Desert Gold

A summer day dawned on Forlorn River, a beautiful, still, hot, golden
day with huge sail clouds of white motionless over No Name Peaks and
the purple of clear air in the distance along the desert horizon.

Mrs. Belding returned that day to find her daughter happy and the past
buried forever in two lonely graves. The haunting shadow left her
eyes. Gale believed he would never forget the sweetness, the wonder,
the passion of her embrace when she called him her boy and gave him her
blessing.

The little wrinkled padre who married Gale and Nell performed the
ceremony as he told his beads, without interest or penetration, and
went his way, leaving happiness behind.

"Shore I was a sick man," Ladd said, "an' darn near a dead one, but I'm
agoin' to get well. Mebbe I'll be able to ride again someday. Nell, I
lay it to you. An' I'm agoin' to kiss you an' wish you all the joy
there is in this world. An', Dick, as Yaqui says, she's shore your
Shower of Gold."

He spoke of Gale's finding love--spoke of it with the deep and wistful
feeling of the lonely ranger who had always yearned for love and had
never known it. Belding, once more practical, and important as never
before with mining projects and water claims to manage, spoke of Gale's
great good fortune in finding of gold--he called it desert gold.

"Ah, yes. Desert Gold!" exclaimed Dick's father, softly, with eyes of
pride. Perhaps he was glad Dick had found the rich claim; surely he
was happy that Dick had won the girl he loved. But it seemed to Dick
himself that his father meant something very different from love and
fortune in his allusion to desert gold.