Page 55 of Inventions of the Heart

CHAPTER

EIGHTEEN

ATRACTIONENGINE?”Zane tilted his head. He thought his mind might be addled, and viewing the world from a slightly different angle might clear things up.

“They’re so useful. And we make them at California Ironworks,” Michelle said.

“We?”

“Yes, my father was part owner, and ... well, now my sisters and I are, and we sit on the board of California Ironworks in San Francisco. Laura is probably talking to them right now with Mama. I am sure I can get it for cost.”

“Before we spend any more money, I need to tell you, Josh came in after the noon meal. He wants us to ride out with him and decide if he’s found all the ...gold.” He whispered that single word. “He thinks he’s reached the end of the vein, but he wants someone else checking, seeing if there are any other veins to be found and then...” Zaneglanced all around to make sure no one was coming over to talk to them.

Michelle and Zane stood in the ranch yard, careful to be a good distance from any building where someone might accidentally overhear them. He hadn’t brought her out here because of her wildly inventive ideas about his ranch. He’d brought her out to talk about gold.

“I’ve given it a lot of thought,” he said. “We’ve tried to decide what to do about that ... um ...ore. So we don’t start some kind of ... stampede onto our ranch.”

“And have you decided?”

“I want to go a good distance away from home, change it all to cash, and put it in a bank. I want a large enough bank in a big enough town that they don’t have much trouble with bank robberies. In a city the size of, say, Denver, they’d have all of that, and no one would know me there.”

“You’d have to identify yourself at the bank in order to write bank drafts.”

“That’s what I realized, so going that far serves little purpose. I’d prefer it if we could go a good distance, but we can’t really hide who we are. Add to that, there are still train robbers around. We put days and days of travel on a train, and our chances for trouble go way up.” Zane ran his hands deep into his hair and knocked his Stetson off his head.

Michelle caught it, smoothed his hair, and replaced the hat. “You’ve made a decision, then. Good. I knew you would. Necessity is the mother of invention.”

“What?” Zane really couldn’t keep up with his wife. “What are you inventing now and whose mother?”

“Sorry, sorry. Ignore that. Plato applies, but he’s a distraction at this point.”

Zane could agree with that.

“What have you decided?” She gave him an encouraging pat on the shoulder to get him to go on.

“We’re going to San Francisco. All of us. My brother and sisters, you and Jilly. We’ve worried about an obviously heavy load. And we have probably two hundred and fifty pounds of”—he barely moved his lips—“gold.” He was going to be glad to get this gold out of the house just so he could stop talking like a half-wit.

“I think if we split it up,” he continued, “and pack five trunks and each carry a satchel, then no one trunk or satchel will be noticeably heavy. Especially if we take nothing else. I’ll pull the wagon up to the door. Josh and I can haul the trunks out and load them. I won’t ask the hands to help so maybe they won’t notice how heavy they are. We’ll go to Lodi and ride the train, just to make the trip as fast as possible. Then make our sale, and bank the money.”

“And buy a traction engine?” Michelle asked hopefully.

“Can we talk about that later?”

Her eyes sparked. She quit asking, but he had no hope she’d given up.

“I SEE NO MORE SIGNS OF GOLD.”Jilly had studied the rugged area to the north of the gold strike, which was very steep.

Michelle had gone west. No one went south. That led to the clearing where the Purgatory settlement had stood. East was fairly cleared because of the logs they’d cut down for the church, and they’d been over it for days before they found the quartz outcropping.

So north or west.

“I didn’t see anything, either.” Michelle and Jilly looked at each other, both analyzing all they knew about gold and the area and altitude.

“So that’s it?” Josh hadn’t learned to step back and let the Stiles sisters think. Michelle noticed that Zane and his sisters had gotten used to the long silences.

Josh just had no patience, or maybe he just couldn’t shut up.

Jilly’s eyes fell closed.

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