"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 from sight, "if only she had ever had a show!"

He looked back at Mrs. Dick's. Bostwick had ousted him after all, before he could extenuate his madness, before he could ascertain whether Beth were angry or not—before he could bid her good-by.

Now that the cool of evening was upon him, along with the chill of sober reflection, he feared for what he had done. He was as mad, as crude as Queenie. Yet his fear of Beth's opinion was a sign that he loved her as a woman should be loved, sacredly, and with a certain awe, although he made no such analysis, and took no credit to himself for the half regrets that persistently haunted his reflections.

It would be a moonlight night, he pondered. He had counted on riding by the lunar glow to the "Laughing Water" claim. Would Beth, by any possibility, attempt to see him—come out, perhaps, in the moonlight—for a word before he should go?

He could not entertain a thought of departing without again beholding her. He wanted to know what she would say, and when he might see her again. After all, what was the hurry to depart? He might as well wait a little longer.

He went to the hay-yard. Dave had disappeared. Half an hour of search failed to bring him to light. On the point of entering a restaurant to allay his sense of emptiness, Van was suddenly accosted by a wild-eyed man, bare-headed and sweating, who ran at him, calling as he came.

"Hey!" he cried. "Van Buren! Come on! Come on! She's dyin' and all she wants is you!"

"What's wrong with you, man?" inquired the horseman, halted by the fellow's words. "What are you talking about?"

"Queenie!" gasped the fellow, panting for his breath. "Took poison—O, Lord! Come on! Come on! She don't want nothing but you!"

Van turned exceedingly pale.

"Poison? What you want is the doctor!"

"He's there—long ago!" answered the informant excitedly, and swabbing perspiration from his face. "She won't touch his dope. It's all over, I guess—only she wants to see you."

"Show me the way, then—show me the way. Where is she?" Van shook the man's shoulder roughly. "Don't stand here trembling. Take me to the place."

The man was in a wretched plight, from fear and the physical suffering induced by what he had seen. He reeled drunkenly as he started down the street, then off between some rows of canvas structures, heading for a district hung with red.

At the edge of this place, at an isolated cabin, comprising two small, rough rooms, the man seemed threatened with collapse.

"May be too late," he whispered hoarsely, as he listened and heard no sounds from the house. "I'm goin' to stay outside—and wait."

The door was ajar. Without waiting for anything further, Van pushed it open and entered.

"There he is—I knew it!" cried Queenie from the room at the rear. It was a cry that smote Van like a stab.

Then he came to the room where she was lying.

"I knew you'd come—I knew it, Van!" said the girl in a sudden outburst of sobbing, and she tried to rise upon her pillow. Agony, which she had fought down wildly, seized her in a spasm. She doubled on the bed.

Van glanced about quickly. The doctor—a young, inexperienced man—was there, sweating, a look of abject helplessness upon his face. The room was a poor tawdry place, with gaudy decorations and a litter of Queenie's finery. In her effort to conquer the pains that possessed her body, the girl had distorted her face almost past recognition.

Van came to the bedside directly, placed his hand on her shoulder, and gave her one of his characteristic little shakings.

"Queenie, what have you done?" he said. "What's going on?"

She tried to smile. It was a terrible effort.

"It's nobody's fault—but what was the use, Van?—what was there in it for me?"

"She won't take anything—the antidote—anything! There isn't a stomach pump in town!" the doctor broke in desperately. "She's got to! It's getting too late! We'll have to force it down! Maybe she'd take it for you." He thrust a goblet into Van's nervous hand. It contained a misty drink.

"For God's sake take this, Queenie," Van implored. "Take it quick!"

She shrank away, attempting with amazing force of will to mask her pain.

"I'd take the stuff—for your sake—when I—wouldn't for God," she faltered, sitting up, despite her bodily anguish. "You don't ask me to—do it for you."

"I do, Queenie—take it for me!" he answered, wrung again as he had been at her smiles, an hour before, but now with heart-piercing poignancy. "Take it for me, if you won't for anyone else."

She received the glass—and deliberately threw it on the floor. The doctor cried out sharply. Queenie shook her head, all the time fighting down her agony, which was fast making inroads to her life. She fell back on her pillow.

"You didn't—ask me—Van 'cause you love me. Nobody—wants me to live. That's all right. Do you s'pose you could kiss me good-by?"

The look on her face was peculiarly childish, as she drove out the lines of anguish in a superhuman effort made for him. And the yearning there brought back again that thought he had voiced before, that night—why couldn't the child have had a chance?

The doctor was feverishly mixing another potent drink.

Van bent down and kissed her, indulgently.

"Force her to take it!" cried the doctor desperately. "Force her to take it!"

"Queenie," Van said, "you've got to take this stuff."

Her hand had found his and clutched it with galvanic strength.

"Don't—make me," she begged, closing her eyes in a species of ecstacy that no man may understand. "I'd rather—not—Van—please. Only about a minute now. Ain't it funny—that love—can burn you—up?" Her grip had tightened on his hand.

The doctor ran to the window, which he found already opened. He ran back in a species of frenzy.

"Make her take it, make her take it! God!" he said. "Not to do anything—not to do a thing!"

Queenie smiled at Van again—terribly. Her fingers felt like iron rods, pressing into his flesh. As if to complete her renunciation she dropped his hand abruptly. She mastered some violent convulsion that left the merest flicker of her life.

"Good-by, Van—good luck," she whispered faintly.

"Queenie!" he said. "Queenie!"

Perhaps she heard. After an ordeal that seemed interminable her face was calm and still, a faint smile frozen on her marble features.

Van waited there a long time. Someway it seemed as if this thing could be undone. The place was terribly still. The doctor sat there as if in response to a duty. He was dumb.

When Van went out, the man on the doorstep staggered in.

The moon was up. It shone obliquely down into all that rock-lined basin, surrounded by the stern, forbidding hills—the ancient, burned-out furnace of gold that man was reheating with his passions. Afar in all directions the lighted tents presented a ghostly unreality, their canvas walls illumined by the candles glowing within. A jargon of dance-hall music floated on the air. Outside it all was the desert silence—the silence of a world long dead.

Van would gladly have mounted his horse and ridden away—far off, no matter where. Goldite, bizarre and tragic—a microcosm of the world that man has fashioned—was a blot of discordant life, he felt, upon an otherwise peaceful world. As a matter of fact it had only begun its evening's story.

He stood in the road, alone, for several minutes, before he felt he could begin to resume the round of his own existence. When he came at length to the main street's blaze of light, a deeply packed throng could be seen in all the thoroughfare, compactly blocked in front of a large saloon.

Culver, the Government representative in the land-office needs, had been found in his office murdered. He had been stabbed. Van's knife, bought for Gettysburg, had been employed—and found there, red with its guilt.

All this Van was presently to discover. He was walking towards the surging mob when a miner he had frequently seen came running up and halted in the light of a window. Then the man began to yell.

"Here he is!" he cried. "Van Buren!"

The mob appeared to break at the cry. Fifty men charged down the street in a species of madness and Van was instantly surrounded.



CHAPTER XXI

IN THE SHADOW OF THE ROPE

Mob madness is beyond explanation. Cattle stampeding are no more senseless than men in such a state. Goldite, however, was not only habitually keyed to the highest of tension, but it had recently been excited to the breaking point by several contributing factors. Lawless thefts of one another's claims, ore stealing, high pressure over the coming rush to the Indian reservation, and a certain apprehension engendered by the deeds of those liberated convicts—all these elements had aroused an over-revulsion of feeling towards criminality and a desire to apply some manner of law. And the primal laws are the laws that spring into being at such a time as this—the laws that cry out for an eye for an eye and a swiftness of legal execution.

Into the vortex of Goldite's sudden revulsion Van was swept like a straw. There was no real chance for a hearing. His friends of the morning had lost all sense of loyalty. They were almost as crazed as those whom his recent success had irritated. The story of his row with Culver had spread throughout the confines of the camp. No link in the chain of circumstantial evidence seemed wanting to convict him. A bawling sea of human beings surrounded him with violence and menace.

To escape the over-wrought citizens, the sheriff, assuming charge of Van, dragged him on top of a stack of lumber, piled three feet high before a building. The cry for a rope and a lynching began with a promptness that few would have expected. In normal times it could scarcely have been broached.

