The Furnace of Gold
by Philip Verrill Mighels · English · Gutenberg #16629 · 518,123 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Furnace of Gold
Author: Philip Verrill Mighels
Illustrator: J. N. Marchand
Release date: August 31, 2005 [eBook #16629]
Most recently updated: December 12, 2020
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/16629
Credits: Produced by Al Haines
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FURNACE OF GOLD ***
Produced by Al Haines
The Furnace of Gold
By
PHILIP VERRILL MIGHELS
Author of
THE PILLARS OF EDEN, BRUVVER JIM'S BABY, ETC
Illustrations by
J. N. MARCHAND
GROSSET & DUNLAP
Publishers :: New York
Copyright, 1909, by
P. V. Mighels
Copyright, 1910, by
Desmond FitzGerald, Inc.
_All Rights Reserved_
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. PRINCE OR BANDIT
II. INTO THE MOUNTAINS
III. A RESCUE
IV. CONGENIAL COMPANY
V. VAN'S PARTNERS
VI. THE BATTLE
VII. AN EXCHANGE OF QUESTIONS
VIII. A NIGHT'S EXPENSES
IX. PROGRESS AND SALT
X. THE LAUGHING WATER CLAIM
XI. ALGY STIRS UP TROUBLE
XII. BOSTWICK LOSES GROUND
XIII. A COMBINATION OF FORCES
XIV. MOVING A SHACK
XV. HATCHING A PLOT
XVI. INVOLVING BETH
XVII. UNEXPECTED COMPLICATIONS
XVIII. WHEREIN MATTERS THICKEN
XIX. VAN AND BETH AND BOSTWICK
XX. QUEENIE
XXI. IN THE SHADOW OF THE ROPE
XXII. TWO MEETINGS AFTER DARK
XXIII. BETH'S DESPERATION
XXIV. A BLIZZARD OF DUST
XXV. A TIMELY DELIVERANCE
XXVI. THE NIGHT IN THE DESERT
XXVII. TALL STORIES
XXVIII. WORK AND SONG
XXIX. SUSPICIOUS ANSWERS
XXX. BETH'S ONE EXPEDIENT
XXXI. McCOPPET BUSIES HIS MIND
XXXII. THE HARDSHIPS OF THE TRAIL
XXXIII. THE CLOUDS OF TROUBLE GATHER
XXXIV. THE TAKING OF THE CLAIM
XXXV. THE MEETINGS OF TWO STRONG MEN
XXXVI. VAN RUNS AMUCK
XXXVII. THE PRIMITIVE LAW
XXXVIII. BETH MAKES DEMANDS
XXXIX. ALGY'S COOKING AND BETH'S DESPAIR
XL. GLEN AND REVELATIONS
XLI. SUVY PROVES HIS LOVE
XLII. THE FURNACE OF GOLD
XLIII. PREPARING THE NET FOR A DRAW
XLIV. THE ENGINES OF CLIMAX
XLV. THE LAST CIGARS
XLVI. WASTED TIME
XLVII. A TRIBUTE TO THE DESERT
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
He Proceeded to Pan from a Dozen Different
Places in the Cove . . . . Frontispiece [missing from book]
His Hold Was Giving Way
The Angry Miner Lurching in Closer to Shoot [missing from book]
"Don't You Want to Give This Man a Chance?"
Beth Felt Her Heart Begin New Gymnastics [missing from book]
No Corpse Snatched from Its Grave Could Have
Been More Helplessly Inert
"Yesh, He's Broke the Law"
Till the Mechanism Burst, He would Chase His
Man Across the Desert [missing from book]
THE FURNACE OF GOLD
CHAPTER I
PRINCE OR BANDIT
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!
She was amazingly beautiful and winning. It seemed as if she and not the
pink mountain blossoms must be responsible for all that haunting
redolence in this landscape of passionless gray. Her brown eyes burned
with glorious luminosity. Her color pulsed with health and the joyance
of existence. Her red lips quivered with unuttered ecstacies that surged
in the depths of her nature. Even the bright brown strands of her hair,
escaping the prison of her cap, were catching the sunlight and flinging
it off in the most engaging animation. She loved this new, unpeopled
land--the mountains, the sky, the vastness of it all!
For a two-fold reason she had come from New York to Nevada. In the first
place her young half-brother, Glenville Kent--all the kin she had
remaining in the world--had been for a month at Goldite camp, where she
was heading, and all that he wrote had inflamed her unusual love of
adventure till she knew she must see it for herself. Moreover, he was
none too well. She had come to visit and surprise him.
In the second place, her fiancé, Searle Bostwick, he who was now at the
wheel, had also been marooned, as it were, in this sagebrush land, by the
golden allurements of fortune. Beth had simply made up her mind to come,
and for two days past had been waiting, with her maid, at the pretty
little town of Freemont, on the railroad, for Searle to appear in his
modern ship of the desert and treat her to the one day's drive into
Goldite, whither he also was bound.
The man now intent on the big machine and the sandy road was a noticeable
figure, despite the dust upon his raiment. He was a tall, well-modeled
man of thirty-five, with an air of distinction upon him, materially
heightened by his deep-set, piercing gray eyes, his firm, bluish jaw, and
the sprinkling of frost in his hair.
He wore no moustache. His upper lip, somewhat over long, bore that same
bluish tint that a thick growth of beard, even when diligently shaved,
imparted to his face. He was, indeed, a handsome being, in a somewhat
stern, determined style.
He was irritated now by the prospect of labor at the station. Even
should he find some willing male being whose assistance with the tire
might be invoked, the task would still involve himself rather
strenuously; and above all things he loathed rough usage of his hands.
For three more miles he cursed the mechanism, then he halted the car at
the station.
A shack that served as lodging-house, saloon, and dining-room, a shack
for a stable, and a shack for a shed, together with a rough corral,
comprised the entire group of buildings at the place. Six or eight fine
cottonwoods and a number of twisted apple trees made the little place
decidedly inviting. Behind these, rising almost sheer from the level
yard, the mountains heaved upward grayly, their vast bulk broken, some
hundred yards away, by a yawning rock canyon, steep and forbidding.
The station proprietor, who emerged from the door at sound of the halting
machine, was a small, lank individual, as brown as an Indian and as
wrinkled as a crocodile. The driver in the car addressed him shortly.
"I wonder if you can help me put on a tire?"
The lank little host regarded him quietly, then looked at the women and
drew his hand across his mouth.
"Wal, I dunno," he answered. "I've set a tire and I've set a hen, but I
wouldn't like to tell ye what was hatched."
The girl in the tonneau laughed in frank delight--a musical outburst that
flattered the station host tremendously. The man at the wheel was
already alighting.
"You'll do," he said. "My name is Bostwick. I'm on my way to Goldite,
in a hurry. It won't take us long, but it wants two men on the job."
He had a way of thrusting his disagreeable tasks upon his fellow beings
before they were prepared either to accept or refuse a proposition. He
succeeded here so promptly that the girl in the car made no effort to
restrain her amusement. She was radiantly smiling as she leaned above
the wheel where the two men were presently at work.
In the midst of the toil a sound of whistling came upon the air. The
girl in the auto looked up, alertly. It was the Toreador's song from
Carmen that she heard, riotously rendered. A moment later the whistler
appeared--and an exclamation all but escaped the girl's red, parted lips.
Mounted on a calico pony of strikingly irregular design, a horseman had
halted at the bend of a trail that led to the rear of the station. He
saw the girl and his whistling ceased.
From his looks he might have been a bandit or a prince. He was a roughly
dressed, fearless-looking man of the hills, youthful, tall, and as
carelessly graceful in the saddle as a fish in its natural clement.
The girl's brown eyes and his blue eyes met. She did not analyze the
perfect symmetry or balance of his features; she only knew his hair and
long moustache were tawny, that his face was bronzed, that his eyes were
bold, frank depths of good humor and fire. He was splendid to look
at--that she instantly conceded. And she looked at him steadily till a
warm flush rose to the pink of her ears, when her glance fell, abashed,
to the pistol that hung on his saddle, and so, by way of the hoofs of his
pinto steed, to the wheel, straight down where she was leaning.
The station-keeper glanced up briefly.
"Hullo, Van," was all he said.
The horseman made no reply. He was still engaged in looking at the girl
when Bostwick half rose, with a tool in hand, and scowled at him silently.
It was only a short exchange of glances that passed between the pair,
nevertheless something akin to a challenge played in the momentary
conflict, as if these men, hurled across the width of a continent to
meet, had been molded by Fate for some antagonistic clash, the essence of
which they felt thus soon with an utter strangeness between them.
Bostwick bent promptly to his labors with the tire. The girl in the
tonneau stepped past her maid and opened the door on the further side of
the car. Bostwick stood up at once.
"I wouldn't get out, Beth--I wouldn't get out," he said, a little
impatiently. "We'll be ready to go in five minutes."
Nevertheless she alighted.
"Don't hurry on my account," she answered. "The day is getting warm."
The eyes of both Bostwick and the horseman followed her graceful figure
as she passed the front of the car and proceeded towards the orchard.
Above the medium height and superbly modeled, she appeared more beautiful
now than before. She had not descended for a change of position, or even
to inspect the place. As a matter of fact she was hoping to secure a
profile view of the bold-looking horseman on the pony. Her opportunity
soon arrived. He spoke to the station proprietor.
"Want to see you for a moment, Dave," and he rode a little off to a tree.
Dave ceased helping on the tire with marked alacrity and went to the
horseman at once. The two engaged in an earnest conversation, somewhat
of which obviously concerned the auto and its passengers, since the lank
little host made several ill-concealed gestures in the car's direction
and once turned to look at the girl.
She had halted by the orchard fence from which, as a post of vantage, she
was apparently looking over all the place. Her brown eyes, however,
swung repeatedly around to the calico pony and its rider.
Yes, she agreed, the horseman was equal to the scene. He fitted it all,
mountains, sky, the sense of wildness and freedom in the air. What was
he, then? Undoubtedly a native--perhaps part Indian--perhaps----
There was something sinister, she was certain, in the glance he cast
towards the car. He was armed. Could it be that he and the station man
were road-agents, plotting some act of violence? They were certainly
talking about the machine, or its owner, with exceptional earnestness of
purpose.
Bostwick had finished with the tire.
"Come along, Beth, come along!" he called abruptly.
No sooner had she turned to walk to the car than the horseman rode up in
her path. Her heart sank suddenly with misgivings. She halted as the
unknown visitor addressed himself to Bostwick.
"May I speak to you a moment privately?"
Bostwick bristled with suspicions at once.
"I have nothing of a private nature to discuss with you," he answered.
"If you have anything to say to me, please say it and be prompt."
The horseman changed color, but lost no whit of the native courtesy that
seemed a part of his being.
"It isn't particularly private," he answered quietly. "I only wished to
say I wouldn't rush off to Goldite this morning. I'd advise you to stay
here and rest."
Bostwick, already irritated by delay, and impervious to any thought of a
possible service in the horseman's attitude, grew more impatient and far
more irritating.
"I haven't desired your advice," he answered sharply. "Be good enough to
keep it to yourself." He advanced to the station owner, held out a bill,
and added: "Here you are, my man, for your trouble."
"Heck!" said the lank little host. "I don't want your money."
Across the horseman's handsome visage passed a look that, to the girl,
boded anything but peace. Bostwick's manner was an almost intolerable
affront, in a land where affronts are resented. However, the stranger
answered quietly, despite the fact that Bostwick nettled him to an
extraordinary degree.
"I agree that the sooner _you_ vamoose, the prompter the improvement in
the landscape. But you're not going off to Goldite with these ladies in
the car."
Matters might still have culminated differently had Bostwick even asked a
civil "Why?" for Van was a generous and easy-going being.
Beth, in the road, felt her heart beat violently, with vague excitement
and alarm. Bostwick glared, in sudden apprehension as to what the
horseman had in mind.
"Is this a hold-up?" he demanded. "What do you mean?"
The rider dismounted, in a quick, active manner, and opened the door of
the tonneau.
"You wouldn't have thanked me for advice," he replied; "you would hardly
thank me more for information." He added to the maid in the car:
"Please alight, your friend is impatient to be starting." He nodded
towards the owner of the auto.
The maid came down, demurely, casting but a glance at the tall,
commanding figure by the wheel. He promptly lifted out a suitcase and
three decidedly feminine-looking bags.
Bostwick by now was furious.
"It's an outrage!" he cried, "a dastardly outrage! You can see I am
wholly unarmed! Do you mean to restrain these ladies here by force?"
The horseman slipped his arm through the reins of his pony's bridle,
surveying Bostwick calmly.
"Do you mean to desert them if I do? I have not yet ordered you to
leave."
"Ordered me to leave!" echoed the car owner fiercely. "I can neither be
ordered to leave nor to stay! But I shall go--do you hear?--I shall
go--and the ladies with me! If you mean to rob us, do so at once and
have it over! My time is precious, if yours is not!"
Van smiled. "I might be tempted to rob a gentleman," he said, "but to
deprive your passengers of your company would be a charity. Pray waste
no more of your precious time if that is your only concern."
Beth had regained a shadow of her former composure. Her courage had
never been absent. She was less alarmed than before and decidedly
curious as to what this encounter might signify. She dared address the
horseman.
"But--but surely--you seem---- You must have some excellent reason
for--for acting so peculiarly."
He could not repress the brightness in his eyes as he met her
half-appealing gaze.
"Reason, advice, and information would apparently be alike unwelcome to
your chauffeur," he answered, doffing his hat. "He is eager to hasten on
his way, therefore by all means let us bid him begone."
Bostwick grew rapidly wilder at each intimation of his social standing--a
friend of the maid, and Beth's chauffeur! His impatience to proceed with
all possible haste to Goldite was consuming. He had not intended that
anything under the sun should delay him another single hour--not even
Beth, should occasion arise to detain her. Even now he was far more
concerned about himself and the business of his mission than he was for
the women in his charge. He was much afraid, however, of the horseman's
visible gun. He was not at all a person of courage, and the man before
him presented such an unknown quantity that he found himself more or less
helpless. At most he could merely attempt a bluff.
"You'll pay for this!" he cried somewhat shrilly, his face a black mask
of anger. "I'll give you just half a minute to release these ladies and
permit them to go with me in peace! If you refuse----"
The horseman interrupted.
"I said before you had not been ordered on your way, but now I've changed
my mind. Don't talk any more--get into your car and hike!"
The gleam in his eye achieved two results: It cowed the last vestige of
bravado in Bostwick's composition and ignited all the hatred of his
nature. He hesitated for a moment, his lips parting sidewise as if for a
speech of defiance which his moral courage refused to indorse. Then, not
daring to refuse the horseman's command, he climbed aboard the car, the
motor of which had never ceased its purring.
"You'll pay for this!" he repeated.
The girl, now pale again and tremendously disturbed, was regarding
Bostwick with a new, cold light in her eyes--a light that verged upon
contempt. She had never seen this lack of courageous spirit in the man
before.
"But, Searle! You're not going--you're not really going, like this?"
It was the horseman who replied.
"You see, his time is precious. Also in his present state of mind he is
certainly unfit company for--well, for Dave, here, a man who loves the
pure white dove of peace." The station owner grinned. Van turned once
more to the car owner, adding, placidly: "There, there, driver----"
Bostwick broke in vehemently.
"I refuse to abandon these ladies! Your conduct is not only that of a
coward, it is----"
Van looked him over in mock astonishment.
"Say, Searle," he said, "don't you savvy you've lost your vote in this
convention? I told you to do these ladies the kindness to sweeten the
atmosphere with your absence. Now you hit the trail--and hit it quick!"
Bostwick looked helplessly at the girl.
"I am entirely unarmed," he said as before, though she knew there was a
pistol in the car. "This ruffian----"
The horseman cut him short.
"So long, Searle. I trust you'll meet congenial company on the road, but
I advise you even now to return the way you came."
Bostwick glared at him vindictively, but impotently. His jaw was set and
hard. A cold fire glittered in his eyes. How selfishly eager he was to
be started on his way not even the girl could have known. Moreover, some
sort of plan for the horseman's speedy punishment had taken possession of
his mind.
"Have courage, Beth," he said to the girl. "Have courage."
He speeded up his motor, dropped in his clutch, and the car slowly
started on its way.
CHAPTER II
INTO THE MOUNTAINS
Beth stood perfectly still beside the road, watching the auto round the
hill where it presently disappeared from view. The station owner
picked up a sliver of wood and began to whittle industriously. The
horseman remained with his bridle reins in hand, amusedly looking at
his captive. The maid sat down upon the suitcase, dropped her skirt in
a modest little manner, and cast her gaze upon the ground.
Beth was the first to speak.
"Well, Elsa, I hope you are comfortable."
"Yes, Miss, thank you," said the maid.
Thereupon Miss Kent turned to the horseman and laughed. Someway she
could not feel alarmed, in the presence of this man of the hills, in
whose eyes merry devils were dancing.
"Isn't this absurd?" she said.
"Searle must have been born absurd," replied the horseman, once more
removing his hat. He waved it towards the station host imperiously.
"Dave, present me to the lady." And as Dave floundered, hopelessly
puzzled, he added: "Give me a knock-down, man, don't you savvy?"
Dave dropped his sliver, snatched off his hat, and rid himself of a
quid of something strong--all in one convulsion of activity.
"'Scuse me," he apologized, approaching nearer. "Miss--Miss--Miss
Laffin' Water, this is Van. His whole name's----"
"That's enough," Van interrupted. "I'm gratified to meet you,
Señorita, I'm sure."
He extended his hand. Beth knew not what to do, wherefore she gave him
her own.
"How do you do, Mr. Van?" she answered tremulously, and she drew her
fingers back again at once. "If you don't mind," she added, "we really
must continue on to Goldite as soon as possible." A fleeting look of
doubt and alarm had swept all the mirth from her eyes. After all, even
with this "introduction" what were these men's intentions? It was a
grave affair to be halted thus--to be practically abducted--to be left
with no protection, in the hands of roadside strangers, one, at least,
of whom was certainly inclined to be lawless and outrageously bold.
The horseman regarded her seriously, as if with a certain divination of
her worry. Someway, from the look in his eyes her confidence returned,
she knew not why.
"Do you ride?" he asked her, "--you and your maid?"
"Why, yes--that is----" she addressed the maid on the suitcase. "Elsa,
can you ride--on a horse?"
Elsa said: "Yes, Miss, if it is part of my duty."
Beth's composure increased. After all, it was a glorious day, the
horseman was handsome, and she had wished for a little adventure--but
not too much!
"What does it mean?" she asked of Van more boldly. "We were perfectly
comfortable, riding in the car. If you really intend to permit us to
go, why couldn't we have gone on as we were?"
Dave started to answer.
"You see, Miss----"
Van cut in abruptly.
"Never mind, Dave; this isn't your pie." To Beth he added: "If you've
brought any particularly appropriate garments for riding, suppose you
retire for preparations. Dave will tote the bags inside the house."
"You bet I will!" said Dave, who, as Elsa rose, took suitcase and all
in one load.
Beth hesitated. The horseman had started already for the stable at the
rear. How superbly straight was his figure! What a confident,
impudent grace beset him as he moved! How could it be possible for
such a man to be other than a gentleman--no matter where he was found?
Some strange little thrill of excitement and love of adventure stirred
in the girl's full veins. Resistance was useless. Come what might,
she was helpless in the hands of this man--and he seemed a person to be
trusted.
"Come, Elsa," she said, bravely deciding to face whatsoever might
arise. "You may wear the second of my skirts."
Fifteen minutes later, therefore, she and her maid emerged from the
shack attired in brown cloth, and kahki, respectively, her own skirt
long and graceful, while Elsa's was shorter and divided. Aside or
cross-saddle Beth was equally at home upon a horse--or always had been,
in the parks.
Van and Dave now returned, leading two extra ponies from the stable.
One was a bay, accoutered with a man's deep Mexican saddle, whereon was
secured a coiled lasso; the other was a wiry little roan mare, with a
somewhat decrepit but otherwise sound side-saddle tightly cinched upon
her back.
"Our stable chamberlain has slipped a cog on the outfits for ladies
recently," said Van apologetically, "but I reckon these will have to
do."
Beth looked the two mounts over uncritically. They seemed to be
equally matched, as to general characteristics, since neither appeared
either strong or plump. She said:
"Shall we ride very far?"
"No, just a pleasant little jog," replied the horseman. "They call it
forty miles to Goldite by the ridge, but it isn't an inch over thirty."
Thirty miles!--over the mountains!--with an unknown man and her maid!
Beth suppressed a gasp of despair and astonishment, not to mention
trepidation, by making an effort that verged upon the heroic.
"But we--we can never arrive in Goldite tonight!" she said. "We can't
expect to, can we?"
"It takes more than that to kill these bronchos," Van cheerfully
assured her. "I can only guarantee that the horses will make it--by
sunset."
Beth flushed. He evidently entertained a very poor notion of her
horsemanship. Her pride was aroused. She would show him something--at
least that no horse could make this journey without her!
"Thank you," she said, and advancing to the roan she addressed herself
to Dave. "Will you please help me up. Mr. Van may assist my maid."
Dave grinned and performed his offices as best he could, which was
strongly, if not with grace. Van shook a threatening fist, behind his
captive's back. He had meant to take this honor to himself.
Fairly tossing the greatly delighted little Elsa to the seat on the
bay, he mounted his own sturdy animal and immediately started for the
canyon below, leaving Beth and her maid to trail behind.
