Desert Gold | Page 3

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DESERT GOLD
A ROMANCE OF THE BORDER BY ZANE GREY

CONTENTS
Prologue
I. Old Friends II. Mercedes Castaneda III. A Flight Into The Desert IV.
Forlorn River V. A Desert Rose VI. The Yaqui VII. White Horses VIII.
The Running of Blanco Sol IX. An Interrupted Siesta X. Rojas XI.
Across Cactus and Lava XII. The Crater of Hell XIII. Changes at
Forlorn River XIV. A Lost Son XV. Bound In The Desert XVI.
Mountain Sheep XVII. The Whistle of a Horse XVIII. Reality Against
Dreams XIX. The Secret of Forlorn River XX. Desert Gold

D E S E R T G O L D

PROLOGUE
I
A FACE haunted Cameron--a woman's face. It was there in the white
heart of the dying campfire; it hung in the shadows that hovered over
the flickering light; it drifted in the darkness beyond.
This hour, when the day had closed and the lonely desert night set in
with its dead silence, was one in which Cameron's mind was thronged
with memories of a time long past--of a home back in Peoria, of a
woman he had wronged and lost, and loved too late. He was a
prospector for gold, a hunter of solitude, a lover of the drear,
rock-ribbed infinitude, because he wanted to be alone to remember.
A sound disturbed Cameron's reflections. He bent his head listening. A
soft wind fanned the paling embers, blew sparks and white ashes and
thin smoke away into the enshrouding circle of blackness. His burro did
not appear to be moving about. The quiet split to the cry of a coyote. It
rose strange, wild, mournful--not the howl of a prowling upland beast
baying the campfire or barking at a lonely prospector, but the wail of a
wolf, full-voiced, crying out the meaning of the desert and the night.
Hunger throbbed in it--hunger for a mate, for offspring, for life. When
it ceased, the terrible desert silence smote Cameron, and the cry echoed
in his soul. He and that wandering wolf were brothers.
Then a sharp clink of metal on stone and soft pads of hoofs in sand
prompted Cameron to reach for his gun, and to move out of the light of
waning campfire. He was somewhere along the wild border line
between Sonora and Arizona; and the prospector who dared the heat
and barrenness of that region risked other dangers sometimes as
menacing.
Figures darker than the gloom approached and took shape, and in the
light turned out to be those of a white man and a heavily packed burro.
"Hello there," the man called, as he came to a halt and gazed about him.
"I saw your fire. May I make camp here?"

Cameron came forth out of the shadow and greeted his visitor, whom
he took for a prospector like himself. Cameron resented the breaking of
his lonely campfire vigil, but he respected the law of the desert.
The stranger thanked him, and then slipped the pack from his burro.
Then he rolled out his pack and began preparations for a meal. His
movements were slow and methodical.
Cameron watched him, still with resentment, yet with a curious and
growing interest. The campfire burst into a bright blaze, and by its light
Cameron saw a man whose gray hair somehow did not seem to make
him old, and whose stooped shoulders did not detract from an
impression of rugged strength.
"Find any mineral?" asked Cameron, presently.
His visitor looked up quickly, as if startled by the sound of a human
voice. He replied, and then the two men talked a little. But the stranger
evidently preferred silence. Cameron understood that. He laughed
grimly and bent a keener gaze upon the furrowed, shadowy face.
Another of those strange desert prospectors in whom there was some
relentless driving power besides the lust for gold! Cameron felt that
between this man and himself there was a subtle affinity, vague and
undefined, perhaps born of the divination that here was a desert
wanderer