Napoleon paid Dave a compliment. He said:

"You old son of a gun!"

Van thought the storms had raged sufficiently.

"Is work unpopular, or did the wind blow the water from the creek?"

"I like to work," admitted Gettysburg, "but it's fun to watch you epicures eatin'."

Beth felt embarrassed.

"Epicures?" echoed Napoleon. "You don't know what an epicure is? That's a vulgar remark when you don't know no meaning of a word."

"Epicure? Me not know what an epicure is?" replied old Gettysburg aggressively. "You bet I do. An epicure's a feller which chaws his fodder before he swallers it."

Napoleon subsided. Then he arose and sauntered out to work, Dave and Gettysburg following. Van hastily drank his cup of coffee, which, as he had predicted, was not particularly good, and started for the others. He halted in the door.

"Make yourself comfortable, if you can here, Kent," he said. "You had an exhausting experience yesterday. Perhaps you had better lie down."

Beth merely said: "Thank you." But her smile was more radiant than sunshine.



CHAPTER XXVIII

WORK AND SONG

Having presently finished her breakfast, Beth joined the group outside, curious to behold the workings of a placer mine in actual operation.

There was not much to see, but it was picturesque. In their lack of funds the partners had constructed the simplest known device for collecting the gold from the sand. They had built a line of sluices, or troughs of considerable length, propped on stilts, or supports about knee high, along the old bed of the canyon. The sluices were mere square flumes, set with a fairly rapid grade.

Across the bottom of all this flume, at every yard or less of its length, small wooden cleats had been nailed, to form the "riffles." Into the hoses the water from the creek was turned, at the top. The men then shoveled the sand in the running stream and away it went, sluicing along the water-chute, its particles rattling down the wooden stairway noisily. The gold was expected to settled behind the riffles, owing to its weight.

All the flume-way dripped from leakages. The sun beat down upon the place unshaded. Water escaped into all the pits the men were digging as they worked, so that they slopped around in mud above their ankles. Dave wore rubber boots and was apparently protected. As a matter of fact the boots promptly filled with water. Napoleon and Gettysburg made no effort to remain dry shod, but puddled all day with soused footgear.

Van rode off to the "reservation town," a mile below the hill, to bargain for a tent reported there for sale. Sleeping quarters here on the claim were far too crowded. Until lumber for a cabin could be purchased they must make what shifts they might.

It had taken but the briefest time for the miners to go at their work. Beth stood near, watching the process with the keenest interest. It seemed to her a back-breaking, strenuous labor. These sturdy old fellows, grown gray and stooped with toil—grown also expectant of hardship, ill-luck, and privations—were pathetic figures, despite their ways of cheer.

That Van had attached them to himself in a largeness of heart by no means warranted by their worth was a conviction at which anyone must promptly arrive. They were lovable old scamps, faithful, honest, and loyal to the man they loved—but that was all that could be stated. Perhaps it was enough. As partners with whom to share both life and fortune they might have seemed impossible to many discerning men.

Beth sat down on a rock, near Gettysburg. Someway she, too, liked the three old chaps of whom work had made three trademarks. Old Gettysburg began to sing. The words of his song, halted by grunts as he shoveled, were, to say the least, unexpected:

The frog he swore he'd have a ride, (Shovel) With a rinktum bolly kimo; Sword and pistols by his side, (Shovel) With a rinktum bolly kimo. For lunch he packed a beetle bug, (Shovel) With a rinktum bolly kimo; Tucked inside his tummy snug, (Shovel) With a rinktum bolly kimo.

Kimo, karo, pito, garo, Kimo, bolly mitty kimo. (Shovel) Shing-shang hammyriddle, allibony, ringtang, Folderolli bolly mitty kimo. (Three shovelings and some meditation)

The frog he rode a slimy eel, (Shovel) With a rinktum bolly kimo. The sun made his complexion peel, (Shovel) With a rinktum bolly kimo. The frog's legs went to join a fry, (Shovel) With a rinktum bolly kimo. The eel became a juicy pie, (Shovel) With a rinktum bolly kimo.

(Chorus)

Napoleon looked up at the end of the song and spat upon his hands.

"Gett," he said placidly, "I think that's a lie—metaphorical speakin'. Ain't mad, are you?"

Gettysburg made no response. He merely shoveled.

One of the sluices, weakened by a leak that had undermined its pinning, fell from place, at the farther end of the line. Old Dave went down to repair it. Napoleon took advantage of his absence to come to Beth, with an air of imparting something confidential.

"Splice my main brace," said he, with his head on one side, quaintly, "wasn't that a blasphermous yarn old Dave was givin' us about the wind blowing that log chain away a link at a time? Old son of a gun!"

Beth was inquisitive.

"Why do you call him a son of a gun?"

Napoleon scratched his head.

"Well, you see, Dave's mother held up his father with a Colt forty-five and makes him marry her. Then along comes Dave. I reckon that makes him a sure enough son of a gun."

Beth said: "Oh." She turned a little red.

"Yep, good old cuss, Dave is, though. No good for a seafearing man, however. He could never learn to swear—he ain't got no ear for music."

He returned to his shovel. He and Gettysburg worked in silence for fifteen minutes. Old Dave returned and joined them. Gettysburg tuned up for another of his songs, the burden of which was the tale of a hen-pecked man.

Once more at its end Napoleon looked up and spat on his hands.

"There ain't nothing that can keep some women down 'cept a gravestone—and I've seen some gravestones which was tilted."

Despite the interest and amusement she felt in it all, Beth was becoming sleepy as she sat there in the sun. She shook off the spell and arose, approaching closer to the bank and flume where Gettysburg was toiling. He labored on, silently, for several minutes, then paused, straightened up by degrees, as if the folds in his back were stubborn, and looked at their visitor steadily, his glass eye particularly fixed. One of his hands pulled down his jaw, and then it closed up with a thump.

"Guess this kind of a racket is sort of new to you, Mr. Kent," he ventured. "Ever seen gold washin' before?"

"No," Beth confessed, "and I don't see where the gold is to come from now."

Gettysburg chuckled. "Holy toads! Miners do a heap of work and never see it neither. Me and Van and Napoleon has went through purg and back, many's the time, and was lucky to git out with our skeletons, sayin' nuthin' about the gold."

"Oh." She could think of nothing else to say.

"In fact Van was all that got me out onct—Napoleon, too. We wasn't worth it, prob'ly. That's the joke on Van. Since then us three cusses has starved, and froze, and clean roasted, chasin' gold."

"Oh."

"We was lost in the snow, one winter, with nuthin' to eat but a plug of tobacker, a can of vasolene, and a porous plaster. We lived on that menu fer a week—that and snow-soup. But Van got us out all right—packed Napoleon about five miles on his back. Nap was so thin there wasn't enough of him to die." His one good eye became dreamily focused on the past. He smiled. "But someways the desert is worse than the snow. We got ketched three times without no water. Never did know, Nap or me, how Van got our two old dried-up carcasses out the last time, down to Death Valley. He's a funny cuss, old Van."

Once more Beth merely answered: "Oh."

"You bet!" resumed Gettysburg. "He never quits. It ain't in him. He works his hands off and his soul out of its socket, every time." He laughed heartily. "Lord! we have done an awful lot of fool work fer nuthin'! We've tackled tunnels and shafts, and several games like this, and pretty near died a dozen different styles—all uneasy kinds of dyin'—and we've lived when it was a darn sight uneasier than croakin', and kept on tryin' out new diggin's, and kept on bein' busted all the time. 'Nuff to make a lemon laugh, the fun we've had. But now, by Jupe! we've struck it at last—and it ain't a-goin' to git away!"

"Oh, I'm glad—I'm glad!" said Beth, winking back a bit of suspicious moisture that came unbidden in her eyes as she looked on this weather-beaten, hardship-beaten old figure, still sturdily ready for the fates. "I'm sure you all deserve it! I'm sure of that!"

