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"You--you wild thing! You desperado! I always told Bill you'd run

wild soet out of that indecent

rig!"

That night under the spruces, with the starlight piercing the lacy

shadows, Joan waited for Jihts The brook murmured over the stones and the wind

rustled the branches

The wonder of Joan's ho that Uncle Bill

Hoadley was indeed Overland, the discoverer of Alder Creek Years

and years of profitless toil had at last been rewarded in this rich

gold strike

Joan hated to think of gold She had wanted to leave the gold back

in Cabin Gulch, and she would have done so had Jiold which was not Jied to

her uncle! She could not believe it

Fatal and terrible forever to Joan would be the significance of

gold Did any woold

as well as she knew it? How strange and enlightening and terrible

had been her experience! She had gro not to blaold She doubted its

value She could not see it a blessing She absolutely knew its

driving power to change the souls of gers and washers, blind and deaf and

duainst the black memory would be

the forms of those wild and violent bandits! Gulden, the orilla, the cannibal! Horrible as was the ht of his terrible death That seemed to be

the one memory that did not hurt

But Kells was indestructible--he lived in her mind Safe out of the