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That was the other part that kept men trekking past their camp. Word of the female miner—a beautiful one—had spread quickly. Truman said barely a miner entered town who wasn’t talking about Maddie.
“We have to move,” she was pointing out once again. “That’s all there is to it.”
They’d had this same conversation the past few days, but this morning, she was more adamant. Stomping around inside the tent while rain pelted against the canvas as it had for the past three days, she resembled a caged critter. He could relate. Everything was wet, damp and shrouded with an oppressing gloom left by gray skies.
“It’s getting too late in the year to move camp,” he answered, searching for a dry pair of socks. Not that it mattered; as soon as he tugged on his boots they’d be damp, too.
“No one’s found anything for days. Weeks. Folks are heading farther upriver. That’s what we need to do, too.”
She was flapping her hands as she talked, and her animated actions had a grin tugging at his lips. Smiling might just set her off like a blasting cap, so he averted his gaze and moved to where his coat hung near the stove.
“We’d have to file on new claims. By the time we did that and moved all this,” he waved a hand around the tent, “it’d be winter.”
“If you hadn’t bought all this stuff, moving wouldn’t be any more work than coming here had been.” She stopped near the stove and held her hands over the heat.
Grinning at how she enjoyed the stove while insisting they didn’t need it, he kissed her cheek as he walked past. “There’s still gold here, darling. Plenty more to go with the bags you’ve hidden beneath the floor of the outhouse.” The outhouse was another thing she seemed to appreciate, though she never admitted that, either.
“No, there’s not.”
Cole shrugged into his coat. There had to still be gold here. Whiskey Jack was still finding color, and they would, too. He didn’t regret spending almost every dime he had, but he was starting to worry. If he didn’t find gold, lots of it soon, they’d barely have enough money to sail south before winter, and staying here was not an option.
“Where are you going?” she asked. “It’s too wet to mine.”
“I’m going to feed the animals, they—”
“The animals,” she grumbled.
“You don’t seem to mind eating the eggs,” he retorted.
She rolled her eyes as if he was shooting blarney, and a chill of fury swept up his spine. “And you hover over that stove more often than I do. You don’t seem to mind the fact we aren’t standing in a foot of mud right now, either, like every other miner out here.”
“If not for this wood floor, we’d be a mile upriver, finding gold,” she shot back. “Like every other miner out here.”
“We’re not moving upriver, Maddie,” he stated firmly.
She huffed and glared and huffed again. “Fine, don’t move upriver. I’ll go by myself.”
“No, you won’t.”
“Yes, I will, and you can’t stop me.”
He crossed the room and took her shoulders. “Yes, I can, and I will.”
She twisted from his hold. “No, you can’t. No man will ever stop me from doing what I want. Not even you.”
Anger was blistering his insides, mainly because he knew her. Maddie didn’t make idle threats.
For a split second he saw his grandmother in Maddie. Her fierce determination. When you love someone, you find a way for both of you to be happy, she’d once told him. Gran had done that. Found a way. She’d built warehouses to sell all the treasures his grandfather found on his sailing adventures. Though his grandfather had died long ago, his grandmother had never stopped buying and selling wares. Her ingenuity had built his family’s dynasty.
Cole spun around. He was damn close to failing at finding the money to rebuild the family business, and he didn’t like it.
“You’re not going anywhere,” he growled.
Hands on her hips and cheeks flushed, she held a defiant glare on him. “Just because we’ve—” Her gaze flashed to the bed and she started over. “I told you before I won’t have a man telling me what to do.”
Drawing in a deep breath through his nose to keep his temper intact, Cole smiled. “Fine.”
Clearly stricken, the color in her cheeks heightened. “Fine?” she asked.
“Yes, fine,” he repeated and pulled open the door.