"Wal, that's a question fer God Almighty," Gettysburg replied. "But there's the gold, the good yellow gold! And I'm awful glad fer Van!"

Into the water he dipped his crooked old fingers, and scratching down behind a riffle he fetched up a small amount of gold, doubly bright with the water and the sunlight upon it.

"Gold—and we git it easy," he added, repeating: "I'm awful glad fer Van. You ought to see him shovel!" He dropped the gold back into the water carelessly. "It ain't a-goin' to do us old jack-legged cusses much good, at our age, but I would like to go to San Francisco this summer once, and shoot the chutes!"



CHAPTER XXIX

SUSPICIOUS ANSWERS

Beth and Van rode away from the claim just after lunch; she on a borrowed horse. The girl had not slept, but she had rested well and was far more fit for the journey back to town than either she or Van had expected.

He went with her part way only—far enough to put her safely on a trail from which she could not wander. They talked but little as they rode—perhaps because they had so much to say that could not be approached. Never for a moment did Van relax his vigilance upon himself, or treat her otherwise than as a man for whom he had conceived a natural liking.

When they came to the place of parting he pulled up his broncho and faced about in the trail.

"Well, Kent," he said, "so long. You'll have no trouble now." He held forth his hand.

Beth gave him hers—and all her heart. Nevertheless, his clasp was as brief as he would give to one of his sex.

"So long," she answered. "Good luck. I am under many obligations."

"They won't make you very round shouldered," he said. "See you again."

That was their parting. He rode back at once—and Beth continued on her way. She turned three times in her saddle to watch him as he went, but she did not catch him glancing back.

About sundown she rode into Goldite, went at once to Mrs. Dick's, and tied her horse to a post. Mrs. Dick she met in the hall.

"Snakes alive!" exclaimed that lively little person. "If you ain't back as natural as life!" The garb had not deceived her for a moment. "Where in the world have you been, in such a rig?"

Beth's answer was ready.

"I went to see my brother, and had to spend the night on the desert."

Mrs. Dick stared at her in wonder. "Talk to me about the Eastern women being mollycuddles! You don't mean his cabin was blown down by the storm?"

Beth was ill-prepared for this, but she met it.

"I wish you could have seen that roof go by!"

"Are you hungry?" the hostess demanded. "You look all wore out."

"I am," Beth admitted. "Has Mr. Bostwick been here in my absence?"

"He ain't been here in anything—nope."

Beth's relief was inexpressible. She was safe, with everything behind her! No one knew, or would ever need to know, the secret in possession of herself and Van.

"If anyone comes that you can send, will you kindly have my horse taken over to the stable?" she said. "I must go upstairs and rest."

"Here's Billy Stitts a-comin' now," replied the housewife, moving towards the door. "He's been worried to death about you bein' gone!"

Beth ran at once for the stairs, and later, from the window, saw the faithful old Billy leading her pony away. She closed her door, darkened the light, and soon clambered wearily into bed, where she dropped off to sleep like a child, lost to the world through the dinner hour and till something like three in the morning. She awaked then for a moment, long enough to think of Van, then sighed in absolute comfort and turned to sleep again.

It was nine o'clock in the morning when at last she appeared on the scene.

"Land snakes!" said Mrs. Dick, who had heard her coming down. "Ain't you the sleeper! Well, I've kept your breakfast, but I couldn't keep last night's supper. Your friend, Mr. Bostwick, was here about eight, but I told him he'd have to wait if it took you a week to come to."

"You didn't tell him I'd been away, I hope," said Beth, suddenly alarmed at the thought of Searle's presence in the town. "I'd rather no one knew but you."

"Lord! I wouldn't tell him if a rat was dead in his pocket!" Mrs. Dick expostulated. "I can't abide the man, and you might as well know it, even if it does hurt your feelings."

Beth sat down to her breakfast. "You're as good as you can be."

"Well, the breakfast ain't—'taint fresh," said Mrs. Dick. "But I'll see you git a decent lunch."

She bustled off into the kitchen. Beth had barely finished eating when Bostwick again appeared.

The man was tanned from his trip in the desert. He seemed alert, excited, keen over prospects rapidly coming to a head.

"Well, well, Beth," he said as he came inside the dining-room, "I'm back, you see, but I've certainly had a time of it! The car broke down, and Glen had left Starlight when at last I arrived, and I hunted for him all through the mountains and only found him four days ago, and we've been going ever since. I couldn't write, but I did feel cut up, I assure you, about leaving you here alone for so long a time."

He advanced as if to kiss her, but Beth avoided his caress. She was calm and possessed. She meant to ascertain just how far the man was trying to deceive her.

"Won't you sit down, and tell me all about it," she said. "You saw Glen four days ago?" She resumed her place in her chair.

"Three or four days ago—I'm mixed in my dates," he said, as he also took a seat. "He's looking fine, and sent his love, of course."

That the man was lying, in every particular, she began to feel convinced.

"You left him well? He was feeling strong and well?"

"Never better," he assured her. "You can see what this wonderful sunlight does, even to me."

"Yes, I see. And you left Starlight yesterday?"

"Yesterday afternoon. I had trouble running back. Otherwise we'd have been here in the evening."

She glanced at him quickly. "We? Glen didn't come along? He isn't here?"

"Oh, no, no, certainly not," he hastened to say. "I brought in a man who—who is interested in the purchase we have made."

That served to arouse her sense of wonderment at what he had really been doing with her money. He was attempting to deceive her concerning Glen, and perhaps his entire story was a fabrication.

"Oh," she said. "Then you have purchased the mine—you and Glen?"

"Well—a few minor details remain to be concluded," he said off-handedly. "We are not yet in actual possession of the property. There will be no further hitches, however—and the claim is certainly rich."

For the life of her she could not tell what lay at the bottom of the business. The strange conflicts and discrepancies between Glen's very own letters made the riddle utterly obscure. She felt that Searle was fashioning falsehoods in every direction. That he had not visited Glen at all was her fixed conviction. A sudden distrust, almost a loathing for this heavy-browed man, was settling down upon her, inescapably. Someway, somehow she must know about Glen for herself. Her own attempted trip to Starlight had discouraged all thought of further adventure, and no reliance whatsoever could be placed on Searle's reports. Perhaps the reputed mining property was likewise a myth—or if such a property existed, Glen might never have heard of it at all. But Glen's letter—she was always forgetting that letter—the one he had written to Searle.

She said: "Where is this mine that Glen has found?"

He colored slightly. "We have all agreed not to talk too much about it yet. It's not very far from here—I can tell you that. Precautions are necessary where a hundred men follow every prospector about, night and day, if he happens to have found a bit of valuable ore. A thousand men would be after this property if they knew the way to secure it."

Perhaps, after all, Glen, had purposely concealed this matter from herself. Bostwick sounded plausible. Her mind reverted to her brother's illness, for Glen to her was of far more importance than all the mines in Nevada.

"I am glad to hear that Glen is well," she said, determined on another tack. "He hasn't answered my letter."

Once more Bostwick colored, beneath his tan and the gun-metal tint of his jaw.

"I suppose he's been too busy," he answered. "Have you written again?"

"Not yet," she answered honestly. "I wasn't sure of his whereabouts. You are sure he's in Starlight now?"

"Yes—but you needn't write," he hastened to say. "He said he might come, perhaps to-morrow." He rose from his chair. "I've got to hurry off, little girl. These negotiations cannot wait. I'll run in when I can—this afternoon at the latest. I'm glad to see you looking so well." He approached her with lover-like intent. "My heart has been empty and forlorn, away from you, Beth. Surely you have a little—a little something for me, pet? You know how starved——"

"Oh—Mrs. Dick is coming!" she interrupted desperately. "You must have a great deal to do."