Snatching new-made deputies, hit-or-miss from the mob, and summarily demanding their services, the sheriff exerted his utmost powers to stem the tide that was rising. Something akin to a trial began then and there. A big red-faced drummer from Chicago, a man that Van had never seen, became his voluntary advocate, standing between him and the mob.

He had power, that man, both of limb and presence. His voice, also, was mighty. He shoved men about like rubber puppets and shouted his demands for law and order.

Van, having flung off half a dozen citizens, who in the excitement had felt some fanatical necessity for clutching him, faced the human wolves about him in a spirit of angry resentment. The big man from Chicago mowed his way to the pile of lumber and clambered up by the sheriff. The pile raised its occupants only well above the surging pack of faces.

"Stop your howling! Stop your noise!" roared the drummer from his elevation. "Don't you want to give this man a chance?"



He was heard throughout the street.

"He's got to prove his innocence or hang!" cried someone shrilly. "A murder foul as that!"

Another one bawled: "Where was he then? Make him tell where he was at six o'clock!"

Culver's watch had been shattered and stopped at precisely six o'clock, presumably by his fall against a table in his office, when he suddenly went down, at the hands of his assassin. This fact was in possession of the crowd.

A general shout for Van to explain where he was at the vital moment arose from all the crowd. The drummer turned to Van.

"There you are," he said. "There's your chance. If you wasn't around the surveyor's shack, you ought to be able to prove it."

Van could have proved his alibi at once, by sending around to Queenie's residence. He was nettled into a stubbornness of mind and righteous anger by all this senseless accusation. He did not realize his danger—the blackness of the case against him. That a lynching was possible he could scarcely have been made to believe. Nevertheless, as the Queenie matter was one of no secrecy and the facts must soon be known, he was turning to the drummer to make his reply when his eye was caught by a face, far out in the mass of human forms.

It was Beth that he saw, her cheek intensely white in the light streaming forth from a store. Bostwick was there at her side. Beth had been caught in the press of the throng as they came from the telegraph office.

He realized that at best his story concerning Queenie would be sufficiently black. With Beth in this theater of accusation the story of Queenie must wait.

"It's nobody's business where I was," he said. "This whole affair is absurd!"

Half a dozen of the men who were nearest heard his reply. One of them roared it out lustily. The mob was enraged. The cries for a violent termination to the scene increased in volume. Men were shouting, swearing, and surging back and forth tumultuously, wrought to a frenzy of primal virtue.

One near Beth called repeatedly for a lynching. He had cut a long new piece of rope from a coil at a store of supplies and was trying to drag it through the crowd.

The girl had heard and seen it all. She realized its full significance. She had never in her life felt so horribly oppressed with a sense of terrible things impending. Impetuously she accosted a man who stood at her side.

"Oh, tell them he was with me!" she said.

The man looked her over, and raising himself on his tip toes, shook his hat wildly at the mob.

"Say," he shouted at the top of his might, "here's a girl he was with at six o'clock."

It seemed as if only the men near at hand either heard or paid attention. On the farther side, away from Beth, the shouts for mob law were increasing. She turned to Bostwick hotly.

"Can't you do anything? Tell them he was there with us—down at Mrs. Dick's at six o'clock!"

"He wasn't!" said Searle. "He left there at five forty-five."

The man who had shouted listened to them both.

"Five forty-five?" he repeated. "That makes a difference!"

The drummer had caught the shout from out at the edge.

"Who's that?" he called. "Who's got that alibi?"

"All wrong!—No good!" yelled the man who stood by Beth.

The girl had failed to realize how her statement would sound—in such a place as Goldite. Van had turned sick when it reached him. He was emphatically denying the story. The gist of it went through the mass of maddened beings, only to be so soon impugned by the man who had started it from Beth. The fury, at what was deemed an attempted deception, burst out with accumulated force.

The sheriff had drawn a revolver and was shouting to the mob to keep away.

"This man has got to go to jail!" he yelled. "You've got to act accordin' to the law!"

He ordered his deputies to clear the crowd and make ready for retreat. Three of them endeavored to obey. Their efforts served to aggravate the mob.

Confusion and chaos of judgment seemed rising like a tide. In the very air was a feeling that suddenly something would go, something too far strained to hold, and some terrible deed occur before these people could ask themselves how it had been accomplished.

The fellow with the rope was being boosted forward by half a dozen intoxicated fools. Had the rope been a burning fuse it could scarcely have ignited more dangerous material than did its strands of manilla, in those who could lay their hands upon it.

The drummer was shouting himself raw in the throat—in vain.

Van was courting disaster by the very defiance of his attitude. It seemed as if nothing could save him, when two separate things occurred.

The doctor who had been with Van at Queenie's death arrived in the press, got wind of the crisis, and vehemently protested the truth. Simultaneously, the lumberman, Trimmer, drunk, and enjoying what he deemed a joke, hoarsely confided to some sober men the fact that Cayuse had done the murder.

Even then, when two centers of opposition to the madness of the mob had been created, the menace could not at once be halted.

The man with the rope had approached so near the lumber-pile that the sheriff could all but reach him. A furious battle ensued, and waged around the planks, between the deputies and lynchers. It lasted till fifty active men of the camp, aroused to a sense of reaction by the facts that were now becoming known, hurled the struggling fighters apart and dragged them off, all the while spreading the news they had heard concerning the half-breed Indian.

No less excited when at last they knew that Van was innocent, the great crowd still occupied the street, hailing Trimmer to the lumber-pile and demanding to know how he came by the facts, and where Cayuse had gone.

Trimmer was frightened into soberness—at least into soberness sufficient to protect himself and McCoppet. He said he had seen the Indian coming from Culver's office, with blood upon his hands. The Indian had gone straight westward from the town, to elude pursuit in the mountains.

The fact that Van had been at Queenie's side at her death became town property at once. It came in all promptness to Beth.

With a feeling of sickness pervading all her being, she was glad to have Bostwick take her home.

It was late when at last the street was clear, and Van could finally make his escape from danger and returning friends. Dave by then had found himself; that is, he made his way, thus tardily, to the horseman's side—and the two went at length to their dinner.

At half-past eight, with the moon well up, Dave and Van were ready for departure. Their horses were saddled. One extra animal was packed with needed provisions for the crew on the "Laughing Water" claim. Van had ordered all he could for Queenie's final journey—the camp's best possible funeral, which he could not remain to attend. There was nothing to do but to mount and ride away, but—Beth was down at Mrs. Dick's.

Resistance was useless. Bidding Dave wait with the horses at the yard. Van made his way around through the shadows of the houses, and coming out upon a rocky hill, a little removed from the boarding place, was startled to see Beth abruptly rise before him.

The house had oppressed her—and the moon had called. Bostwick, in alarm concerning possible disaster to the plans he had made with McCoppet, now that Culver was dead, had gone to seek the gambler out and ascertain the status of affairs.



CHAPTER XXII

TWO MEETINGS AFTER DARK

For a moment neither Beth nor Van could speak. The girl, like a startled moon-sprite, wide-eyed and grave, had taken on a mood of beauty such as the man had never seen. She seemed to him strangely fragile, a trifle pale, but wholly exquisite, enchanting.

No signs were on her face, but she had wept—hot, angry tears, within the hour. And here was the cause of them all! She had wished he would come—and feared he would come, as conflicting emotions possessed her. Now that he stood here, with moonlight on half of his face, her thoughts were all unmarshaled.

Van presently spoke.

"I'm a kid, after all. I couldn't go away without—this."

"I wish you had! I wish you had!" she answered, at his smile. "I wish I had never seen you in the world!"

His heart was sore for jesting, but he would not change his way.

"If not in the world, where would you have wished to see me, then?"

"I never wished to see you at all!" she replied. "Your joke has gone too far. You have utterly mistaken my sense of gratitude."

"Guess not," he said. "I haven't looked for gratitude—nor wanted it, either."

"You had no right!" she continued. "You have said things—done things—you have taken shameful advantage—you have treated me like—I suppose like—that other—that other—— You dared!"

Van's face took on an expression of hardness, to mask the hurt of his heart.

"Who says so?" he demanded quietly. "You know better."

"It's true!" she answered hotly. "You had no right! It was mere brute strength! You cannot deny what you have been—to that miserable woman!" Tears of anger sped from her eyes, and she dashed them hotly away.

Van stepped a little closer.

"Beth," he said, suddenly taking her hand, "none of this is true, and you know it. You're angry with that woman, not with me."