The girl's heart all but failed her. Whither were they going?--and
towards what Fate? What could be the outcome of a journey like this,
undertaken so blindly, with no chance for resistance? The horseman had
stubbornly refused a reply to her question; he was calmly riding off
before them now with the utmost indifference to her comfort. There was
nothing to do but to follow, and resign herself to--the Lord alone knew
what. The little roan mare, indeed, required no urging; she was
tugging at the bit to be off. With one last look of helplessness at
the station and Dave--who someway bore the hint of a fatherly air upon
him--she charged her nerves with all possible resolution and rode on
after her leader.
Elsa permitted her broncho to trudge at the tail of the column. She
dared to cast one shy, disconcerting little glance at Dave--and he
suddenly felt he would burst into flame and consume himself utterly to
ashes.
The great canyon yawned prodigiously where its rock gates stood open to
grant the party admission to the sanctum of the hills. Sheer granite
walls, austere and frowning, rose in sculptured immensity on either
side, but the trail under foot was scored between some scattered
wild-peach shrubs, interspersed with occasional bright-green clumps of
manzanita. The air was redolent of warmth and fragrance that might
with fitness have advertised the presence in the hills of some
glorified goddess of love--some lofty, invisible goddess, guarded by
her mountain snows, yet still too languorous and voluptuous to pass
without at least trailing on the summery air the breath that exhaled
from her being. It was all a delight, despite vague alarms, and the
promise ahead was inviting.
Van continued straight onward, with never so much as a turn of his
head, to the horses in the rear. He seemed to have quite forgotten the
two half-frightened women in his wake. Beth had ample opportunity for
observing again the look of strength and grace upon him. However, she
found her attention very much divided between tumultuous joyance in the
mountain grandeur, bathed in the marvelously life-exciting air, and
concern for the outcome of the day. If a faint suggestion of pique at
the manner in which the horseman ignored her presence crept
subconsciously into all her meditations, she did not confess it to
herself.
Elsa's horrid little habit of accepting anything and everything with
the most irresponsible complacency rendered the situation aggravating.
It was so utterly impossible to discuss with such a being even such of
the morning's developments as the relationship of mistress and maid
might otherwise have permitted.
A mile beyond the mouth of the canyon the slight ascent was ended, the
chasm widened, rough slopes succeeded the granite walls, and a charming
little valley, emerald green and dotted with groups of quaking aspen
trees, stretched far towards the wooded mountain barriers, looming
hugely ahead. It was like a dainty lake of grass, abundantly supplied
with little islands.
The sheer enchantment of it, bathed as it was in sun-gold, and
sheltered by prodigious, snow-capped summits, so intensely white
against the intensity of azure, aroused some mad new ecstacy in all
Beth's being. She could almost have done something wild--she knew not
what; and all the alarm subsided from her thoughts. As if in answer to
her tumult of joy, Van spurred his pinto to a gallop. Instantly
responding to her lift of the reins, Beth's roan went romping easily
forward. The bay at the rear, with Elsa, followed rhythmically,
pounding out a measure on the turf.
A comparatively short session of this more rapid locomotion sufficed
for the transit of the cove--that is, of the wide-open portion. The
trail then dived out of sight in a copse where pine trees were
neighbors of the aspens. Van disappeared, though hardly more than
fifty feet ahead. Through low-hanging boughs, that she needs must push
aside, Beth followed blindly, now decidedly piqued by the wholly
ungallant indifference to her fate of the horseman leading the way.
She caught but a glimpse of him, now and again, in the density of the
growth. How strange it was to be following thus, meekly, helplessly,
perforce with some sort of confidence, in the charge of this unknown
mountain man, to--whatsoever he might elect! The utterly absurd part
of it all was that it was pleasant!
At length they emerged from the shady halls of trees, to find
themselves confronted by the wall of mountains. Already Van was riding
up the slope, where larger pines, tall thickets of green chincopin, and
ledges of rock compelled the trail to many devious windings. Once more
the horseman was whistling his Toreador refrain. He did not look back
at his charges. That he was watching them both, from the tail of his
eye, was a fact that Beth felt--and resented.
The steepness of the trail increased. At times the meager pathway
disappeared entirely. It lay upon rocks that gave no sign of the hoofs
that had previously rung metallic clinks upon the granite. How the man
in the lead discerned it here was a matter Beth could not comprehend.
Some half-confessed meed of admiration, already astir in her nature for
the horseman and his way, increased as he breasted the ascent. How
thoroughly at home--how much a part of it all he appeared, as he rode
upon his pony!
Two hours of steady climbing, with her mare oblique beneath her weight,
and Beth felt an awe in her being. It was wonderful; it was almost
terrible, the fathomless silence, the altitudes, this heretofore
unexperienced intimacy with the mountains' very nakedness! It was
strange altogether, and impressive, the vast unfolding of the world
below, the frequency with which the pathway skirted some dark
precipice--and the apparent unconcern of the man ahead, now so
absolutely master. And still that soul-inviting exhilaration of the
air aroused those ecstacies within her spirit that she had not known
were there.
They were nearing the summit of the pass. It was still a thousand feet
below the snow. To the left a mighty chasm trenched the adamant, its
bottom lowered away to depths of mysterious blue. Its side, above
which the three stout ponies picked their way, was a jagged set of
terraces, over the brink of which the descents were perpendicular.
Rising as if to bar the way, the crowning terrace apparently ended the
trail against all further advance. Here Van finally halted,
dismounted, and waited for the advent of his charges.
Beth rode up uncertainly, her brown eyes closely scrutinizing his face.
It appeared as if they had come to the end of everything--the place for
leaping off into downward space.
"Let me see if the cinches are tight," said the horseman quietly, and
he looked to the girth of her saddle.
It was found to be in a satisfactory condition. The girth on the bay
he tightened, carelessly pushing Elsa's foot and the stirrup aside for
the purpose.
His own horse now showed unmistakable signs of weariness. He had
traveled some twenty odd miles to arrive at Dave's before undertaking
this present bit of hardship. Since then Van had pushed him to the
limit of his strength and speed, in the effort to reach Goldite with
the smallest possible delay.
If a sober expression of sympathy came for a second in the horseman's
steady eyes, as he glanced where his pony was standing, it quickly gave
way to something more inscrutable as he looked up at Beth, in advancing
once more to the fore.
"Both of you give them the reins," he instructed quietly. "Just drop
them down. Let the bronchos pick the trail." He paused, then added,
as if on second thought, "Shut your eyes if you find you're getting
dizzy--don't look down."
Beth turned slightly pale, in anticipation of some ordeal, undoubtedly
imminent, but the light in her eyes was one of splendid courage. She
might feel they were all at the gate of something awful, but her nature
rose to meet it. She said nothing; she simply obeyed directions and
looked with new emotions on the somewhat drooping mare to whom her own
safety was entrusted.
Van was once more in his saddle. He started, and the ponies behind
resumed their faithful plodding at his heels.
A few rods ahead they encountered a change, and Beth could scarcely
repress a gasp of surprise and apprehension. The trail was laid upon
the merest granite shelf, above that terrible chasm. She was
terrified, frankly. The man and pony in the lead were cut with
startling sharpness against the gray of the rock--the calico coloring,
the muscular intensity, the bending of the man to every motion--as they
balanced with terrifying slenderness above the pit of death.
For a moment the girl thought nothing of herself and of how she too
must pass that awful brink, for all her concern was focused on the man.
Then she realized what she must do--was doing--as her roan mare
followed on. She was almost upon it herself!
Her hand flew down to the reins to halt the pony, involuntarily. A
wild thought of turning and fleeing away from this shelf of destruction
launched itself upon her mind. It was folly--a thing impossible.
There was nothing to do but go on. Shutting her eyes and holding her
breath she felt the mare beneath her tremulously moving forward,
smelling out the places of security whereon to rest her weight.
Elsa, sublimely unresponsive, alike to the grandeur or the danger of
the place, rode as placidly here as in the valley.
They passed the first of the shelf-like brinks, traversed a safer
contour of the wall, and were presently isolated upon the second bridge
of granite, which was also the last, much longer than the first, but
perhaps not so narrow or winding.
Van had perspired in nervous tension, as the two women rode above the
chasm. Men had gone down here to oblivion. He was easier now, more
careless of himself and horse, less alert for a looseness in the
granite mass, as he turned in his saddle to look backward.
Suddenly, with a horrible sensation in his vitals, he felt his pony
crumpling beneath him, even as he heard Beth sound a cry.
A second later he was going, helplessly, with the air-rush in his ears
and the pony's quiver shivering up his spine. All bottomless space
seemed to open where they dropped. He kicked loose the stirrups, even
as the pony struck upon the first narrow terrace, ten feet down, and
felt the helpless animal turned hoofs and belly upward by the blow.
He had thrust himself free--apart from the horse--but could not cling
to the rotten ledge for more than half a second. Then down once more
he was falling, as before, only a heart-beat later than the pinto.
Out of the lip of the next shelf below the pony's weight tore a jagged
fragment. The animal's neck was broken, and he and the stone-mass
plunged on downward together.
Van half way fell through a stubborn bush--that clung with the
mysterious persistency of life to a handful of soil in a crevice--and
his strong hands closed upon its branches.
He was halted with a jolt. The pony hurtled loosely, grotesquely down
the abyss, bounding from impacts with the terraces, and was presently
lost to mortal sight in the dust and debris he carried below for a
shroud. Sounds of his striking--dull, leaden sounds, tremendous in the
all-pervading silence--came clearly up to the top. Then Van found his
feet could be rested on the shelf, and he let himself relax to ease his
arms.
CHAPTER III
A RESCUE
Beth had uttered that one cry only, as man and horse careened above the
pit. She now sat dumbly staring where the two had disappeared.
Nothing could she see of Van or his pony. A chill of horror attacked
her, there in the blaze of the sun. It was not, even then, so much of
herself and Elsa she was thinking--two helpless women, lost in this
place of terrible silence; she was smitten by the fate of their guide.
Van, for his part, looked about as best he might, observing his
situation comprehensively. He was safe for the moment. The ledge
whereon he was bearing a portion of his weight was narrow and crumbling
with old disintegration. The shrub to which he clung was as tough as
wire cable, and had once been stoutly rooted in the crevice. Now,
however, its hold had been weakened by the heavy strain upon it, and
yet he must continue to trust a part of his weight to its branches.
There was nothing, positively nothing, by which he could hope to climb
to the trail up above.
He deliberately rested and fostered his breath, not a trifle of which
had been jolted in violence from his body. Presently he raised his
voice and called out, as cheerfully as possible:
"Ship ahoy! Hullo--Miss Laughing Water!"
For a moment there was no response. Beth was to utterly overcome to
speak. She hardly dared believe it was his call she heard, issuing up
from the tomb. She feared that her hope, her frantic imagination, her
wish to have it so, had conjured up a voice that had no genuine
existence. Her lips moved, but made no audible sound. She trembled
violently. Van called again, with more of his natural power.
"Hullo! Hullo! Miss Beth--are you up there on the trail?"
"Oh, yes! Oh! what shall I do?" cried Beth in a sudden outburst of
relief and pent-up emotions. "Tell me what to do!"
Van knew she was rather near at hand. The bridge and trail were
certainly no more than twenty-five feet above his head. He could make
her hear with little effort.
"Brace up and keep your nerve," he instructed. "We're O.K. up to date.
Just ride ahead till you come to the flat. Let Elsa hold your mare.
Can you hear me plainly?"
"Oh! yes--yes--then what next?" replied the worried girl.
Van resumed calmly: "You'll find a rawhide rope on Elsa's saddle. Come
back with that, on foot. Then I'll tell you what to do. Don't try to
hurry; take your time, and don't worry." After a moment, as he got no
reply, he added: "Have you started?"
Beth had not budged her mare, for terror of what she must do. She was
fortifying all her resolution. She answered with genuine bravery:
"Yes--I--I'll do what you say."
She took up the reins. Her pale face was set, but she did not close
her eyes to cross the dizzying brink. The mare went forward--and
Elsa's bay resumed his patient tagging, up to and past the fateful
place where a part of the shelf-edge, having been dislodged, had let
Van's pony fall.
For ten age-long minutes Van waited on his ledge, feeling the
treacherous, rotted stuff break silently away beneath his feet. The
shrub, too, was showing an earthy bit of root as it slowly but
certainly relinquished its hold on the substance which the crevice had
divided. The man could almost have calculated how many seconds the
shelf and the shrub could sustain their living burden.
Then Beth returned. She had left her maid with the horses; she held
the lasso in her hand. To creep on foot along the granite bridge was
taxing the utmost of her courage. She could not ascertain precisely
where it was that the horseman was waiting below. She was guided only
by the broken ledge, where pony and all had disappeared. Therefore,
she called to him weakly.
"Mr. Van--Mr. Van--where are you?"
Van's heart turned over in his breast.
"Just below that split boulder in the trail," he answered cheerily.
"Go to that."
A silence succeeded, then he heard, in tremulous accents:
"I'm here--but how am I going to tie the rope?"
Van answered distinctly, for much depended on precision.
"Uncoil it first. On one end there's an eye that runs the loop. Open
the loop to a pretty good size and slip it over the smaller portion of
the boulder. Then push it well down in the crevice, and pull it tight."
He knew that the rope was far too short to loop the larger rock and
reach his hands. He waited while he thought she might be working--as
indeed she was--and presently added: "Got that done?"
"Yes," she called. "Yes--but are you sure----"
His hold was giving way. He answered crisply:
"Now drop me the end. Don't wait!"
[Illustration: His hold was giving way.]
Beth had forgotten all danger to herself. She had ceased to tremble.
She paid out the rope with commendable promptness.
"Does it reach?" she cried. "Can you get it?"
He could not. Though sufficiently long it was ten feet away, on his
right. His seconds were growing fearfully precious.
"Just shift it over, more towards Elsa," he called, still calmly.
"Move it about ten feet."
It began to approach him jerkily. It halted, then once more it moved.
The shrub in his grasp gave out an inch, and was coming from its
anchorage. Then his fist was closed on the rope.
"All right!" he called. "Let go--and stand aside!"
"But--oh, if the rock shouldn't hold!" cried the girl. "Are you sure
it won't pull over?"
He was not at all certain of the boulder. This explained his
directions, "stand aside!" If it came--it must not involve the girl.
There was nothing for him but to trust to its weight against his own.
He was strong. He began to come up, bracing a foot against the
crumbling wall, winding the rope around one of his legs--or his leg
around the rope, and resting whensoever he could.
Beth stood there, nearly as tense as the rope. Her brown eyes were
fixed on the bedded boulder; her face was more gray than its bulk.
At the edge, where the lasso impinged upon the granite, small particles
were breaking and falling ominously. Scarcely daring to breathe, as
she felt how the man was toiling up from the maw of the chasm, Beth
could not bear to look where he must come--if come he ever should.
It seemed an eternity of waiting. At last, when new misgivings had
seized upon her heart, she heard his labored breathing. Even then she
did not turn. She feared to watch his efforts; she feared to break the
spell. A minute later she heard his even voice.
"It's a wonderful view--from down below."
The glad, eager light in her eyes, which his eyes met from the brink,
put strength in both his arms. He came up to safety in an outburst of
vigor that was nothing short of magnificent.
"Oh!" said the girl, and she leaned against the wall in a sudden need
for support.
"I really had no intention of--deserting like that," panted Van, with a
smile that was just a trifle forced. "But it's so much easier to--drop
into a habit than it--ever is to get out."
She made no reply, but remained where she was, weakly leaning against
the wall and slowly regaining the strength she had lost at the moment
of beholding him safe. She was not the fainting kind, but she was
human--womanly human.
Van began immediately to release and re-coil the rope.
"Too bad to throw away a pony like that," he resumed regretfully. "I
always intended, if he died a Christian death, to have his hide tanned
for a rug."
He was saying anything, no matter what, to dissipate the reactionary
collapse into which he feared the girl was falling.
"Now then," he added, when the rope was well in hand, "we've wasted all
the time we can spare on a second-rate vaudeville performance. Come
along."
CHAPTER IV
CONGENIAL COMPANY
He started ahead as he had before, with that show of utter unconcern
towards the girl that was absolutely new to her experience. Her eyes
were wide with appeal as she watched him striding up the trail. For
herself she wanted nothing; but her womanly nature craved some trifling
sign, some word of assurance that the man was uninjured--really safe
again and whole--after that terrible plunge. But this from the
horseman was impossible. He had not even thanked her for the rescue.
"You horrid, handsome wretch!" she murmured vexedly, stimulated to
renewed activity by her resentment; then she followed along the narrow
way.
They came to the flat, beyond the wall, where Elsa sat keeping the
horses. The maid looked the horseman over quite calmly, inquiring:
"What for dit you did it--go down there?"
"Just for ducks," said Van. He halted for Beth's approach, put her up
on the roan, and once more strode off in the trail ahead with a
promptness that was certainly amazing.
There was no understanding such a person. Beth gave it up. The whole
affair was inexplicable--his attitude towards Searle at the station,
his abduction of herself and the maid, and this trailing of the pair of
them across these terrible places, for no apparent reason in the world.
Her mare followed on in the tracks of the muscular figure, over whom,
for a moment, she had almost wished to yearn. His escape from death
had been so slender--and he would not even rest!
The flat was, in reality, the hog's back or ridge of a lofty spur of
the mountains. Except for the vast bluish canyons and gorges far
below, the view was somewhat restricted here, since towering summits,
in a conclave of peaks, arose to right and left.
After a time, as they swung around on the trend of the ridge, they came
abreast a mighty gap in the mountains to the left, and there, far down,
lay a valley as flattened by perspective as the unruffled surface of a
lake.
Here Van presently halted, peering down and searching the vast gray
floor with the keenest attention. He went on further, and halted
again, Beth meanwhile watching his face with increasing curiosity.
At the third of his stops she gazed no more on the panorama of
immensity, but rather gazed at him.
"What is it you expect to see?" she inquired at last. "Goldite isn't
down there, is it?"
"I'm rather expecting--if I haven't miscalculated on the time----
There he is now," he answered, still staring afar off down upon the
valley. He raised his arm and extended a finger to point towards the
north-most limit of the level stretch of land. "Do you see that small,
dark object in the road? That's a road, that slender yellow streak
that you can follow."
Beth obeyed directions and thereby discerned, with remarkable
clearness, the moving object, far away below. She did not in the least
suspect its nature.
"Why, yes--what is it?" she asked with languid interest, having
expected something more significant. "Is it some small animal?"
"Yes," responded Van. "It's Searle."
Beth was instantly all attention.
"Not Mr. Bostwick, in his car?"
Van continued to study the gray of the world-wide map.
"I rather wonder----" he mused, and there he halted, presently adding,
"He's climbing a hill. You might not think so, looking down from here,
but it's steep and sandy, for a car."
She was watching eagerly.
"And he's no further along towards Goldite than this?"
"He's had some tough old going," answered Van. "He's in luck to----"
then to himself, as he continued to scan the scene for something he did
not apparently find. "By Jupe! I'd have sworn Matt Barger----" He
broke off abruptly, adding in a spirit of fairness, "Searle is getting
right up to the ridge all right. Good boy! He must have a powerful
motor under the--There! By George! I knew it! I knew it! Got him!
right there in the gravel!"
The girl looked suddenly upon him, wholly unable to comprehend the
sharp exclamations he was making.
"What has got him? What do you mean?" she demanded in vague alarm. "I
don't see what you----"
"That's Matt every time--I thought so," he resumed, as he stepped a
little closer to the girl. "Don't you see them?--those lively little
specks, swarming all around the machine?"
Beth bent her gaze on the drama, far below--a play in which she knew
but one of the characters, and nothing of the meaning of the scene.
"I see--yes--something like a lot of tiny ants--or something. What are
they?--not robbers?--not men?"
"Part men, part hyenas," he told her quietly. "It's a lot of State
convicts, escaped from their prison, two days free--and desperate."
She was suddenly very pale. Her eyes were blazing.
"Convicts! Out of prison?"
"A good long way out," he told her watching, "and clever enough to hike
for the mines, with the camps all full of strangers. They learn to be
good mixers, when they're trying to escape."
Beth gazed at him searchingly.
"You--knew they were out--and waiting on the road?"
"Everyone knew they were out--and I certainly thought big Matt would do
precisely what you see he has done."
"Matt?" she echoed.
"The leader," he explained, "a clever brute as ever worried a sheriff."
She was not in the least interested in the personality of the convict
thus described. Her mind had flown to another aspect of the case--the
case involving herself.
"And this was why you wouldn't let us go in the auto?" she said. "You
expected this?"
He looked at her quickly.
"Searle wouldn't take my advice, you know." His eyes were once more
merry. "What could I do?"
"But Mr. Bostwick wouldn't have gone if you had told him!" she said.
"Oh, I'm surprised you'd do it--let him go and be captured like that!"
She was looking down upon the silent drama intently as she added: "I
don't see why you ever did it!"
He was still amused.
"Oh, I thought perhaps Searle deserved it."
She blazed a little.
"You told him you hoped he'd meet congenial company on the road. You
didn't mean----"
"Guilty as charged in the indictment. I guess I did."
"Oh! I wouldn't have thought----" she started, then she shivered in
horror, reflecting swiftly on the fate that might have befallen herself
and Elsa had they too been captured with Searle. It was all explained
at last--the horseman's earnest talk with Dave, his quiet but grim
refusal to permit herself and Elsa to remain with the car, and the
hazardous ride he had since dared compel them to take at such peril to
his life! And now, his persistent advance on foot, when perhaps he was
painfully injured! He had done then such a service as she could never
in her life forget. His treatment of Searle had perhaps, even as he
said, been deserved. Nevertheless, Searle was much to her, very much,
indeed--or had been--up to this morning--and she was worried.
