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before handled a weapon, but she was glad for it now. “Thank you.”
    The air was frigid as she stepped outside and looked cautiously about. She saw no sign of the Carruthers while she filled the pitcher at the pump, but the skin on her neck crawled, thinking they could be watching from the house, her house.
    Exotic? There were Italians in Crystal. She had seen them, heard them on the street as she passed through the day before. But they were contadini , southern peasants, not northern Italians from the Kingdom of Sardinia like her papa. They came to America with nothing, came to escape hardship, but they were ill-equipped to rise to higher status. Could they be, as Papa said, so entrenched in hardship they clung to it?
    She had not known such hardship, and she crossed herself in gratitude, then reached for the pump handle. She had not even known hunger, thanks to God and her papa. Angelo Pasquale DiGratia was an educated man and a gifted physician. He had been famous in Salerno, a friend of Count Camillo Benso di Cavour, prime minister to Victor Emmanuel II, king of Sardinia-Piedmont.
    And he was well respected in Sonoma. With his classic patrician features, blond hair, and blue eyes, his knowledge of seven languages, four of which he could read as well, and, most of all, his ability to heal … ah, Angelo Pasquale DiGratia was a great man. She felt a homesick pang. Oh, Papa.
    With the full pitcher, she made her way back to the boardinghouse. Inside her room, Carina scrubbed with the vendor’s soap, then brushed her hair into a dark, rippled veil down her back. Closing her eyes, she tossed it softly back, feeling the length of it brush the top of her thighs. Loose like this, it was her finest feature, or so Flav—
    She jerked her head upright. She would not think of that. Her hair dried while she brushed the dust from her blouse and skirt and donned them again. Once she was dressed, she twisted and clipped her hair at the nape with the horn barrette her mother had given her.
    First she would check on Dom. She would have to leave him at the livery until Mr. Beck got her house back. But she would see Mr. Beck directly. After that, she would attend to the task that burned most fiercely.
    Carina pulled the door closed behind her. From the tumult downstairs she guessed Mae was still serving food, and when she reached the stairs, she saw it was so. The benches, made of a single log hewn lengthwise and supported by thinner crossed logs, overflowed with more men than Mae housed.
    Every table was filled, and as fast as Mae shoved platters of meat and hot cakes down, they were devoured. Like slopped hogs, the men ate, then took up their hats and walked out. There was no refinement, no leisurely enjoyment. She pictured her own papa at the breakfast table, his shirt white in the gentle sunlight, his motions elegant, relaxed, his smile quick as his laughter. Even her brothers with their pranking did not match this … coarseness.
    Watching the miners, her hunger left her. Though the smell of fried bacon and woodsmoke teased her nose, Carina shook her head. Even were there room for her, she would not join them. She slipped out unnoticed.
    The morning air had a bite, though the June sun climbed up the clear sky. It seemed to have no power yet to warm the day. As she turned onto Central Street, she passed three boys scrabbling in the sawdust swept out from the floor of the Boise Billiard Hall. Carina wrinkled her nose at the smell of whiskey, vomit, and tobacco spittle in the sawdust, but the boys seemed oblivious. One jumped up and hallooed, gripping a coin above his head. The other two dug their fingers in with renewed fervor. She looked away.
    Empty ore wagons, hauled by mules or horse teams, made their way out to the mines. She turned toward the stable. Tavish Livery and Feed . A sign to the right of the door read:
    City transfer & hack line
Expressing and hauling
    And on the left:
    Boarding horses a specialty
Horses let by the