She snatched her hand away.

"You shan't!" she said. "Don't you dare to touch me again. I hate you—hate you for what you have done! You've been a brute probably to her as well as to me!"

"To you? When?" he demanded

"All the time! To-day!—Now!—when you say I'm angry at a—woman who is dead!—a woman who died for you!"

It hit him.

"Poor Queenie," he said, "poor child."

"Yes—poor Queenie!" Her eyes blazed in the moonlight. "To think that you dared to treat me like——"

"Beth!" he interrupted, "I won't permit it. I told you to-day I loved you. That makes things right. You love me, and that makes them sacred. I'd do all I've done over again—all of it—Queenie and the rest! I'm not ashamed, nor sorry for anything I've done. I love you—I say—I love you. That's what I've never done before—and never said I did—and that's what makes things right!"

Beth was confused by what he said—confused in her judgment, her emotions. Weakly she clung to her argument.

"You haven't any right—it isn't true when you say I love you. I don't! I won't! You can't deny that woman died of a broken heart for you!"

"I don't deny anything about her," he said. "I tried to be her friend. God knows she needed friends. She was only a child, a pretty child. I'm sorry. I've always been sorry. She knew I was only a friend."

She felt he was honest. She knew he was wrung—suffering, but not in his conscience. Yet what was she to think? She had heard it all—all of Queenie's story.

"You kissed her," she said, and red flamed up in her cheeks.

"It was all she asked," he answered simply. "She was dying."

"And you're paying for her funeral."

"I said I was her friend."

"Oh, the shamelessness of it!" she exclaimed as before, "—the way it looks! And to think of what you dared to do to me!"

"Yes, I kissed you without your asking," he confessed. "I expect to kiss you a hundred thousand times. I expect to make you my wife—for a love like ours is rare. Whatever else you think you want to say, Beth—now—don't say it—unless it's just good-night."

With a sudden move forward he took her two shoulders in his powerful hands and gave her a rough little shake. Then his palms went swiftly to her face, he kissed her on the lips, and let her go.

"You!—Oh!" she cried, and turning she ran down the slope of the hill as hard as she could travel.

He watched her going in the moonlight. Even her shadow was beautiful, he thought, but all his joy was grave.

She disappeared within the house, without once turning to see what he had done. He could not know that from one of the darkened windows she presently peered forth and watched him depart from the hill. He was not so assured as he had tried to make her think, and soberness dwelt within his breast.

Half an hour later he and old Dave were riding up the mountain in the moonlight. The night from the eminence was glorious, now that the town was left behind. Goldite lay far below in the old dead theatre of past activities, dotting the barren immensity with its softened lights like the little thing it was. How remote it seemed already, with its vices, woes, and joys, its comedy and tragedy, its fevers, strifes, and toil, disturbing nothing of the vast serenity of the planet, ever rolling on its way. How coldly the moon seemed looking on the scene. And yet it had cast a shadow of a girl to set a man aflame.

Meantime Bostwick had been delayed in securing McCoppet's attention. The town was still excited over all that had happened; the saloons were full of men. Culver had been an important person, needful to many of the miners and promoters of mining. His loss was an aggravation, especially as his deputy, Lawrence, was away.

The more completely to allay suspicions that might by any possibility creep around the circle to himself, McCoppet had been the camp's most active figure in organizing a posse, with the sheriff, to go out and capture Cayuse. His reasons for desiring the half-breed's end were naturally strong, nevertheless his active partisanship of law and justice excited no undesirable talk. He was simply an influential citizen engaged in a laudable work.

It was late when at length he and Bostwick could snatch a few minutes to themselves. The gambler's first question then was something of a puzzle to Bostwick.

"Well, have you got that thirty thousand?"

"Got it? Yes, I've got it," Bostwick answered nervously, "but what is the good of it now?"

It was McCoppet's turn to be puzzled.

"Anything gone wrong with Van Buren, or his claim?"

"Good heavens! Isn't it sufficient to have things all gone wrong with Culver? What could be worse than that?"

The gambler flung his cigar away and hung a fresh one on his lip.

"Say, don't you worry on Culver. Don't his deputy take his place?"

"His deputy?"

"Sure, his deputy—Lawrence—a man we can get hands down."

Bostwick stared at him hopefully.

"You don't mean to say this accident—this crime—is fortunate, after all?"

"It's a godsend." McCoppet would have dared any blasphemy.

Bostwick's relief was inordinate.

"Then what is the next thing to do?"

"Wait for Lawrence," said the gambler. Then he suddenly arose. "No, we can't afford the time. He might be a week in coming. You'll have to go get him, to-morrow."

"Where is he, then?"

"Way out South, on a survey. You'd better take that car of yours, with a couple of men I'll send along, and fetch him back mighty pronto. We can't let a deal like this look raw. The sooner he runs that reservation line the better things will appear."

Bostwick, too, had risen.

"Will your men know where to find him?"

"If he's still on the map," said the gambler. "You leave that to me. Better go see about your car to-night. I'll hustle your men and your outfit. See you again if anything turns up important. Meantime, is your money in the bank?"

"It's in the bank."

"Right," said McCoppet. "Good-night."



CHAPTER XXIII

BETH'S DESPERATION

The following day in Goldite was one of occurrences, all more or less intimately connected with the affairs of Van and Beth.

Bostwick succeeded in making an early start to the southward in his car. McCoppet had provided not only a couple of men as guides to the field where Lawrence was working, but also a tent, provisions, and blankets, should occasion arise for their use.

Beth was informed by her fiance that word had arrived from her brother, to whom Searle said he meant to go. The business of buying Glenmore's mine, he said, required unexpected dispatch. Perhaps both he and Glen might return by the end of the week.

By that morning's train the body of Culver was shipped away—and the camp began to forget him. The sheriff was after Cayuse.

Early in the afternoon the body of the girl who had never been known in Goldite by any name save that of Queenie, was buried on a hillside, already called into requisition as a final resting place for such as succumbed in the mining-camp, too far from friends, or too far lost, to be carried to the world outside the mountains. Half a dozen women attended the somewhat meager rites. There was one mourner only—the man who had run to summon Van, and who later had waited by the door.

At four o'clock the Goldite News appeared upon the streets. It contained much original matter—or so at least it claimed. The account of the murder of Culver, the death of Queenie, and the threatened lynching of Van Buren made a highly sensational story. It was given the prominent place, for the editor was proud to have made it so full in a time that he deemed rather short. On a second page was a tale less tragic.

It was, according to one of its many sub-headings, "A Humorous Outcrop concerning two Maids and a Man." It related, with many gay sallies of "wit," how Van had piloted Mr. J. Searle Bostwick into the hands of the convicts, recently escaped, packed off his charges, Miss Beth Kent and her maid, and brought them to Goldite by way of the Monte Cristo mine, in time to behold the discomfited entrance of the said J. Searle Bostwick in prisoner's attire. Mr. Bostwick was described as having been "on his ear" towards Van Buren ever since.

In the main the account was fairly accurate. Gettysburg, Napoleon, and old Dave had over-talked, during certain liquifying processes. The matter was out beyond repair.

Mrs. Dick was prompt in pouncing on the story, hence Beth was soon presented with a copy. In the natural annoyance she felt when it was read, there was one consolation, at least: Searle was away, to be gone perhaps two or three days. He might not see the article, which would soon be forgotten in the camp.

To culminate the day's events, that evening Elsa ran away. She went with a "gentleman" lodger, taking the slight precaution to be married by the Justice of the Peace.

Beth discovered her loss too late to interfere. She felt herself alone, indeed, with Bostwick away, her brother off in the desert, and Van—she refused to think of Van. Fortunately, Mrs. Dick was more than merely a friend. She was a staunch little warrior, protecting the champion, to anger whom was unhealthy. Despite the landlady's attitude of friendliness, however, Beth felt wretchedly alone. It was a terrible place. She was cooped up all day within the lodging house, since the street full of men was more than she cared to encounter; and with life all about her, and wonderful days spreading one after another across the wide-open land, her liberties were fairly in a cage.

From time to time she thought of the horse, awaiting her order at the hay-yard. She tried to convince herself she would never accept or ride the animal. She was certain she resented everything Van had done. She felt the warmest indignation at herself for breaking into bits of song, for glowing to the tips of her ears, for letting her heart leap wildly in her breast whenever she thought of the horseman.