Mrs. Dick was making a large and lively noise in the kitchen.

Bostwick listened for a second, his deep-set eyes keenly fixed on the girl, like very orbs of suspicion and jealousy. He lowered his voice.

"Has that ruffian, Van Buren, been here recently?"

She raised her brows in well-feigned astonishment,

"I haven't heard of any ruffian being in town."

Bostwick studied her face for a moment in silence.

"I'll be around this afternoon," he repeated. "Good-by."

He departed hurriedly, glancing at his watch as he went.

Not a block from the house he met old Billy Stitts, who, though quite unknown to the New York man, knew Bostwick in a way of his own.

"Morning, Uncle.—Howdy?" he said, blocking Bostwick's path. "Back, I see. Welcome home. I guess you don't know me as well as I know you. My name is Stitts—Billy Stitts—and I'm gittin' on fine with your niece. I'm the one which runs her errands and gits the inside track."

Bostwick, staring at Billy ominously, and about to sweep him aside as a bit of old rubbish, too familiar and impudent for tolerance, paused abruptly in his impulse, at a hint which Billy had supplied.

"Oh," he said. "How are you? So you are the friend who runs Miss Kent's errands? You must be the one she asked me to befriend."

"Did she?" said old Billy, inordinately pleased. "What did I tell you about the inside track?"

"I'm glad if you have been of use," Bostwick told him insidiously. "You didn't say what your services have been. Just a few little errands, I suppose?"

"Never you mind," said Billy, with a profoundly impressive wink. "That's between her and me. That ain't even fer you, Uncle Bostwick," and he winked again.

"Of course, of course," agreed Bostwick, half consumed with rage at the old fellow's abominable manners and familiarity. "I'll keep you in mind and add some reward of my own on the next occasion."

He bowed and hastened on his way, boiling with curiosity to know what it was that Beth had been doing to require this old tattler's services. He meant to ascertain. His suspicions went at once to Van, at thought of whom he closed down his jaw like a vise.

Filled with a turmoil of thoughts that seethed in his brain, like a brew in a witch's cauldron—some of them dark and some golden bright, and some of them red with lust for many things—he proceeded down street to McCoppet's place, to find himself locked out of the private den, where the gambler was closeted with Lawrence.



CHAPTER XXX

BETH'S ONE EXPEDIENT

Bostwick had told Beth partial truths. His journey had been hard. His car had been twice disabled on the desert; Lawrence had been difficult to find; delays had confronted him at every turn, and not until midnight of the day before this had he come with his quarry to Goldite—barely in time to save the situation, with the reservation opening less than forty-eight hours away.

He had not seen Glen, nor approached the town of Starlight closer than fifteen miles. He had not yet expended Beth's money, which only that morning had been practically placed at McCoppet's disposal. But having finally landed the Government surveyor in camp, he had achieved the first desirable end in the game they were playing, and matters were moving at last with a speed to suit the most exacting.

During the interim between Searle's departure and return affairs had been a trifle complicated in another direction—affairs that lay between the gambler and his friend, the lumberman, big Trimmer.

Trimmer had been paid one thousand dollars only of the sum agreed upon when he gave the name of Culver to the half-breed Indian, Cayuse. He had since spent his money, demanded the balance due, and threatened McCoppet with exposure, only to be met with a counter threat of prison for life as the half-breed's accomplice in the crime. McCoppet meant to pay a portion of the creature's price, but intended to get it from Bostwick. Indeed, to-day he had the money, but was far too much engrossed with Lawrence to give the lumberman a thought.

Trimmer, waxing greedy through the ease with which he had blackmailed McCoppet, had developed a cunning of his own. Convinced that the gambler was accustomed to incubating plans in his private office, the lumberman made shift to excavate a hole beneath the floor of that particular den of privacy, and, after having spent half a night in vain, in this place of concealment, was at last being duly rewarded as he listened to McCoppet and Lawrence.

With his ear to a knot-hole he gathered in everything essential to a knowledge of the plot. He became aware that Lawrence "fell" for twenty thousand dollars; he overheard the details of the "survey" about to be made; but to save his very life he could not have fathomed the means that were about to be employed to "jump" the mining property belonging to Van Buren and his partners.

Equipped with this latest means of squeezing McCoppet, the creature emerged from his hole in time to meet the gambler at the bar, during a moment of Bostwick's temporary absence.

"Opal," he said significantly, "I need to see you fer a minute. It won't be no healthier to refuse me now than it was the first time I come."

The gambler looked at him coldly. "I haven't got time to talk now, Larry, but some of your money is at your order any time you want it, in gold, or poker chips, or gin."

Trimmer was placated. "All right," he said, and cunningly resolved, upon the spot, to keep his latest secret on the ice.

Lawrence had already disappeared to hasten arrangements for getting out upon his work.

Bostwick had waited half an hour in the utmost impatience. With a hundred things to increase his restlessness of mind and body, he had finally gone to the postoffice and there discovered a letter from Glenmore Kent.

It was short, and now no longer fresh. It had been composed just after the young man's accident, and after relating how he had received a not inconsiderable injury, requested Searle to come to Starlight at once, if possible, and not to divulge any needless facts to Beth.

"I'm broke, and this knock puts me down and out," the letter concluded. "Come down, like a good old chap, and cheer me up."

Bostwick destroyed the letter promptly, lest it fall by some accident into other hands than his own. Not without a slight feeling of guilt, the man shut out all thought, for the present, of deserting Goldite and the plot. That Beth would learn nothing from himself as to Glen's condition was a certainty. He was glad of this wisdom in the boy—this show of courage whereby he had wished his sister spared.

But the more he thought upon Beth's attitude towards himself, and the mystifying confessions old Billy Stitts had made, concerning the errands he was running for the girl, the more Bostwick fretted and warmed with exasperation, suspicion, and jealousy. He returned to McCoppet's. The door to the den was still barred. Impatiently he started again for Mrs. Dick's. He was not in the least certain as to what he meant to do or say, but felt obliged to do something.

Meantime, Beth had written to her brother. Bostwick's evasions and lies had aroused more than merely a vague alarm in her breast. She had begun to feel, perhaps partially by intuition, that something was altogether wrong. Searle's anxiety to assure her she need not write to Glen—that he was coming to Goldite—had provided the one required element to excite a new trend in her thought. She knew that Glen would not come soon to town. She knew she must get him word. She had thought of one way only to insure herself and Glen against deceit—ask Van to go in person with her letter, and bring her Glen's reply.

Had she felt the affair to be in the slightest degree unimportant she might have hesitated to think of making this request, but the more she dwelt upon it the more essential it seemed to become. Her brothers very life might be dependent upon this promptness of action. A very large sum of money was certainly involved in some sort of business of which, she felt, both she and Glen were in ignorance. Bostwick had certainly not seen Glen at all. His deceptions might mean anything!—the gravest of dangers to them all!

It had taken her the briefest time only to resolve upon her course—and then old Billy came upon the scene, as if in answer to a question she had asked—how to get her request and the letter to Glen across the hills to Van, at the "Laughing Water" claim?

Three letters she wrote, and tore to scraps, before one was finally composed to express all she felt, in the way that she wished it expressed. Old Billy went off to wait and returned there duly, enormously pleased by his commission. He knew the way to the "Laughing Water" claim and could ride the borrowed pony.

As pleased as a dog with a parcel of meat, entrusted to his keeping by a confident master, he finally started for the hay-yard, with two dainty letters in his keeping. One was to Van, with Beth's request; the other was, of course, to her brother.

Bostwick met the proud old beau at the corner of the street.

"Say, Uncle, what did I tell you," said Billy at once. "This time it's the biggest errand yet."

