Summary
Ruth Gaylord—Manhattan-bred, velvet-spined—trades brownstone echoes for sagebrush silence when she weds frontier surveyor John; the marriage bed becomes a crucible of wind and absence. Months bleed into ochre horizons, rattlesnake afternoons, a piano that will never arrive; lonesomeness calcifies into revulsion, and she flees eastward, ghosting the man who once mapped constellations for her. On the train she dreams: John unearths a vein of gold so incandescent it turns night into noon, then signs away his fortune to a silk-cravat predator, Kirk Harding, who brandishes Ruth’s own relinquishment like a scalpel. She awakens inside the Pullman berth, pulse drumming with guilt, the dream still smelling of ore and brimstone; she steps back onto the platform, into the arms she almost abandoned, now treasuring the very dust she once despised.
Synopsis
Ruth Gaylord gives up her home in New York to marry John Gaylord but grows discontented with the loneliness and desolation of life in the West and leaves her husband. After returning home, she hears that he has struck one of the richest gold veins in California. A letter surrendering her interests in the mine falls into the hand of Kirk Harding, an eastern capitalist; and John, tricked into surrendering his rights and discovering the truth, struggles with Harding. Ruth awakens, discovering it was all a dream, and decides not to leave her dedicated husband after all.
Director
Cast
