Desert Gold | Page 8

and strange consciousness.
As Cameron gazed out over the blood-red, darkening desert suddenly
the strife in his soul ceased. The moment was one of incalculable
change, in which his eyes seemed to pierce the vastness of cloud and
range, and mystery of gloom and shadow--to see with strong vision the

illimitable space before him. He felt the grandeur of the desert, its
simplicity, its truth. He had learned at last the lesson it taught. No
longer strange was his meeting and wandering with Warren. Each had
marched in the steps of destiny; and as the lines of their fates had been
inextricably tangled in the years that were gone, so now their steps had
crossed and turned them toward one common goal. For years they had
been two men marching alone, answering to an inward driving search,
and the desert had brought them together. For years they had wandered
alone in silence and solitude, where the sun burned white all day and
the stars burned white all night, blindly following the whisper of a
spirit. But now Cameron knew that he was no longer blind, and in this
flash of revelation he felt that it had been given him to help Warren
with his burden.
He returned to camp trying to evolve a plan. As always at that long
hour when the afterglow of sunset lingered in the west, Warren plodded
to and fro in the gloom. All night Cameron lay awake thinking.
In the morning, when Warren brought the burros to camp and began
preparations for the usual packing, Cameron broke silence.
"Pardner, your story last night made me think. I want to tell you
something about myself. It's hard enough to be driven by sorrow for
one you've loved, as you've been driven; but to suffer sleepless and
eternal remorse for the ruin of one you've loved as I have suffered--that
is hell. . . .Listen. In my younger days--it seems long now, yet it's not
so many years--I was wild. I wronged the sweetest and loveliest girl I
ever knew. I went away not dreaming that any disgrace might come to
her. Along about that time I fell into terrible moods--I changed--I
learned I really loved her. Then came a letter I should have gotten
months before. It told of her trouble--importuned me to hurry to save
her. Half frantic with shame and fear, I got a marriage certificate and
rushed back to her town. She was gone--had been gone for weeks, and
her disgrace was known. Friends warned me to keep out of reach of her
father. I trailed her-- found her. I married her. But too late!...She would
not live with me. She left me--I followed her west, but never found
her."

Warren leaned forward a little and looked into Cameron's eyes, as if
searching there for the repentance that might make him less deserving
of a man's scorn.
Cameron met the gaze unflinchingly, and again began to speak:
"You know, of course, how men out here somehow lose old names, old
identities. It won't surprise you much to learn my name really isn't
Cameron, as I once told you."
Warren stiffened upright. It seemed that there might have been a blank,
a suspension, between his grave interest and some strange mood to
come.
Cameron felt his heart bulge and contract in his breast; all his body
grew cold; and it took tremendous effort for him to make his lips form
words.
"Warren, I'm the man you're hunting. I'm Burton. I was Nell's lover!"
The old man rose and towered over Cameron, and then plunged down
upon him, and clutched at his throat with terrible stifling hands. The
harsh contact, the pain awakened Cameron to his peril before it was too
late. Desperate fighting saved him from being hurled to the ground and
stamped and crushed. Warren seemed a maddened giant. There was a
reeling, swaying, wrestling struggle before the elder man began to
weaken. The Cameron, buffeted, bloody, half-stunned, panted for
speech.
"Warren--hold on! Give me--a minute. I married Nell. Didn't you know
that?...I saved the child!
Cameron felt the shock that vibrated through Warren. He repeated the
words again and again. As if compelled by some resistless power,
Warren released Cameron, and, staggering back, stood with uplifted,
shaking hands. In his face was a horrible darkness.
"Warren! Wait--listen!" panted Cameron. "I've got that marriage

certificate--I've had it by me all these years. I kept it--to prove to
myself I did right."
The old man uttered a broken cry.
Cameron stole off among the rocks. How long he absented himself or
what he did he had no idea. When he returned Warren was sitting
before the campfire, and once more he appeared composed. He spoke,
and his voice had a deeper note; but otherwise he seemed as