Bostwick had wondered if he might not catch Mr. Stitts in some such service as he boasted now, and his wit was worthy of his nature.

"Yes," he said readily, "Miss Kent was saying she thought perhaps she could get you to carry a note to Mr. Van Buren." It was a hazardous coup but he dared it with the utmost show of pleasure in his smile. For a second, however, as he watched the old man's face, he feared he had overshot the mark.

Old Billy was pleased and disappointed together. However, his wish to prove his importance greatly outweighed his chagrin that Beth should have taken even "Uncle" Bostwick into her confidence.

"That ain't all she give me," he announced, as foolishly as a child. "I've got her letter to her brother, over to Starlight, too, and nothin' couldn't stop me from takin' it up to the 'Laughing Water' claim. You bet I'll see Van Buren gits it right into his hand from me!"

If Bostwick had contemplated making an attempt to bribe the old beau into permitting him a glance at the letters, he abandoned the thought with sagacious alacrity. He must think of something safer. A letter to Van Buren and one to Glen was more than he had counted on discovering. It made him decidedly uneasy.

"I'm sure you'll deliver everything safely," he said, masking his annoyance with a smile. "Before you go, perhaps, you'd take something to drink."

The suggestion in his mind was crude, but at least it was something.

"Huh!" said old Billy, "Me!—drink and git a jag when she's expectin' me to hike right out of camp? Guess you don't know me, Uncle, not worth a mice! Didn't I say nuthin' couldn't stop me? And I'm goin' right now."

He clapped his bony old hand over his pocket, where the two precious letters reposed, and winking prodigiously at Bostwick, departed forthwith from the scene.

Bostwick could have run him down, beaten him to the ground and snatched the letters from him, but he did not dare. Instead, he merely continued to grin while Billy remained in sight. Then instead of going on to Beth's, he circled a building and returned down street towards McCoppet's.



CHAPTER XXXI

MCCOPPET BUSIES HIS MIND

Unfortunately for Bostwick he knew no ruffians in the camp—none of the Trimmers who would, perhaps, accept a sum of money to waylay a man, bash him over the head, and filch required letters from his pocket. He was not precisely willing, moreover, to broach such an undertaking to the gambler. This, after all, was his private affair, to be shared with no one he knew.

The man had arrived at the truth concerning the letters with commendable skill in deduction. He had himself destroyed Beth's earlier letter to her brother, for reasons of policy. He had found her conduct cold, if not suspicious, this morning. How far she had been excited to distrust himself or the mails he could not estimate. He was certain, however, she had sent a request to Van Buren to carry a letter to Glen.

Her reasons for taking precautions so extraordinary were undoubtedly significant. He was galled; his anger against Van Buren was consuming. But first and foremost he must block the harm Beth's letter to her brother might accomplish. For two days more young Kent and Beth must remain in ignorance of what was being done through the use of her money—of the fact that no mine of Glen's discovery was the object of the scheme he was working, and that none of his own alleged money was being employed in the game.

He made up his mind to go to Starlight himself—to be on hand when Van Buren should arrive. With Glenmore ill, or injured, in his bed, the case might offer simple handling, Further neglect of Glenmore might, indeed, be fatal, at a juncture so delicate. From every possible viewpoint the thing to do was to intercept Van Buren.

He found McCoppet just returned from launching Lawrence forth upon his work. Three of the gambler's chosen men had accompanied the Government's surveyor. They had taken Bostwick's car. Instructions had been simple enough. Push over the reservation line to cover the "Laughing Water" claim, by night of the following day.

Searle was taken to the private den. McCoppet imparted his information with the utmost brevity.

"Nothing for us to do but to wait till six o'clock, day after to-morrow morning," he concluded, "then play our cards—and play 'em quick."

"You've taken my car?" said Bostwick, whose personal plans were thrown into utter confusion, for the moment. "I wanted that car for my own use. I've got to go to Starlight to-morrow."

"Sit down," said McCoppet, throwing away his unsmoked cigar and taking another from his pocket. "What's going on at Starlight?"

Bostwick had no intention of divulging his personal affairs, but there was something in this that trenched upon "company" concerns.

"Van Buren's going over there, to see young Kent," he admitted. "I've got to see him first."

McCoppet looked up at him sharply.

"Young Kent ain't next to anything?" he demanded.

"Not yet."

"Look here," said the gambler, whose wits were inordinately keen, "is anything leaking, Bostwick? What about the girl—the young chump's sister? You're not putting her wise to the layout?"

"Certainly not!" said Bostwick. "She knows nothing. But it wouldn't be safe for this mix-up to occur. At any rate, I propose to be there when Van Buren arrives."

McCoppet arose, plunged his hands in his pockets, and paced up and down reflectively.

"Someways I'm glad Van Buren's going," he said. "I've been trying to figure how I could play the game to have him away when we come to take the trick. He's hostile in a fight. I guess it's all right. Don't need you here. You can copper any possible harm down there at Starlight, and meantime I'll see if there's any known way of delaying Van Buren's return."

"But how am I going to get down there and back?" said Bostwick, intent upon the need for haste. "I can't get around without a car."

"Don't get tropical," said McCoppet calmly. "I can get you a car in fifteen minutes. It ain't as good as yours, but we needed the one that was surest to keep on its legs. If you ain't got anything more on your mind, I want to chase around for a lumberman—a friend of mine—before he gits any drunker."

Bostwick arose.

"Arrange for that car to take me to-night, after dinner. I think that's all."

He repaired to his room to attend to a dozen small affairs, then went once more to Beth's. She was not in the least surprised to hear him say he meant to return to Starlight and to Glen that night, on business of importance to them all, but she did not believe him in the least. He remained in the hope of entrapping her into some sort of self-betrayal as to what she had recently done, but without avail.

The hour that he spent at Mrs. Dick's was dull for them both—dull and distasteful to the girl, growing so rapidly to hate and distrust him, dull and aggravating to Bostwick, with jealousy increasing upon him. His one consolation lay in the fact that in less than two days Van Buren would be no better off than a pauper at best with scarcely a shelter for his head.

One of the interesting and vital chapters in the whole affair was meanwhile in McCoppet's hands and receiving his attention. Trimmer had been captured, far more sober than the gambler could have hoped. The two were in the den once more, the lumberman smoking an excellent cigar as if it had been a stick of candy.

McCoppet came to his subject promptly.

"Look here, Larry," he said, "you know Van Buren when you see him."

Trimmer glanced up sharply, ready in an instant to resent what he felt to partake of the nature of a personal affront.

"Don't git funny, Opal. If ever I fight Van Buren when I'm sober I'll eat him alive. I was drunk when he licked me, and you know it!"

McCoppet leaned back in his chair and half closed his eyes.

"I didn't know but what you'd like to sober up and lick him."

Trimmer stared, shifted uneasily in his seat, and demanded:

"Where? Where is he at?"

"He's going to Starlight to-morrow—from up by the reservation—from his claim. If he don't git back for a couple of days—I could make it worth your while; and you could cash in for that time he licked you when you wasn't in condition."

Again Trimmer fidgeted. "I guess he licked me fair enough. I admit he's all right in a scrap. I ain't holdin' nuthin' agin him. Goldite's good enough fer me."

McCoppet knew the creature was afraid to meet his man—that Trimmer's attack on Van Buren, once before, had been planned with much deliberation, had amounted to an ambush, in point of fact, resulting in disaster to the bully.

"I counted on you to help me, Larry," he said, drumming on the table with his fingers. "You're the only man of your kind with brains in all the camp."

Trimmer had smoked his cigar to within an inch of his mouth. He extinguished the fire and chewed up the stump voraciously.

"Say!" he suddenly ejaculated, leaping to his feet and coming around the table, "I can fix him all right," and he lowered his voice to a whisper. "Barger would give up a leg to git a show at Van Buren!"

