She grimaced.

Cash laughed and scooped up enough water to begin washing the material remaining in the bottom of the gold pan. A deft motion of his wrists sent the water swirling around in a neat circle. When he tilted the pan slightly away from himself, the circular movement of the water lifted the lighter particles away from the bottom of the pan. Water and particles climbed the shallow incline to the rim and drained back into the stream. After a minute or two, Cash looked at the remaining stuff, rubbed it between his fingers, stared again, and flipped it all back into the stream. He rinsed the pan, attached it and the shovel to his backpack again, and set off upstream.

"Nothing, huh?" Mariah said, scrambling to keep up.

"Grit, sand, pea gravel, pebbles. Granite. Some basalt. A bit of chert. Small piece of clear quartz."

"No gold?"

"Not even pyrite. That's fool's gold."

"I know. Pyrite is pretty, though."

Cash grunted. "Leave it to a woman to think pretty is enough."

"Oh, right. That's why men have such a marked preference for ugly women."

Cash hid a smile. For a time there was silence punctuated by scrambling sounds when the going became especially slippery at the stream's edge. Twice Mariah needed help. The first time she needed only a steadying hand as she scrambled forward. The second time Cash found it easier simply to lift her over the obstacle. The feel of his hands on her, and the ease with which he moved her from place to place, left Mariah more than a little breathless. Yet despite the odd fluttering in the pit of her stomach, her brain continued to work.

"Cash?"

The sound he made was encouraging rather than curt, so Mariah continued.

"What are we doing?"

"Walking upstream."

"Why are we walking upstream?"

"It's called prospecting, honey. Long hours, back breaking work and no pay. Just like I told you back at the ranch house. Remember?"

Mariah sighed and tried another approach.

"We're looking for Mad Jack's mine, right?" she asked.

"Right."

"Mad Jack's gold was rough, which meant it didn't come out of a placer pocket in a stream, right?"

"Right."

"Because placer gold is smooth."

"Right."

The amusement in Cash's tone was almost tangible. It was also gentle rather than disdainful. Knowing that she was being teased, yet beguiled by the method, Mariah persisted.

"Then why are you panning for Mad Jack's non-placer mine?"

Cash's soft laughter barely rose above the sound of the churning stream. He turned around, made a lightning grab and had Mariah securely tucked against his chest before she knew what was happening. With a startled sound she hung on to him as he crossed the stream in a few strides, his boots impervious to the cold water.

"Wondered when you'd catch on," Cash said.

He set Mariah back on her feet, releasing her with a slow reluctance that was like a caress. His smile was the same. A caress.

"But the truth is," he continued in a deep voice, resolutely looking away from her, "I am panning for that mine. Think about it. Gold is heavy. Wherever a gold-bearing formation breaks the surface, gradually the matrix surrounding the gold weathers away. Gold doesn't weather. That, and its malleability, is what makes it so valuable to man."

Mariah made an encouraging sound.

"Anyway, the matrix crumbles away and frees the gold, which is heavy for its size. Gravity takes hold, pulling the gold downhill until it reaches a stream and sinks to the bottom. Floods scoop out the gold and beat it around and drop it off farther downstream. Slowly the gold migrates downhill, getting more and more round until the nugget settles down to bedrock in a deep placer pocket."

"Mad Jack's gold is rough," Mariah pointed out.

"Yeah. I'm betting that canny old bastard panned a nameless stream and found bits of gold that were so rough they had to have come from a place nearby. So he panned that watershed, tracking the color to its source – the mother lode."

Cash looked back at Mariah to see if she understood. What he saw were wisps of dark, shiny hair feathered across her face, silky strands lifted by a cool wind. Before he could stop himself, he smoothed the hair away from her lips and wide golden eyes. Her pupils dilated as her breath came in fast and hard.

"You see," he said, his voice husky, "streams are a prospector's best friend. They collect and concentrate gold. Without them a lot of the West's most famous gold strikes would never have been made."

"Really?"

The breathless quality of Mariah's voice was a caress that shivered delicately over Cash.

"They're still looking for the mother lode that put Sutter's Mill on the map," he murmured, catching a lock of her hair and running it between his fingers.

The soft sound Mariah made could have been a response to his words or to the fragile brush of Cash's fingertips at her hairline. With a stifled curse at his inability to keep his hands off her, Cash opened his fingers, releasing Mariah from silken captivity.

"Anyway," he said, turning his attention back to the rugged countryside, "I'm betting Mad Jack was panning a granite-bottomed stream, because only a fool looks for gold in lava formations, and that old boy was nobody's fool."

"You're not a fool, either," Mariah said huskily, grabbing desperately for a safe topic, because it was that or grab Cash's hand and beg him to go on touching her. "So why were you prospecting the Devil's Peak area before you saw Mad Jack's map? Until we got to this stream, I didn't see anything that looked like granite or quartzite or any of the 'ites' that are usually found with gold. Just all kinds of lava. Granted, I'm no expert on gold hunting, but…"

"This area wasn't my first choice," Cash said dryly. "Almost two years ago I was having a soak in Black Springs when I realized that Devil's Peak is basically a volcano rammed through and poured out over country rock that's largely granite. Where the lava has eroded enough, the granite shows through. And where there's granite, there could be gold." He smiled, gave Mariah a sideways glance, and admitted, "I was glad to see that ratty old map, though. I've been panning up here for two years and haven't gotten anything more to show for it than a tired back."

"No gold at all?"

"A bit of color here and there. Hobbyist flakes, the kind you put in a magnifying vial and show to patient friends. Nothing to raise the blood pressure."

"Darn, I was hoping that- trout!" Mariah said excitedly, pointing toward the stream.

"What?"

"I just saw a trout! Look!"

Smiling down at Mariah, barely resisting the urge to fold her against his body in a long hug, Cash didn't even glance at the stream that had captured her interest.

"Fish are silver," he said in a deep voice. "We're after gold. We'll catch dinner on the way back."

"How can you be so sure? The fish could be hiding under rocks by then."

"They won't be."

Mariah made an unconvinced sound.

"I bet we'll catch our fill of trout for dinner tonight," Cash said.

"What do you bet?"

"Loser cleans the fish."

"What if there are no fish to clean?"

"There will be."

"You're on," she retorted quickly, forgetting Nevada's advice about never gambling with a man called Cash. "If we don't get fish, you do dishes tonight."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"You're on, lady." Cash laughed softly and tugged at a silky lock of Mariah's hair once more. "Candy from a baby."

"Tell me that while you're doing dishes."

Cash just laughed.

"It's not a bet until we shake on it," she said, holding out her hand.

"That's not how it works between a man and a woman."

He took her hand and brought it to his mouth. She felt the mild rasp of his growing beard, the brush of his lips over her palm, and a single hot touch from the tip of his tongue. She thought Cash whispered candy when he straightened, but she was too shaken to be sure.