.” She surveyed him closely, and didn’t try to hide her doubt. “Can I trust you?”

She didn’t trust him already. Although he spoke politely, he didn’t look one speck humble. People who looked like this man took others for what they could get and then went on their merry ways and never looked back.

There was the slightest hint of a hesitation before the stranger gave his answer. “Yes, ma’am.”

It was the hesitation that made Zee Gray soften. She knew from bitter experience that the really choice villains on this green earth didn’t hesitate before they lied.

“The only other man I have working for me is Lee Yung. Yung’s a Chinaman and a good man. You got anything against working with a Chinaman?”

“No, ma’am.”

“I don’t allow cussing around me, and I expect an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay.”

“Yes’m.”

“I read the Bible every night after supper. Lee Yung sits in, and I’d expect you to do so as well. You up to that?”

It looked to Zee as if the man had to suppress a grin. “Yes, ma’am. I believe I am.”

She decided to ignore the almost-grin. “If you work for me, you’ve got to have a name. What’s yours?”

From the expression on her face, Sam deduced she hated him already, although she hadn’t yet told him to get lost. He kept his temper and tried to keep hoping. It was a hard job.

“Sam Ransom, ma’am.” There was no hesitation then, because it was his name; or most of it, anyway. He didn’t bother to add that his full name was Samuel Ransom Glover.

“You smoke or chew?” She barked it out as a challenge, as though she were looking for an excuse not to hire him.

“No, ma’am.”

There was a brief pause, during which Sam held his breath and Zenobia Gray seemed to be mulling over his answers.

Then, still eyeing him skeptically, she said, “I don’t know why you choose to work at a real, honest-to-God job when all the other no-good men in these parts are out slopping in the mud for the Golden Idol, Mr. Ransom, but you can start now.”

It surprised her to see relief wash over him as surely as if she’d dumped a bucket of it over his head like water.

“Thank you, ma’am. What would you like me to do?”

With the thought in mind of telling him to help Lee Yung clean up while she counted the cash and locked it away, Zee opened her mouth to speak. Her intentions were thwarted when a huge bear of a man rushed through the front flap of the tent, barreling straight into Sam Ransom’s back.

Sam stumbled forward, immediately caught his balance in a low crouch and swirled around. By the time the intruder had skidded to a halt, Sam had his gun drawn and cocked.

“There’s no need for that, Mr. Ransom,” Zee told him in a hard, reproving voice.

“Sorry.” Sam straightened, quickly tucked his gun back into his waist band, and looked as though he’d betrayed himself somehow. “Reflexes,” muttered as an addendum.

“Be interested to know where you had to learn reflexes of that nature,” snapped Zee. Then she turned away from Sam and proceeded to ignore him while she talked to the intruder. “What’s the matter, Caleb?”

Caleb, the burly fellow, looked as though he’d been growing his coppery hair for years. His eyes were red-rimmed and what could be discerned of his face through his shaggy beard was white and drawn with care.

“Oh, Zee, It’s my Sue Ellen. The babe’s coming and she’s hurting bad. It ain’t going right, Zee, and I don’t know what to do.” Huge tears began to course down Caleb’s cheeks and get caught up in his whiskers.

Sam eyed the big man, surprised and vaguely appalled. He’d never seen a grown man cry before. He didn’t say anything.

Zee spun on him so fast his hand reached for his gun, reflexively. It hovered in the air above his holster, and he knew he’d betrayed himself again, just like his pappy always used to warn him about.

Zee spared a frosty glance for his gun hand, but it thawed some when Sam’s hand dropped to his side. “You aren’t going to need that gun, Mr. Ransom. But I’ll need you. Stay right here until I come back.

“Caleb,” she barked at the big, worried newcomer. “You get on back to Sue Ellen right now. Tell her I’m coming and I’m bringing help. Keep her warm, and stay with her. Is your cabin clean?”

Caleb did not seem to be offended by her peremptory question. “Just like you said, Zee. As soon as the pains started, I cleaned everything right up. Clean sheets and clean rags. But Zee, they’s all bloodied up now. I’m so scared.” His shoulders shook, and Zee took the time to offer him a consoling pat on the back.

“I know you’re worried, Caleb. You get on back to Sue Ellen now. She needs you. We’ll be along in just a couple of shakes.” Her voice went as soft for Caleb as it had been hard for Sam.

And then Sam found himself alone in the tent, left to his own thoughts amid rows of plank tables, set to order once again. In a very few minutes, Zee Gray was back, a worn satchel clutched in her hands.

“You carry this and a lamp, Mr. Ransom. Since I know the path and will have to lead, I’ll carry this other lamp and show you the way. It’ll be rough going, so watch your step.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I don’t know when you got to these parts, Mr. Ransom, or how much you know about them, but we live on the side of a mountain here and nature treats us like the puny folks we are instead of the Titans we like to think we are. It’s rained recently so the trail is muddy and sloppy, and it’ll be an unpleasant trek to Caleb’s cabin.” She spoke as rapidly as she walked, and Sam listened closely.

“There will be fools sleeping by the river to guard their claims, and you’ll probably have to watch out or step on one or two of them. The easy gold’s all been picked up by now, so folks are trying other ways to find what’s left. There’s mining equipment, sluice boxes, rockers, long-toms, and all sorts of trash to watch out for. These idiots dig huge holes in the ground and then leave them open for anybody to fall in, so don’t veer away from the path.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Do your best to keep that satchel dry. It carries my medical supplies.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Zee Gray set a clip that would have done a mean-hearted drill sergeant proud. If Sam’s legs weren’t so long and he wasn’t in powerful shape from riding half-way across the enormous geography of the American Continent, he might have had trouble keeping up with her. She took rocks and boulders as though she did this every day of the year. Which she might, for all he knew.

