The Angel of the Desert
Directed by Rollin S. Sturgeon1913 11m[Drama](/on-demand/category/drama), [Short](/on-demand/category/short)
Anne Stearns has a varied, unsettled life married to a sporting man. Finally Stearns moves her and their child to a Western town where he opens a gambling house. A man of coarse instincts and mercenary nature, he insists that his wife make herself agreeable to patrons of his den and dance-hall to popularize the resort. Their little girl becomes very ill. Stearns insists that she leave the little one and go into the barroom to meet one of her admirers. She refuses, asserting that her child demands her attention. He grabs her, drags her into the saloon, and commands her to entertain his friend. She acquiesces under protest. When the drunken fellow attempts to caress her, she resists him and her husband tries to force her to submit. At this moment, a strange prospector who has entered the room, springs to her protection, knocking down her annoyer and throwing aside her husband. He then escorts her to her home where she finds that her child died during her absence. The defeated gambler follows the prospector. Stearns entirely ignores his wife after this incident and the prospector helps her bury her child and consoles her in her grief. Later the gambler he had opposed in Stearns' place attacks him, and in their pistol duel he shoots his assailant. A drawn jury sentences him to exile and drives him into the desert. Learning of his condemnation, Anne hastily fills a canteen and follows him into the desert, where she finds him already delirious from thirst. He looks at her through his death-palled eyes and she appears to him as a ministering angel coming to cool his parched lips with a cup of cold water. Anne hastens to his side just as he breathes his last and passes into the land of eternal peace and rest. With thoughts of his kindness to her and her child and fearing to return to her brutal husband, she empties the water from her canteen into the sands of the desert, preferring to die beside the man who would protect her rather than endure the insults of a husband who would demoralize and degrade her.
