The mining camp in the San Bernardino Mountains is the latest in a long line of gold fields Della Wolfe and her brother have been dragged to by their father. She clings to a vague memory of living in a house with a flower garden and vows to mine enough to buy such a place of her own. Instead, she has to endure living in canvas tents or poorly built shacks. Since the death of her mother, her father calls her Del and insists Della wears trousers, binds her breasts, and wears a slouch hat to keep others from taking notice that she's female. The amount Brendan and Gerhard are mining would be enough if Gerhard didn't gamble away half their earnings.

Harte Thorley is only working a gold claim to earn $200 to pay off his father's debt on the family farm to provide his mother and sisters a safe place to live. Then he'll dig enough nuggets from the creek bed so he can open a store. He envies the family mining the adjacent claim because they help each other while he does everything himself and drops onto his bedroll exhausted every night. Instead of sleep, he can only think about the dark-haired woman nearby who passes as a man. Getting close to his monetary goal, he needs a plan for securing his claim while he delivers the money off the mountain.

First, Della's father is jailed after a barroom brawl then her brother joins a group of malcontents. Left on her own, Della turns to Harte for help. A marriage of convenience is the solution--she receives Harte's protection and he's guaranteed a continued presence on his claim. But thrown together into close quarters causes a new set of problems. Will trust and dependence turn into caring, or will the pair go their separate ways when they achieve their own goals?