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.
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