Summary
Amid the sepulchral hush of a forgotten gorge—its very name a memento mori—consumptive Fred Watson drags his dwindling breath, wife-and-son façade, and a fox-eared terrier toward a pair of sun-scabbed shacks where beard-matted recluse Bill Dorgan eyes Kate as if she were a haunch of salvation. Into this tableau strides Bill Mason, freshly pardoned, spine still wearing the stripes of a murder rap, pockets empty save for half a parchment that once promised El Dorado. The cabin he once called home now hosts strangers; the woman he will love still wears another man’s ring—except the ring is a fiction, the marriage a shield, the child a nephew, the dog the only honest soul for miles. Consumption reaps Fred; gold beckons; Dorgan clutches the missing cartographic fragment wrested from a corpse; fists, revolvers, and hearts all converge in a moonlit scramble whose prize is not bullion alone but the sudden, vertiginous knowledge that two kinds of love exist—one that devours and one that, against the arithmetic of desert nights, somehow restores.
Synopsis
Fred Watson, ravaged by consumption, travels to the lonely country known as Dead Man's Gulch in hopes of regaining his health. Accompanying Fred is his family, comprised of Kate, his son Bobbie and dog Mickey. Coming upon two shacks, they meet Bill Dorgan, a rough bearded hermit who, after leering at Kate, invites the family to occupy the deserted cabin owned by Bill Mason, imprisoned for the murder of his partner. Meanwhile, his innocence established, Mason is pardoned from jail and returns to his cabin, bitter against the world. Gradually he is softened by Kate's charms and confides to her that he is searching for the gold that he and his partner had hidden years before, but is hampered by a missing section of the treasure map which disappeared the night of his partner's death. When Dorgan makes advances to Kate, Mason discovers that he possesses the other half of the map, having obtained it by killing Mason's partner. After a bitter struggle, Mason regains the map and proves Dorgan's guilt. Upon Fred's death, Mason discovers that Kate was the dead man's sister and not his wife, as had been assumed, and Mason wins both Kate's love and the gold.