"What do you think they will do?" she added in a spirit of contrition
that came at once upon her. "They must be terrible men!"
"They won't do much but take his money and clothes, and maybe beg for a
ride," said Van reassuringly. "They'll see he isn't fit to kill."
Beth glanced at him briefly, inquiringly. What a baffling light it was
that played in the depths of his eyes! What manner of being was he,
after all? She could not tell. And yet she felt she could trust
him--she certainly knew not why. Despite his ways of raillery she felt
he was serious, true as steel, and big in heart and nature.
"I mustn't forget to thank you," she murmured. "I mean for sparing
us--all that. I do thank you, most sincerely, for----"
"Never mind that," he interrupted. "We're going to be late to lunch."
He turned once more to the trail and started off, in his active manner,
together with a thorough indifference as to what became of Bostwick.
Beth, with a feeling that something ought yet to be done for Searle,
down in the valley with the convicts, cast one helpless glance at the
scene of the hold-up, then perforce urged her pony forward.
Van halted no more. He led the way doggedly onward, over the rises,
through great silent forests, past crystal springs, and down dark,
somber ravines. At a quarter of one he emerged from a gorge upon the
level acre of a tiny cove, still high in the mountains fastnesses.
Here he let out a whoop like an Indian, its echo filling all the place.
An answering call came clearly from somewhere near at hand. Beth felt
a sudden alarm to know there were human beings near. What sort they
were was a matter entirely of conjecture. Then presently she
discovered a number of small, rude buildings, and a fair-sized cabin,
planted next the hill. The door of the latter was open. A tall man
appeared in the frame.
"This," said Van, who had waited for the girl to ride once more to his
side, "is the Monte Cristo mine--the worst false alarm that ever
disfigured the map."
CHAPTER V
VAN'S PARTNERS
The Monte Cristo mining property comprised a tunnel in the hill, a
glory hole, a little toy quartz-mill--five stamps strong--the
bunk-house, kitchen, blacksmith-shop, stable, corral, and four human
beings. These latter were a Chinese cook named Algy, a Piute Indian
half-breed called Cayuse, and two rare souls--Napoleon G. Blink and
"Gettysburg"--miners, and boastful old worthies, long partnered and
beloved by Van.
Just at present the tunnel was empty, the glory-hole was deserted, and
the quartz-mill was silent. The mine had proved a failure. Van had
expended many thousands of dollars and ten months of time to
demonstrate the facts; and now, in possession of much new experience,
an indomitable spirit, two tired partners, and a brand-new claim, he
was facing his fate, as heretofore, with a wonderful boyish cheer.
Not all this knowledge was vouchsafed to Beth when she and her maid
were presently put in possession of the place. With the utmost gravity
Van introduced her by old Dave's appellation, Miss Laughing Water. The
maid he merely called Elsa. His explanation as to whence they hailed,
whither they were bound, why he had taken them in charge, and how he
had lost the pinto pony, was notable chiefly for its brevity. He and
his charges were hungry and somewhat pressed for time, he announced,
and he therefore urged Algy to haste.
Dinner had been promptly served at twelve. Algy was therefore in
despair--for Algy was proud of his art. He still had good red beans,
most excellent coffee, corn-fed bacon, the best of bread and butter, a
hunger-inspiring stew of lamb, white potatoes, fine apple sauce, and
superlative gingerbread on hand in great abundance, however, but in
spite of it all he spluttered.
"What's mallah you, Van?" he demanded several times. "Wha' for no tell
me blingee ladies? How you s'plose I gettee dinner? Sominagot, you
come like this, that velly superstich."
He would readily have laid down his very life for Van, but he laid a
good dinner instead. During its preparation Beth and her maid sat down
on a bench beside the bunk-house, in the presence of Cayuse, Napoleon,
and Gettysburg, while Van led the horses to the stable for refreshment,
and Algy talked to himself in pigeon English.
It was an odd situation for the girl from New. York, but she found
herself amused. Both Napoleon and Gettysburg had been cast for amusing
roles, which they did not always fill. Neither, as might be supposed
from his name, had ever even smelled the faintest suggestion of things
military. Napoleon had once been a sailor, or, to be more accurate, a
river boatman. He was fat, short, red-headed, red-necked, red-nosed,
and red-eyed. His hands were freckled, his arms were hairy. He turned
his head to one side like a bird--and promptly fell in love with demure
little Elsa.
Gettysburg was as thin as Napoleon was fat. He had a straggling gray
beard, a very bald pate, high cheek bones, and a glass eye. This eye
he turned towards the maid, perhaps because it was steady. He also had
a nervous way of drawing one hand down his face till he lowered his jaw
prodigiously, after which, like the handle of a knocker, it would fall
back to place with quite a thump. He did this twice as he stared at
Beth, and then he remarked:
"Quite a hike yit, down to Goldite."
"I suppose it is," said Beth in her interesting way. "How far is it,
really, from here?"
"'Bout twenty miles of straight ahead, and two miles of straight up,
and three of straight down--if a feller could go straight," said
Gettysburg gravely, "but he can't."
Beth looked very much concerned. She had hoped they were almost there,
and no more hills to climb or descend. She felt convinced they had
ridden over twenty miles already, and the horseman had assured her it
was thirty at the most, from the station so far behind the mountains.
"But--Mr. Van can't walk so far as that," she said. "I'm sure I don't
see what----"
She was interrupted by the reappearance of Van himself.
"Isn't there a horse on the place?" he asked his partners collectively.
"What have you done with the sorrel?"
Gettysburg arose. "Loaned him to A. C., yistiddy," said he. "But the
outlaw's on the job."
"Not Vesuvius?" Van replied incredulously. "You don't mean to say he's
turned up again unslaughtered?"
"Cayuse here roped him, up to Cedar flat," imparted Gettysburg.
"Cornered him there in natural corral and fetched him home fer fun."
Napoleon added: "But Cayuse ain't been on board, you bet. He likes
something more old-fashioned than Suvy. Split my bowsprit, I wouldn't
tow no horse into port which I was afraid to board. When I was bustin'
bronchos I liked 'em to be bad."
"Yes," agreed Gettysburg, "so bad they couldn't stand up."
A bright glitter came for a moment in Van's blue eyes.
"If Suvy's the only equine paradox on the place, he and I have got to
argue things out this afternoon," he said, "but I'll have my dinner
first."
Beth was listening intently, puzzled to know precisely what the talk
implied. She was vaguely suspicious that Van, for the purpose of
escorting her on, would find himself obliged to wage some manner of war
with a horse of which the Indian was afraid.
Further discussion of the topic was interrupted now by the cook, who
appeared to announce his dinner served. Beth and her maid were,
therefore, directed by Van to a table set for two, while he, with
Napoleon and Gettysburg for company, repaired to a place in the kitchen.
Beth was hungry. She ate with all the relish of a mountaineer. Algy,
moreover, was a kitchen magician in the art of transforming culinary
commonplaces into viands of toothsome delight. Elsa became
speechlessly busy. Despite her wishes in the matter, Beth could hear
the men talking beyond.
"So them convicts has hiked over this way already," said the voice of
Gettysburg distinctly. "We heard from A. C. about the prison break,
but he wasn't on to which ones they was."
"One is Matt Barger," Van informed them. "He's the only one I know."
"Matt Barger! Not _your_ Matt Barger?" demanded Gettysburg sharply.
Van nodded. "Mine when I had him."
Gettysburg arose excitedly.
"He ain't come hunting fer you as quick as this?" he inquired uneasily.
"That ain't what's fetched him over to the desert?"
"Haven't asked him," answered Van. "He promised to look me up if ever
he got out alive."
"Look you up!" Gettysburg was obviously over-wrought by the mere
intelligence that Barger was at liberty. "You know what he'll do! You
know him, boy! You know he'll keep his word. You can't go foolin'
around alone. You've got to be----"
"Pass the beans," Van interrupted. He added more quietly: "Sit down,
Gett, and shut the front door of your face."
Napoleon was eating, to "keep Van company." He pushed away his plate.
"Just our luck if these here derelicts was to foul us, skipper and
crew," he observed ruefully. "Just our luck."
Gettysburg sat down, adding: "Why can't you wait, Van, wait till the
whole kit and boodle of us can move to the bran'-new claim?"
Van finished half a cup of coffee.
"I told you I should continue on without delay. The horses will
probably come to-night for all of you to follow me to-morrow."
"Then why don't you wait and go with us?" repeated Gettysburg. "We'll
git there by noon, and you ain't got nuthin' to ride."
The horseman answered: "Suvy's the prettiest gaited thing you ever
saw--when he gaits."
"Holy toads!" said the older man apprehensively, "you ain't
sure-a-goin' to tackle the outlaw today?"
"I've always felt we'd come to it soon or late," was Van's reply. "And
I've got to have a horse this afternoon. We can't kill each other but
once."
"Supposen he stoves in your pilot-house," said Napoleon. "What shall
we do about the claim, and all this cargo, and everything?"
"The claim? Work it, man, work it," Van responded. "What's a mining
claim for but to furnish good hard work for a couple of old ring-tailed
galoots who've shirked it all their lives?"
"Work it, yep, but what on?" asked Gettysburg. "We're as broke as a
hatched-out egg."
"Haven't you worked on shinbones and heavenly hopes before?" inquired
the busy leader of the partnership. "And that reminds me, Algy, what
about you?" he added to the Chinese cook. "We can't afford a
tippe-bob-royal chef of your dimensions after this. I guess you'll
have to poison somebody else."
"What's mallah you, Van?" Algy demanded aggressively. "You makee me
velly sick. You get velly lich I cook your glub. You go bloke, I cook
alle same. Sominagot, I b'long go with you all time. You no got good
luck I never want the money, you savvy? You go hell--go anywhere--I go
same place--that's all. You talkee big fool, that velly superstich."
He looked at Van fiercely to disguise a great alarm, a fear that he
might, after all, be dismissed in the break-up impending.
Van shrugged his shoulders.
"Sentenced for life. All right, Algy, if your cooking kills us off, at
least, as the brave young husband remarked, it will all be in the
family."
Algy still looked as fierce as one of his heathen idols.
"You t'ink velly smart," he said, still concealing his feelings.
"Lats!" and with that he went out to chop some wood.
"Batten me into the pantry!" said Napoleon. "I'll bet old Algy'd board
the outlaw himself, fer you, Van, squall and all."
"That horse ain't human," Gettysburg exploded anew. "Van, you can't
ride no such Fourth-of-July procession!"
"Shut up!" murmured Van, with a gesture towards the room where Beth and
her maid were dining. He added aloud: "The chances are we'll find he's
a cheap Sunday-school picnic. Napoleon, you and Cayuse go out and
prepare his mind for work."
"Aye, aye," said Napoleon rising to go, "but I wish we had some
soothin' syrup, skipper."
He and the Indian were heard to depart, by Beth, sitting back in her
chair. She was greatly alarmed by all she had heard of vengeful
convicts and the vicious horse, and could eat no more for nervous dread.
"That horse has killed his man, and you know it," said Gettysburg in a
whisper that the girl distinctly overhead. "Boy, boy, let the Injun
ride him first."
"There, there, ease off," Van answered quietly. "You keep the women
entertained about the mill while Suvy and I are debating."
He gulped down a last drink of coffee, silenced the miner's further
remonstrances, and departed by way of the kitchen door.
Beth arose hurriedly and hastened forth, intent upon immediate
prevention, if possible, of any further ordeals undertaken in behalf of
herself. She was thoroughly frightened. A prescience of something
ominous impending seemed to grip her very heart. She glanced about,
helplessly, unfamiliar with the place. Van was nowhere in sight. She
started to run around the cabin when Gettysburg appeared in her path.
"Well, well," said he nervously, "now who'd a-thought you'd finished
eatin'?"
"Oh please," she said, "please go tell Mr. Van I'd rather he wouldn't
attempt to ride _any_ horse again to-day. Will you please go tell him
that?"
"You bet your patent leathers!" said Gettysburg. "You just go over and
globe-trot the quartz-mill while I'm gone, and we'll fix things right
in a shake."
He strode off in haste. Beth watched him go. She made no move towards
the quartz-mill, which Gettysburg had indicated, over on the slope.
She soon grew restive, awaiting his return. Elsa came out and sat
down. The old miner failed to reappear.
At length, unable to endure any longer her feeling of alarm and
suspense, Beth resolutely followed where Gettysburg had gone, and soon
came in sight of the stable and high corral. Then her heart struck a
blow of excitement in her breast, and her knees began to weaken beneath
her.
CHAPTER VI
THE BATTLE
Too late to interfere in the struggle about to be enacted, the girl
stood rigidly beside a great red pine tree, fixing her gaze upon Van,
on whose heels, as he walked, jingled a glinting pair of spurs.
From the small corral he was leading forth as handsome an animal as
Beth had ever seen, already saddled, bridled--and blindfolded. The
horse was a chestnut, magnificently sculptured and muscled. He was of
medium size, and as trim and hard as a nail. His coat fairly glistened
in the sun.
Despite his beauty there was something about him that betokened menace.
It was not altogether that the men all stood away--all save Van--nor
yet that the need for a blindfold argued danger in his composition.
There was something acutely disquieting in the backward folding of his
ears, the quiver of his sinews, the reluctant manner of his stepping.
Beth did not and could not know that an "outlaw" is a horse so utterly
abandoned to ways of broncho crime and equine deviltry that no man is
able to break him--that having conquered man after man, perhaps even
with fatal results to his riders, he has become absolutely depraved and
impossible of submission. She only knew that her heart was beating
rapidly, painfully, that her breath came in gasps, that her whole
nervous system was involved in some manner of anguish. She saw the
Chinese cook run past to witness the game, but all her faculties were
focused on the man and horse--both sinister, tense, and grim.
Van had not turned in Beth's direction. He was wholly unaware of her
presence. He halted when the horse was well out towards the center of
the open, and the outlaw braced awkwardly, as if to receive an attack.
With the bridle reins held in his hand at the pommel of the saddle, Van
stood for a moment by the chestnut's side, then, with incredible
celerity of movement, suddenly placed his foot in the stirrup and was
up and well seated before the blinded pony could have moved.
Nothing happened. No one made a sound. No one, apparently, save Beth,
had expected anything to happen. She felt a rush of relief--that came
prematurely.
Van now leaned forward, as the horse remained stiffly braced, and
slipping the blindfold from the pony's eyes, sat back in the saddle
alertly.
Even then the chestnut did not move. He had gone through this ordeal
many times before. He had often been mounted--but not for long at a
time. He had even been exhausted by a stubborn "broncho buster"--some
hardy human burr who could ride a crazy comet--but always he had won in
the end. In a word he had earned his sobriquet, which in broncho-land
is never lightly bestowed.
Van was not in the least deceived. However, he was eager for the
conflict to begin. He had no time to waste. He snatched off his hat,
let out a wild, shrill yell, dug with his spurs and struck the animal a
resounding slap on the flank, that, like a fulminate, suddenly
detonated the pent-up explosives in the beast.
He "lit into" bucking of astounding violence with the quickness of
dynamite.
It was terrific. For a moment Beth saw nothing but a mad grotesquerie
of horse and man, almost ludicrously unnatural, and crazed with
eccentric motion.
The horse shot up in the air like a loose, distorted piece of statuary,
blown from its pedestal by some gigantic disturbance. He appeared to
buckle in his mid-air leap like a bended thing of metal, then dropped
to the earth, stiff-legged as an iron image, to bound up again with mad
and furious gyrations that seemed to the girl to twist both horse and
rider into one live mass of incongruity,
He struck like a ruin, falling from the sky, went up again with
demon-like activity, once more descended--once more hurtled wildly
aloft--and repeated this maneuver with a swiftness utterly bewildering.
Had some diabolical wind, together with a huge, volcanic force, taken
insane possession of the animal, to fire him skyward, whirl him about,
thrash him down viciously and fling him up again, time after time, he
could not have churned with greater violence.
He never came down in the same place twice, but he always came down
stiff-legged. The jolt was sickening. All about, in a narrow,
earth-cut circle he bucked, beginning to grunt and warm to his work and
hence to increase the deviltry and malice of his actions.
Van had yelled but that once. He saw nothing, knew nothing, save a
dizzy world, abruptly gone crazy about him.
To Beth it seemed as if the horror would never have an end. One
glimpse she had of Van's white face, but nothing could it tell of his
strength or the lack thereof. She felt she must look and look till he
was killed. There could be no other issue, she was sure. And for
herself there could be no escape from the awful fascination of the
merciless brute, inflicting this torture on the man.
It did end, however, rather unexpectedly--that particular phase of the
conflict. The horse grew weary of the effort, made in vain, to
dislodge the stubborn torment on his back. He changed the program with
the deadliest of all a broncho's tricks.
Pausing for the briefest part of a second, while Van must certainly
have been reeling with hideous motion and jolt, the chestnut quickly
reared on high, to drop himself clean over backwards. It was thus that
once he had crushed the life from a rider.
"Oh!" screamed Both, and she sank beside the tree.
The men all yelled. They were furious and afraid.
With hoofs wildly flaying the air, while he loomed tall and unreal in
such an attitude, the broncho hung for a moment in mid-poise, then
dropped over sheer--as if to be shattered into fragments.
But a mass of the bronze-like group was detached, and fell to one side,
on its thigh. It was Van. He had seen what was coming in time.
Instantly up, as the brute rolled quickly to arise, he leaped in the
saddle, the horn of which had snapped, and he and the chestnut came
erect together, as if miraculously the equestrian group had been
restored.
"Yi! Yi!" he yelled, like the madman he was--mad with the heat of the
fight--and he dug in his spurs with vicious might.
Back to it wildly, with fury increased, the broncho leaped responsively.
Here, there, all the field over, the demon thrashed, catapulting
incredibly. He tried new tricks, invented new volcanics of motion,
developed new whirlwinds of violence.
Once more, then, as he had on the first occasion, the beast reared up
and fell backward to the earth. Once more Van dropped away from his
bulk and caught him before he could rise. This time, however, he did
not immediately mount--and the men went running to his side.
"Fer God's sake, boy, let me kill the brute!" cried Gettysburg taking
up a club.
"I'll shoot him! I'll shoot him! I'll shoot him!" said Napoleon
wildly, but without any weapon in his hands.
Beth beheld and heard it all. She was once more standing rigidly by
her tree, unable to move or speak. She wished to run to Van as the men
had run, but not to slay the broncho--only to beg the horseman not to
mount again.
She saw him push the men away and stand like the broncho's guard. His
face was streaked with blood--his blood--jolted alike from his mouth
and nose by the shocks to which he had been subjected.
"Let the horse alone!" he commanded roughly. "Good stuff in this
broncho--somewhere. Get me a bottle of water, right away--a big
one--get it full."
His partners started at once to raise objections. The Indian stood by
stolidly looking on.
"You can't go no further. Van, you can't----" started Gettysburg.
"Sominagot! Una ma, hong oy! Una ca see fut!" said the Chinese-cook,
swearing vehemently in the language likeliest to count, and he ran at
once towards the kitchen.
Van was replacing the blindfold on the broncho's eyes. The animal was
panting, sweating, quivering in every muscle. His ears went backward
and forward rapidly. The blindfold shut out a wild, unreasoning
challenge and defiance that burned like a torch in his eyes.
Algy came running with a big bottle, filled and corked.
"Fer God's sake, leave me kill him!" Gettysburg was repeating
automatically. "Van, if you ain't got no respect fer yourself, ain't
you got none left fer us old doggone cusses?"
"Give me the bottle, Algy," Van replied. "You're the only game sport
on the ranch."
Still he did not discover Beth. His attentions were engrossed by the
horse. He was dizzy, dazed, but a dogged master still of his forces.
Up he mounted to the saddle again, the bottle held firmly in his grasp.
"Slip off the blinder," he said to his friends, and Algy it was who
obeyed.
"Damn you, now you buck!" cried Van wildly, and his heels ignited the
volcano.
For five solid minutes the broncho redoubled his scheme of demoniac
fury. Then he poised, let out a shrill scream of challenge, and
abruptly raised to repeat the backward fall.
Up, up he went, an ungainly sight, and then--the heavens split in twain.
He was only well lifted from the earth when, with a thunderous,
terrible blow, Van crashed the bottle downward, fairly between his
ears, and burst it on his skull.
The weapon was shattered with a frightening thud. Red pieces of glass
and streaming water poured in a cataract down across the broncho's eyes
as if very doom itself had suddenly cracked. A cataclysm could not
have been more horrible. An indescribable fright and awe overwhelmed
the brutish mind as with a cloud of lead.
Down swiftly he dropped to his proper position, perhaps with a fear
that his crown was gaping open from impact with the sky. He was
stunned by the blow upon his brain, and weakened in every fiber. He
started to run, in terror of the thing, and the being still solid in
the saddle. Wildly he went around the cove, in the panic of utter
defeat.
The men began to cheer, their voices choked and hoarse. Van rode now
as fate might ride the very devil. He spurred the horse to furious,
exhausting speed, guiding him wildly around the mountain theater.
Again and again they circled the grassy arena, till foam and lather
whitened the broncho's flank, chest, and mouth, and his nostril burned
red as living flame.
When at last the animal, weary and undone, would have sobered down to a
trot or walk, Van forced him anew to crazy speed. At least five miles
he drove him thus, till the broncho's sides, like the rider's face,
were red with blood mingled with sweat.
