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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.