The light in the Cañon of Gold went out. The hours passed, and still the man held his place on that wild spot high up in the mountains.
And now he saw and felt the mysteries of the night—saw the wide sea of darkness that engulfed the vast desert below, and felt the whispering breath of the desert air—saw the mighty peaks and shoulders of the mountains lifting out of the dark shadows below, up and up and up into the star-lit sky, and felt the fragrant coolness dropping from the pines that held the snows—saw the night sky filled with countless star worlds, and felt the brooding Presence that fixes the time of their every movement, and marks their paths of gleaming light—saw the black depths of the Cañon of Gold, and felt the ghostly multitude of the disappointed ones who had toiled there, as he had toiled, for the treasure they never found, or, finding, were cursed with its possession.
And then, as one who in a vision glimpses the underlying truth of things, this man, on the mountain heights above the Cañada del Oro, saw that life itself was but a Cañon of Gold.
As men through the ages had braved the dangers and endured the hardships of desert and mountains to gain the yellow wealth from the Cañada del Oro, so men braved dangers and endured hardships everywhere. Every dream of man was a dream of gold. Every effort was an effort for gold. Every hope was a hope for gold. For gold was life and honor and power and love and happiness. And gold was death and dishonor and murder and hatred and misery.
It was gold that had led Marta’s father to purchase the rich mining property from the ignorant owners, for a price that was little more than nothing. The victims of George Clinton’s shrewdness had stolen his child, in the hope that by her they might regain the gold they had lost. It was for gold that Clinton had robbed the people who, because of their need for gold, had trusted him with their savings. To insure himself in the possession of gold, Clinton had sent Donald Payne to prison and condemned him to a life of dishonor. Gold, to the escaped convict, had meant, at first, the bare necessities of life. It had come to mean everything for which a man desires to live. For gold, Sonora Jack had given himself to crime. Lured by the gold of the Mine with the Iron Door he had come to the Cañada del Oro and had been brought, finally, to his death. It was gold that had, at last, led to the revelations that brought the love of Hugh Edwards and Marta to naught.
The man saw that the story of his life in the Cañon of Gold, with its needs, its hopes, its labor, its fears, its victories and defeats, was the story of all life, everywhere.
He saw that the need of gold is a curse—that the craving for gold is a greater curse—that the possession of gold may be the greatest curse of all.
When Hugh Edwards went down to the cabin he found Natachee the Indian waiting for him.
CHAPTER XXXIV
MORNING
“The heart of a white man is a strange thing—I, Natachee, cannot understand.”