Beth, at the climax, had gone down suddenly, leaning against the tree.
She had not fainted, but was far too weak to stand. Her eyes only
moved. She watched the two, that seemed welded into one, go racing
madly against fatigue.
At last she beheld the look of the conquered--the utter surrender of
the broken and subdued--gleam dully from the wilted pony's eyes. She
pitied the animal she had feared and hated but a few brief moments
before. She began to think that the man was perhaps the brute, after
all, to ride the exhausted creature thus without a sign of mercy.
She rose to her feet as the two came at last to a halt, master and
servant, conquered and conqueror, man and quivering beast.
Then Van got down, and her heart, that had pitied the horse, welled
with deeper feeling for the rider. She had never in her life seen a
face so drawn, so utterly haggard beneath a mask of red as that
presented by the horseman.
Van nearly fell, but would not fall, and instead stood trembling, his
arm by natural inclination now circling the neck of the pony.
"Well, Suvy," he said not ungently, "we gave each other hell.
Hereafter we're going to be friends."
Beth heard him. She also saw the chestnut turn and regard the man with
a look of appeal and dumb questioning in his eyes that choked her--with
joy and compassion together. She someway knew that this man and horse
would be comrades while they lived.
Half an hour afterward as she, Van, and Elsa rode forward as before,
she saw the man in affection pat the broncho on the neck. And the
horse pricked his ears in a newfound gladness in service and friendship
that his nature could not yet comprehend.
CHAPTER VII
AN EXCHANGE OF QUESTIONS
Youth is elastic, and Van was young. An hour of quiet riding restored
him astoundingly. He bore no signs of fatigue that Beth could detect
upon his face. Once more, as he had in the morning, he was riding ahead
in the trail, apparently all but oblivious of the two anxious women in
his charge.
They had wound far downward through a canyon, and now at length were
emerging on a sagebrush slope that lowered to the valley. Van halted for
Beth to ride to his side, and onward they continued together.
"I suppose you have friends to whom you are going in Goldite," he said,
"--or at least there's someone you know."
"Yes," she answered, "my brother."
Van looked at her in his quizzical way, observing:
"I don't believe I know him."
Her glance was almost one of laughter.
"Why, how can you tell? You don't even know his name." She paused, then
added quietly: "It's Glenmore Kent." She felt he had a right to know not
only her brother's name, but also her own, if only for what he had done.
"You might, of course, know him after all," she concluded. "He has quite
a number of acquaintances."
"Kent," said Van. To himself it was "Beth Kent" he was saying. "No,
guess not. No such luck, but I hope you'll find him in the camp."
"Do you think I may not?" She was just a trifle startled by the
possibility.
He was grave for once.
"Men come and go in a mining town, where everyone's unduly excited. If
he isn't on deck, then have you no one else? Have you any alternative
plan?"
"Why, no," she confessed, her alarm increasing, "not unless Mr. Bostwick
has arrived and arranged our accommodations."
"I wouldn't count on Searle," drawled Van significantly. "He may have to
walk."
"Not across the awful desert?"
"If he goes around he'll be longer."
"Why--but----" she gasped, "there is nothing to eat--no water--there
isn't anything on the desert, is there?--anywhere?"
He was looking intently into the deep brown depths of her eyes as he
answered:
"There's so little to eat that the chipmunks have to fetch in their
lunches."
Beth continued to gaze upon him. If she noted the lights of laughter
lying soberly subdued in his eyes, she also discerned something more,
that affected her oddly. Despite the horseman's treatment of her
escort--a treatment she confessed he had partially deserved--and despite
the lightness of his speeches, she felt certain of the depth of his
nature, convinced of the genuine earnestness of his purposes--the honesty
and worth of his friendship.
She knew she was tremendously indebted for all he had done and was doing,
but aside from all that, in her heart of hearts she admired bravery,
courage, and a dash of boldness more than anything else in the world.
She was not yet certain, however, whether the man at her side was brave
or merely reckless, courageous, or indifferent to danger, bold or merely
audacious. She knew nothing about him whatsoever, nothing except he must
be tired, lame, and bruised from exertions undertaken in her behalf. It
had been a long, long day. She felt as if they had known each other
always--and had always been friends.
Her mind went back to the morning as if to an era of the past. The
thought of the convicts who had captured Bostwick aroused new
apprehensions in her breast, though not for the man with the car.
Someway Searle seemed strangely far away and dimmed in her regard. She
was thinking of what she had overheard, back there at the Monte Cristo
mine.
"This has been a trying day," she said, apparently ignoring Van's last
observation. "You have taken a great deal of trouble for--for us--and we
appreciate it fully."
Van said gravely: "Taking trouble is the only fun I have."
"You laugh at everything," she answered, "but isn't it really a serious
thing--a menace to everyone--having those convicts out of prison?"
"It isn't going to be a knitting-bee, rounding them up," Van admitted.
"And meantime they're going to be exacting of everyone they meet."
She looked at him half seriously, but altogether brightly.
"And what if they chance to meet you?"
"Oh, we'd exchange courtesies, I reckon."
She had no intention of confessing how much she had overheard, but she
was tremendously interested--almost fearful for the man's safety, she
hardly dared ask herself why. She approached her subject artfully.
"Do you know them, then?"
"Well, yes, the leader--slightly," he answered. "I sent him up for
murder, stealing cattle, and robbing sluices. He was too annoying to
have around."
"Oh! Then won't he feel ugly, resentful?" she inquired earnestly.
"Won't he try to hunt you up--and pay you back?"
Van regarded her calmly.
"He told me to expect my pay--if ever he escaped--and he's doubtless got
his check-book along."
"His check-book?"
"Colt--forty-four," Van drawled by way of explanation.
She turned a trifle pale.
"He'd shoot you on sight?"
"If he sighted me first."
Her breath came hard. She realized that the quiet-seeming horseman at
her side would kill a fellow-being--this convict, at least--as readily as
he might destroy a snake.
"How long ago did you put him in jail?" she inquired.
"Four years ago this summer."
"Have you always lived here--out West?"
"I've lived every day I've been here," he answered evasively. "Do I look
like a native?"
She laughed. "Oh, I don't know. We came here straight from New York, a
week ago, Elsa and I. Mr. Bostwick joined us two days later. I really
know nothing of the country at all."
"New York," he said, and relapsed into silent meditation. How far away
seemed old New Amsterdam! How long seemed the brief six years since he
had started forth with his youthful health, his strength, determination,
boyish dreams, and small inheritance to build up a fortune in the West!
What a mixture of sunshine and failure it had been! What glittering
hopes had lured him hither and yon in the mountains, where each great
gateway of adventure had charged its heavy toll!
He had lost practically all of his money; he had gained his all of
manhood. He had suffered privation and hardship; he had known the vast
comfort of friends--true friends, as certain as the very heart in his
breast to serve him to the end.
Like a panoramic dream he beheld a swift procession of mine-and-cattle
scenes troop past for swift review. He lived again whole months of
nights spent out alone beneath the sky, with the snow and the wind hurled
down upon him from a merciless firmament of bleakness. Once more he
stumbled blindly forward in the desert--he and Gettysburg--perishing for
water, giving up their liquid souls to the horribly naked and insatiate
sun. Again he toiled in the shaft of a mine till his back felt like a
crackly thing of glass with each aching fissure going deeper.
Once more the gold goddess beckoned with her smile, and fortune was
there, almost in reach--the fortune that he and his partners had sought
so doggedly, so patiently--the fortune for which they had starved and
delved and suffered--only to see it vanish in the air as the sunshine
will vanish from a peak.
Old hopes, like ghosts, went skulking by, vain charlatans, ashamed. But
friendships stood about in every scene--bright presences that cast a
roseate glow on all the tribulations of his life. And it seemed as if a
failure here was half a failure only, after all. It had not robbed him
either of his youth, his strength, or a certain boyish credulity and
trust in all his kind. He still believed he should win his golden goal,
and he loved the land that had tried him.
His last, his biggest venture, the Monte Cristo mine was, however,
gone--everything sold to meet the company debts. Nevertheless, he had
once more purchased a claim, with all but his very last dollar in the
world, and he and his partners would soon be on the ground, assaulting
the stubborn adamant with powder, pick, and drill, in the fever of the
miner's ceaseless dream.
To-day, as he rode beside the girl, he wondered at it all--why he had
labored so persistently. The faint, far-off shadow of a sweetheart, long
since left behind, failed to supply him a motive. She had grown
impatient, listened to a suitor more tangible than Van's absent self, and
so, blamelessly, had faded from his scheme of hopes, leaving no more than
a fragrance in his thoughts, with certainly no bitterness or anger.
"Old New York," he repeated, at the end of his reverie, and meeting once
more the steady brown eyes of the girl with whom the fates had thrown
him, he fetched up promptly with the present.
"How long has your brother been out here in Goldite?"
"About a month," she answered. "He's been in the West for nearly a year,
and wrote Mr. Bostwick to come."
"Mr. Bostwick is doubtless a very particular friend of your family."
"Why, yes, he's my---- That is, he _was_--he always has been a very
particular friend--for several years," she faltered suddenly turning red.
"We haven't any family, Glen and I--and he's my half brother only--but
we're just like chums---and that was why I wanted to come. I expect to
surprise him. He doesn't know I'm here."
Van was silent and she presently added:
"I hope you and Glen will be friends. I know how much he'll wish to
thank you."
He looked at her gravely.
"I hope he won't. It's up to me to thank him."
They had come to a road at the level of the valley--a desert valley,
treeless, grassless, gray, and desolate. The sun was rapidly nearing the
rim of the mountains, as if to escape pursuit of a monstrous bank of
clouds.
Van spurred his chestnut to a gallop, and the horses bearing the women
responded with no further need of urging.
CHAPTER VIII
A NIGHT'S EXPENSES
From Karrish to Goldite by the road was twenty-seven miles. There were
fifteen mile of bottles by the way--all of them empty. A blind man
with a nose for glass could have smelled out the trail unerringly
across that desert stretch. Karrish was the nearest town for a very
great distance around.
Over the road innumerable caravans were passing. Everything was
rushing to Goldite. There were horsemen, hurried persons on foot, men
in carriages and autos, twenty-horse freight teams, and men on tiny
burros. Nearly all were shedding bottles as they went. A waterless
land is not necessarily devoid of all manner of moisture.
A dozen of the slowly laboring freight outfits were passed by Van and
his two companions. What engines of toil they represented! The ten
pairs of sweating, straining animals seemed almost like some giant
caterpillar, harnessed to a burden on wheels. They always dragged
three wagons, two of which were huge gray hulks, incredibly heavy with
giant-powder, canned goods, bottled goods, picks, shovels, bedding,
hay, great mining machinery, and house-hold articles. These wagons
were hitched entrain. The third wagon, termed a "trailer," was small
and loaded merely with provisions for the teamster and the team. The
whole thing, from end to end, beat up a stifling cloud of dust.
The sun went down while Beth, Van, and Elsa were still five miles from
their goal. They rode as rapidly as possible. The horses, however,
were jaded, and the way was slightly up grade. The twilight was brief.
It descended abruptly from the western bank of clouds, by now as thick
and dark as mud. Afar off shone the first faint light of the gold-camp
to which the three were riding. This glimmering ray was two miles out
from the center of town. Goldite was spread in a circle four miles
wide, and the most of it was isolated tents.
The darkness shut down like a pall. A vivid, vicious bolt of
lightning--a fiery serpent, overcharged with might--struck down upon
the mountain tops, pouring liquid flame upon the rocks. A sweeping
gust of wind came raging down upon the town, hurling dust and gravel on
the travelers.
Van rode ahead like a spirit of the storm. He knew the need for haste.
Beth simply let her pony go. She was cramped and far too wearied for
effort.
They were galloping now past the outskirts of the camp, the many
scattered tents of the men who were living on their claims. All the
world was a land of claims, staked off with tall white posts, like
ghosts in the vanishing light. Ahead, a multitude of lights had
suddenly broken on the travelers' vision, like a nearby constellation
of stars.
They rode into all of it, blazing lights, eager crowds upon the
streets, noise of atrocious music from the brilliant saloons, and rush
of wind and dust, not a minute too soon. They had barely alighted and
surrendered their horses to a friend of Van's when the rain from the
hilltops swooped upon the camp in a fury that seemed like an elemental
threat to sweep all the place, with its follies, hopes, and woes, its
excitements, lawlessness, and struggles, from the face of the barren
desert world.
Beth and her maid were lame and numb. Van could only hustle them
inside a grocery-and-hardware store to save them from a drenching. The
store was separated from a gambling-hall saloon by the flimsiest board
partition. Odors of alcohol, confusion of voices, and calls of a
gamester came unimpeded to the women's senses, together with some
mighty bad singing, accompanied lustily by strains and groans pounded
from a ghastly piano.
"Sit down," said Van, inverting a tub at the feet of the wondering
women. "I'll see if I can rustle up your brother."
He went out in the rain, dived impartially into the first of the
crowded saloons, was somewhat hilariously greeted by a score of
convivial fellows, found no one who knew of young Glen Kent, and
proceeded on to the next.
The horseman was well and favorably known in all directions. He was
eagerly cornered wheresoever he appeared by a lot of fellows who were
friends to little purpose, in an actual test. However, he clung to his
mission with commendable tenacity of purpose, and kept upon his way.
Thus he discovered at length, when he visited the bank--an institution
that rarely closed before ten o'clock in the evening--that Kent had
been gone for the past two weeks, no one knew where, but somewhere out
south, with a party.
There was nothing to do after that but to look for fit apartments for
the gently reared girl and her maid. Hunting a needle in the ocean
would have been a somewhat similar task. Van went at once at the
business, with his customary spirit. He was presently informed there
was nothing resembling a room or a bed to be had in all the place. A
hundred men would walk the streets or sleep in chairs that night. The
one apartment suitable for two lone women to occupy had been secured
the previous day by "Plunger" Trask, an Eastern young man who would bet
that grass was not green.
Van searched for Trask and found him "cashing in" a lot of assorted
chips, representing his winnings at a faro game at which he had been
"bucking."
"Hello, there, Van," he said familiarly as the horseman touched him on
the shoulder. "Come and have a drink."
"My teeth are floating now from drink," said Van, "but I'll take
something else if you say so. I want your apartments for the night."
"Say, wire me!" answered the plunger. "That's the cutest little bunch
of nerve I ever saw off the Bowery! How much money have you got in
your clothes?"
"About forty-five dollars," said Van. "Is it good?"
"Not as a price, but O.K. in a flip," said Trask, with an itch for
schemes of chance. "I'll throw you the dice, my room against your
forty-five--and the devil take your luck if you win!"
Van agreed. They borrowed a box of dice, threw three times apiece--and
the horseman paid over his money.
"There you are, old man," said the plunger cheerfully. "Satisfied, I
hope."
"Not quite," said Van. "I'll owe you forty-five more and throw you
again."
"Right ho!" responded Trask. "Go as far as you like."
They shook again. Van lost as before. He borrowed again,
undiscouraged. For the third time they cast the little cubes of
uncertainty and this time Van actually won. The room was his to
dispose of as he pleased. It had cost him ninety dollars for the night.
In his pocket he had cautiously retained a little money--seven and
one-half dollars, to be accurate. He returned to Beth, informed her of
all he had discovered concerning her brother, took herself and Elsa to
dine in the camp's one presentable restaurant, paid nearly seven
dollars for the meal, and gave what remained to the waiter.
Then Beth, who had never in her life been so utterly exhausted,
resigned herself to Elsa's care, bade Van good-night, and left him
standing in the rain before the door, gallant, and smiling to the end.
CHAPTER IX
PROGRESS AND SALT
Goldite, by the light of day, presented a wonderful spectacle. It was
a mining camp positively crystallizing into being before the very eyes
of all beholders. It was nearly all tents and canvas structures--a
heterogeneous mixture of incompleteness and modernity to which the
telegraph wires had already been strung from the outside world. It had
no fair supply of water, but it did have a newspaper, issued once a
week.
A dozen new buildings, flimsy, cheap affairs, were growing like
toadstools, day and night. Several brick buildings, and shacks of mud,
were rising side by side. Everywhere the scene was one of crowds,
activity, and hurry. Thousands of men were in the one straight street,
a roughly dressed, excited throng, gold-bitten, eager, and open-handed.
Hundreds of mules and horses, a few bewildered cows, herds of great
wagons, buggies, heaps of household goods, and trunks, with
fortifications of baled hay and grain, were crowded into two great
corrals, where dusty teamsters hastened hotly about, amidst heaps of
dusty harness, sacks of precious ore and the feed troughs for the
beasts.
Beth had slept profoundly, despite the all-night plague of noises,
penetrating vividly through the shell-like walls of the house. She was
out with Elsa at an early hour, amazingly refreshed and absorbingly
interested in all she heard and saw. The sky was clear, but a chill
wind blew down from the mountains, flapping canvas walls in all
directions.
The building wherein the women had rested was a wooden lodging house,
set barely back from the one business street of the camp. Next door
was a small, squat domicile constructed of bottles and mud. The
bottles were laid in the "mortar" with their ends protruding. Near by,
at the rear of a prosperous saloon, was a pyramid of empty bottles,
fully ten feet high--enough to build a little church.
Drawn onward by the novelty of all the scene, Beth crossed the main
street--already teeming with horses, wagons, and men--and proceeded
over towards a barren hill, followed demurely by her maid. The hill
was like a torn-up battlefield, trenched, and piled with earthworks of
defense, for man the impetuous had already flung up great gray dumps of
rock, broken and wrenched from the bulk of the slope, where he quested
for gleaming yellow metal. He had ripped out the adamant--the matrix
of the gold--for as far as Beth could see. Like ant-heaps of
tremendous dimensions stood these monuments of toil--rock-writings,
telling of the heat and desire, the madness of man to be rich.
The world about was one of rocks and treeless ridges, spewed from some
vast volcanic forge of ages past. It was all a hard, gray, adamantine
world, unlovely and severe--a huge old gold furnace, minus heat or
fire, lying neglected in a universe of mountains that might have been a
workshop in the ancient days when Titans wrought their arts upon the
earth.
Beth gazed upon it all in wonder not unmingled with awe. What a place
it was for man to live and wage his puny battles! Yet the fever of all
of it, rising in her veins, made her eager already to partake of the
dream, the excitement that made mere gold-slaves of the men who had
come here compelling this forbidding place to yield up some measure of
comfort and become in a manner their home.
Van, in the meanwhile, having spent the time till midnight on his feet,
and the small hours asleep on a bale of hay, was early abroad, engaged
in various directions. He first proceeded to the largest general store
in the camp and ordered a generous bill of supplies to be sent to his
newest claim. Next he arranged with a friendly teamster for the prompt
return of the two borrowed horses on which Beth and her maid had come
to camp. Then, on his way to an assayer's office, where samples of
rock from the claim in question had been left for the test of fire, he
encountered a homely, little, dried-up woman who was scooting about
from store to store with astonishing celerity of motion.
"Tottering angels!" said he. "Mrs. Dick!"
"Hello--just a minute," said the lively little woman, and she dived
inside the newest building and was out almost immediately with a great
sack of plunder that she jerked about with most diverting energy.
"Here, fetch this down to the house," she demanded imperiously.
"What's the good of my finding you here in Goldite if you don't do
nothing for your country?"
Van shouldered the sack.
"What are you doing here anyhow?" said he, "--up before breakfast and
busy as a hen scratching for one chicken."
"Come on," she answered, starting briskly towards a new white building,
off the main thoroughfare, eastward. "I live here--start my
boarding-house today. I'm going to get rich. Every room's furnished
and every bed wanted as fast as I can make 'em up. Have you had your
breakfast?"
"Say, you're my Indian," answered Van. "I've got you two customers
already. You've got to take them in and give them your best if you
turn someone else inside out to do it."
Mrs. Dick paused suddenly.
"Bronson Van Buren! You're stuck on some woman at last!"
"At last?" said Van. "Haven't I always been stuck after you?"
Mrs. Dick resumed her brisk locomotion.
"Snakes alive!" she concluded explosively. "She's respectable, of
course? But you said two. Now see here, Van, no Mormon games with me!"
"Her _maid_--it's her maid that's with her," Van explained. "Don't
jump down my throat till I grease it."
"Her maid!" Mrs. Dick said no more as to that. The way she said it
was enough. They had come to the door of her newly finished house, a
clean, home-like place from which a fragrance of preparing breakfast
flowed like a ravishing nectar. "Where are they now?" she demanded
impatiently. "Wherever they are it ain't fit for a horse! Why don't
you go and fetch 'em?"
Van put the bag inside the door, then his hands on Mrs. Dick's
shoulders.
"I'll bet your mother was a little red firecracker and your father a
bottle of seltzer," he said. Then off he went for Beth.
She was not, of course, at "home" when he arrived at the place he had
found the previous evening. Disturbed for a moment by her absence, he
presently discerned her, off there westward on the hill from which she
was making a survey of the camp.
Three minutes after he was climbing up the slope and she turned and
looked downward upon him.
"By heavens!" he said beneath his breath, "--what beauty!"
The breeze was molding her dress upon her rounded form till she seemed
like the statue of a goddess--a goddess of freedom, loveliness, and
joy, sculptured in the living flesh--a figure vibrant with glowing
health and youth, startlingly set in the desert's gray austerity. With
the sunlight flinging its gold and riches upon her, what a marvel of
color she presented!--such creamy white and changing rose-tints in her
cheeks--such a wonderful brown in her hair and eyes--such crimson of
lips that parted in a smile over even little jewels of teeth! And she
smiled on the horseman, tall, and active, coming to find her on the
hill.
