CHAPTER II.
The Woman with the Disfigured Face The Golden State Limited, with two laboring engines, was climbing the desert side of San Gorgonio Pass.
Now San Gorgonio Pass--as all men should know--is one of the two eastern gateways to the beautiful heart of Southern California.

It is, therefore, the gateway to the scenes of my story.
As the heavy train zigzagged up the long, barren slope of the mountain, in its effort to lessen the heavy grade, the young man on the platform of the observation car could see, far to the east, the shimmering, sun-filled haze that lies, always, like a veil of mystery, over the vast reaches of the Colorado Desert.

Now and then, as the Express swung around the curves, he gained a view of the lonely, snow-piled peaks of the San Bernardinos; with old San Gorgonio, lifting above the pine-fringed ridges of the lower Galenas, shining, silvery white, against the blue.

Again, on the southern side of the pass, he saw San Jacinto's crags and cliffs rising almost sheer from the right-of-way.
But the man watching the ever-changing panorama of gorgeously colored and fantastically unreal landscape was not thinking of the scenes that, to him, were new and strange.

His thoughts were far away.