The night was black as pitch, so Sam couldn’t see much of the countryside. They headed out of the gold camp proper and started up a trail leading into the hills, their two lanterns swaying crazily as they climbed.

Sam kept his eye on the golden patch of light in front of him. It occasionally lit the woman who carried it so he could see her from the waist down. She had her lamp pitched so that it didn’t light up her face, and once or twice Sam had the odd impression that he was following a disembodied ghoul.

He shook his head and tried to keep his mind on the rugged trail. That was another thing his father had taken pains to scold him about: his whimsical nature. “Pay attention to what you’re about, Sammy, or you’ll be crow bait come mornin’,” he used to tell him.

Well, Pappy was crow bait now, Sam guessed. And here he was, trying to go straight by following this sharp-as-broken-glass gold-camp cook up the side of a mountain. It seemed an odd way to go about the business. Sam gritted his teeth and decided it would be better if he were to stop thinking altogether.

He did notice, because he couldn’t help it, that Zee Gray wore a man’s heavy, laced-up work boots. When she lifted her skirts so she could clamber over an impediment in her way, he could discern the hint of a well-turned calf and averted his gaze quickly. For some reason, peeking at Zenobia Gray’s feminine attributes struck him as an improper activity; sort of like lifting a nun’s habit for an unauthorized peek at what it hid from view.

She was right about the roughness of the trail and the sleeping men scattered about. He caught glimpses of rag-tag, tent-like structures and lumber frameworks of mining equipment as they climbed. The mining accouterments all looked like rubbish to him, and he wondered if anybody ever struck anything but mud here. He’d just begun to think they’d been trudging along for an inordinately long time when Zee’s voice surprised him.

“Won’t be long now, Mr. Ransom. Caleb’s cabin is just up ahead.”

She sounded out of breath, and it surprised him. He was out of breath, too, but Zee Gray was possessed of so few normal human attributes, he hadn’t expected her to feel the effects of this hike as would a regular female.

“They got a cabin?”

“Yes. Caleb built it for Sue Ellen when she came to these parts.”

“They been married long, ma’am?” Sam asked the question mainly for the sake of conversation. He noticed a gap, however, between his question and Zee’s answer, and guessed he shouldn’t have asked.

“Well, now, Mr. Ransom, I’m not certain Caleb and Sue Ellen have ever had the opportunity to formalize their union with a man of God. There’s aren’t many people of that stripe out here. Which is not to say that they aren’t fond of one another or that they won’t avail themselves of a preacher should one appear.”

She spoke in a voice that didn’t invite argument, and Sam didn’t give her any. Besides, he not only didn’t know what to say, but he didn’t give a rap.

“Caleb loves Sue Ellen, and he’s stuck by her through this ordeal and will stand by her after it’s over, if she pulls through. That’s all I need to know about him to know he’s a good man. And, believe me, good men are scarcer than preachers in these parts.” Almost to herself, she added, “But she’s so tiny. I’m mortally afraid for her.”

Since he was unsure of his ground in this discourse he had begun so innocently, Sam only mumbled, “Yes, ma’am,” and shut his mouth. He heard Zee take a deep breath as though she were going to pursue the subject of good men and their paucity, and was unprepared when she reverted to his original query.

“Lots of folks build themselves cabins around here. I’ve been trying to get one built for a year or more. That’s probably one of the first things I’ll have you do, in fact, Mr. Ransom. You said you could build things.”

There it was again: the challenge in her tone, as though she didn’t believe what he’d told her. Sam found it right aggravating not to be believed when he was telling the truth. Truth-telling was a novel experience for him, and he reckoned if he were going to go to the damned—blasted—trouble of being honest, the least this woman could do was believe him. He remembered his new goal in life before he could holler at her.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said in a voice pitched honey-sweet to counter her acerbity. “I’m a right good carpenter.”

He was trying to recall whether it had been in Kansas or that filthy prison in New Orleans where he’d learned the skill of carpentry, when Zee interrupted his thoughts.

“We’re here.”

Sam guessed he might have known that a second or two later even if Zee hadn’t announced their arrival, because a wrenching cry tore through the air and ended in a series of panting sobs. A deep grumbly rumble followed the cry, and Sam recognized Caleb’s voice. The rumble was meant to convey words of comfort; Sam could tell by the tone of it.

“Sounds like things are bad in there.” Immediately Zee became a model of efficiency. “Mr. Ransom, I want you to take this pail, fill it with water from the river, and bring it back. Before you come inside, stomp as much of the mud off your boots as you can and then wash your hands in that other bucket, the one beside the door. Use this piece of carbolic soap.” She shoved the pail and a chunk of soap at him.

“Yes, ma’am.” Sam flinched when another sharp female cry smote his ears. Shit—shoot—what was going on in there, anyway?

Sam had never seen a woman in labor before and wasn’t looking forward to it. He tried to numb his brain as he headed toward the river.

The balsamic scent of fir and pine trees tickled his nostrils, and hinted of a peace peculiarly at odds with the battle raging in the cabin. He couldn’t see very well by the light of his lantern, but he heard the water bubbling merrily along down the mountainside, impervious to the human suffering going on only a few yards away. He felt strangely sad, as though the tranquil brook were laughing at him.