"Good morning!" she cried. "Oh, isn't it wonderful--so big, and bare,
and _clean_!"
Van smiled.
"It's a hungry-looking country to me--looks as if it has eaten all the
trees. If it makes you think of breakfast, or just plain coffee and
rolls, I've found a place I hope you'll like, with a friend I didn't
know was here."
"You are very kind, I'm sure," she said. "I'm afraid we're a great
deal of trouble."
"That's what women were made for," he answered her frankly, a bright,
dancing light in his eyes. "They couldn't help it if they would, and I
guess they wouldn't if they could."
"Oh, indeed?" She shot him a quick glance, half a challenge. "I
_guess_ if you don't mind we won't go to the place you've found, for
breakfast, this morning."
"You'd better guess again," he answered, and taking her arm, in a
masterful way that bereft her of the power of speech or resistance, he
marched her briskly down the slope and straight towards Mrs. Dick's.
"Thank your stars you've struck a place like this," he said. "If you
don't I'll have to thank them for you."
"Perhaps I ought to thank you first," she ventured smilingly. It would
have seemed absurd to resent his boyish ways.
"You may," he said, "when I get to be one of your stars."
"Oh, really? Why defer mere thanks _indefinitely_?"
"It won't be indefinitely, and besides, thanks will keep--and breakfast
won't."
He entered the house, with Beth and her maid humbly trailing at his
heels. Mrs. Dick came bustling from the kitchen like a busy little
ant. Van introduced his charges briefly. Mrs. Dick shook hands with
them both.
"Well!" she said, "I like you after all! And it's lucky I do, for if I
didn't I don't know's I should take you or not, even if Van did say I
had to."
Van took her by the shoulders and shook her boyishly.
"You'd take a stick of dynamite and a house afire, both in one hand, if
I said so," he announced. "Now don't get hostile."
"Well--I s'pose I would," agreed Mrs. Dick. She added to Beth: "Ain't
he the dickens and all? Just regular brute strength. Come right
upstairs till I show you where you're put. I've turned off two men to
let you have the best room in the house."
Beth had to smile. She had never felt so helpless in her life--or so
amused. She followed Mrs. Dick obediently, finding the two-bed room
above to be a bright, new-smelling apartment of acceptable size and
situation. In answer to a score of rapid-fire questions on the part of
Mrs. Dick, she imparted as much as Van already knew concerning herself
and her quest.
Mrs. Dick became her friend forthwith, then hastened downstairs to the
kitchen. Van and Beth presently took breakfast together, while Elsa,
with a borrowed needle and thread, was busied with some minor repairing
of garments roughly used the day before. Other boarders and lodgers of
the house had already eaten and gone, to resume their swirl in the
maelstrom of the camp.
For a time the two thus left alone in the dining-room appeased their
appetites in silence. Van watched the face of the girl for a time and
finally spoke.
"I'll let you know whatever I hear about your brother, if there is any
more to hear. Meantime you'll have to remain here and wait."
She was silent for a moment, reflecting on, the situation.
"You took my suitcase away from Mr. Bostwick, you'll remember," she
said, "and left it where we got the horses."
"It will be here to-day," he answered. "I arranged for that with Dave."
"Oh. But of course you cannot tell when Mr. Bostwick may appear."
"His movements couldn't be arranged so conveniently, otherwise he
wouldn't appear at all."
She glanced at him, startled.
"Not come at all? But I need him! Besides, he's my---- I expect him
to go and find my brother. And the trunk checks are all in his
pocket--wait!--no they're not, they're in my suitcase after all."
"You're in luck," he assured her blandly, "for Searle has doubtless
lost all his pockets."
"Lost his pockets?" she echoed. "Perhaps you mean the convicts took
them--took his clothing--everything he had."
"Everything except his pleasant manner," Van agreed. "They have plenty
of that of their own."
She was lost for a moment in reflection.
"Poor Searle! Poor Mr. Bostwick!"
Van drank the last of his coffee.
"Was Searle the only man you knew in all New York?"
She colored. "Certainly not. Of course not. Why do you ask such a
question?"
"I was trying to understand the situation, but I give it up." He
looked in her eyes with mock gravity, and she colored.
She understood precisely what he meant--the situation between herself
and Bostwick, to whom, she feared, she had half confessed herself
engaged. She started three times to make a reply, but halted each
answer for a better.
"You don't like Mr. Bostwick," she finally observed.
Van told her gravely: "I like him like the old woman kept tavern."
She could not entirely repress a smile.
"And how did she keep it--the tavern?"
"Like hell," said Van. He rose to go, adding; "You like him about that
way yourself--since yesterday."
Her eyes had been sparkling, but now they snapped.
"Why--how can you speak so rudely? You know that isn't true! You know
I like--admire Mr. Bost---- You haven't any right to say a thing like
that--no matter what you may have done for me!"
She too had risen. She faced him glowingly.
He suddenly took both her hands and held them in a firm, warm clasp
from which there could be no escape.
"Beth," he said audaciously, "you are never going to marry that man."
She was struggling vainly to be free. Her face was crimson.
"Let me go!" she demanded. "Mr. Van--you let me go! I don't see how
you dare to say a thing like that. I don't know why----"
"You can't marry Searle," he interrupted, "because you are going to
marry me."
He raised her hands to his lips and kissed them both.
"Be back by and by," he added, and off he went, through the kitchen,
leaving Beth by the table speechless, burning and confused, with a
hundred wild emotions in her heart.
He continued out at the rear of the place, where little Mrs. Dick was
valiantly tugging at two large buckets of water. He relieved her of
the burden.
"Say, Priscilla," he drawled, "if a smoke-faced Easterner comes around
here while I'm gone, looking for--you know--Miss Kent, remember he
can't have a room in your house if he offers a million and walks on his
hands and prays in thirteen languages."
Little Mrs. Dick glanced up at him shrewdly.
"Have you got it as bad as that? Snakes alive! All right, I guess
I'll remember."
"Be good," said Van, and off he went to the assayer's shop for which he
had started before.
The assayer glanced up briefly. He was busy at a bucking-board, where,
with energetic application of a very heavy weight, on the end of a
handle, he was grinding up a lot of dusty ore.
"Greeting, Van," said he. "Come in."
Van shook his outstretched hand.
"I thought I'd like to see those results," he said, "--that rock I
fetched you last, remember? You thought you could finish the batch
last week. Gold rock from the 'See Saw' claim that I bought three
weeks ago."
"Yes, oh yes. Now what did I do with---- Finished 'em up and put 'em
away somewhere," said the assayer, dusting his hands and moving towards
his desk. "Such a lot of stuff's been coming in--here they are, I
reckon." He drew a half dozen small printed forms from a cavity in the
desk, glanced them over briefly and handed the lot to Van. "Nothing
doing. Pretty good rock for building purposes."
"Nothing doing?" echoed Van incredulously, staring at the assay records
which showed in merciless bluntness that six different samples of
reputed ore had proved to be absolutely worthless. "The samples you
assayed first showed from ten to one hundred and fifty dollars to the
ton, in gold."
"What's that got to do with this?" inquired the master of acids and
fire. "You don't mean to say----"
"Do with it, man? It all came out of the same identical prospect," Van
interrupted. "These were later samples than the others, that's all."
The assayer glanced over his shoulder at the hope-destroying slips.
"The 'See Saw' claim," he said perfunctorily. "You bought it, Van, who
from?"
"From Selwyn Briggs."
"Sorry," said the assayer briefly. "H'm! That Briggs!"
"You don't mean---- It couldn't have been salted on me!" Van declared.
"I took my own samples, broke down a new face purposely, sacked it all
myself--and sealed the sacks. No one touched those sacks till you
broke the seals in this office. He couldn't have salted me, Frank.
What possible chance----"
The assayer went to a shelf, took down a small canvas bag, glanced at a
mark that identified it as one in which samples of "See Saw" rock had
arrived for the former assay, and turned it inside out.
"Once in a while I've heard of a cute one squirting a sharp syringe
full of chloride of gold on worthless rock, through the meshes of the
canvas, even after the samples were sealed," he imparted quietly.
"This sack looks to me like some I've encountered before that were
pretty rich in gold. I'll assay the cloth if you like."
Van took the sack in his hand, examined it silently, then glanced as
before at his papers.
"Salted--by that lump of a Briggs!" His lip was curved in a mirthless
smile. "I guess I've got it in the neck all right. These last samples
tell the real story." He slapped the papers across his hand, then tore
them up in tiny bits and threw them on the floor."
"Sorry, old man," said the assayer, as before. "Hope you didn't pay
him much for the claim."
"Not much," said Van. "All I had--and some of it borrowed money."
The assayer puckered up his mouth.
"Briggs has skipped--gone East."
"I know. Well--all in a lifetime, I suppose. Pay you, Frank, when I
can."
"That's all right," his friend assured him. "Forget it if you like."
Van started off, but returned.
"Say, Frank," he said, "don't hawk this around. It's bad enough for me
to laugh at myself. I don't want the chorus joining in."
"I'm your clam," said Frank. "So long, and better luck!"
CHAPTER X
THE LAUGHING WATER CLAIM
A man who lives by uncertainties has a singular habit of mind. He is
ever lured forward by hopes and dreams that overlap each other as he
goes. While the scheme in hand is proving hopeless, day by day, he
grasps at another, just ahead, and draws himself onward towards the
gilded goal, forgetful of the trickery of all those other schemes
behind, that were equally bright in their day.
Van had relinquished all hold on the golden dream once dangled before
him by the Monte Cristo mine, to lay strong hands on the promise
vouchsafed by the "See Saw" claim which he had purchased. As he walked
away from the assayer's shop he felt his hands absolutely empty. For
the very first time in at least four years he had no blinding glitter
before his vision to entice him to feverish endeavor. He was a dreamer
with no dreams, a miner without a mine.
He felt chagrined, humiliated. After all his time spent here in the
world's most prodigious laboratory of minerals, he had purchased a
salted mine! A sharper man, that sad-faced, half-sick Selwyn Briggs,
had actually trimmed him like this!
Salted! And he was broke. Well, what was the next thing to do? He
thought of the fine large bill of goods, engaged for himself and
partners to take to the "See Saw" claim. It made him smile. But he
would not rescind the order--for a while. His partners, with his
worldly goods, the Chinese cook and all the household, save Cayuse,
would doubtless arrive by noon. He and they had to eat; they had to
live. Also they had to mine, for they knew nothing else by way of
occupation. They must somehow get hold of some sort of claim, and go
on with their round of hopes and toil. They had never been so utterly
bereft--so outcast by the goddess of fortune--since they had thrown
their lots together.
He dreaded the thought of meeting various acquaintances here in
camp--the friends to whom he had said he was going that day to the "See
Saw" property, far over the Mahogany range, near the Indian
reservation. He determined to go. Perhaps the shack and the
shaft-house on the claim, with the windlass and tools included by
Briggs in the bill of sale, might fetch a few odd dollars.
Slowly down the street he went to the hay-yard where his pony was
stabled. He met a water man, halting on his rounds at the front of a
neat canvas dwelling. The man had three large barrels on a wagon, each
full of muddy, brackish water. A long piece of hose was thrust into
one, its other end dangled out behind.
From the tent emerged a woman with her buckets. The water man placed
the hose-end to his mouth, applied a lusty suction, and the water came
gushing forth. He filled both receptacles, collected the price, and
then drove on to the next.
Sardonically Van reflected that even the fine little stream of water on
his claim, in a land where water was so terribly scarce, was absolutely
worthless as an asset. It was over a mountain ridge of such tremendous
height that it might as well have been in the forests of Maine.
Despite the utter hopelessness of his present situation, his spirits
were not depressed. Gettysburg, he reflected, was a genius for bumping
into queer old prospectors--relics of the days of forty-nine, still
eagerly pursuing their _ignis fatuous_ of gold--and from some such
desert wanderer he would doubtless soon pick up a claim. There was
nothing like putting Gettysburg upon the scent.
Van wrote a note to his partners.
"Dear Fellow Mourners:
"Have just discovered a joke. I was salted on the 'See Saw' property.
Our pipe dream is defunct. Have gone over to lay out remains. If you
find any oldtimers who have just discovered some lost bonanza, take
them into camp. Don't get drunk, get busy. Be back a little after
noon."
This he left with the hay-yard man where his partners would stop when
they arrived. Mounted on Suvy, his outlaw of the day before, he rode
from Goldite joyously. After all, what was the odds? He had been no
better off than now at least a hundred times. At the worst he still
had his partners and his horse, a breakfast aboard, and a mountain
ahead to climb.
Indeed, at the light of friendship in his broncho's eyes, as well as at
the pony's neigh of welcome, back there at the yard, he had felt a
boundless pleasure in his veins. He patted the chestnut's neck, in his
rough, brusque way of companionship, and the horse fairly quivered with
pleasure.
For nearly two hours the willing animal went zig-zagging up the rocky
slopes. The day was warming; the sun was a naked disk of fire. It was
hard climbing. Van had chosen the shorter, steeper way across the
range. From time to time, where the barren ascent was exceptionally
severe, he swung from the saddle and led the broncho on, to mount
further up as before.
Thus they came in time to a zone of change, over one of the ridges, a
region where rocks and ugliness gave way to a growth of brush and
stunted trees. These were the outposts, ragged, dwarfed, and warped,
of a finer growth beyond.
Fifteen miles away, down between the hills, flowed a tortuous stream,
by courtesy called a river. It sometimes rose in a turgid flood, but
more often it sank and delivered up its ghost to such an extent that a
man could have held it in his hat. Nevertheless some greenery
flourished on its banks.
When Van at last could oversee the vast, unpeopled lands of the Piute
Indian reservation, near the boundary of which his salted claim had
been staked, he had only a mile or so to ride, and all the way down
hill.
He came to the property by eleven o'clock of the morning. He looked
about reflectively. The rough board cabin and the rougher shaft-house
were scarcely worth knocking down for lumber. There, on the big,
barren dike, were several tunnels and prospects, in addition to the
shaft, all "workings" that Briggs had opened up in his labors on the
ledge. They were mere yawning mockeries of mining, but at least had
served a charlatan's requirements. A few tools lay about, abominably
neglected.
The location was rather attractive, on the whole. The clear stream of
water had coaxed a few quaking aspens and alders into being, among the
stunted evergreens. Grass lay greenly along the bank, a charming
relief to the eye. The sandy soil was almost level in the narrow cove,
which was snugly surrounded by hills, except at the lower extremity,
where the brook tumbled down a wide ravine.
Van, on his horse, gazed over towards the Indian reservation idly. How
vain, in all likelihood, were the wonderful tales of gold ledges lying
within its prohibited borders. What a madness was brewing in the camps
all around as the day for the reservation opening rapidly approached!
How they would swarm across its hills and valleys--those gold-seeking
men! What a scramble it would be, and all for--what?
There were tales in plenty of men who had secretly prospected here on
this forbidden land, and marked down wonderful treasures. Van looked
at his salted possessions. What a chance for an orgie of salting the
reservation claims would afford!
With his pony finally secured to a tree near at hand, the horseman
walked slowly about. A gold pan lay rusting, half filled with rock and
dirt, by a bench before the cabin. It was well worth cleaning and
taking away, together with some of the picks, drills, and hammers.
He carried it over to the brook. There he knelt and washed it out,
only to find it far more rusted than it had at first appeared. He
scooped it full of the nearest gravel and scoured it roughly with his
hands. Three times he repeated this process, washing it out in the
creek.
Ready to rise with it, cleaned at last, he caught up a shallow film of
water, flirted it about with a rotary motion, to sluice out the last
bit of stubborn dross, then paused to stare in unbelief at a few bright
particles down at the edge, washed free of all the gravel.
Incredulous and not in the least excited, he drew a small glass from
has pocket and held it on the specks. There could be no doubt of their
nature. They were gold.
Interested, but doubting the importance of his find, Van pawed up half
a pan full of gravel and dipped the receptacle full of water. Then
stirring the sand and stuff with his hand, he panned it carefully.
The result at the end was such a string of colors as he had never
washed in all his wide experience. To make a superficial prospect of
the claim he proceeded to pan from a dozen different places in the
cove, and in every instance got an exceptional showing of coarse,
yellow gold, with which the gravel abounded.
He knelt motionless at last, beside the stream, singularly unperturbed,
despite the importance of his find. Briggs had slipped up, absolutely,
on the biggest thing in many miles around, by salting and selling a
quartz claim here to a man with a modest sum of money.
The cove was a placer claim, rich as mud in gold, and with everything
needed at hand.
Then and there the name of the property was changed from the "See Saw"
to the "Laughing Water" claim.
CHAPTER XI
ALGY STIRS UP TROUBLE
Bostwick arrived in Goldite at three in the afternoon, dressed in
prison clothes. He came on a freight wagon, the deliberate locomotion
of which had provided ample time for his wrath to accumulate and
simmer. His car was forty miles away, empty of gasolene, stripped of
all useful accessories, and abandoned where the convicts had compelled
him to drive them in their flight.
A blacker face than his appeared, with anger and a stubble of beard
upon it, could not have been readily discovered. His story had easily
outstripped him, and duly amused the camp, so that now, as he rode
along the busy street, in a stream of lesser vehicles, autos, and dusty
horsemen, arriving by two confluent roads, he was angered more and more
by the grins and ribald pleasantries bestowed by the throngs in the
road.
To complicate matters already sufficiently aggravating, Gettysburg,
Napoleon C. Blink, and Algy, the Chinese cook, from the Monte Cristo
mine, now swung into line from the northwest road, riding on horses and
burros. They were leading three small pack animals, loaded with all
their earthly plunder.
The freight team halted and a crowd began to congregate. Bostwick was
descending just as the pack-train was passing through the narrow way
left by the crowd. His foot struck one of the loaded burros in the
eye. The animal staggered over against the wall of men, trampling on
somebody's feet. Somebody yelled and cursed vehemently, stepping on
somebody else. A small-sized panic and melee ensued forthwith. More
of the animals took alarm, and Algy was frightened half to death. His
pony, a wall-eyed, half-witted brute, stampeded in the crowd. Then
Algy was presently in trouble.
There had been no Chinese in Goldite camp, largely on account of race
prejudice engendered and fostered by the working men, who still
maintained the old Californian hatred against the industrious
Celestials. In the mob, unfortunately near the center of confusion,
was a half-drunken miner, rancorous as poison. He was somewhat roughly
jostled by the press escaping Algy's pony.
"Ye blank, blank chink--I'll fix ye fer that!" he bawled at the top of
his voice, and heaving his fellow white men right and left he laid
vicious hands on the helpless cook and, dragging him down, went at him
in savage brutality.
"Belay there, you son of a shellfish!" yelled Napoleon, dismounting and
madly attempting to push real men away. "I'll smash in your
pilot-house! I'll---- Leave me git in there to Algy!"
Gettysburg, too, was on the ground. He, Bostwick, and a hundred men
were madly crowded in together, where two or three were pushing back
the throng and yelling to Algy to fight.
Algy was fighting. He was also spouting most awful Chinese oaths,
sufficient to warp an ordinary spine and wither a common person's
limbs. He kicked and scratched like a badger. But the miner was an
engine of destruction. He was aggravated to a mood of gory slaughter.
He broke the Chinaman's arm, almost at once, with some viciously
diabolical maneuver and leaped upon him in fury.
In upon this scene of yelling, cursing, and fighting Van rode
unannounced. He saw the crowd increasing rapidly, as saloons, stores,
hay-yard, bank, and places of lodging poured out a curious army, mostly
men, with a few scattered women among them--all surging eagerly forward.
Algy, meantime, in a spasm of pain and activity, struggled to his feet
from the dust and attempted to make his escape. Van no more than
beheld him that he leaped from his horse and broke his way into the
ring.
When he laid his hand on the miner's collar it appeared as if that
individual would be suddenly jerked apart. Algy went down in collapse.
"Why don't you pick on a man of your color?"
Van demanded, and he flung the miner headlong to the ground.
A hundred lusty citizens shouted their applause.
Little Napoleon broke his way to the center. Gettysburg was just
behind him. Van was about to kneel on the ground and lift his
prostrate cook when someone bawled out a warning.
He wheeled instantly. The angered miner, up, with a gun in hand, was
lurching in closer to shoot. He got no chance, even to level the
weapon. Van was upon him like a panther. The gun went up and was
fired in the air, and then was hurled down under foot.
Two things happened then together. The sheriff arrived to arrest the
drunken miner, and a woman pushed her way through the press.
"Van!" she cried. "Van--oh, Van!"
He was busy assisting his partners to escort poor Algy away. He noted
the woman as she parted the crowd. He was barely in time to fend her
off from flinging herself in his arms.
"Oh, Van!" she repeated wildly. "I thought you was goin' to git it
sure!"
"Don't bother me, Queenie," he answered, annoyed, and adding to
Gettysburg, "Take him to Charlie's," he turned at once to his broncho,
mounted actively, and began to round up the scattered animals brought
into camp by his partners.
He had barely ridden clear of the crowd when his glance was caught by a
figure off to the left.
It was Beth. She was standing on a packing case, where the surging
disorder had sent her. She had seen it all, the fight, his arrival,
and the woman who would have clasped him in her arms.
Her face was flushed. She avoided his gaze and turned to descend to
the walk. Then Bostwick, in his convict suit, stepped actively forward
to meet her.