"Barger?" echoed McCoppet. "Matt? But they got him! Got 'em all."

"Got nuthin'," the lumberman ejaculated. "What's the good of all these lyin' papers when I seen Matt myself, readin' the piece about him goin' back to the pen?"

McCoppet rose, went to the window, and returned again.

"Larry, you're all right," he said. "Where's Barger now?"

Trimmer winked. "That's his business, and mine."

"All right—that's all right," agreed the gambler. "Wouldn't he take it as a favor if you passed him some money and the word about Van Buren's hike to Starlight?"

Trimmer got out a new cigar, lit up, and began to smoke as before.

"I was goin' to pass him some of mine," he confessed. "Yours will suit me just as good."

"Five hundred ought to help him some," said the gambler. "Come out to the bar."

At dark the lumberman left the camp on foot, heading for the mountains. Bostwick departed in the borrowed car at eight. The whole town was ablaze with light, and tumultuous with sound. Glare and disturbance together, however, only faintly symbolized the excitement and fever in the camp. A thousand men were making final preparations for the rush so soon to come—the mad stampede upon the reservation ground, barely more than a day removed.

Miners with outfits, gamblers with their paraphernalia, saloon men with case on case of liquors, assayers, lawyers, teamsters, cooks—even a half dozen women—comprised the heterogeneous army making ready for the charge. The streets were filled with horses, men, and mules. The saloons were jammed to suffocation. Musical discord filled the air. Only the land, the silent old hills, the ancient, burned-out furnace of gold, was absolutely calm. Overhead a few clouds blurred the sky. Beyond them the eternal march of the stars proceeded in the majesty of space, with billions of years in which to fulfil the cosmic cycle of existence.



CHAPTER XXXII

THE HARDSHIPS OF THE TRAIL

In the night, far out to the northward, a storm descended like a cataclysm. Torrential rains were poured upon the hills from a cloudburst exceptionally savage. Only the scattered outposts, as it were, of the storm were blown as far as Goldite. A sprinkle of rain that dried at once was the most those mountains received.

Van made an early start from the "Laughing Water" claim, to deliver Beth's letter in Starlight. Her note to himself he read once more as his pony jogged down the descent.

"Dear Mr. Van: I wonder if I dare to ask a favor—from one who has done so much already? My brother, in Starlight, is ill. He has hurt himself, I do not know how badly. A letter I sent has never been received, and I am worried. The effort I made to see him—well—at least, I'm glad I made the effort. But meantime, what of poor Glen? Some little fear I have may be groundless. I shall therefore keep it to myself—but I have it, perhaps because I am a woman. I must know the truth about my brother—how he is—what has been happening. It is far more important than I dare confess. I have written him a letter and sent it to you in the hope you may not find it impossible to carry it to Glen in person. If I am asking too much, please do not hesitate to say so. I am sure you will be friendly enough for that—to say 'no' if need be to another friend—your friend, BETH KENT."

She did not regret that desert experience—that was almost enough for him to know! He had lived in a glow since that wonderful night—and this letter provided another. He rode like a proud young crusader of old, with his head in a region of sunshine and gold, his vision transfixed by a face. Her love had become his holy grail—and for that he would ride to death itself.

His way he shortened, or thought to shorten, by dropping down from the reservation heights to the new-made town a mile below. He came upon the place abruptly, after dipping once into a canyon, and looked with amazement on the place. In the past twelve hours it had doubled in size and increased twenty-fold in its fever. The face of the desert was literally alive with men and animals. Half of Goldite and practically all of a dozen lesser camps were there. Confusion, discomfort, and distraction seemed hopelessly enthroned. The "rush" was written in men's faces, in their actions, in their baggage, words, and rising temperature.

A dozen stalwart stampeders pounced upon Van like wolves. They wanted to know what he thought of the reservation, where to go, whether or not there was any more ground like that of the "Laughing Water" claim, what he had heard from his Indian friends, and what he would take for his placer. The crowd about him rapidly increased. Men in a time of excitement such as this flock as madly as sheep whenever one may lead. Anything is news—any man is of interest who has in his pocket a piece of rock, or has in his eye a wink. No man is willing to be left outside. He must know all there is to be known.

It was utterly useless for Van to protest his ignorance of the reservation ground. He owned a deposit of placer gold. Success had crowned his efforts. It was something to get in touch with success, rub shoulders with a man who had the gold.

His friends were there in the red-faced mob. They said they were his friends, and they doubtless knew. Some were, indeed, old acquaintances whom Van would gladly have assisted towards a needed change of fortune. He was powerless, not only to aid these men, but also to escape. Despite his utmost endeavors they held him there an hour, and to make up the time, he chose the hottest, roughest trail through the range, when at last he was clear of the town.

The climb he made on his pony to slice a few miles from his route was over a mountain and through a gulch that was known as The Devil's Slide. It was gravel that moved underfoot with never-failing treachery, gravel made hot by the rays of the sun, and flinging up a scorching heat while it crawled and blistered underfoot. On midsummer days men had perished here, driven mad by the dancing of the air and the dread of the movement where they trod. The last two miles of this desolate slope Van walked and led his broncho.

He entered "Solid Canyon" finally, and mounting once more let Suvy pick the way between great boulders, where gray rattlesnakes abounded in exceptional numbers. These were the hardships of the ride, all there were that Van felt worth the counting. He had reckoned without that far-off storm, which had raged in the darkness of the night.

He came to the river, the ford between the banks where he and Beth had found a shallow stream. For a moment he stared at it speechlessly. A great, swiftly-moving flood was there, tawny, roiled with the mud torn down and dissolved in the water's violence, and foaming still from a plunge it had taken above.

It was ten to twenty feet deep. This Van realized as he sat there on his sweating horse, measuring up the banks. The depth had encroached upon the slope whereon he was wont to ascend the further side. There was one place only where he felt assured a landing might be achieved.

"Well, Suvy," he said to the animal presently, "it looks more like a swim than a waltz quadrille, and neither of us built web-footed."

Without further ado he placed Beth's letter in his hat, then rode his pony down the bank and into the angry-looking water. Suvy halted a moment uncertainly, then, like his master, determined to proceed.

Five feet out he was swimming, headed instinctively up the stream and buried deep under the surface. Van still remained in the saddle. He was more than waist under, loosely clinging to his seat and giving the pony the reins.

Suvy was powerful, he swam doggedly, but the current was tremendous in its sheer liquid mass and momentum. Van slipped off and swam by the broncho's side. Together the two breasted the surge of the tide, and now made more rapid progress. It required tremendous effort to forge ahead and not be swept headlong to a choppy stretch of rapids, just below.

"Up stream, boy, up stream," said Van, as if to a comrade, for he had noted the one likely place to land, and Suvy was drifting too far downward.

They came in close to the bank, as Van had feared, below the one fair landing. Despite his utmost efforts, to which the pony willingly responded, they could not regain what had been lost. The broncho made a fine but futile attempt to gain a footing and scramble up the almost perpendicular wall of rock and earth by which he was confronted. Time after time he circled completely in the surge, to no avail. He may have become either confused or discouraged, Whichever it was, he turned about, during a moment when Van released the reins, and swam sturdily back whence he come.

Van, in the utmost patience, turned and followed. Suvy awaited his advent on the shore.

"Try to keep a little further up, boy, if you can," said the man, and he mounted and rode as before against the current.

The broncho was eager to obey directions, eager to do the bidding of the man he strangely loved. All of the first hard struggle was repeated—and the current caught them as before. Again, as formerly, Van slipped off and swam by his pony's side. He could not hold his shoulder against the animal, and guide him thus up the stream, but was trailed out lengthwise and flung about in utter helplessness, forming a drag against which the pony's most desperate efforts could not prevail.

