Philip Verrill Mighels 
Furnace of Gold [EPUB ebook] 

The Furnace of Gold was published in 1910. The title comes from Proverbs 17:3 The crucible for silver and the furnace for gold, but the Lord tests the heart. The story begins "Now Nevada, though robed in gray and white–the gray of sagebrush and the white of snowy summits–had never yet been accounted a nun when once again the early summer aroused the passions of her being and the wild peach burst into bloom. It was out in Nauwish valley, at the desert-edge, where gold has been stored in the hungry-looking rock to lure man away from fairer pastures. There were mountains everywhere–huge, rugged mountains, erected in the igneous fury of world-making, long since calmed. Above them all the sky was almost incredibly blue–an intense ultramarine of extraordinary clearness and profundity. At the southwest limit of the valley was the one human habitation established thereabout in many miles, a roadside station where a spring of water issued from the earth. Towards this, on the narrow, side-hill road, limped a dusty red automobile. It contained three passengers, two women and a man. Of the women, one was a little German maid, rather pretty and demure, whose duty it was to enact the chaperone. The other, Beth Kent, straight from New York City, well–the wild peach was in bloom."