her hair
hung in ragged locks, its black gloss hidden under the trail's red
dust. Even her youth had left her, she seemed double her age. It was
as if he looked at the woman she would be twenty years from now.

Something in the sight of her, unbeautiful, enfeebled, her high spirit
dimmed, stirred in him a new, strange tenderness. His arm tightened
about her, his look lost its jealous ardor and wandering over her
blighted face, melted to a passionate concern. The appeal of her
beauty gave place to a stronger, more gripping appeal, never felt by
him before. She was no longer the creature he owned and ruled, no
longer the girl he had broken to an abject submission, but the woman he
loved. Uplifted in the sudden realization he felt the world widen
around him and saw himself another man. Then through the wonder of the
revelation came the thought of what he had done to win her. It
astonished him as a dart of pain would have done. Why had he
remembered it? Why at this rich moment should the past send out this
eerie reminder? He pushed it from him, and bending toward her murmured
a lover's phrase.

She opened her eyes and they met an expression in his that she had felt
the need of, hoped and waited for, an answer to what she had offered
and he had not seen or wanted. It was completion, arrival at the goal,
so longed for and despaired of, and she turned her face against his
shoulder, her happiness too sacred even for his eyes. He did not
understand the action, thought her spirit languished and, pointing
outward, cried in his mounting gladness:

"Look--that's where our home will be."

She lifted her head and followed the directing finger. The old man
stood beside them also gazing down.

"It's a grand sight," he said. "But it's as yellow as the desert.
Must be almighty dry."

"There's plenty of water," said Courant. "Rivers come out of these
mountains and go down there into the plain. And they carry the gold,
the gold that's going to make us rich."

He pressed her shoulder with his encircling arm and she answered
dreamily:

"We are rich enough."

He thought she alluded to the Doctor's money that was hidden in the
wagon.

"But we'll be richer. We've got here before the rest of 'em. We're
the first comers and it's ours. You'll be queen here, Susan. I'll
make you one." His glance ranged over the splendid prospect, eager
with the man's desire to fight and win for his own. She thought little
of wh