Two days went by and she chafed under continued restraints. No word had come from Bostwick, none from Glen—and not a sign from the "Laughing Water" claim. From the latter she said to herself she wished no sign. But Searle had no right to leave her thus and neglect her in every respect.

The morning of the third long day Mrs. Dick brought her two thin letters. One had been mailed in Goldite, by a messenger down from the "Laughing Water" claim. It came from Van. He had written the briefest of notes:

"Just to send my love. I want you to wear my nugget."

Folded into the paper was a spray of the wild peach bloom.

Beth tried to think her blushes were those of indignation, which likewise caused the beat of her heart to rise. But her hand fluttered prettily up to her breast, where the nugget was pinned inside her waist. Also his letter must have been hard to understand—she read it seventeen times.

Then she presently turned to the other. It was addressed in typewritten characters, but the writing inside she knew—her brother Glen's.

"Dear Old Sis: Say, what in the dickens are you doing out here in the mines, by all that's holey?—and what's all this story in the Goldite News about one Bronson Van Buren doing the benevolent brigand stunt with you and your maid, and shunting Searle off with the Cons? Why couldn't you let a grubber know you were hiking out here to the desert? Why all this elaborate surprise—this newspaper wireless to your fond and lonesome?

"What's the matter with your writing hand? Is this Van-brigand holding them both? What's the matter with Searle? I wrote him two or three aeons ago, when he might have been of assistance. Now I'm doing my eight hours a day in an effort to sink down to China. I'm on the blink, in a way, but not for long, for this is the land where opportunity walks night and day to thump on your door—and I'll grab her by the draperies yet.

"But me!—working as a common miner!—though I've got a few days off to go and look at a claim with a friend of mine, so you needn't answer till you hear again.

"If Searle is dead, why don't he say so? I only touched him for a few odd dollars—I only needed a grub-stake—fifty would have done the trick—and he doesn't come through. And nobody writes. I guess it's me for the Prodigal, but when I do get next to the fatted calf I'll get inside and eat my way out by way of his hoofs and horns. Why couldn't you and Searle and the maid come down and have a look at me—working? It's worth it. Come on. Maybe it's easier than writing. Yours for the rights of labor, GLEN."

Astonished by the contents of this communication, Beth read it again, in no little bewilderment, to make sure she had made no mistake. No letter from herself? No word from Searle? No answer to Glen's request for money? And he had only asked for a "few odd dollars?" There must be something wrong. He had sent the most urgent requirement for sixty thousand dollars. And she herself had written, at once. Searle had assured her he had sent him word by special messenger. Starlight was less than a long day's ride away. Glen had already had time to see that account in the paper and write.

She had no suspicions of Bostwick. She had seen Glen's letter and read it for herself. And Searle had responded immediately with an offer to lend her brother thirty thousand dollars. There must be some mistake. Glen might be keeping his news and plans from herself, as men so often will. Searle might even have overlooked the importance of keeping Glen fully posted, intending to go so soon to Starlight. Her own letter might have miscarried.

She tried to fashion explanations—but they would not entirely fit. Searle had been gone three days. He had gone before the Goldite News was issued. The paper had arrived at Glen's while the man in his car had failed.

For a moment she sickened with the reflection that Searle might once more have fallen captive to the convicts, still at large—and with all the money! Then she presently assured herself that news so sinister as this would have been very prompt to return.

It was all too much to understand—unless Glen were ill—or out of his reason. His two letters, the one to Searle and this one to herself, were so utterly conflicting. It was not to be solved from such a distance. Moreover, Glen wrote that he was off on a trip, and asked her to wait before replying. It was irritating, all this waiting, alone here in Goldite, but there seemed to be nothing else to do.

The long morning passed, and she fretted. In the afternoon the Goldite News broke its record. It printed an extra—a single sheet, in glaring type, announcing the capture of the convicts. By a bold and daring coup, it said, the entire herd of criminals, all half starved and weakened by privations, had been rounded up and transported back to prison. Unfortunately, the report was slightly inaccurate. Matt Barger, the leader in the prison delivery, and the most desperate man in the lot, had escaped the posse's vigilance. Of this important factor in the welcome story of the posse's work Goldite was ignorant, and doomed to be in ignorance a week.

The news to Beth was a source of great relief. But her troubles in other directions were fated to increase. That evening three men called formally—formally, that is to say, in so far as dressing in their best was concerned and putting on their "company manners." But Beth and courtship were their objects, a fact that developed, somewhat crudely with the smallest possible delay.

One of these persons, Billy Stitts by name, was fairly unobjectionable as a human being, since he was a quaint, slow-witted, bird-like little creature, fully sixty years of age and clearly harmless. The others were as frankly in pursuit of a mate as any two mountain animals.

Beth was frightened, when the purport of their visit flashed upon her. She felt a certain sense of helplessness. Mrs. Dick was too busy to be constantly present; Elsa was gone; the ways of such a place were new and wholly alarming. She felt when she made her escape from the three that her safety was by no means assured. Her room was her only retreat. Except for Mrs. Dick, there was not another woman in the house. She was wholly surrounded by men—a rough, womanless lot whose excitements, passions, and emotions were subjected to changes constantly, as well as to heats, by the life all around them in the mines.

That night was her first of real terror. Every noise in the building, and some in the streets, made her start awake like a hunted doe, with imaginings of the most awful description. She scarcely slept at all.

The following day old Billy Stitts called again, very shortly after breakfast. He proved such an amiable, womanly old chap that he was almost a comfort to the girl. She sent him to the postoffice, for a possible letter from Glen. He went with all the pleasure and alacrity of a faithful dog, apologizing most exuberantly on his return for the fact that no letter had come.

She remained in the house all day. The afternoon brought the two rough suitors of the night before, and two more equally crude. Mrs. Dick, to Beth's intense uneasiness, regarded the matter as one to be expected, and quite in accord with reason and proper regulations. A good-looking girl in camp, with her men-folks all giving her the go-by—and what could you expect? Moreover, as some of these would-be courtiers were husky and in line for fortune's smile, with chances as good as any other man's, she might do worse than let them come, and hear what they had to say. It was no girl's need to be neglected as Searle and Van were patently neglecting Beth.

This was the stage in which Beth at length began to meditate on Spartan remedies. The situation was not to be endured. No word had come from Searle. The world might have swallowed him up. She was sick of him—sick of his ways of neglect. And as for Van——

There was no one to whom she could turn—unless it were Glen. If only she could flee to her brother! She thought about it earnestly. She tried to plan the way.

Her horse was at the hay-yard. Starlight was only one day off in the desert. The convicts were no longer about. If only she could ride there—even alone! An early start—a little urging of the pony—she could fancy the journey accomplished with the utmost ease; then scornful defiance, both of Bostwick and of Van.

But a woman—riding in this lawless land alone! She was utterly disheartened, disillusionized at the thought. It would be no less than madness. And yet, it seemed as if she must presently go. Searle's silence, coupled to conditions here, was absolutely intolerable.

With plans decidedly hazy—nothing but a wild, bright dream really clear—she questioned Billy Stitts concerning the roads. He was familiar with every route in miles, whether roadway, trail, or "course by compass," as he termed trackless cruising in the desert. He gave her directions with the utmost minutae of detail as to every highway to Starlight. He drew her a plan. She was sure that she could almost ride to Starlight in the dark. What branches of the road to shun, which trails to choose, possibly, for gaining time, what places to water a famishing horse—all these and more she learned with feverish interest.

"Now a man would do this," and "a man would do that," said Billy time after time, till a new, fantastic notion came bounding full-fledged into Beth's anxious brain and almost made her laugh with delight. She could dress as a man and ride as a man and be absolutely safe on the journey! She knew a dozen unusual arts for dying the skin and concealing the hair and making the hands look rough. Make-up in private theatricals, at professional hands, she had learned with exceptional thoroughness.

She would need a suit of kahki, miners' books, a soft, big hat, and flannel shirt. They were all to be had at the store. She could order her horse to be saddled for a man. She could readily dress and escape unseen from the house. In a word, she could do the trick!

The plan possessed her utterly. It sent her blood bounding through her veins. Her face was flushed with excitement. She loved adventure—and this would be something to do!

Nevertheless, despite all her plans, she had no real intention of attempting a scheme so mad. Subconsciously she confessed to herself it was just the merest idle fancy, not a thing to be actually ventured, or even entertained.