Van saw the look of surprise in her face, at beholding the man in this
attire. She recoiled, despite herself, then held forth her hand for
his aid. Bostwick took it, assisted her down, and they hastily made
their escape.
CHAPTER XII
BOSTWICK LOSES GROUND
The one retreat for Beth was the house where she was lodging. She went
there at once, briefly explaining to Bostwick on the way how it chanced
she had come the day before. What had happened to himself she already
knew.
Bostwick was a thoroughly angered man. He had seen the horseman in the
fight and had hoped to see him slain. To find Beth safe and even
cheerful here annoyed him exceedingly.
"Have you lodged a complaint--done anything to have this fellow
arrested?" he demanded, alluding to Van. "Have you reported what was
done to me?"
"Why, no," said Beth. "What's the use? He did it all in kindness,
after all."
"Kindness!"
"Of a sort--a rough sort, perhaps, but genuine--a kindness to me--and
Elsa," she answered, flushing rosily. "He saved me from----" she
looked at the convict garb upon him, "--from a disagreeable experience,
I'm sure, and secured me the very best accommodations in the town."
They had almost come to her lodgings. Bostwick halted in the road, his
gun-metal jaw protruding formidably.
"You haven't already begun to admire this ruffian--glorify this
outlaw?" he growled, "--after what he did to me?"
"Don't stop to discuss it here," she answered, beholding Mrs. Dick at
the front of the house. "I haven't had time to do anything. You must
manage to change your clothes."
"I'll have my reckoning with your friend," he assured her angrily.
"Have you engaged a suite for me?"
They had come to the door of the house. Beth beheld the look of
amazement, suspicion, and repugnance on the face of Mrs. Dick, and her
face burned red once more.
"Oh, Mrs. Dick," she said, "this is Mr. Bostwick, of whom I spoke." She
had told of Bostwick's capture by the convicts. "Do you think you
could find him a room?"
"A room? I want a suite--two rooms at least," said Bostwick
aggressively. "Is this a first-class place?"
"It ain't no regular heaven, and I ain't no regular Mrs. Saint Peter,"
answered Mrs. Dick with considerable heat, irritated by Bostwick's
personality and recognizing in him Van's "smoke-faced Easterner." She
added crisply: "So you might as well vamoose the ranch, fer I couldn't
even put you in the shed."
"But I've got to have accommodations!" insisted Bostwick. "I prefer
them where my fiancée--where Miss Kent is stopping. I'm sure you can
manage it someway--let someone go. The price is no object to me."
"I don't want you that bad," said Mrs. Dick frankly. "I said no and
I'm too busy to say it again."
She bustled off with her ant-like celerity, followed by Bostwick's
scowls.
"You'll have to give up your apartments here," he said to Beth. "I'll
find something better at once."
"Thank you, I'm very well satisfied," said Beth. "You'll find this
town quite overcrowded."
"You mean you propose to stay here in spite of my wishes?"
"Please don't wish anything absurd," she answered. "This is really no
place for fastidious choosing--and I am very comfortable."
A lanky youth, with a suitcase and three leather bags, came shuffling
around the corner and dropped down his load.
"Van told me to bring 'em here with his--something I don't remember,"
imparted the youth. "That's all," and he grinned and departed.
Bostwick glowered, less pleased than before.
"That fellow, I presume. He evidently knows where you are stopping."
Beth was beginning to feel annoyed and somewhat defiant. She had never
dreamed this man could appear so repellant as now, with his stubble of
beard and this convict garb upon him. She met his glance coldly.
"He found me the place. I am considerably in his obligation."
Bostwick's face grew blacker.
"Obligation? Why don't you admit at once you admire the fellow?--or
something more. By God! I've endured about as much----"
"Mr. Bostwick!" she interrupted. She added more quietly: "You've been
very much aggravated. I'm sorry. Now please go somewhere and change
your clothing."
"Aggravated?" he echoed. "You ought to know what he is, by instinct.
You must have seen him in a common street brawl! You must have seen
that woman--that red-light night-hawk throwing herself in his arms.
And to think that you--with Glenmore in town---- Why isn't your
brother here with you?"
Beth was smarting. The sense of mortification she had felt at the
sight of that woman in the street with Van, coupled with the sheer
audacity of his conduct towards herself that morning, had already
sufficiently shamed her. She refused, however, to discuss such a
question with Bostwick.
"Glen isn't here," she answered coldly. "I trust you will soon be
enabled to find him--then--we can go."
"Not here?" repeated Bostwick. "Where is he, then?"
"Somewhere out in another camp--or mining place--or something. Now
please go and dress. We can talk it over later."
"This is abominable of Glen," said Bostwick. "Is McCoppet in town?"
She looked her surprise. "McCoppet?"
"You don't know him, of course," he hastened to say. "I shall try to
find him at once." He turned to go, beheld her luggage, and added: "Is
there anyone to take up your things?"
She could not bear to have him enter her apartment in this awful prison
costume.
"Oh, yes," she answered. "You needn't be bothered with the bags."
"Very well. I shall soon return." He departed at once, his impatience
suddenly increased by the thought of seeking out McCoppet.
Beth watched him going. A sickening sense of revulsion invaded all her
nature. And when her thoughts, like lawless rebels, stole guiltily to
Van, she might almost have boxed her own tingling ears in sheer
vexation.
She entered the house, summoned Elsa from her room, and had the luggage
carried to their quarters. Then she opened her case, removed some
dainty finery, and vaguely wondered if the horseman would like her in
old lavender.
Van, in the meantime, had been busy at the hay-yard known as Charlie's.
Not only had Algy's arm been broken, by the bully in the fight, but he
had likewise been seriously mauled and beaten. His head had been cut,
he was hurt internally. A doctor, immediately summoned by the
horseman, had set the fractured member. Algy had then been put to bed
in a tent that was pitched in the yard where the horses, mules, cows,
pyramids of merchandise, and teamsters were thicker than flies on
molasses.
Gettysburg and Napoleon, quietly informed by Van of the latest turn of
their fortune, were wholly unexcited by the news. The attack on Algy,
however, had acted potently upon them. They started to get drunk and
achieved half a load before Van could herd them back to camp.
Napoleon was not only partially submerged when Van effected his
capture; he was also shaved. Van looked him over critically.
"Nap," he said, "what does this mean?--you wasting money on your face?"
Napoleon drunk became a stutterer, who whistled between his discharges
of seltzer.
"Wheresh that little g-g-g-(whistle) girl?" he answered, "--lit-tle
D-d-d-d-(whistle) Dutch one that looksh like--looksh like--quoth the
r-r-r-r-(whistle) raven--NEVER MORE!"
Van divined that this description was intended to indicate Elsa.
"Gone back to China," said he. "That shave of yours is wasted on the
desert air."
Gettysburg, whose intellect was top heavy, had the singular habit, at a
time like this, of removing his crockery eye and holding it firmly in
his fist, to guard it from possible destruction. He stared uncertainly
at both his companions.
"China!" said he tragically. "China?"
"Hold on, now, Gett," admonished Van, steering his tall companion as a
man might steer a ladder, "you don't break out in the woman line again
or there's going to be some concentrated anarchy in camp."
"No, Van, no--now honest, no woman," said Gettysburg in a confidential
murmur. "I had my woman eye took out the last time I went down to
'Frisco."
"You're a l-l-l-(whistle) liar!" ejaculated Napoleon.
"What!" Gettysburg fairly shrieked.
"Metaphorical speakin'--meta phor-f-f-f-f-f-(whistle) phorical
speakin'," Napoleon hastened to explain.
"Metaphor-f-f-f-(whistle)-phorical means you don't really
m-m-m-m-(whistle) mean what you say--means--quoth the
r-r-r-r-r-(whistle) raven--NEVER MORE!"
Van said: "If you two old idiots don't do the lion and the lamb act
pretty pronto I'll send you both to the poor house."
They had entered the hay-yard, among the mules and horses. Gettysburg
promptly reached down, laid hold of Napoleon, and kissed him violently
upon the nose.
Napoleon wept. "What did I s-s-s-s-(whistle) say?" he sobbed
lugubriously. "Oh, death, where is thy s-s-s-s-(whistle) sting?"
Evening had come. The two fell asleep in Algy's tent, locked in each
other's arms.
CHAPTER XIII
A COMBINATION OF FORCES
Bostwick effected a change of dress in the rear of the nearest store.
A rough blue shirt, stout kahki garments and yellow "hiking" boots
converted him into one of the common units of which the camp throng was
comprised. He was then duly barbered, after which he made a strenuous
but futile endeavor to procure accommodations for the night.
There was no one with leisure to listen to his tirade on the shameful
inadequacy of the attributes of civilization in the camp, and after one
brief attempt to arouse civic indignation against Van for his acts of
deliberate lawlessness, he perceived the ease with which he might
commit an error and render himself ridiculous. He dropped all hope of
publicly humiliating the horseman and deferred his private vengeance
for a time more opportune.
Wholly at a loss to cope with a situation wherein he found himself so
utterly neglected and unknown, despite the influential position he
occupied both in New York and Washington, he resolved to throw himself
entirely upon the mercies of McCoppet.
He knew his man only through their correspondence, induced by Beth's
brother, Glenmore Kent. Inquiring at the bank, he was briefly directed
to the largest saloon of the place. When he entered the bar he found
it swarming full of men, miners, promoters, teamsters, capitalists,
gamblers, lawyers, and--the Lord alone knew what. The air was a reek
of smoke and fumes of liquor. A blare of alleged music shocked the
atmosphere. Men drunk and men sober, all were talking mines and gold,
the greatness of the camp, the richness of the latest finds, and the
marvel of their private properties. Everyone had money, everyone had
chunks of ore to show to everyone else.
At the rear were six tables with layouts for games of chance. Faro,
"klondike," roulette, stud-poker, almost anything possibly to be
desired was there. All were in full blast. Three deep the men were
gathered about the wheel and the "tiger." Gold money in stacks stood
at every dealer's hand. Bostwick had never seen so much metal currency
in all his life.
He asked for McCoppet at the bar.
"Opal? Somewhere back--that's him there, talkin' to the guy with the
fur on his jaw," informed the barkeeper, making a gesture with his
thumb. "What's your poison?"
"Nothing, thank you," answered Bostwick, who started for his man, but
halted for McCoppet to finish his business with his friend.
The man on whom Bostwick was gazing was a tall, slender, slightly
stooped individual of perhaps forty-five, with a wonderful opal in his
tie, from which he had derived his sobriquet. He was clean-shaved, big
featured, and gifted with a pair of heavy-lidded eyes as lustreless as
old buttons. He had never been seen without a cigar in his mouth, but
the weed was never lighted.
Bostwick noted the carefulness of the man's attire, but gained no clue
as to his calling. To avoid stupid staring he turned to watch a game
of faro. Its fascinations were rapidly engrossing his attentions and
luring him onward toward a reckless desire to tempt the goddess of
chance, when he presently beheld McCoppet turn away from his man and
saunter down the room.
A moment later Bostwick touched him on the shoulder.
"Beg pardon," he said, "Mr. McCoppet?"
McCoppet nodded. "My name."
"I'd like to introduce myself--J. Searle Bostwick," said the visitor.
"I expected to arrive, as I wrote you----"
"Glad to meet you, Bostwick," interrupted the other, putting forth his
hand. "Where are you putting up?"
"I haven't been able to find accommodations," answered Bostwick warmly.
"It's an outrage the way this town is conducted. I thought perhaps----"
"I'll fix you all right," cut in McCoppet. "Are you ready for a talk?
Nothing has waited for you to come."
"I came for an interview--in fact----"
"Private room back here," McCoppet announced, and he started to lead
the way, pausing for a moment near a faro table to cast a cold glance
at the dealer.
"Wonderfully interesting game," said Bostwick. "It seems as if a man
might possibly beat it."
There might have been a shade of contempt in the glance McCoppet cast
upon him. He merely said: "He can't."
Bostwick laughed. "You seem very positive."
McCoppet was moving on again.
"I own the game."
He owned everything here, and had his designs on two more places like
it, down the street. He almost owned the souls of many men, but gold
and power were the goals on which his eyes were riveted.
Bostwick glanced at him with newer interest as they passed down the
room, and so to a tight little office the walls of which were specially
deadened against the transmission of sound.
"Have anything to drink?" inquired the owner, before he took a chair,
"--whiskey, wine?"
"Thanks, no," said Bostwick, "not just yet." He took the chair to
which McCoppet waved him. "I must say I'm surprised," he admitted, "to
see the numbers of men, the signs of activity, and all the rest of it
in a camp so young. And by the way, it seems young Kent is away."
"Yes," said the gambler, settling deeply into his chair and sleepily
observing his visitor. "I sent him away last week."
Bostwick was eager.
"On something good for the--for our little group?"
"On a wild goose séance," answered McCoppet. "He's in the way around
here."
"Oh," said Bostwick, who failed to understand. "I thought----"
"Yes. I culled your thought from your letters," interrupted his host
drawlingly. "We might as well understand each other first as last.
Bostwick--are you out here to work this camp my way or the kid's?"
Bostwick was cautious. "How does he wish to work it?"
"Like raising potatoes."
"And your plan is----"
"Look here, do I stack up like a Sunday-school superintendent? I
thought you and I understood each other. I don't run no game the other
man can maybe beat. Didn't you come out here with that understanding?"
"Certainly, I----"
"Then never mind the kid. What have you got in your kahki?"
"Our syndicate to buy the Hen Hawk group----" started Bostwick, but the
gambler cut in sharply.
"That's sold and cold. You have to move here; things happen. What did
you do about the reservation permit?"
Bostwick looked about the room furtively, and edged his chair a bit
closer.
"I secured permission from Government headquarters to explore all or
any portions of the reservation, and take _assistants_ with me," he
imparted in a lowered tone of voice. "I had it mailed to me here by
registered post. It should be at the post-office now."
"Right," said McCoppet with more of an accent of approval in his
utterance. "Get it out to-day. I've got your corps of assistants
hobbled here in camp. They can get on the ground to-morrow morning."
Bostwick's eyes were gleaming.
"There's certainly gold on this reservation?"
"Now, how can anybody tell you that?" demanded McCoppet, who from his
place here in Goldite had engineered the plan whereby his and
Bostwick's expert prospectors could explore every inch of the
Government's forbidden land in advance of all competitors. "We're
taking a flyer, that's all. If there's anything there--we're on."
Bostwick reflected for a moment. "There's nothing at present that our
syndicate could do?"
"There'll be plenty of chances to use ready money," McCoppet assured
him, rising. "You're here on the ground. Keep your shirt on and leave
the shuffling to me."
Bostwick, too, arose. "How long will young Kent be away?"
"As long as I can keep him busy out South."
"What is he doing out South?"
"Locating a second Goldite," said the gambler. "Keeps him on the
move." He threw away his chewed cigar, placed a new one in his mouth,
and started for the door. "Come on," he added, "I'll identify you over
at the postoffice and show you where you sleep."
CHAPTER XIV
MOVING A SHACK
Less than a week had passed since Bostwick's arrival in Goldite, but
excitement was rife in the air. Despite the angered protests of half a
thousand mining men, the Easterner, with four of the shrewdest
prospectors in the State, had traversed the entire mineral region of
the reservation in the utmost security and assurance. Five hundred men
had been forced to remain at the border, at the points of official
guns. A few desperate adventurers had crept through the guard, but
nearly all were presently captured and ejected from the place, while
Bostwick--granted special privileges--was assuming this inside track.
The day for the opening of the lands was less than two weeks off--and
the news leaked out and spread like a wind that the "Laughing Water"
claim had suddenly promised amazing wealth as a placer where Van and
his partners were taking out the gold by the simplest, most primitive
of methods.
The rush for the region came like a stampede of cattle. An army of men
went swarming over the ridges and overran the country like a plague of
ants. They trooped across the border of the reservation, so close to
the "Laughing Water" claim, they staked out all the visible world,
above, below, and all about Van's property, they tore down each others'
monuments, including a number where Van had located new, protective
claims, and they builded a tent town over night, not a mile from his
first discovery.
At the claim in the cove the fortunate holders of a private treasury of
gold had lost no time. In the absence of better lumber, for which they
had no money, Van and his partners had torn down the shaft-house, made
it into sluices, and turned in the water from the stream. That was all
the plant required. They had then commenced to shovel the gravel into
the trough-like boxes, and the gold had begun to lodge behind the
riffles.
The cove became a theatre of curiosity, envy, and covetous longings.
Men came there by motor, on horses, mules, and on foot to take one
delirious look and rush madly about to improve what chances still
remained. The fame of it swept like prairie fire, far and wide. The
new-made town began at once to spread and encroach upon all who were
careless of their holdings. Lawlessness was rampant.
At the cabin on the "Laughing Water" claim Algy, the Chinese cook, was
still disabled. Gettysburg was chief culinary artist. Napoleon
hustled for grub, the only supplies of which were over at Goldite--and
expensive. All were constantly exhausted with the labors of the day.
Despite their vigilance they awoke one morning to see a brand-new cabin
standing on the claim, at the top of a hill. A man was on the rough
pine roof, rapidly laying weather paper. Van beheld him, watched him
for a moment, then quietly walked over to the site.
"Say, friend," he called to the man on the roof, "you've broken into
Eden by mistake. This property is mine and I haven't any building lots
to sell."
The visiting builder took out a huge revolver and laid it on a block.
He said nothing at all. Van felt his impatience rising.
"I'm talking to you, Mr. Carpenter," he added. "Come on, now, I don't
want any trouble with neighbors, but this cabin will have to be
removed."
"Go to hell!" said the builder. He continued to pound in his nails.
"If I go," said Van calmly, "I'll bring a little back. Are you going
to move or be moved?"
"Don't talk to me, I'm busy," answered the intruder. "I'm an irritable
man, and everything I own is irritable, understand?" And taking up his
gun he thumped with it briskly on the boards.
"If you're looking for trouble," Van replied, "you won't need a
double-barreled glass."
He turned away and the man continued operations. When he came to the
shack Van selected a hammer and a couple of drills from among a lot of
tools in the corner.
To his partner's questions as to what the visitor intended he replied
that only time could tell.
"Here, Nap," he added, fetching forth the tools, "I want you to take
this junk and go up there where the neighbor is working. Just sit down
quietly and drill three shallow holes and don't say a word to yonder
busy bee. If he asks you what's doing, play possum--and don't make the
holes too deep."
Napoleon went off as directed. His blows could presently be heard as
he drilled in a porphyry dike.
His advent puzzled the man intent on building.
"Say, you," said he, "what's on your programme?"
Napoleon drilled and said nothing.
The carpenter watched him in some uneasiness.
"Say, you ain't starting a shaft?"
No answer.
"Ain't this a placer? Say, you, are you deef?"
Napoleon pounded on the steel.
"Go to hell!" said the builder, as he had before, "--a man that can't
answer civil questions!"
He resumed his labors, pausing now and then to stare at Napoleon, in a
steadily increasing dubiety of mind.
In something less than twenty minutes he had done very little roofing,
owing to a nervousness he found it hard to banish, while Napoleon had
all but completed his holes. Then Van came leisurely strolling to the
place, comfortably loaded with dynamite, of which a man may carry much.
With utter indifference to the man on the roof he proceeded to charge
those shallow holes. As a matter of fact he overcharged them. He used
an exceptional amount of the harmless looking stuff, and laid a short
fuse to the cap. When he turned to the builder, who had watched
proceedings with a sickening alarm at his vitals, that industrious
person had taken on a heavy, leaden hue.
"You see I went where you told me," said Van, "and I've brought some
back as I promised. This shot has got to go before breakfast--and
breakfast is just about ready."
"For God's sake give a man a chance," implored the man who had
trespassed in the night. "I'll move the shack to-morrow."
"You won't have to," Van informed him, "but you'd better move your meat
to-day."
He took out a match, scratched it with quiet deliberation and lighted
the end of the fuse.
"For God's sake--man!" cried the carpenter, and without even waiting to
climb from the roof he rolled to the edge in a panic, fell off on his
feet, and ran as if all the fiends of Hades were fairly at his heels.
Van and Napoleon also moved away with becoming alacrity. Three minutes
later the charge went off. It sounded like the crack of doom. It
seemed to split the earth and very firmament. A huge black toadstool
of smoke rose up abruptly. Something like a blot of yellowish color
spattered all over the landscape. It was the shack.
It had moved. The smoke cloud drifted rapidly away. On the hill was a
great jagged hole, lined with rock, but there was nothing more. The
cabin was hung in lumber shreds on the stunted trees for hundreds of
feet in all directions. With it went hammers, saws and a barrel of
nails whose usefulness was ended.
Gettysburg, aproned, and fresh from his labors at the stove, came
hastening out of the cabin to where his partners stood, in great
distress of mind.
"Holy toads, Van!" he said excitedly, "it must have been the shot!
I've dropped an egg--and what in the world shall I do?"
"Cackle, man, cackle," Van answered him gravely. "That's a mighty rare
occurrence."
"And two-bits apiece!" almost wailed poor Gettysburg, diving back into
the cabin, "and only them four in the shack!"
That was also the day that Bostwick came out upon the scene. He came
with his prospectors, all the party somewhat disillusionized as to all
that fabled gold upon the Indian reservation.
Some word of the wealth of the "Laughing Water" claim had come to
Searle early in the week. He did not visit the cabin or the owners of
the cove. For fifteen minutes, however, he sat upon his horse and
scanned the place in silence. Then out of his newly-acquired knowledge
of the boundaries of the reservation the hounds of his mind jumped up a
half-mad plan. His cold eyes glittered as he looked across to where
Van and his partners were toiling. His lips were compressed in a smile.
