When Fate Leads Trump
Summary
A dynastic smuggler prince, Gordon, is cast by his dying patriarch into the world’s crucible, only to collide with Marion—an incandescent spark whose innocence incinerates every inherited oath. Their clandestine marriage detonates a chain-reaction: betrayal, amnesia, and a three-cornered resurrection in a snow-scarred wilderness where memory itself becomes contraband. What emerges is a triangular duel between two husbands—one flesh, one phantom—and a woman who must reassemble her fractured self from the shards of two incompatible lives.
Synopsis
Gordon, the only son of a smuggler chief, is sent with a companion from his father's stronghold to travel so that he may learn the ways of the world. At their first stopping place he falls in love with a young woman, Marion Williams, and marries her against his father's orders, keeping her in ignorance of who he is and what his past has been. Shortly after his marriage he receives a message that his father is dying, and in his attempt to visit his parent secretly is seriously injured. His wife nurses him back to health, and then demands an explanation. He confessed all, and because of the great love she bears him and their child she forgives and even consents to accompany him on a visit to his father. While there the band, including Gordon, is captured by the customs police, but Marion escapes, becomes lost in the wilderness and is found almost drowned in a mountain stream by Jim Bartlett, the paymaster of a lumber camp. As a result of her privations her memory of the past is a blank. She marries Jim. After several years Gordon and his companion are released from prison and return to the mountains. They apply to Bartlett for work, but he has no places for them. Continuing on their way they reach Jim's cabin, and Gordon, leaving his companion on the outside as a lookout, enters to rob it. Inside he sees a woman and attempts to overpower her. In the struggle he meets her face to face; it is his wife. The shock restores her memory. At this moment Jim enters the cabin and in astonishment beholds his wife in another man's arms. Not receiving an explanation, he turns to Gordon and says, "I will give you one hour to explain or fight." For Marion's sake he leaves in silence, removes the bullets from the cartridges in his revolver, and in the duel which follows is mortally wounded. His foe, learning of his act, removes him to the cabin where Gordon, with his last breath, whispers, "I married her years ago; she thought me dead."