That night, when she was more beset, more worried than before, however, desperation was increasing upon her. The plan she had made no longer seemed the mere caprice of one in pursuit of pleasure—it appeared to be the only possible respite from conditions no longer to be borne.

When the morning came, after a night of mental torture and bodily fear, her patience had been strained to the point of breaking, and resolve was steeling her courage.

The word that should have come from Searle was still delinquent. But old Billy Stitts brought her a letter from Glen.

"Dear Sis: I can only write a line or two. Had a thump on the head, but it didn't knock off my block. Don't worry. All right in a few days, sure. Guess you couldn't come, or you'd be here, in response to my last. But Searle might show up, anyhow. You can write me now. Hope you're well and happy. Is the brigand still on the job? Can't really write. With love, GLEN."

Her heart stood still as she; read her brother's lines, in a scrawled hand indicative of weakness. She resolved in that instant to go.

"Mr. Stitts," she raid in remarkable calm, for all that she felt, "my brother needs some clothing—everything complete, boots, shirts, and all. He's just about my size. I wish you'd go and buy them."

"Lord, I know the best and the cheapest in camp!" said Billy eagerly. "I'll have 'em here before you can write him your letter—but the stage don't go back till Friday."

She had given no thought to the tri-weekly stage. She dismissed it now, with a wave of gratitude towards Van for the horse—gratitude, or something, surging warmly in her veins. She almost wished he could ride at her side, but checked that lawlessness sternly. She would ride to Glen alone!



CHAPTER XXIV

A BLIZZARD OF DUST

At daylight Beth was dressed as a man and surveying herself in the mirror. She had passed a sleepless night. She was fevered, excited, and nervous.

Her work had been admirably done. She looked no more rawly new or youthful than scores of young tenderfeet, daily in the streets of the camp. The stain on her face had furnished an astonishing disguise, supported as it was by male attire. Her hair was all up in the crown of her hat, which was set on the back of her head. It was fastened, moreover, with pins concealed beneath the leather band. Altogether the disguise was most successful. Beth had disappeared: a handsome young man had been conjured in her place.

Her mare, which Billy had ordered, came promptly to the door. She heard her arrive—and her heart stroked more madly than before. Trembling in every limb, and treading as softly as a thief, she made her way downstairs.

On the dining-room table was the package of lunch that Mrs. Dick had agreed to prepare. Beth had told her she meant to take an early morning ride and might not be back in time for breakfast. With this bundle in hand she went out at the door, her courage all but failing at thought of the man with the horse at the threshold. She shrank from being seen in such an outfit.

It was too late now to retreat, however, she told herself bravely, and out she went.

"Say, git a move, young feller," said the hostler with her pony. "I ain't got time to play horse-post here all day."

"Thank you for being so prompt," said Beth, in a voice that was faint, despite her efforts to be masculine, and she gave him a coin.

"I'll tie that there bundle on behind," he volunteered, less gruffly, and Beth was glad of his assistance.

A moment later she took a gasp of breath and mounted to the seat. Collapse of all the project had seemed imminent, but an actual feeling of relief and security ensued when she was settled in the saddle.

"So long," said the hostler, and Beth responded manfully, "So long."

She rode out slowly, towards the one main road. A feeling of the morning's chill assailed her, making her shiver. The noise of her pony's hoof-beats seemed alarmingly resonant.

But nothing happened. The streets were deserted, save for a few half-drunken wanderers, headed for the nearest saloon. On the far-off peaks of the mountains the rosy light of sunrise faintly appeared. In the calm of the great barren spaces, even Goldite was beautiful at last.

A sense of exhilaration pervaded Beth's youthful being. She was glad of what she had done. It was joyous, it was splendid, this absolute freedom in all this stern old world!

The road wound crookedly up a hill, as it left the streets of the town behind. The scattered tents extended for a mile in this direction, the squares of silent canvas, like so many dice, cast on the slopes by a careless fate that had cast man with them in the struggle.

Beth and her pony finally topped the hill, to be met by a sea of mountains out beyond. Up and down these mighty billows of the earth the highway meandered, leading onward and southward through the desert.

The mare was urged to a gallop, down an easy slope, then once more she walked as before. All the mountains in the west were rosy now, till presently the sun was up, a golden coin, struck hot from the very mints of God, giving one more day with its glory.

Its very first rays seemed a comfort, suggesting a welcome warmth. Beth could have called out songs of gladness well nigh uncontainable. She had all the big world to herself. Even the strangely twisted clouds in the sky seemed made for her delight. They were rare in this wonderful dome of blue and therefore things of beauty.

For an hour or more her way was plain, and to ride was a god-like privilege. Her ease of mind was thoroughly established. What had been the necessity for all those qualms of fear? The matter was simple, after all.

It was ten o'clock before she ate her breakfast. She had come to the so-called river, the only one in perhaps a hundred miles. It was quite a respectable stream at this particular season, but spread very thinly and widely at the ford.

By noon she was half way of her distance. The sun was hot; summer baking of the desert had begun. Her mare was sweating profusely. She had urged her to the top of her strength. Nevertheless she was still in excellent condition. To the westward the sky was overcast in a manner such as Beth had never seen, with a dark, copperous storm-head that massed itself prodigiously above the range.

Already she had come to three branchings of the road and chosen her way in confidence, according to Billy Stiff's directions. When she came to a fourth, where none had been indicated, she was sure, either in Billy's instructions, or upon his drawing, she confessed herself somewhat uncertain. She halted and felt for the map.

It was not to be found. She had left it behind at Mrs. Dick's. Dimly she fancied she remembered that Billy had said on the fourth branch, keep to the right. There could be no doubt that this branch was the fourth, howsoever out of place it appeared. She rode to the right, and, having passed a little valley, found herself enfolded in a rolling barrier of hills where it seemed as if the sun and rocks were of almost equal heat.

At mid-afternoon Beth abruptly halted her pony and stared at the world of desert mountains in confusion not unmixed with alarm. She was out at the center of a vast level place, almost entirely devoid of vegetation—and the road had all but disappeared. It branched once more, and neither fork was at all well defined, despite the fact that travel to Starlight was supposed to be reasonably heavy. She had made some mistake. She suddenly remembered something that Billy had said concerning a table mountain she should have passed no later than half-past one. It had not been seen along her way. She was tired. Weariness and the heat had broken down a little of the bright, joyous spirit of the morning. A heart-sinking came upon her. She must turn and ride back to—she knew not which of the branches of the road, any one of which might have been wrongly selected.

Her mare could not be hurried now; she must last to get her to Starlight. To add to other trifles of the moment, the bank of cloud, so long hung motionless above the western summits, moved out across the path of the sun and blotted out its glory with a density that would have seemed impossible.

Scarcely had Beth fairly turned her back to the west when a wind storm swooped upon the desert. It came as a good stiff breeze, at first, flecking up but little of the dust. Then a sudden, ominous change occurred. All the blue of the sky was overwhelmed, under a sudden expansion of the copperous clouds. An eclipse-like darkness enveloped the world, till the farthest mountains disappeared and the near-by ranges seemed to magnify themselves as they blended with the sky.

With a sound as of an on-rushing cataclysm the actual storm, cyclonic in all but the rotary motion, came beating down upon the startled earth like a falling wall of air.

In less than two minutes the world, the atmosphere, everything had ceased to be. It was a universe of dust and sand, hurtling—God knew whither.

In the suddenness of the storm's descent upon her, Beth became speechless with dismay. Her mare dropped her head and slowly continued to walk. Road, hills, desert—all had disappeared. To go onward was madness; to remain seemed certain death. Despair and horror together gripped Beth by the heart. There was nothing in the world she could do but to close her eyes and double low above the saddle, her hat bent down to shield her face.

At the end of a few minutes only the frightfulness of the thing could no longer be endured. Beth had been all but torn from her seat by the sheer weight and impact of the wind. All the world was roaring prodigiously. The sand and dust, driving with unimaginable velocity, smoked past in blinding fury.

The mare had ceased to move. Beth was aware of her inertia, dimly. She remembered at last to dismount and stand in the animal's shelter. At length on the raging and roaring of the air-sea, crashing onward in its tidal might, came a fearful additional sound. It was rushing onward towards the girl with a speed incredible—a sound of shrieking, or whistling, that changed to a swishing as if of pinions, Titanic in size, where some monstrous winged god was blown against, his will in a headlong course through the tumult.

