A Thousand to One

Summary

A broke drifter, William Newlands, barters his name for solvency, wedding Beatrice—an heiress he barely knows—on the oily counsel of venal pal Jimmy Munroe. Their honeymoon locomotive vaults off a mountain curve; steel screams, carriages somersault, and in the soot-choked dusk Beatrice claws free, dragging the mangled mining magnate Steven Crawford to safety while William is presumed char-beyond-recognition. Yet William walks from the ashes, beard budding like penitence, and vanishes into the hard-rock labyrinth of Crawford’s failing mine. Beneath sooty timbers he earns the lamp-lit respect of pick-swinging roughnecks, pacifies a powder-keg strike, and unearths a lode so luminous it could ransom the whole county. Up-top, Beatrice—half widow, half foundling—tends Crawford’s fevered delirium, her wedding ring glinting like a question mark. On the eve of the mine’s salvation William, now foreman, prepares to disappear again, but Beatrice spots the scar behind his ear, the one she kissed on their wedding night; the tunnel mouth becomes a cathedral, dust motes freeze, and two bruised futures teeter on the cusp of either forgiveness or final abandonment.

Synopsis

Finding himself deeply in debt, William Newlands reluctantly follows the advice of his unscrupulous friend, Jimmy Munroe, and marries Beatrice, the wealthy daughter of an old friend. When their honeymoon train is derailed, Beatrice loses sight of her husband but manages to save the life of mine owner Steven Crawford. Newlands is reported burned in the wreck and Beatrice returns with Crawford to his cabin, where she nurses him back to health. Meanwhile, Newlands has escaped death and, filled with remorse, decides to make a new man of himself. Disguising his appearance by the addition of a beard, he finds work at the Crawford mine, but determines to stay out of Beatrice's life. Eventually, Newlands becomes foreman, brings law and order to the discontented miners and discovers a rich vein of ore, thus averting Crawford's financial ruin. His job completed, Newlands is about to leave when Beatrice recognizes him and begs him to give their marriage another chance.