They came to the bank precisely as they had before, and once again, perhaps more persistently, Suvy made wild, eager efforts to scramble out where escape was impossible. Again and again he circled, pawed the bank, and turned his eyes appealingly to Van, as if for help or suggestions.

At last he acknowledged defeat, or lost comprehension of the struggle. He swam as on the former trial to the bank on the homeward side.

There was nothing for Van but to follow as before. When he came out, dripping and panting, by the animal, whose sides were fairly heaving as he labored for breath, he was still all cheer and encouragement.

"Suvy," said he, "a failure is a chap who couldn't make a fire in hell. We've got to cross this river if we have to burn it up."

He took the broncho's velvety nose in his hands and gave him a rough little shake. Then he patted him smartly on the neck.

"For a pocket-size river," he said as he looked at the flood, "this is certainly the infant prodigy. Well, let's try it again."

Had the plunge been straight to sudden death that broncho would have risked it unswervingly at the urging of his master. Suvy was somewhat exhausted by the trials already made, in vain. But into the turgid down-sweep he headed with a newly conjured vigor.

Van now waited merely for the pony to get started on his way, when he lifted away from the saddle, with the water's aid, and clung snugly up to the stirrup. He swam with one hand only. To keep himself afloat and offer no resistance to the broncho was the most that he could do, and the best.

The struggle was tremendous. Suvy had headed more obliquely than before against the current, and having encountered a greater resistance, with his strength somewhat sapped, was toiling like an engine.

Inch by inch, foot by foot, he forged his way against the liquid wall that split upon him. Van felt a great final quiver of muscular energy shake the living dynamic by his side, as Suvy poured all his fine young might into one supreme effort at the end. Then he came to the landing, got all his feet upon the slope, and up they heaved in triumph!



CHAPTER XXXIII

THE CLOUDS OF TROUBLE GATHER

By the route beyond the river that Van was obliged to choose, the distance from his claim to Starlight was more than forty miles. His pony had no shoes, and having never been ridden far, was a trifle soft for a trip involving difficulties such as this mountain work abundantly afforded. When they came to Phonolite Pass, the last of the cut-offs on the trail, Van rode no more than a hundred yards into its shadows before he feared he must turn.

Phonolite is broken shale, a thin, sharp rock that gives forth a pleasant, metallic sound when struck, like shattered crockery. For a mile this deposit lay along the trail across the width of the pass. For the bare-footed pony there was cruelty in every step. The barrier of rock was far more formidable than the river in its flood.

Van was not to be halted in his object. He had a letter to deliver; he meant to take it through, though doom itself should yawn across his path. The hour was late; the sun was rapidly sinking. Van pulled up his broncho and debated.

Absolute silence reigned in the world of mountains. But if the place seemed desolate, it likewise seemed secure. Nevertheless, death lurked in the trail ahead. Barger was there. He was lying in the rocks, concealed where the chasm was narrow. He had ridden four hours—on the mare Beth had lost—to arrive ahead of Van Buren. The muzzle of a long black revolver that he held in hand rested upon a shattered boulder. His narrow eyes lay level with a rift in the group of rocks that hid him completely from view. Van was in sight, and the convict's breath came quickly as he waited.

Van dismounted from his pony's back and picked up one of his hoofs.

"Worn down pretty flat," he told the animal. "Perhaps if I walk we can make it." He started on foot up the tinkling way, watching the broncho with solicitude.

Suvy followed obediently, but the pointed rocks played havoc with his feet. He lurched, in attempting to right his foot on one that turned, and the long lassoo, secured to the saddle, flopped out, fell back, and made him jump. Van halted as before. The convict was barely fifty yards away. His pistol was leveled, but he waited for a deadlier aim, a shorter shot.

"Nope! We'll have to climb the hill," Van decided reluctantly. "You're a friend of mine, Suvy, and even if you weren't, you'd have to last to get back." He turned his back on death, unwittingly, to spare the horse he loved.

Delayed no less than an hour by this enforced retreat, he patiently led the broncho back to the opening of the pass, and, still on foot, led the steep way up over the mountain.

Barger rose up and cursed himself for not having risked a shot. He dared not attempt a dash upon his man; he could not know where Van might again be intercepted; he was helpless, baffled, enraged. Half starved, keenly alive only in his instinct to accomplish his revenge, the creature was more like a hunted, retaliating animal than like a man. He had sworn to even the score with Van Buren; he was not to be deflected from his course. But to get his man here was no longer possible. The horse Beth had lost, now in the convict's possession, was all but famished for water, not to mention food. There was nothing to choose but retreat towards the river, to the northward, where the mountains might yet afford an ambush as Van was returning home.

Far away in the mountains, at the "Laughing Water" claim, while the sun was setting on a scene of labors, all but concluded for the day, the group of surveyors, with Lawrence in charge, appeared along the southern ridge.

Gettysburg, Napoleon, and Dave were still in the water by the sluices. They were grimed, soiled with perspiration, wearied by the long, hard day of toil. Shovel in hand old Gettysburg discovered the men with an instrument who trekked along the outside edge of the claim. Chain-man, rod-man, and Lawrence with his shining theodolite, set on its three slender legs, they were silhouetted sharply against the evening sky. Their movements and their presence here were beyond the partners' comprehension. It was Gettysburg who climbed up the slope, and anchored himself in their path.

"What you doin'?" he said to the rod-man presently, when that tired individual approached and continued on his way.

"What does it look like—playing checkers?" said the man. "Can't the Government do nuthin'—run no county line ner nuthin' without everybody sittin' up to notice?"

No less than fifty men they had met that day had questioned what the Government was doing. The "county line" suggestion had been the only hint vouchsafed—and that had sufficed to allay the keenest suspicion.

"That all?" said Gettysburg, and, watching as he went, he slowly returned to his partners. His explanation was ample. The surveyors proceeded on.

Meantime, in absolute ignorance of all that was happening on his property, Van continued towards Starlight unmolested. An hour after sundown he rode to the camp, inquired his way to the rough-board shack, where Kent was lying ill, and was met at the door by a stranger, whom Glen had employed as cook and "general nurse."

Bostwick was there. He remained unseen. His instructions were imperative—and the "nurse" had no choice but to obey.

"Of course, Kent's here," he admitted, in response to Van's first question. "He can't see no one, neither—no matter who it is."

"I've brought a letter from his sister," Van explained. "He's got to have it, and have it now. If he wishes to send any answer back, I'm here to take it."

The "nurse" looked him over.

"The orders from the doctor is no visitors!" he said. "And that goes. If you want to leave the letter, why you kin."

Van produced the letter.

"If the man's as ill as that, I have no desire to butt in for an interview," he said. "Oblige me by ascertaining at your earliest convenience whether or not I may be of service to Mr. Kent in returning his reply."

The man looked bewildered. He received the letter, somewhat dubiously, and disappeared. Van waited. The reception was not precisely what he might have expected, but, for the matter of that, neither had the trip been altogether what he might have chosen.

It was fully twenty minutes before the nurse reappeared.

"He was just woke up enough to say thank you and wants to know if you'll oblige him with the favor of takin' his hand-write back to his sister in the mornin'?"

Van looked him over steadily. After all, the man within might be utterly sick and weak. His request was natural. And the service was for Beth.

"Certainly," he said. "I'll be here at seven in the morning."

Starlight was nearly deserted. Gratified to discover sufficient food and bedding for himself and his pony, Van made no complaint.

At six in the morning he was rousing up the blacksmith, fortunately not yet gone to join the reservation rush. Suvy was shod, and at seven o'clock he and Van were again at Glenmore's cabin.

His man was in waiting. In his hand he held an envelope, unsealed.

"Mr. Kent's asleep, but here's his hand-write to his sister," he said. "He wants you to read it out before you hike."

