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the mountain streams required for sluicing or panning gold, rough and ready towns growing overnight when word traveled of a new strike. Although Blaze expected no special privileges as the only woman in the group, her father saw to it she had a private room at night when possible. When more humble conditions prevailed, a blanket was strung up to serve as a sketchy wall. On the nights spent under the stars, she and her father slept side by side in their rough bedrolls, often talking far into the wee hours. It was the first time her father had spoken of his childhood. The starlit heavens reminded him of summers sleeping out of doors as a youngster. A pleasant respite, he'd said, from the crowded hut that was home to his family.
     
    "How did you ever decide to leave Ireland?" Blaze asked the first time he'd mentioned his youth.
     
    "Everyone was dying or dead from the famine," he replied simply.
     
    "Were you afraid to go alone?"
     
    Her father was looking up into the star-studded sky when he answered, his voice as soft as his dying mother's had been when she'd said the words to him long years ago: "The streets are paved with gold." There was a short silence before he turned his head toward Blaze and in a normal tone added, "That's what everyone thought in our village." Then a faint smile appeared on his lined face. "Might be damned near true on this mountainside. We picked up some promising claims today," he briskly went on, shaking aside the melancholy memories of his adored mother.
     
    "How many does your group have now?" Blaze inquired, responding to the casualness her father had inserted into the conversation.
     
    "Fred says one hundred eighteen as of today and we've a long way to go."
     
    After traveling for two weeks, the party of investors arrived in Diamond City. The possibility of an enormous strike was in the air. Good color had been showing up in numerous placer claims, indicating a very rich vein, and the investment group was buying up claims as fast as they could.
     
    Blaze had decided to stay in town for the afternoon, but soon the heat in her little hotel room became oppressive. After a week of rain, the humidity pressed down like a fur mask. It was too stifling inside, she decided, after opening the windows in the rough-sawn structure serving as a hotel but getting no relief. Surely outside there would be a breath of a breeze. Somewhere.
     
    Although there were few women in the mining camp, and those visible were of a certain profession, Blaze was unafraid; she was proficient with the two small custom Colts holstered on her hips. She was imbued as well with implicit confidence in her ability to take care of herself. The brown worsted trousers she wore tucked into high boots and the matching silk shirt had caused pursed lips of registered distaste when they had left her mother in Virginia City, but her father had found the upcountry clothes eminently practical.
     
    "My God, Millie," he had said. Since Mrs. William Braddock hated being called Millie, her well-preserved face had flinched with further displeasure. "Don't tell me you want her gallivanting out in the bush in velvet and ruffles."
     
    "I do not want her gallivanting, as you so colorfully put it, anywhere at all in this rude country. I wish, William, just once, you would remember that Venetia is a properly raised young lady. Or at least the attempt was made," she scathingly added.
     
    "Godalmighty, woman," he'd exploded. She disliked that crudity even more, and if William Braddock had not been a millionaire many times over when he first uttered it to her at the Spring Cotillion in Richmond twenty years earlier, she would have suggested to his face that he go back to the potato fields of Ireland where he most certainly belonged. "Blaze is a person, not some sugar confection that's going to melt in the rain. This country's beautiful and she'll enjoy the trip."
     
    "Very well, William, do as you like. I have made my opinions known and you have