"Yesh, He's Broke the Law"

Till the Mechanism Burst, He would Chase His
Man Across the Desert [missing from book]




THE FURNACE OF GOLD


CHAPTER I

PRINCE OR BANDIT

Now Nevada, though robed in gray and white--the gray of sagebrush and the
white of snowy summits--had never yet been accounted a nun when once
again the early summer aroused the passions of her being and the wild
peach burst into bloom.

It was out in Nauwish valley, at the desert-edge, where gold has been
stored in the hungry-looking rock to lure man away from fairer pastures.
There were mountains everywhere--huge, rugged mountains, erected in the
igneous fury of world-making, long since calmed. Above them all the sky
was almost incredibly blue--an intense ultramarine of extraordinary
clearness and profundity.

At the southwest limit of the valley was the one human habitation
established thereabout in many miles, a roadside station where a spring