“I had a daughter,” said Cameron’s comrade.  “She lost her mother at birth.  And I—­I didn’t know how to bring up a girl.  She was pretty and gay.  It was the—­the old story.”

His words were peculiarly significant to Cameron.  They distressed him.  He had been wrapped up in his remorse.  If ever in the past he had thought of any one connected with the girl he had wronged he had long forgotten.  But the consequences of such wrong were far-reaching.  They struck at the roots of a home.  Here in the desert he was confronted by the spectacle of a splendid man, a father, wasting his life because he could not forget—­because there was nothing left to live for.  Cameron understood better now why his comrade was drawn by the desert.

“Well, tell me more?” asked Cameron, earnestly.

“It was the old, old story.  My girl was pretty and free.  The young bucks ran after her.  I guess she did not run away from them.  And I was away a good deal—­working in another town.  She was in love with a wild fellow.  I knew nothing of it till too late.  He was engaged to marry her.  But he didn’t come back.  And when the disgrace became plain to all, my girl left home.  She went West.  After a while I heard from her.  She was well—­working—­living for her baby.  A long time passed.  I had no ties.  I drifted West.  Her lover had also gone West.  In those days everybody went West.  I trailed him, intending to kill him.  But I lost his trail.  Neither could I find any trace of her.  She had moved on, driven, no doubt, by the hound of her past.  Since then I have taken to the wilds, hunting gold on the desert.”

“Yes, it’s the old, old story, only sadder, I think,” said Cameron; and his voice was strained and unnatural.  “Pardner, what Illinois town was it you hailed from?”

“Peoria.”

“And your—­your name?” went on Cameron huskily.

“Warren—­Jonas Warren.”

That name might as well have been a bullet.  Cameron stood erect, motionless, as men sometimes stand momentarily when shot straight through the heart.  In an instant, when thoughts resurged like blinding flashes of lightning through his mind, he was a swaying, quivering, terror-stricken man.  He mumbled something hoarsely and backed into the shadow.  But he need not have feared discovery, however surely his agitation might have betrayed him.  Warren sat brooding over the campfire, oblivious of his comrade, absorbed in the past.

Cameron swiftly walked away in the gloom, with the blood thrumming thick in his ears, whispering over and over: 

“Merciful God!  Nell was his daughter!”

III