Then the something went by—the whole roof of a house—from twenty miles away. It scraped in the earth, not ten feet off from where the pony stood—and she bolted and ran for her life.

Down went Beth, knocked over by the mare. With a hideous crash the flying roof was hurled against a nearby pinnacle of rock. The wooden wings split upon the immovable obstruction, and on they went as before.

The pony had disappeared, in panic that nothing could have allayed. The storm-pall swallowed her instantly, Beth could not have seen her had she halted a rod away. Her eyes had been opened for half a moment only before she was flung to the earth. She was rolling now, and for the moment was utterly powerless to rise or to halt her locomotion.

When she presently grasped at a little gray shrub, came to a halt, and tried to stand erect, she was buffeted bodily along by the wind with no strength in her limbs to resist.

She was blown to the big rock pinnacle on which the roof had been divided. An eddy twisted her rudely around to the shelter, and she flung herself down upon the earth.



CHAPTER XXV

A TIMELY DELIVERANCE

How long she lay there Beth could never have known. It seemed a time interminable, with the horror of the storm in all the universe. It was certainly more than an hour before the end began to come. Then clouds and the blizzard of sand and dust, together with all the mighty roaring, appeared to be hurled across the firmament by the final gust of fury and swept from the visible world into outer space.

Only a brisk half-gale remained in the wake of the huger disturbance. The sky and atmosphere cleared together. The sun shone forth as before—but low to the mountain horizon. When even the clean wind too had gone, trailing behind its lawless brother, the desert calm became as absolute as Beth had beheld it in the morning.

She crept from her shelter and looked about the plain. Her eyes were red and smarting. She was dusted through and through. In all the broad, gray expanse there was not a sign of anything alive. Her mare had vanished. Beth was lost in the desert, and night was fast descending.

Deliverance from the storm, or perhaps the storm's very rage, had brought her a species of calm. The fear she had was a dull, persistent dread—an all-pervading horror of her situation, too large to be acute. Nevertheless, she determined to seek for the road with all possible haste and make her way on foot, as far as possible, towards the Starlight highway and its possible traffic.

She was stiff from her ride and her cramped position on the earth. She started off somewhat helplessly, where she felt the road must be.

She found no road. Her direction may have been wrong. Possibly the storm of wind had swept away the wagon tracks, for they had all been faint. It had been but half a road at best for several miles. Her heart sank utterly. She became confused as to which way she had traveled. Towards a pass in the hills whence she felt she must have come she hastened with a new accession of alarm.

She was presently convinced that she had chosen entirely wrong. A realizing sense that she was hopelessly mixed assailed her crushingly. To turn in any direction might be a grave mistake. But to stand here and wait—do nothing—with the sun going down—this was preposterous—suicidal! She must go on—somewhere! She must find the road! She must keep on moving—till the end! Till the end! How terrible that thought appeared, in such a situation!

She almost ran, straight onward towards the hills. Out of breath very soon, she walked with all possible haste and eagerness, all the time looking for the road she had left, which the storm might have wiped from the desert. She was certain now that the mountains towards which she was fleeing were away from the Goldite direction.

Once more she changed her course. She realized then that such efforts as these must soon defeat themselves. At least she must stick to one direction—go on in a line as straight as possible, till she came to something! Yet if she chose her direction wrong and went miles away from anything——

She had to go on. She had to take the chance. She plodded southwestward doggedly, for perhaps a mile, then halted at something like a distant sound, and peered towards the shadows of the sunset.

There was nothing to be seen. A hope which had risen for a moment in her breast, at thought of possible deliverance, sank down in collapse, and left her more faint than before. The sun was at the very rim of the world. Its edge began to melt its way downward into all the solid bulk of mountains. It would soon be gone. Darkness would ensue. The moon would be very late, if indeed it came at all. Wild animals would issue from their dens of hiding, to prowl in search of food. Perhaps the sound she heard had been made by an early night-brute of the desert, already roving for his prey!

Once more she went on, desperately, almost blindly. To keep on going, that was the one essential! She had proceeded no more than a few rods, however, when she heard that sound again—this time more like a shout.

Her heart pounded heavily and rapidly. She shaded her eyes with her hand, against the last, slanted sun-rays, and fancied she discerned something, far off there westward, in the purples flung eastward by the mountains. Then the last bit of all that molten disk of gold disappeared in the summits, and with its going she beheld a horseman, riding at a gallop towards herself.

The relief she felt was almost overwhelming—till thoughts of such an encounter came to modify her joy. She was only an unprotected girl—yet—she had no appearance of a woman! This must be her safeguard, should this man now approaching prove some rough, lawless being of the mines.

She stood perfectly still and waited. A man would have hurried forward to meet this deliverance, so unexpectedly vouchsafed. But she was too excited, too uncertain—too much of a girl. Then presently, when the horseman was still a hundred yards away, her heart abruptly turned over in her bosom.

The man on the horse was Van. She knew him—knew that impudent pose, that careless grace and oneness with his broncho! She did not know he was chasing that flying roof which had frightened her horse from her side; that he had bought an old cabin, far from his claim, to move it to the "Laughing Water" ground—only to see it wrenched from his hold by the mighty gale and flung across the world. She knew nothing of this, but she suddenly knew how glad was her whole tingling being, how bounding was the blood in her veins! And she also knew, abruptly, that now if ever she must play the man. She had all but forgotten she was angry with Van. That, and a hundred reasons more, made it absolutely imperative now that he should not know her for herself!

She made a somewhat wild attempt at a toilet of her hair—in case the wind had ripped the tell-tale strands from beneath her hat. Then with utter faintness in her being, and weakness in her knees, she prepared to give him reception.

He had slowed his horse to a walk. He rode up deliberately, scrutinizing in obvious puzzlement the figure before him in the sand.

"Hullo," he said, while still a rod away, "what in blazes are you doing here, man—are you lost?"

Beth nodded. "I'm afraid I am." Her utterance was decidedly girlish, and quavering.

"Lost your voice somewhere, too, I reckon," said Van. "Where are you going? Where are you from?"

"Starlight," answered Beth, at a loss for a better reply, and making an effort to deepen her tones as she talked. "I lost my horse in the storm."

Van looked around the valley.

"Did, hey? Didn't happen to see a stray roof, anywhere, did you? I lost one."

"I—haven't seen anything," faltered Both, whose only wish was to have him say something about her escape from this terrible place. "But something frightened my pony."

"I was curious to see how far that roof would hike, that's all," he told her by way of explanation of his presence here on his horse, and he turned to look at her again. "Didn't you know this so-called cut-off to Starlight would take you more time than the road?"

"No, I—I didn't know it," said Beth, afraid he must presently penetrate her masquerade if he looked like that upon her. "What do you advise me to do?"

He ignored her question, demanding:

"Say, is your name Kent?—Glenmore Kent?"

Beth felt her heart begin new gymnastics. This was her cue.

"Why, yes. But—how did you know—know me?"

"I've met your sister, in Goldite. You can't get to Starlight to-night."

She had passed muster! A herd of wild emotions were upon her. But first here was her predicament—and what he said was not at all reassuring. Certain alarms that his coming had banished returned in a vague array.

She showed her dread in her eyes. "Perhaps I could get to Goldite."

"How?" He was half unconsciously patting Suvy, the horse, whose ecstasy thereat was not to be concealed.

Beth knew not how. She wished Van would cease that study of her face. Perhaps she could think more clearly.

"Why—I suppose I could walk—if I knew the way," she said. "Is it very far? I admit I'm bewildered. I was lost."

"It would be a long ride," he told her. "A lost man is hopeless. I couldn't even show you the way so you could keep it—especially at night."

New fears came surging upon her in all their force and numbers.

"But—what shall I do?"

Van reflected.

"My claim is the nearest camp from here, since the wind took down that shack. And that was abandoned anyway. Can you hike some twenty-odd miles?"

Twenty-odd miles!—on foot! For a second she was almost tempted to disclose herself, and beg him, for something a trifle more sympathetic than what he seemed to be offering another fellow man. But that could not be done. And night was descending rapidly. The twilight was brief—and on the wane.

"Why—perhaps so," she answered, attempting to smile. "I'll try."

Something in her smile went straight to his heart—he wondered why. To feel as he did towards this unknown man, even the brother of the girl he madly loved—this was certainly absurd. It was not to be explained; it was simply upon him, that was enough. He dismounted.