Van received the envelope, glanced at the man inquiringly, and removed a single sheet of paper. It was not a note from Glen; it appeared to be the final page of Beth's own letter to her brother. Van knew the strong, large chirography. His eye ran swiftly over all the lines.

"—so I felt I ought to know about things, and let you know of what is going on. There is more that I cannot tell you. I wrote you much in my former letter—much, I mean, about the man who will carry this letter, so unsuspiciously—the man I shall yet repay if it lies within my power. For the things he has done—and for what he is—for what he represents—this is the man I hate more than anything or anyone else in the world. You would understand me if you knew it all—all! Let him carry some word from you to Your loving sister, BETH."

Van had read and comprehended the full significance of the lines before he realized some error had been made—that this piece of Beth's letter had been placed by mistake in the envelope for him to take, instead of the letter Glen had written.

He did not know and could not know that Bostwick, within, by the sick man's side, had kept Glen stupid and hazy with drugs, that the one word "hate" had been "love" on the sheet he held in his hand till altered by the man from New York, or that something far different from an utterly despicable treachery towards himself had been planned in Beth's warm, happy heart.

The thing, in its enormity, struck him a blow that made him reel, for a moment, till he could grasp at his self-control. He had made no sign, and he made none now as he folded the sheet in its creases.

"I'm afraid you made some mistake," he said. "This is not the note from Mr. Kent. Perhaps you will bring me the other."

"What?" said the man, unaware of the fact that Bostwick had purposely arranged this scheme for putting the altered sheet in Van Buren's hands.

"What's that?" He glanced at the sheet in genuine surprise. "Keerect," he said. "I'll go and git you the letter."

Van mounted his horse. His face had taken on a chiseled appearance, as if it had been cut in stone. He had ridden here through desert heat and flood, for this—to fetch such a letter as this, to a man he had never seen nor cared to see, and whose answer he had promised to return.

He made no effort to understand it—why she should send him when the regular mail would have answered every purpose. The vague, dark hints contained in her letter—hints at things going on—things she could not tell—held little to arouse his interest. A stabbed man would have taken more interest in the name of the maker of the weapon, stamped on the dagger's blade, than did Van in the detail of affairs between Glenmore Kent and his sister. Beth had done this thing, and he had fondly believed her love was welded to his own. She had meant it, then, when she cried in her passion that she hated him for what he had done. Her anger that night upon the hill by Mrs. Dick's had not been jealousy of Queenie, but rage against himself. She was doubtless in love with Bostwick after all—and would share this joke with her lover.

He shrugged his shoulders. Luck had never been his friend. By what right had he recently begun to expect her smile? And why had he continued, for years, to believe in man or in Fate? All the madness of joy he had felt for days, concerning Beth and the "Laughing Water" claim, departed as if through a sieve. He cared for nothing, the claim, the world, or his life. As for Beth—what was the use of wishing to understand?

The "nurse" came out at the door again, this time with a note which Bostwick had written, with a few suggestions from Glen, in an unsealed cover as before.

"I told young Kent you didn't take no time to read the other," he said, holding up the epistle. "If you want to read this——"

"Thank you," Van interrupted, taking the letter and thrusting it at once in his pocket. "Thank Mr. Kent for his courtesies, in my behalf." He turned and rode away.



CHAPTER XXXIV

THE TAKING OF THE CLAIM

Before six o'clock that morning, while Van was arousing the blacksmith, the reservation madness broke its bounds. Twenty-five hundred gold-blinded men made the rush for coveted grounds.

The night had been one long revel of drinking, gambling, and excitement. No one had slept in the reservation town—for no one had dared. Bawling, singing, and shouting, the jollier element had shamed the coyotes from the land. Half a thousand camp fires had flared all night upon the plain. The desert had developed an oasis of flowing liquors, glaring lights, and turmoil of life, lust, and laughter. Good nature and bitter antagonism, often hand in hand, had watched the night hours pale.

By daylight the "dead line" of the reservation boundary—the old, accepted line that all had acknowledged—resembled a thin, dark battle formation, ready for the charge. It was a heterogeneous array, where every unit, instead of being one of an army mobilized against a common foe, was the enemy of all the others, lined up beside him. There were men on foot, men on horses, mules, and burros, men in wagons, buckboards, and buggies, and men in automobiles.

At half-past five the pressure of greed became too great to bear. A few unruly stragglers, far down the line, no longer to be held in check, bent portions of the long formation inward as they started out across the land. The human stampede began almost upon the instant. Keepers on their horses, riding up and down, were swept away like chips before a flood. Scattering wildly over hill and plain, through gulches, swales, and canyons, the mad troop entered on the unknown field, racing as if for their lives.

Gettysburg, Napoleon, and Dave had watched for an hour the human hedge below the "Laughing Water" claim. They, too, had been up since daylight, intent upon seeing the fun. They had eaten their breakfast at half-past four. At a quarter of six they returned, to their shack and began at their daily work.

The cold mountain stream, diverted to the sluices, went purling down over the riffles. The drip from countless negligible leaks commenced in its monotony. Into the puddles of mud and water the three old miners sloshed, with shovels and picks in hand. They were tired before their work began. Gettysburg, at sixty-five, had been tired for twenty-five years. Nevertheless, he began his day with song, his cheery,

Rinktum bolly kimo.

They were only fairly limbered up when four active men appeared abruptly on the property, at the corners of the claim, and began the work of putting up white location posts, after knocking others down. They were agents employed by McCoppet, in behalf of Bostwick and himself.

Napoleon was the first to note their presence. He was calling attention to the nearest man when a fifth man appeared by the cabin. He, too, had a new location post, or stake, to be planted at the center of the claim. He was not only armed as to weapons, but protruding from his pocket was a wad of "legal" documents, more to be feared than his gun.

He came straight towards Gettysburg, walking briskly.

"Morning," he said. "I've come to notify you men to get off of this here claim. This ground belongs to me and my partners, by right of prior location—made right now."

He thrust his stake a little into the yielding sand and had posted a notice, made out in due form, before the wet old workers by the sluice could conclude that the man had lost his wits.

"What you givin' us, anyway?" said Gettysburg, remaining ankle-deep in the mud. "Don't you know this here is the 'Laughin' Water' claim, which was located proper——"

"This claim on the reservation," interrupted McCoppet's agent. "The line was run out yesterday, according to Government instructions, and the line takes in this ground." He continued at his work.

Napoleon got stirred up then and there.

"You're a liar!" he cried out recklessly, "—metaphorical speakin'. Belay there, my hearty. You and your dog-gone pirate craft——"

McCoppet himself, on horseback, came riding down the slope.

"That's enough from you!" interrupted the gambler's agent. "You and your crowd is liable for trespass, or Government prosecution, getting on the reservation land ahead of date. This ground belongs to me and my company, understand, with everything on it—and all the gold you've took out! And all you take away is your personal effects—and you take 'em and git, right now!"

"Now hold on," said Gettysburg, dazed by what he heard. "I seen that Government surveyor cuss. He said he was only running out a county line."

McCoppet took the case in hand, as he halted by the boxes.

"Now, boys, don't waste your time in argument," he said. "You've made a mistake, that's all. Take my advice and hike to the reservation now, before the gang stakes everything in sight. You can't go up against the law, and you've done too much illegal work already."

"Illegal?" cried Napoleon. "You're a liar, Opal. Ain't mad, are you? I've drunk at your saloon, and you know this claim belongs to Van and us!"

"Don't I say you've made a mistake?" repeated the gambler. "I don't hold any feelings about it. Nobody was on for a sure thing about the reservation line till Lawrence run it out. We had suspicions, from a study of the maps, but it took the Government surveyor to make the matter certain. It's a cinch you're on the reservation land. You can copper all your rights, and play to win the bet this claim belongs to me—and everything else that's any good. Now don't stop to talk. Go to Lawrence for Government facts—and git a-going pronto."

