The Sheriff (Historical Romance) by Nan Ryan Page A

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 wildthrough 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
    A s 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 untilshe 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