A kidnapped girl is forced into following the group of gold robbers until her old flame shows up. ( )

I dunno, pretty standard fare for the genre, I think. There's bandits, there's horses, there's one beautiful, pure, intelligent, fearless, young woman, facing the "one thing worse than death", but who occasionally needs a truly manly man to rescue her.

In this case, we're out on the edges of Idaho, where a gold strike is about to happen. Or at least so the prospectors hope. Gold makes people crazy and steals their souls. Then there are those who don't want to work for gold, so figure appropriating someone else's gold makes more sense to them. That makes them crazy as well.

Joan Randal has a fight with her sweetheart, and he heads off to the wild border to become "bad". Joan repents some harsh words she said, and heads out to bring him back, because, after he left, she realized that she loves the galoot. Well, naturally, she can't find the sweetheart, but gets picked up by a gang of thieves. The head of the gang falls in love with her. Eventually her sweetheart shows up to join the gang. She redeems him, of course, and perhaps the head thief a little bit as well.

Not great literature, and it dragged a bit, but if you want mindless adventure with manly men and womenly women, I'm sure this will suffice.
( )

Early Zane Grey work, so the book is heavy on the melodrama. The bandit leader lusting after his 16 year old captive is a bit off putting. ( )

It's replete with the typical simplistic plot, acted out by cartoons. But it's more deeply dimensioned than some stories in this genre because of the way Grey conveys the spiritual power of women to affect the emotions of men. He also portrays the underlying character of human spirit, including the acceptance of a dare and the ability to try again after failing. ( )

Book Description: New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1916. Cloth Hard Cover. No Jacket. First Edition?. Clean very good hard back copy, dark yellow cloth binding with brown picture and lettering. Binding is tight,and the pages are clean and bright