He rode to Goldite hurriedly and sought out his friend McCoppet. When
the two were presently closeted together where their privacy was
assured, a conspiracy, diabolically insidious, was about to have its
birth.
CHAPTER XV
HATCHING A PLOT
"You're back pretty pronto," drawled the gambler, by way of an opening
remark. "Found something too big to keep hidden?"
"That reservation is a false alarm, as Billy and the others will tell
you," answered Bostwick, referring to McCoppet's chosen prospectors.
"The rush will prove a farce."
"You've decided sudden, ain't you?" asked McCoppet. "There's a good
big deck there to stack."
"We've wasted time and money till to-day." Bostwick rose from his
chair, put one foot upon it, and leaned towards the gambler as one
assuming a position of equality, if not of something more. "Look here,
McCoppet, you asked me the day I arrived what sort of a game I'd come
to play. I ask you now if you are prepared to play something
big--and--well, let us say, a trifle risky?"
"Don't insult my calling," answered the gambler. "I call. Lay your
cards on the table."
Bostwick sat down and leaned across the soiled green baize.
"You probably know as much as I do about the 'Laughing Water'
claim--its richness--its owners--and where it's located."
McCoppet nodded, narrowing his eyes.
"A good dog could smell their luck from here."
"But do you know where it lies--their claim?" insisted Bostwick
significantly. "That's the point I'm making at present."
"It's just this side of the reservation, from what I hear," replied the
gambler, "but if there's nothing on the reservation even near the
'Laughing Water' ground----"
Bostwick interrupted impatiently: "What's the matter with _the
'Laughing Water' being on the reservation_?"
McCoppet was sharp but he failed to grasp his associate's meaning.
"But it ain't," he said, "and no one claims it is."
Bostwick lowered his voice and looked at the gambler peculiarly.
"No one claims it _yet_!"
McCoppet threw away his cigar and took out a new one.
"Well? Come on. I bite. What's the answer?"
Bostwick leaned back in his chair.
"Suppose an accredited surveyor were to run out the reservation
line--the line next the 'Laughing Water' claim--and make an error of an
inch at the farthest end. Suppose that inch, projected several miles,
became about a thousand feet--wouldn't the 'Laughing Water' claim be
discovered to be a part of the Indian reservation?"
McCoppet eyed him narrowly, in silence, for a moment. He had suddenly
conceived a new estimate of the man who had come from New York.
Bostwick again leaned forward, continuing:
"No one will be aware of the facts but ourselves--therefore no one will
think of attempting to relocate the 'Laughing Water' ground, lawfully,
at six o'clock on the morning of the rush. But we will be on hand,
with the law at our backs, and quietly take possession of the property,
on which--as it is reservation ground--the present occupants are
trespassing."
McCoppet heard nothing of what his friend was saying. All the
possibilities outlined had flashed through his mind at Bostwick's first
intimation of the plan. He was busy now with affairs far ahead in the
scheme.
"Culver, the Government agent and surveyor is a dark one," he mused
aloud, half to himself. "If only Lawrence, his deputy, was in his
shoes---- Your frame-up sounds pretty tight, Bostwick, but Culver may
block us with his damnable squareness."
"Every man has his price," said Bostwick, "--big and little. Culver,
you say, represents the Government? Where is he now?"
McCoppet replied with a question: "Bostwick, how much have you got?"
Bostwick flushed. "Money? Oh, I can raise my share, I hope."
"You hope?" repeated the gambler. "Ain't your syndicate back of any
game you open, with the money to see it started right?"
Bostwick was a trifle uneasy. The "syndicate" of which he had spoken
was entirely comprised of Beth and her money, which he hoped presently
to call his own. He had worked his harmless little fiction of big
financial men behind him in the certainty of avoiding detection.
"Of course, I can call on the money," he said, "but I may need a day or
so to get it. How much shall we require?"
McCoppet chewed his cigar reflectively.
"Culver will sure come high--if we get him at all--but--it ought to be
worth fifty thousand to you and me to shift that reservation line a
thousand feet--if reports on the claim are correct."
It was a large sum. Bostwick scratched the corner of his mouth.
"That would be twenty-five thousand apiece."
"No," corrected McCoppet, "twenty thousand for me and thirty for you,
for equal shares. I've got to do the work underground."
"Perhaps I could handle what's his name, Culver, myself," objected
Bostwick. "The fact that I'm a stranger here----"
"And what will you do if he refuses?" interrupted the gambler. "Will
you still have an ace in your kahki?"
Bostwick stared.
"If he should refuse, and tell the owners----"
"Right. Can you handle it then?"
Bostwick answered: "Can you?"
"It's my business to get back what I've lost--and a little bit more.
You leave it to me. Keep away from Culver, and bring me thirty
thousand in the morning."
Bostwick was breathing hard. He maintained a show of calm.
"The morning's a little bit soon for me to turn around. I'll bring it
when I can."
McCoppet arose. The interview was ended. He added:
"Have a drink?"
"I'll wait," said Bostwick, "till we can drink a toast to the 'Laughing
Water' claim."
McCoppet opened the door, waved Bostwick into the crowded gaming room,
and was about to follow when his roving gaze abruptly lighted on a
figure in the place--a swarthy, half-breed Piute Indian, standing in
front of the wheel and roulette layout.
Quickly stepping back inside the smaller apartment, the gambler pulled
down his hat. His face was the color of ashes.
"So long. See you later," he murmured, and he closed the door without
a sound.
Bostwick, wholly at a loss to understand his sudden dismissal, lingered
for a moment only in the place, then made his way out to the street,
and went to the postoffice, where he found a letter from Glenmore Kent.
Intent upon securing the needed funds from Beth with the smallest
possible delay, he dropped the letter, unread, in his pocket and headed
for the house where Beth was living. He walked, however, no more than
half a block before he altered his mind. Pausing for a moment on the
sidewalk, he turned on his heel and went briskly to his own apartments,
where he performed an unusual feat.
First he read the letter from Kent. It was dated from the newest camp
in the desert and was filled with glittering generalities concerning
riches about to be discovered. It urged him, in case he had arrived in
Goldite, to hasten southward forthwith--"and bring a bunch of money."
Glenmore's letters always appealed for money--a fact which Bostwick had
remembered.
The man sat down at his table and wrote a letter to himself. With
young Kent's epistle for his model, he made an amazingly clever forgery
of the enthusiastic writer's chirography, and at the bottom signed the
young man's name.
This spurious document teemed with figures and assertions concerning a
wonderful gold mine which Glenmore had virtually purchased. He needed
sixty thousand dollars at once, however, to complete his remarkable
bargain. Only two days of his option remained and therefore delay
would be fatal. He expected this letter to find his friend at Goldite
and he felt assured he would not be denied this opportunity of a
lifetime to make a certain fortune. He would, of course, appeal to
Beth--with certainty of her help from the wealth bequeathed her by her
uncle--but naturally she was too far away,
Glenmore was unaware of the fact that his sister had come to the West.
Bostwick overlooked no details of importance. Armed with this
plausible missive, he went at once to Mrs. Dick's and found that Beth
was at home.
CHAPTER XVI
INVOLVING BETH
Goldite to the Eastern girl, who had found herself practically
abandoned for nearly a week, had proved to be a mixture of discomforts,
excitements, and disturbing elements. Fascinated by the maelstrom of
the mining-camp life, and unwilling to retreat from the scene until she
should see her roving brother, and gratify at least a curiosity
concerning Van, she nevertheless felt afraid to be there, not only on
account of the roughness and uncertainty of the existence, but also
because, despite herself, she had attracted undesirable attention.
Moreover, the house was full of "gentlemen" lodgers, with three of whom
Elsa was conducting most violent flirtations.
There were few respectable women in the town. It was still too early
for their advent. Beth had been annoyed past all endurance. There was
no possibility of even mild social diversions; there was no one to
visit. While the street could be described as perfectly safe, it was
nevertheless an uncomfortable place in which to walk. Bostwick's car
had been recovered and brought into camp, but skilled as she was at the
steering wheel, she had hardly desired or dared to take it out.
Crime was frequent in the streets and houses. Disturbing reports of
marauding expeditions on the part of the convicts, still at large, came
with insistent frequency. Altogether the week had been a trial to her
nerves. It had also been a vexation. No man had a right, she told
herself, to do and say the things that Van had said and done, only to
go off, without so much as a little good-by and give no further sign.
She told herself she had a right to at least some sort of opportunity
to tender her honest congratulations. She had heard of his claim--the
"Laughing Water"--and perhaps she wished to know how it chanced to have
this particular name. If certain disturbing reflections anent that
woman who had run to him wildly, out in the street, came mistily
clouding the estimate she tried to place upon his character, she
confessed he certainly had the right to make an explanation. In a
purely feminine manner she argued that she had the right to some such
explanation--if only because of certain liberties he had taken with her
hands--on which memories still warmly burned.
Wholly undecided as to what she would do if she could, and impatient
with Bostwick for his sheer neglect in searching out her brother, she
was thoroughly glad to see him to-day when he came so unannounced to
the house.
"Well if you don't look like a mountaineer!" she said, as she met him
in the dining-room, which was likewise the parlor of the place. "Where
in the world have you been, all this time? You haven't come back
without Glen?"
He had gone away ostensibly to find her brother.
"Well, the fact is he wasn't where I went, after all," he said. "I
hastened home, after all that trip, undertaken for nothing, and found a
letter from him here. I've come at once to have an important talk."
"A letter?" she cried. "Let me see it--let me read it, please.
He's--where? He's well? He's successful?"
"Sit down," answered Bostwick, taking a chair and placing his hat on
the table. "There's a good deal to say. But first, how have you been
here, all alone?"
"Oh--very well--I suppose," she answered, restraining the natural
resentment she felt at his patent neglect. "It isn't exactly the place
I'd choose to remain in, alone all the time."
"Poor little girl, I've been thinking of that," he told her, reaching
across the table to take her hands. "It's worried me, Beth, worried me
greatly--your unprotected position, and all that."
"Oh, you needn't worry." She withdrew her hands. Someway it seemed a
sacrilege for him to touch them--it was not to be borne--she hardly
knew why, or since when. "I want to know about Glen," she added.
"Never mind me."
"But I do mind," he assured her. His hand was trembling. "Beth, I--I
can't talk much--I mean romantic talk, and all that, but--well--I've
about concluded we ought to be married at once--for your sake--your
protection--and my peace of mind. I have thought about it ever since I
left you here alone."
The brightness expressive of the gayety of her nature departed from her
eyes. She looked fixedly at the man's dark face, with its gray,
deep-set, penetrative eyes, its bluish jaw, and knitted brows. It
frightened her, someway, as it never had before. He had magnetized her
always--sometimes more than now, but his influence crept upon her
subtly even here.
"But I--I think I'd rather not--just yet," she faltered, crimsoning and
dropping her gaze to the table. "You promised not to--to urge me
again--at least till I've spoken to Glen."
"But I could not have known--forseen these conditions," he told her,
leaning further towards her across the table. "Why shouldn't we be
married now--at once? A six months' engagement is certainly long
enough. Your position here is--well--almost dubious. You must see
that. It isn't right of me--decent--not to make you my wife
immediately. I wish to do so--I wish it very much."
She arose, as if to wrench herself free from the spell he was casting
upon her.
"I'm all right--I'm quite all right," she said. "I'd rather not--just
now. There's no one here who cares a penny who or what I am. If my
position here is misunderstood--it can do no harm. I'd rather you
wouldn't say anything further about it--just at present."
Her agitation did not escape him. If he thought of the horseman who
had carried her off while sending himself to the convicts, his plan for
vengeance only deepened.
"You must have some reason for refusing." He too arose.
"No--no particular reason," she answered, artlessly walking around the
table, apparently to pick up a button from the floor, but actually to
avoid his contact. "I just don't wish to--to be married
now--here--that's all. I ask you to keep your promise--not to ask it
while we remain."
He had feared to lose her a score of times before. He feared it now
more potently than ever. And there was much that he must ask. The
risk of giving her a fright was not to be incurred.
"Very well," he said resignedly, "but--it's very hard to wait."
"Won't you sit down?" she asked him, an impulse of gratitude upon her.
"Now do be good and sensible, and tell me all about Glen."
She returned to the table and resumed her seat.
Bostwick sat opposite and drew his forged letter from his pocket. He
had placed it in Glenmore's envelope after tearing the young man's
letter into scraps.
"This letter," said he, "was sent from way down in the desert--from
Starlight, another new camp. It looks to me as if the boy has struck
something very important. I'll read you what he says--or you can read
it for yourself."
"No, no--read it. I'd rather listen."
He read it haltingly, as one who puzzles over unfamiliar writing. Its
effect sank in the deeper for the method. Beth was open-eyed with
wonder, admiration, and delight over all that Glen had done and was
about to accomplish. She rose to the bait with sisterly eagerness.
"Why, he _must_ have the chance--he's _got_ to have the chance!" she
cried excitedly. "What do you think of it yourself?"
Bostwick fanned the blaze with conservatism.
"It's quite a sum of money and Glen might overestimate the value of the
mine. I've inquired around and learn that the property is considered
tremendously promising. If we--if he actually secures that claim it
will doubtless mean a for---- I don't like to lose my sense of
judgment, but I do want to help the boy along. Frankly, however, I
don't see how I can let him have so much. I couldn't possibly send him
but thirty thousand dollars at the most."
Beth's eyes were blazing with excitement. She had never dreamed that
Searle could be so generous--so splendid. An impulse of gratitude and
admiration surged throughout her being.
"You'd _do_ it?" she said. "You'll do as much as that for Glen?"
"Why, how can I do less?" he answered. "That claim will doubtless be
worth half a million, maybe more--if all I hear is reliable--and I get
it from disinterested parties. The boy has done a good big thing.
I've got to help him out. It seems too bad to offer him only half of
what he needs, but I'm not a very wealthy man. I can't be utterly
Quixotic. We've all got to help him all we can."
"Oh, thank you, Searle--thank you for saying 'we,'" she said in a voice
that slightly trembled. "I'm glad of the chance--glad to show dear
Glen that a sister can help a little, too."
He stared at her with an excellent imitation of surprise in his gaze.
"You'll--help?" he said in astonishment, masterfully simulated. "Not
with the other thirty thousand?"
"Why not?" she cried. "Why not, when Glen has the chance of his life?
You don't really think I'd hesitate?"
"But," said he, leading her onward, "he needs the money now--at once.
You'd have to get it here by wire, and all that sort of trouble."
"Then we'd better get things started," she said. "You'll help me,
Searle, I'm sure."
"If you wish it," said Bostwick, "certainly."
"Dear Glen!" she said. "Dear boy! I'll write him a letter at once."
Bostwick started, alertly, as she ran in her girlish pleasure to a
stand where she had placed her materials for writing.
"Good," he commented drily, "I'll mail it with one of my own."
She dashed off a bright effusion with all her spontaneous enthusiasm.
Bostwick supplied her with the address, and presently took the letter
in his hand. He had much to do at the bank, he informed her, by way of
preparing for the deal. He promised to return when he could.
On his way down street be deliberately tore the letter to the smallest
of fragments and scattered them widely on the wind.
CHAPTER XVII
UNEXPECTED COMPLICATIONS
On the following morning news arrived in Goldite that temporarily
dimmed the excitement attendant upon stories of the "Laughing Water"
property and the coming stampede to the Indian reservation.
Matt Barger and three others of the convicts, still uncaptured, had
pillaged a freight team, of horses, provisions, and arms, murdered a
stage driver, robbed the express of a large consignment of gold, and
escaped as before to the mountains.
Two separate posses were in pursuit. Rewards aggregating ten thousand
dollars were offered for Barger, dead or alive, with smaller sums for
each of his companions. Their latest depredations had occurred
alarmingly close to the mining camp, from which travel was becoming
hazardous.
The gold theft was particularly disquieting to the Goldite mining
contingent. Dangers beset their enterprises in many directions at the
very best. To have this menace added, together with worry over every
man's personal safety in traveling about, was fairly intolerable. The
inefficient posses were roundly berated, but no man volunteered to
issue forth and "get" Matt Barger--either alive or as a corpse.
The man who arrived with the news was one of Van's cronies, Dave, the
little station man whom Beth had met the morning of her coming. He was
here in response to a summons from Van, who thought he saw an
opportunity to assist his friend to better things. Everything Dave
owned he had fetched across the desert, including both the horses that
Beth and Elsa once had ridden. The station itself he had sold. He had
launched forth absolutely on Van's new promises, burning all his
bridges, as it were, behind him.
Van came down to meet him. He had other concerns in Goldite, some with
Culver, the Government representative, and others a trifle more
personal, and intended to combine them all in one excursion.
No sooner had he appeared on the street, after duly stabling "Suvy" at
the hay-yard, than a hundred acquaintances, suddenly transformed into
intimate friends, by the change in his fortunes, pounced upon him in a
spirit of generosity, hilarity, and comaraderie that cloyed not only
his senses, but even his movements in the camp.
He was dragged and carried into four saloons like a helpless,
good-natured bear cub, strong enough to resist by inflicting injuries,
but somewhat amused by the game. Intelligence of his advent went the
rounds. The local editor and the girl he had addressed as "Queenie,"
on the day of the fight in the street, were rivals in another joyous
attack as he escaped at last to proceed about his own affairs.
The editor stood no chance whatsoever. Van had nothing to say, and
said so. Moreover, Queenie was a very persistent, as well as a very
pretty, young person, distressingly careless of deportment. She clung
to Van like a bur.
"Gee, Van!" she cried with genuine tears in her eyes, "didn't I always
say you was the candy? Didn't I always say I'd give you my head and
breathe through my feet--day or night? Didn't I tell 'em all you was
the only one? You're the only diamonds there is for me--and I didn't
never wait for you to strike it first."
"No, you didn't even wait for an invitation," answered Van with a
smile. "Everybody's got to hike now. I'm busy, trying to breathe."
She clung on. Unfortunately, down in an Arizona town, Van had trounced
a ruffian once in Queenie's protection--simply because of her gender
and entirely without reference to her character or her future attitude
towards himself. In her way she personified a sort of adoration and
gratitude, which could neither be slain nor escaped by anything that he
or anyone else could do. Her devotion, however, had palled upon him
early, perhaps more because of its habit of increasing. It had
recently become a pest.
"Busy?" she echoed. "You said that before. When ain't you going to be
busy?"
"When I'm dead," he answered, and wrenching loose he dived inside a
hardware store, to purchase a hunting knife for Gettysburg, then went
at once to a barber shop and shut out the torment of friends.
He escaped at the rear, when his face had been groomed, and made his
way unseen to Mrs. Dick's.
Beth was not at home. She and Bostwick were together at the office of
the telegraph company, where Searle was assisting her, as she thought
to aid her brother, to such excellent purpose that her thirty thousand
dollars bid fair to repose in the bank at his call before the business
day should reach its end.
Mrs. Dick seemed to Van the one and only person in the camp unaffected
by the news of his luck. She treated him precisely as she always had
and doubtless always should. Therefore, he had no difficulty in
getting away to Culver at his office.
The official surveyor was a fat-cheeked, handsome man, with a silky
brown beard, an effeminate voice, and prodigious self-conceit. He was
pacing up and down the inside office, at the rear of the rough board
building, when Van came in and found him. The horseman's business was
one of maps and land-office data made essential to his needs by the new
recording of the "Laughing Water" property as a placer instead of a
quartz claim. He had drawn a crude outline of his holdings and in
taking it forth from his pocket found the knife bought for Gettysburg
in the way. He removed the weapon and placed it on the table near at
hand.
"There's so much of this desert unsurveyed," he said, "that no man can
tell whether he's just inside or just outside of Purgatory."
"So you come to me to find out?" Culver demanded somewhat shortly. "Do
you tin-horn miners think that's all this office is for?"
"Well, in my instance, I had to come to some wiser spirit than myself
to get my bearings," answered Van drawlingly. "You can see that."
"There are the maps." Culver waved his hand towards a drawer in the
office table, and moved impatiently over to a window, the view from
which commanded a section of the street, including the bank.
Van was presently engrossed in a search for quarter sections, ranges,
and townships.
"Look here," said Culver, turning upon him aggressively, "what's this
racket I hear about you taking the inside track with that stunning new
petticoat in town?"
Van looked up without the least suspicion of the man's real meaning.
"If you are referring to that reckless young woman called Queenie----"
"Oh, Queenie--rats!" interrupted Culver irritably. "You know who I
mean. I guess you call her Beth."
Van's face took on a look of hardness as if it were chiseled in stone.
He had squared around as if at a blow. For a moment he faced the
surveyor in silence.
"You are making some grave mistake," he said presently in ominous calm.
"Please don't make such an allusion as that again."
"So, the shot went home," Culver laughed unctuously, turning for a
moment from the window. "I thought it would. You know you couldn't
expect to keep anything like that all to yourself, Van Buren. You're
not the only ladies' man on the beach. And as for this clod of a
Bostwick----" He had turned to look out as before, and grew suddenly
excited. Beth was in view at the bank. "By the gods!" he exclaimed
with a sudden change of tone, "she is the handsomest bit of
confectionery on earth. If I don't win her----"
His utterance promptly ceased, together with his abominable activities
and primping in the window. Van, who did not know that this creature
had been Beth's particular annoyance, had crossed the room without a
sound and laid his grip on Culver's collar.
