The Furnace of Gold

A troubled automobile brings Beth Kent to a roadside station in Nevada's Nauwish valley, where the landscape promises both riches and danger. She has come from New York to visit her ailing half-brother at Goldite camp, traveling with her maid and her fiancé, Searle Bostwick. While Bostwick struggles with a tire, a horseman called Van arrives, and the encounter introduces an immediate tension between the two men.

Philip Verrill Mighels sets this Western novel among gold miners, dusty roads, mountain passes and isolated stopping places. Beth's enthusiasm for adventure meets the practical hazards of the country: in a later passage, a dust storm leaves her without her mare and struggling to recover her route as evening falls. The contrast between her confident arrival and this anxious walk gives the desert a strong role in the story. Readers interested in mining fiction and Western romance will find both social friction and close attention to a demanding landscape.