"Here, get on my horse and ride. I want to walk and stretch my legs."

Beth all but gasped. She!—ride on Suvy!—the horse she had seen so nearly kill this man!—a horse that might perhaps permit no other living thing upon his back! Yet she knew not how to refuse—and to walk very far would be impossible.

"I'm—afraid I'm a very poor horseman," she admitted guardedly. "If your pony should happen——"

Van had thought that Suvy might resent a stranger's liberties. He turned to the broncho peculiarly.

"How about it, boy?" he asked the horse gravely. "I want you to stand for it, savvy?" He looked at the animal inquiringly. How he knew that Suvy consented was only for him to comprehend. He squared about to Beth, who was watching with wonder, and something far softer, in her heart. "Get on," he said. "He was raised as a cradle for babies."

Beth was pale, but she had to be a man. She stepped to the broncho's side and mounted to the saddle. Suvy trembled in every sinew of his being.

Van gave him a pat on the neck again, turned his back and started straight northward. The pony followed at his heels like a dog with a master he loves.



CHAPTER XXVI

THE NIGHT IN THE DESERT

At ten o'clock that night the moon had not yet risen. Its glow was on the eastern sky, however, and at length it appeared, a broken orb with its waning side lopped from its bulk.

Beth was still in the saddle. She was utterly exhausted; she could scarcely remain in her seat. For more than an hour Van had plodded onward without even turning to speak. They had talked intermittently, and he had told her his name. Far off in the dimness of the desert level—the floor of a second mighty valley—a lone coyote began his dismal howling. Beth, on the horse, felt a chill go down her spine. Van seemed not to hear. The howl was repeated from time to time intermittently, like the wail of a ghost, forever lost to hope.

When the moon at last shone fairly on the broncho and the girl, Van cast a glance at her face. He was startled. The young rider looked so much like Beth—and looked so utterly tired!

Van halted, and so did the pony. The man looked up at his companion.

"You're in no fit condition to go on," he said. "What's the use of our trying to make it? To camp right here is as good as going on all night, which don't suit my legs worth a cent."

Beth was wearied almost to collapse. But—to camp out here—all night!—they two! Aside from the terrors that had crept to her soul at sound of the distant coyote, this present aspect of the situation was appalling. Indeed, she began to see that whether they went on or remained, she must spend the night in this man's company.

She was almost too tired to care how such a thing would appear. He thought her a man—it had been inescapable—there was nothing she could do to prevent the course of events. And come what might she must presently slip from that saddle, in her weakness, faintness, and hunger, if the penalty were all but life itself.

"I'm—sure I can walk—and let you ride," she said. "I'd like to go on, but I know I can't sit here any longer."

She tried to dismount by herself—as any man must do. In her stiffness she practically fell from the saddle, sinking on her side upon the ground. Only for a second was she prostrate thus at his feet, but her coat fell back from her kahki vest—and a gleam of the moonlight fell upon a bright little object, pinned above her heart.

Van beheld it—and knew what it was—his nugget, washed from the "Laughing Water" claim!

The truth seemed to pour upon him like the waters of an all-engulfing wave—the overwhelming, wonderful truth that was also almost terrible, in what it might mean to them both.

There was one thing only the man could do—ignore this fact that he had discovered and treat her like a man. This he knew instantly. He turned with a man's indifference to one of his sex and vaulted to Suvy's back.

"Come on," he said, "if you're anxious to get under cover."

He could trust himself to say no more. He rode ahead.

Beth did her best to follow, and make no complaint. The broncho, however, was a rapid walker. This she had not realized while Van was striding on in the lead. She fell behind repeatedly, and Van was obliged to halt his horse and wait. She began to be lame. It had been a torture to ride; it was agony to walk.

Van now became strangely urgent. He had never loved her more. His love had taken on a sacredness, out here in the night, with Beth so weary and helpless. More than anything he had ever desired in his life he wished to keep her sacred—spared from such a complication as their night out here alone might engender.

Yet he saw the first little limp when she began to falter. He was watching backward constantly, his whole nature eager to protect her—save her from hurt, from this merciless toil across the desert. He longed to take her in his arms and carry her thus, securely. He was torn between the wish to hasten her along, for her own greater ease of mind, and the impulse to halt this hardship. He knew not what to do.

They had gone much less than a mile when he brought up his pony at her side.

"Here, Kent," he said, "you walk like a bride-groom going up the aisle. You'll have to get up here and ride." He dismounted actively.

Beth could have dropped in her tracks for weariness. She was tired to the marrow of her bones.

"I can't," she answered. "Perhaps—we'd better camp." A hot flush rushed upward to her very scalp, fortunately, however, unseen.

Van regarded her sternly.

"I've changed my mind. I haven't time to camp out here to-night. You'll have to ride."

It seemed to Beth that, had it been to save her life, she could scarcely have climbed to that saddle. To remain on the horse would, she knew, be far beyond her strength. She continued on her feet only by the utmost exertion of her will. Someway since Van had found her in this dreadful place she had lost strength rapidly—perhaps for the leaning on him. With Van's ultimatum now to confront, she could summon no nerve or resolution.

Her face paled. "You'd better go on, if you have to be at your claim," she said, aware that she could offer no argument, no alternative plan to his wish for an onward march. "I'm—not used to riding—much. I can't ride any more tonight."

He knew she told the truth, knew how gladly she would have continued riding, knew what a plight of collapse she must be approaching to submit to a thought of remaining here till morning. He could not go and leave her here. The thought of it aroused him to something like anger. He realized the necessity of assuming a rougher demeanor.

"Damn it, Kent," he said, "you're no less lost than you were before. You know I can't go off and leave you. And I want to get ahead."

She only knew she could not ride, come what might.

"You didn't say so, a little while ago," she ventured, half imploringly. "I'm sorry I'm so nearly dead. If you must go on——"

That cut him to the heart. How could he be a brute?

"I ought to go!" he broke in unguardedly. "I mean I've got to think—I've got work to do in the morning. Don't you suppose you could try?"

The moonlight was full on his face. All the laughter she knew so well had disappeared from his eyes. In its place she saw such a look of yearning and worry—such a tenderness of love as no woman ever yet saw and failed to comprehend. She divined in that second that he knew who she was—she felt it, through all her sense of intuition and the fiber of her soul. She understood his insistence on the march, the saving march, straight onward without a halt. She loved him for it. She had loved him with wild intensity, confessed at last to herself, ever since the moment he had appeared in the desert to save her.

If a certain reckless abandon to this love rocked her splendid self-control, it was only because she was so utterly exhausted. Her judgment was sound, unshaken. Nevertheless, despite judgment and all—to go on was out of the question. God had flung them out here together, she thought, for better or for worse. That Van would be the fine chivalrous gentleman she had felt him to be at the very first moment of their accidental acquaintance, she felt absolutely assured. She accepted a certain inevitable fatality in the situation—-perhaps the more readily now that she knew he knew, for she seemed so much more secure.

His question remained unanswered while she thought of a thousand things. Could she try to go on?

She shook her head. "What's the use of my riding—perhaps another mile? You might go on and send a man to guide me in the morning."

What an effort it cost her to make such a harsh suggestion not even Van could know. A terrible fear possessed her that he might really act upon her word. To have him stay was bad enough, but to have him go would be terrible.

"Hell!" he said, keeping up his acting. "You talk like a woman. Haven't I wasted time enough already without sending someone out here to-morrow morning? What makes you think you're worth it?" He turned his back upon her, hung the stirrup of the saddle on the horn, and began to loosen the cinch.

Like the woman that she was, she enjoyed his roughness, his impudence, and candor. It meant so much, in such a time as this. After a moment she asked him:

"What do you mean to do?"

He hauled off the saddle and dropped it to the ground.

"Make up the berths," he answered. "Here's your bedding." He tossed the blanket down at her feet. It was warm and moist from Suvy's body. He then uncoiled his long lasso, secured an end around the pony's neck, and bade him walk away and roll.

The broncho obeyed willingly, as if he understood. Van took up the saddle, carried it off a bit, and dropped it as before.

Beth still remained there, with the blanket at her feet.

Van addressed her. "Got any matches?"

"No," she said. "I'm afraid——"

"Neither have I," he interrupted. "No fire in the dressing-room. Good-night. No need to set the alarm clock. I'll wake you bright and early." Once more he took up his saddle and started off in the ankle-high brush of the plain.