"You cur!" he said quietly, and choking the man he flung him down
against the floor and wall as if he had been the merest puppet.
Someone had entered the outside door. Neither Culver nor Van heard the
sound. Culver rolled over, scrambled to his feet, and with his face
and neck engorged with rage, came rushing at the horseman like a fury.
"You blackguard!" he screamed, "I'll tear out your heart for that!
I'll kill you like----"
"Shut up!" Van commanded quietly, stopping the onrush of his angered
foe by putting his hand against the surveyor's face and sending him
reeling as before. "Don't tell me what you'll do to me--or to anyone
else in this camp! And if ever I hear of you opening your mouth again
as you did here a moment ago, I'll tie a knot so hard in your carcass
you'll have to be buried in a hat box!"
He glanced towards the doorway. A stranger stood on the threshold.
Bowing, Van passed him and left the place, too angered to think either
of the maps or of his knife.
Culver, raging like a maniac, bowled headlong into the visitor, in his
effort to overtake the horseman, but found himself baffled and took out
his wrath in foul vituperation that presently drove the stranger from
the place.
CHAPTER XVIII
WHEREIN MATTERS THICKEN
The stranger who had witnessed the trouble at Culver's office had come
there at the instance of McCoppet. It was, therefore, to McCoppet that
he carried the intelligence of what had taken place, so far as he had
seen.
The gambler was exceedingly pleased. That Culver would now be ready,
as never before, to receive a proposition whereby the owners of the
"Laughing Water" claim could be deprived of their ground, he was well
convinced.
For reasons best known to himself and skillfully concealed from all
acquaintances, McCoppet had remained practically in hiding since the
moment in which he had beheld that half-breed Piute Indian in the
saloon. He remained out of sight even now, dispatching a messenger to
Culver, in the afternoon, requesting his presence for a conference for
the total undoing of Van Buren.
Culver, who in ordinary circumstances might have refused this request
with haughty insolence, responded to the summons rather sooner than
McCoppet had expected. He was still red with anger, and meditating
personal violence to Van at the earliest possible meeting.
McCoppet, with his smokeless cigar in his mouth, and his great opal
sentient with fire, received his visitor in the little private den to
which Bostwick had been taken.
"How are you, Culver?" he said off-handedly.
"I wanted to have a little talk. I sent a man up to your shop a while
ago, and he told me you fired Van Buren out of the place on the run."
"That's nobody's business but mine," said Culver aggressively. "If
that is all you care to talk about----"
"Don't roil up," interrupted the gambler. "I don't even know what the
fight was about, and I don't care a tinker's whoop either. I got you
here to give you a chance to put Van Buren out of commission and make a
lifetime winning."
Culver looked at him sharply.
"It must be something crooked."
"Nothing's crooked that works out straight," said McCoppet. "What's
life anyhow but a sure-thing game? It's stacked for us all to lose out
in the end. What's the use of being finniky while we live--as long as
even the Almighty's dealing brace?"
Culver was impatient. "Well?"
"I won't beat around the chapparal," said McCoppet. "It ain't my way."
Nevertheless, with much finesse and art he contrived to put his
proposition in a manner to rob it of many of its ugly features.
However, he made the business plain.
"You see," he concluded, "the old reservation line might actually be
wrong--and all you'd have to do would be to put it right. That's what
we want--we want the line put right."
Culver was more angered than before. He understood the conspiracy
thoroughly. No detail of its cleverness escaped him.
"If you thought you could trade on my personal unpleasantness with an
owner of the 'Laughing Water' claim," he said hotly, "you have made the
mistake of your life. I wish you good-day."
He rose to go. McCoppet rose and stopped him.
"Don't get feverish," said he. "It don't pay. I ain't requesting this
service from you for just your feelings against a man. There's plenty
in this for us all."
"You mean bribe money, I suppose," said Culver no less aggressively
than before. "Is that what you mean?"
"Don't call it hard names," begged the gambler. "It's just a
retainer--say twenty thousand dollars."
Culver burned to the top of his ears. He looked at McCoppet intently
with an expression the gambler could not interpret.
"Just to change that line a thousand feet," urged the man of gambling
propensities. "I'll make it twenty-five."
Still Culver made no response. With all his other hateful attributes
of character he was tempered steel on incorruptibility. He was not
even momentarily tempted to avenge himself thus on Van Buren.
McCoppet thought he had him wavering. He attempted to push him over
the brink.
"Say," said he persuasively, lowering his voice to a tone of the
confidential, "I can strain a little more out of one of my partners and
make it thirty thousand dollars." He had no intention of employing a
cent of his own. Bostwick was to pay all these expenses. "Thirty
thousand dollars, cash," he repeated, "the minute you finish your
work--and make it look like a Government _correction_ of the line."
Culver broke forth on him with accumulated wrath.
"You damnable puppy!" he said in a futile effort to be adequate to the
situation. "You sneak! Of all the accursed
intrigues--insults--robberies that ever were hatched---- By God, sir,
if you offered me a million of money you shouldn't alter that
Government line by a hair! If you speak to me again--I'll knock you
down!"
He flung the door wide open, went out like a rocket, and bowled a man
half over in his blind haste to be quit the place.
McCoppet was left there staring where he had gone--staring and afraid
of what the results would probably be to all the game. He had no eyes
to behold a man who had suddenly discerned him from the crowds. A
moment later he started violently as a huge form stood in the door.
"Trimmer!" he said, "I'm busy!"
"You're goin' to be busier in about a minute, if I don't see you right
now," said the man addressed as Trimmer, a raw, bull-like lumberman
from the mountains. "Been waitin' to see you some time."
"Come in," said the gambler instantly regaining his composure. "Come
in and shut the door. How are you, anyway?" He held out his hand to
shake.
Trimmer closed the door. "Ain't ready to shake, jest yet," he said.
"I come here to see you on business."
"That's all right, Larry," answered McCoppet. "That's all right. Sit
down."
"I'm goin' to," announced his visitor. He took a chair, pulled out a
giant cigar, and lighting it up smoked like a pile of burning leaves.
"You seem to be pretty well fixed," he added, taking a huge black
pistol from his pocket and laying it before him on the table. "Looks
like money was easy."
"I ain't busted," admitted the gambler. "Have a drink?"
"Not till we finish." The lumberman settled in his chair. "That was
the way you got me before--and you ain't goin' to come it again."
McCoppet waited for his visitor to open. Trimmer was not in a hurry.
He eyed the man across the table calmly, his small, shifting optics
dully gleaming.
Presently he said; "Cayuse is here in camp."
Cayuse was the half-breed Piute Indian whose company McCoppet had
avoided. Partially educated, wholly reverted to his Indian ways and
tribal brethren, Cayuse was a singular mixture of the savage, plus
civilized outlooks and ethical standards that made him a dangerous
man--not only a law unto himself, as many Indians are, but also a
strange interpreter of the law, both civilized and aboriginal.
McCoppet had surmised what was coming.
"Yes--I noticed he was here."
"Know what he come fer?" asked the lumberman. "Onto his game?"
"You came here to tell me. Deal the cards."
Trimmer puffed great lungfuls of the reek from his weed and took his
revolver in hand.
"Opal," said he, enjoying his moment of vantage, "you done me up for a
clean one thousand bucks, a year ago--while I was drunk--and I've been
laying to git you ever since."
McCoppet was unmoved.
"Well, here I am."
"You bet! here you are--and here you're goin' to hang out till we fix
things _right_!" The lumberman banged his gun barrel on the table hard
enough to make a dent. "That's why Cayuse is here, too. Mrs. Cayuse
is dead."
The gambler nodded coldly, and Trimmer went on.
"She kicked the bucket havin' a kid which wasn't Cayuse's--too darn
white fer even him--and Cayuse is on the war trail fer that father."
McCoppet threw away his chewed cigar and replaced it with a fresh one.
He nodded as before.
"Cayuse is on that I know who the father was," resumed the visitor. "I
told him to come here to Goldite and I'd give up the name."
He began to consume his cigar once more by inches and watched the
effect of his words. There was no visible effect. McCoppet had never
been calmer in his life--outwardly. Inwardly he had never felt Dearer
to death, and his own kind of fright was upon him.
"Well," he said, "your aces look good to me. What do you want--how
much?"
"I ought to hand you over to Cayuse--good riddance to the whole
country," answered Trimmer, with rare perspicacity of judgment. "You
bet you're goin' to pay."
"If you want your thousand back, why don't you say so?" inquired the
gambler quietly. "I'll make it fifteen hundred. That's pretty good
interest, I reckon."
"Your reckoner's run down," Trimmer assured him. "I want ten thousand
dollars to steer Cayuse away."
McCoppet slowly shook his head. "You ain't a hog, Larry, you're a
Rockyfeller. Five thousand, cash on the nail, if you show me you can
steer Cayuse so far off the trail he'll never get on it again."
Five thousand dollars was a great deal of money to Trimmer. Ten
thousand was far in excess of his real expectations. But he saw that
his power was large. He was brutally frank.
"Nope, can't do it, Opal, not even fer a friend," and he grinned.
"I've got you in the door and I'm goin' to jamb you hard. Five
thousand ain't enough."
Things had been going against the gambler for nearly an hour. He had
been acutely alarmed by the presence of Cayuse in the camp. His mind,
like a ferret in a trap, was seeking wildly for a loophole of
advantage. Light came in upon him suddenly, with a thought of Culver,
by whom, subconsciously, he was worried.
"How do you mean to handle the half-breed?" he inquired by way of
preparing his ground. "You've promised to cough up a name."
Trimmer scratched his head with the end of his pistol.
"I guess I could tell him I was off--don't know the father after all."
"Sounds like a kid's excuse," commented McCoppet. "Like as not he'd
take it out of you."
The likelihood was so strong that Trimmer visibly paled.
"I've got to give him somebody's name," he agreed with alacrity. "Has
anyone died around here recent?"
"Yes," answered McCoppet with ready mendacity.
"Culver, who used to do surveying."
"Who?" asked Trimmer. "Don't know him."
McCoppet leaned across the table.
"Yes you do. He stopped you once from stealing--from picking up a lot
of timber land. Remember?"
Trimmer was interested. His vindictive attributes were aroused.
"Was that the cuss? I never seen him. Do you think Cayuse would know
who he was?--and believe it--the yarn?"
"Cayuse was once his chain-man." McCoppet was tremendously excited,
though apparently as cold as ice, as he swiftly thought out the
niceties of his own and fate's arrangements. "Cayuse's wife once
worked for Mrs. Culver, cooking and washing."
"Say, anybody'd swaller that," reflected the lumberman aloud. "But
five thousand dollars ain't enough."
"I'll make it seven thousand five hundred--that's an even split,"
agreed the gambler. He thought he foresaw a means whereby he could
save this amount from the funds that Bostwick would furnish. He rose
from his seat. "A thousand down, right now--the balance when Cayuse is
gone, leaving me safe forever. You to give him the name right now."
Trimmer stood up, quenched the light on the stub of his cigar, and
chewed up the butt with evident enjoyment.
"All right," he answered. "Shake."
Ten minutes later he had found Cayuse, delivered up the name agreed
upon, and was busy spending his money acquiring a load of fiery drink.
CHAPTER XIX
VAN AND BETH AND BOSTWICK
Van was far too occupied to retain for long the anger that Culver had
aroused in all his being. Moreover, he had come to camp in a mood of
joyousness, youth, and bounding emotions such as nothing could
submerge. The incident with Culver was closed. As for land-office
data, it was far from being indispensable, and Gettysburg's knife was
forgotten.
He had fetched down a nugget from the "Laughing Water" claim, a bright
lump of virgin gold, rudely fashioned by nature like a heart. This he
took at once to a jeweler's shop, where more fine diamonds were being
sold than in all the rest of the State, and while it was being soldered
to a pin he returned to the hay-yard for Dave. His business was to
purchase the mare on which, one beautiful morning when the wild peach
was in bloom, Beth Kent had ridden by his side. Dave would have given
him the animal out of hand. Van compelled him to receive a market
price. Even ponies here were valuable, and Dave had been poor all his
life.
"Say, Van," he drawled, when at length the transaction was complete,
"this camp has set me to thinkin'. It's full of these rich galoots,
all havin' an easy time. If ever I git a wad of dough I'm comin' here
and buy five dollars worth of good sardines and eat 'em, every one.
Never have had enough sardines in all my life."
"I'd buy them for you now and sit you down," said Van, "only why start
a graveyard with a friend?"
Some woman who had come and gone from Goldite had disposed of a
beautiful side saddle, exposed in the hay-yard to the weather. Van
paid fifty dollars and became its owner. The outfit for Beth was soon
complete. He ordered the best of feed and attention for her
roan--bills to be rendered to himself--and hastening off to the
jeweler's, found his pin ready and reposing in a small blue box.
Avoiding a number of admiring friends, he slipped around a corner, and
once more appeared at Mrs. Dick's.
Beth was in the dining-room, alone. Her papers were spread upon the
table. She was flushed with the day's excitements,
Van had entered unannounced. His active tread upon the carpet of the
hall had made no sound. When he halted in the doorway, transfixed by
the beauty of the face he saw reflected in the sideboard mirror
opposite, Beth was unconscious of his presence.
She was busily gathering up her documents. Her pretty hands were
moving lightly on the table. Her eyes were downcast, focused where she
worked. Only the wondrous addition of their matchless brown, thought
Van, was necessary to complete a picture of the most exquisite
loveliness he had ever beheld.
He had come there prepared to be sedate--at least not over-bold again,
or too presumptuous. Already, however, a riot of love was in his
veins. He loved as he fought--with all his strength, with a tidal
impetuosity that could scarcely understand resistance or imagine
defeat. To restrain himself from a quick descent upon her position and
a boyish sweeping of her up in his powerful arms was taxing the utmost
of his self-control. Then Beth glanced up at the mirror.
The light of her eyes seemed to liquify his heart. He felt that mad,
joyous organ spread abruptly, throughout his entire being.
She rose up suddenly and turned to greet him.
"Why--Mr. Van!" she stammered, flushing rosily. "I _heard_ you were in
town."
He came towards her quietly enough, the jeweler's box in his hand.
"I called before," he answered in his off-hand way. "You must have
been out with poor old Searle."
"Oh," she said, "poor old Searle? Why poor?"
"I told you why before," he said boldly, in spite of himself. He was
standing before her by the table, looking fairly into her eyes, with
that dancing boyishness amazingly bright in his own. "You remember,
too--you can't forget."
The flush in her cheeks increased. Her glance was lowered.
"You didn't give me time to--rebuke you for that," she answered,
attempting to assume a tone of severity. "You had no right--it wasn't
nice or like you in the least."
"Yes it was, nice, and like me," he corrected. "I've brought you a
nugget from the claim." He opened the box and shook out the pin on the
table.
She had started to make a reply concerning his actions when leaving on
that former occasion. The words were pushed aside.
"Oh, my!" she said in a little exclamation, instead. "A
nugget!--gold!--not from the--not from your claim?"
His hand slightly trembled.
"From the 'Laughing Water' claim. Named for the girl I'm going to
marry."
She gasped, almost audibly. The things he said were so wholly
unexpected--so almost naked in their bluntness.
"The girl--some girl you--Isn't it beautiful?" she faltered helplessly.
"Of course I don't know--how any girl could have such a singular name."
"Yes you do," he corrected in his shockingly candid way. "You know
when Dave gave her the name."
"Do I?" she asked weakly, trying to smile, and feeling some wonderful,
welcome sort of fear of the passion with which he fairly glowed. "You
are--very positive."
He moved a trifle closer, touching the pin, with a finger, as she held
it in her hand. His voice slightly shook as he asked:
"Do you like it?"
"The pin? Of course. A genuine nugget! You were very kind, I'm sure."
"I thought when you and I ride over to the claim, some day, you ought
to have a horse of your own," he announced in his manner of finality.
"So your horse and outfit are over at Charlie's, at your order."
She looked up at him swiftly. "My horse--over at Charlie's?"
"Yes, Charlie's--the hay-yard. I thought you liked a side-saddle best
and I found a good one in the hay."
"But--I haven't any horse," she protested, failing for a moment to
grasp his meaning. "How could I have a horse in Goldite?"
"You couldn't help having him--that's all--any more than you can help
having me."
The light in his eyes was far too magnetic for her own brown glance to
escape. She hardly knew what she was saying, or what she was thinking.
She was simply aflame with happiness in his presence--and she feared he
must read it in her glance. That the horse was his gift she
comprehended all at once--but--what had he said--what was it he had
said, that she must answer? Her heart and her mind had coalesced.
There was love in both and little of reason in either. She knew he was
holding her eyes to his with the sheer force of overwhelming love.
She tried to escape.
"You--mean-----"
He broke all control like a whirlwind.
"I mean I can't hold it any longer! I love you!--I love you to death!"
He took her in his arms suddenly, passionately, crushing her almost
fiercely against his heart. He kissed her on the lips--once--twice--a
dozen times in half a minute--feeling the warm, moist softness in the
contact and holding her pliant figure yet more closely.
She, too, was mad with it all, for a second. Then she began to battle
with his might.
"Van!--Mr. Van!" she said, pushing his face away with a hand he might
have devoured. "Let me go! Let me go! How dare---- You shan't! You
shan't! Let me go!"
Her nature, in revolt for a moment against her better judgment, refused
to do the bidding of her muscles. Then she gathered strength out of
the whirlwind itself and pushed him away like a tigress.
"You shan't!" she repeated. "You ought to be ashamed! How dare you
treat me----"
He had turned abruptly, looking towards the door. Her utterance was
halted by his movement of listening. She had barely time to take up
her papers, and make an effort at regaining her composure. Bostwick
was coming down the hall. He presently appeared at the door. For a
moment there was silence.
Van was the first to speak.
"How are you, Searle?" he said cheerily. "Got over your grouch?"
Bostwick looked him over with ill-concealed loathing.
"You thought you were clever, I suppose," he said in a growl-like tone
that certainly fitted his face. "What are you doing here, I'd like to
know?"
"Tottering angels!" said Van, "didn't that experience do you any good
after all? No wonder the convicts wouldn't have you!"
Beth was afraid for what Bostwick might have heard. She could not
censure Van for what he had done; she saw he would make no
explanations. At best she could only attempt to put some appearance of
the commonplace upon the horseman's visit.
"Mr. Van Buren came--to see Mrs. Dick," she faltered, steadying her
voice as best she might. "They're--very old friends."
"What's that?" demanded Bostwick, coming into the room and pointing at
the bright nugget pin, lying exposed upon the table. "Some present, I
suppose, for Mrs. Dick?" He started to take it in his hand.
Van interposed. "It's neither for Mrs. Dick nor for you. It's a
present I've made to Miss Kent."
Bostwick elevated his brows.
"Indeed?"
Beth fluttered in with a word of defense.
"It's just a little souvenir--that's all--a souvenir of--of my escape
from those terrible men."
"And Searle's return," added Van, who felt the very devil in his veins
at sight of Bostwick helpless and enraged.
Searle opened his lips as if to fling out something of his wrath. He
held it back and turned to Beth.
"It will soon be night. We have much to do. I suppose I may see you,
privately--even here?"
Beth was helpless. And in the circumstances she wished for Van to go.
"Certainly," she answered, raising her eyes for a second to the
horseman's, "--that is--if----"
"Certainly," Van answered cordially. "Good-by." He advanced and held
out his hand.
She gave him her own because there was nothing else to do--and the
tingling of his being made it burn. She did not dare to meet his gaze.
"So long, Searle," he added smilingly. "Better turn that grouch out to
pasture."
Then he went.
CHAPTER XX
QUEENIE
The shadows of evening met Van, as he stepped from the outside door and
started up the street. Then a figure emerged from the shadows and met
him by the corner.
It was Queenie. Her eyes were red from weeping. A smile that someway
affected Van most poignantly, he knew not why, came for a moment to her
lips.
"You didn't expect to see me here," she said. "I had to come to see if
it was so."
"What is it, Queenie? What do you mean? What do you want?" he
answered. "What's the trouble?"
"Nothing," she said. "I don't want nothing I can git--I
guess--unless--Oh, _is_ it her, Van? Is it sure all over with me?"
"Look here," he said, not unkindly, "you've always been mistaken,
Queenie. I told you at the time--that time in Arizona--I'd have done
what I did for an Indian squaw--for any woman in the world. Why
couldn't you let it go at that?"
"You know why I couldn't," she answered with a certain intensity of
utterance that gave him a species of chill. "After what you done--like
the only real friend I ever had--I belonged to you--and couldn't even
take myself away."
"But I didn't want anyone to belong to me, Queenie. You know that. I
could barely support my clothes."
Her eyes burned with a strange luminosity. Her utterance was eager.
"But you want somebody to belong to you now? Ain't that what's the
matter with you now?"
He did not answer directly.
"I didn't think it was in you, Queenie, to follow me around and play
the spy. I've liked you pretty well--but--I couldn't like this."
She stared at him helplessly, as an animal might have looked.
"I couldn't help it," she murmured, repressing some terrible emotion of
despair. "I won't never trouble you no more."
She turned around and went away, walking uncertainly, as if from
physical weakness and the blindness of pain.
Van felt himself inordinately wrung--felt it a cruelty not to run and
overtake her--give her some measure of comfort. There was nothing he
could do that would not be misunderstood. Moreover, he had no adequate
idea of what was in her mind--or in her homeless heart. He had known
her always as a butterfly; he could not take her tragically now.
"Poor girl," he said as he watched her vanishing fr
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