The Project Gutenberg EBook of Desert Gold, by Zane Grey

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Title: Desert Gold

Author: Zane Grey

Posting Date: September 13, 2008 [EBook #502]
Release Date: April, 1996

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DESERT GOLD ***

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