The Irish are hardheaded so Elspeth Hamilton doesn't like them. The Mexicans are hotheaded so likewise, she doesn't think much of them either. Since Rebels burned her family home, killing both her parents in the Chambersburg, Pennsylvania fire, it stands to reason she surely doesn't waste affection on Rebels. Colum Sullivan is all three: Irish, Mexican, and Rebel. It would take an utter absence of sanity and total absolution of all the past to fall in love with Colum.

The English are a stiff-necked lot so Colum doesn't like Ellie. The Yankees are a cold-blooded bunch so likewise he doesn't like her. All he's going to do is rescue her and then light a shuck back to Texas. But an early blizzard in the mountains of Southern Pennsylvania turns his plans around abruptly. Colum admires the lady but that's as far as it's going because it's absolutely the wrong time in the century for the likes of a lady like Ellie Hamilton and a man like Colum Sullivan to get together. Those kinds of miracles only happen once in a lifetime, and his sister Douglass and her new husband Monroe have already captured that miracle.