Beth watched him with many misgivings at her heart.

"Where—where are you going?" she called.

"To bed," he called in response. "Want room to kick around, if I get restless."

She understood—but it was hard to bear, to be left so alone as this, in such a place. He went needlessly far, she was sure.

Grateful to him, but alarmed, made weaker again by having thus to make her couch so far from any protection, she continued to stand there, watching him depart. He stooped at last, and his pony halted near him, like a faithful being who must needs keep him always in sight. Even the pony would have been some company for Beth, but when Van stretched himself down upon the earth, with the saddle for a pillow, she felt horribly alone.

There was nothing to do but to make the best of what the fates allowed. She curled herself down on the chilly sand with the blanket tucked fairly well around her. But she did not sleep. She was far too tired and alarmed.

Half an hour later three coyotes began a fearsome serenade. Beth sat up abruptly, as terrified as if she had been but a child. She endured it for nearly five minutes, hearing it come closer all the while. Then she could bear it no more. She rose to her feet, caught up her blanket, and almost ran towards the pony. More softly then she approached the place where Van lay full length upon the ground. She beheld him in the moonlight, apparently sound asleep.

As closely as she dared she crept, and once more made her bed upon the sand. There, in a child-like sense of security, with her fearless protector near, she listened in a hazy way to the prowling beasts, now cruising away to the south, and so profoundly slept.

Van had heard her come. Into his heart snuggled such a warmth and holy joy as few men are given to feel. He, too, went to sleep, thinking of his nugget on her breast.



CHAPTER XXVII

TALL STORIES

Daylight had barely broadened into morning when Van was astir from his bed. The air was chill and wonderfully clean. Above the eastern run of hills the sun was ready to appear.

Beth still lay deep in slumber. She had curled up like a child in her meager covering. Van watched her from his distance. A little shiver passed through her form, from time to time. Her hat was still in place, but how girlish, how sweet, how helpless was her face—the little he could see! How he wished he might permit her to sleep it out as nature demanded. For her own sake, not for his, he must hasten her onward to Goldite, by way of the "Laughing Water" claim.

He walked off eastward where a natural furrow made a deep depression in the valley. His pony followed, the lasso dragging in the sand. Once over at the furrow edge, the man took out his pistol and fired it off in the air.

Beth was duly aroused. Van saw her leap to her feet, then he disappeared in the hollow, with his broncho at his heels.

The girl was, if possible, stiffer than before. But she was much refreshed. For a moment she feared Van was deserting, till she noted his saddle, near at hand. Then he presently emerged upon the level of the plain and returned to the site of their camp.

"First call for breakfast in the dining-car," he said. "We can make it by half-past eight."

"If only we could have a cup of good hot coffee first, before we start," said Beth, and she smiled at the vainness of the thought.

"We won't get good coffee at the claim," Van assured her dryly. "But near-coffee would lure me out of this."

He was rapidly adjusting the blanket and saddle on his horse.

"You'll have to ride or we can't make speed," he added. "As a walker you're sure the limited."

She appreciated thoroughly the delicacy with which he meant to continue the fiction of her sex. But he certainly was frank.

"Thank you," she answered amusedly. "I'd do better, perhaps, if I weren't so over-burdened with flattery."

"You'll have to do better, anyhow," he observed, concluding preparations with Suvy. "There you are. Get on. Father Time with hobbles on could beat us getting a move."

He started off, leaving her to mount by herself. She managed the matter somewhat stiffly, suppressing a groan at the effort, and then for an hour she was gently pummeled into limberness as the pony followed Van.

They came at the end of that time to one of the upper reaches of that same river she had forded the previous day. To all appearances the wide shallow bed was a counterpart of the one over which her horse had waded. But the trail turned sharply down the stream, and followed along its bank.

They had halted for the pony to drink. Van also refreshed himself and Beth dismounted to lie flat down and quench her long, trying thirst.

"Right across there, high up in the hills, is the 'Laughing Water' claim," said Van, pointing north-eastward towards the mountains. "Only three miles away, if we could fly, but six as we have to go around."

"And why do we have to go around?" Beth inquired. "Aren't we going to cross the river here?"

"Looks like a river, I admit," he said, eying the placid stream. "That's a graveyard there—quicksand all the way across."

Beth's heart felt a shock at the thought of what could occur to a traveler here, unacquainted with the treacherous waters.

"Good gracious!" she said. She added generously: "Couldn't I walk a little now, and—share the horse?"

"When you walk it gets on Suvy's nerves to try to keep step," he answered. "Fall in."

They went two miles down the river, then, across on a rock-and-gravel bottom, at a ford directly opposite a jagged rift in the mountains. This chasm, which was short and steep, they traversed perspiringly. The sun was getting warm. Beyond them then the way was all a rough, hard climb, over ridges, down through canyons, around huge dykes of rock and past innumerable foldings of the range. How Van knew the way was more than Beth could understand. She was already growing wearied anew, since the night had afforded her very little rest, and she had not eaten for nearly a day.

Van knew she was in no condition for the ride. He was watching her constantly, rejoicing in her spirit, but aching for her aches. He set a faster pace for the broncho to follow, to end the climb as soon as possible.

At length, below a rounded ridge, where stunted evergreens made a welcome bit of greenery, he came to a halt.

"We're almost there," he said. "You'll have to remain at the claim till somewhere near noon, then I'll show you the way down to Goldite."

"Till noon?" She looked at him steadily, a light of worry in her eyes as she thought of arriving so late at Mrs. Dick's, with what consequences—the Lord alone knew.

"I can't get away much earlier," he said, and to this, by way of acting his part, he added: "Do you want to wear me out?"

She knew what he meant. He would wait till noon to give her time to rest. She would need all the rest he could make possible. And then he would only "show her the way to Goldite." He would not ride with her to town. She might yet escape the compromising plight into which she had been thrust. His thoughtfulness, it seemed, could have no end.

"Very well," she murmured. "I'm sorry to have made you all this trouble." She was not—someways; she was lawlessly, inordinately glad.

The "trouble" for Van had been the most precious experience in all his life.

"It has been one wild spasm of delight," he said in his dryest manner of sarcasm. "But between us, Kent, I'm glad it's no continuous performance."

He went over the ridge, she following. A moment later they were looking down upon the "Laughing Water" claim from that self-same eminence from which Searle Bostwick had seen it when he rode one day from the Indian reservation.

"This," said Van, "is home."

"Oh," said the girl, and tears sprang into her eyes.

And a very home, indeed, it presently seemed, when they came to the shack, where Gettysburg, Napoleon, old Dave, and even Algy, the Chinese cook, came forth to give them cordial welcome.

Beth was introduced to all as Glenmore Kent—and passed inspection.

"Brother of Miss Beth Kent," said Van, "who honored us once with a visit to the Monte Cristo fiasco. He's been lost on the desert and he's too done up to talk, so I want him to be fed and entertained. And of the two requirements, the feed's more important than the vaudeville show, unless your stunts can put a man to sleep."

Algy and Gettysburg got the impromptu breakfast together. The placer sluices outside were neglected. Nobody wished to shovel sand for gold when marvelous tales might be exchanged concerning the wind storm that had raged across the hills the day before.

Indeed, as Van and Beth sat together at the board, regaling themselves like the two famished beings they were, their three entertainers proceeded to liberate some of the tallest stories concerning storms that mortal ever heard.

Napoleon and Gettysburg became the hottest of rivals in an effort to deliver something good. Gettysburg furnished a tale of a breeze in the unpeopled wilds of Nebraska where two men's farms, fully twenty miles apart, had undergone an astounding experience whereby a complete exchange of their houses, barns, and sheds had been effected by a cyclone, without the slightest important damage to the structures.

When this was concluded, Napoleon looked pained. "I think you lie, Gett—metaphorical speakin'!" he hastened to add. "But shiver my bowsprit if I didn't see a ship, once, ten days overdue, jest snatched up and blowed into port two days ahead of time, and never touched nothing all the way, I remember the year 'cause that was the winter ma had twins and pa had guinea pigs."

"Wal," drawled Dave, who had all this time maintained a dignified silence, "I've saw some wind, in my time, but only one that was really a leetle mite too obstreperous. Yep, that was a pretty good blow—the only wind I ever seen which blew an iron loggin' chain off the fence, link by link."