Gettysburg was pulling down his sleeves. Old age had suddenly claimed him for its own. The song had dried from his heart, and the light of his wonderful youth and hope departed from his eye. Dave was too stunned to think. All three felt the weight of conviction sink them in the chilling mire. The survey of the day before made doubt impossible.

Gettysburg looked at the boxes, the pits they had dug, the water running over the riffles, behind which lay the gold.

"I wish Van was to home," he said. "He'd know."

Their helplessness without the absent Van was complete. In the game of life they were just old boys who would never become mature.

"Van Buren couldn't do no good," McCoppet assured them. "This ain't a matter of wrangling or fighting; it's a matter of law. If the law ain't with us you'll get the property back. Van Buren would tell you the same. He didn't know the ground was reservation. We give him the benefit of that. But all the gold you've got on the place you'll have to leave with me. You never had no rights on the Government preserves, and I'm here ahead of all the bunch in staking it out at six o'clock, the legal opening hour."

Napoleon started to speak again, but glanced at Gettysburg instead. A bluff was useless, especially with Gettysburg looking so utterly defeated. From his tall, old partner, Napoleon looked at Dave.

"Can't we tack somewhere?" he said. "Couldn't we hold the wheel and wait fer Van?"

Gettysburg repeated: "I wish Van was to home."

"Come on, come on," McCoppet urged, beginning to lose his patience. "If you think you've got any rights, go to Lawrence and see. You're trespassing here. I don't want to tell you harsh to pack your duds and hunt another game, but you can't stay here no longer."

Gettysburg hesitated, then slowly came out of the water. He looked at the sluices hazily.

"Just gittin' her to pay," he said. "The only easy minin' I ever done."

Napoleon, suddenly dispirited—utterly dispirited—had nothing more to say. Slowly and in broken order the three old cronies wended towards the cabin. Less than an hour later, with all their meager treasure in worldly goods roped to the last of Dave's horses, they quitted the claim, taking Algy, the Chinese cook, along. They were homeless wanderers with no place in all the world to turn. Without Van they were utterly lost. They expected him to come that day to the cove. Therefore, on a desert spot, not far from the new reservation line, taking possession of a bit of hill so poor that no one had staked it, they made their camp in the sand and rocks, to await Van's pleasure in returning.



CHAPTER XXXV

THE MEETINGS OF TWO STRONG MEN

Matt Barger, riding in the night, intent upon nothing save the chance to deal out his vengeance to Van Buren, had camped beside the river, at the turn where Van and Beth had skirted the bank to the regular fording below. The convict's horse, which Beth had lost, was tethered where the water-way had encouraged a meager growth of grass. Barger himself had eaten a snake and returned to a narrow defile in the range, where his ambush could be made.

To insure himself against all misadventure he rolled a mass of boulders down the hill, to block the trail. His barrier was crude but efficient. Neither man nor horse could have scaled it readily, and the slopes on either side were not only well-nigh perpendicular, they were also built of crumbling stone that broke beneath the smallest weight. He labored doggedly, persistently, despite his half-starved condition, and when he had finished he looked to his gun, proceeded down the trail some fifty yards or more, climbed the slope, and there in the rocks, where the walls gave way to a sandy acclivity, concealed himself to wait.

The sun at noon found Van a mark for punishment. The day was the hottest of the season. The earth and rocks irradiated heat that danced in the air before him. All the world was vibrant, the atmosphere a shimmer, as if in very mockery of the thoughts that similarly rose and gyrated in his brain. His horse was suffering for water. The river was still an hour away, so steep was the climb through the range.

The trail he would gladly have avoided, had such a course been practical. He had ridden here with Beth, and therefore the mockery was all the more intense. His inward heat and the outward heat combined to make him savage. There was nothing, however, on which to vent his feelings. Suvy he loved. Perhaps, he reflected, the horse was his one faithful friend. Certainly the broncho toiled most willingly across the zone of lifelessness to bear him on his way.

Up through the narrowing walls of sand and adamant they slowly ascended. Barger saw them once, far down the trail, then lost them again as they rounded a spur of the shimmering hillside, coming nearer where he lay. He was up the slope a considerable distance—farther than he meant to risk a shot. His breath came hard as he presently beheld Van Buren fairly entering the trap.

Van's head had fallen forward on his breast. He looked at nothing. His face was set and hard. Barger raised his pistol, sighted down the barrel—and repressed the impulse to fire as the horseman came onward, unsuspiciously.

No sooner was Van around the turn, where in less than a minute he would find his progress blocked, than Barger arose and ran with all his might down the slope.

He let out a yell of exultation as he came to the trail. Van turned in his saddle instantly, beholding the man in the pass. He knew that sinister form.

His pony had bounded forward, frightened by the cry. Down went Van's hand to his own revolver, and the gun came up cocked for action.

One glance he cast up the trail ahead—and saw through Barger's trick. The cul de sac was perfect, and the convict had halted to fire.

It made a singular picture on Van Buren's retina—that gaunt, savage being, hairy, wild of eye, instinct with hatred and malice, posing awkwardly, and the sun-lit barrel of polished steel, just before its yawning muzzle belched lead and a cloud and a roaring detonation.

The bullet went wide, and Barger fired again, quickly, but more steadily. That one landed. It got Van just along the arm, burning in a long, shallow wound that barely brought the blood.

Van's gun was down, despite Suvy's panic of cavortings. He pulled the trigger. The hammer leaped two ways, up and back—but the gun made no report, no buck, no cloud to answer Barger's. The cartridges, subjected to all that water of the day before, were worthless.

The third of Barger's shots was fired from a closer range, as the eager creature closed in upon his enemy. It let the daylight enter Van's hat, near the top.

Van had snapped every shell in his weapon, with amazing rapidity—to no avail. The cylinder had flung around like a wheel, but the sounds were those of a toy.

Barger was steadied in his tracks for better marksmanship. He had heard that succession of metallic snaps; he knew he had Van Buren at his mercy. Three of his shots remained unfired, and a second, unused pistol in his belt, with more ammunition. The fellow even smiled as he was aiming.

There was one thing to do—and Van did it. He leaped his broncho clean against the wall, then spurred him straight for Barger. The shot that split the air again was splattered on the rocks. Before the convict could make ready to avoid the charge, Suvy was almost upon him. He partially fell and partially leaped a little from the broncho's path, but was struck as the pony bounded by.

He yelled, for his leg was trampled and hurt by the pressure of Suvy's shoe, nevertheless he scrambled to his feet at once, and fired wildly at his man.

He emptied his gun, drew the other, and ran, too eager for his deed of revenge to halt and take a steady aim. A bullet punctured the broncho's ear, and the blood flew back upon Van.

They were past the walls in the briefest time, and Van attacked the slope. Barger came after, yelling in rage. He tripped, and his hurt leg dropped him down.

Already wearied, and famished for drink, Suvy nevertheless rose to the needs of the moment with a strength incredible. He scaled that sandy, treacherous slope like an engine built for the purpose. It was love, pure love for the master on his back, that steeled the mighty sinews in his body.

Two shots and two bullets from below proclaimed renewed activities where Barger was once more on his feet. But the man had lost too much ground to recover his advantage. He knew that Van Buren, with a horse like that, could win the high ridge and escape.

He raged; he cursed himself and his God, for this second failure of his deed. Then once again he abruptly thought of a chance whereby to redeem his galling failures. His man on the horse would be more than an hour in reaching the river by the slopes. A man on foot could beat him there, and beat him across to the farther side, from which to attack with surer aim—from the cover of the willows by the ford. The flood had subsided. This Barger knew. The water was hardly knee high on a man, and better than all, Van Buren would scarcely dream of such a plan as within the range of possibilities.

Laboriously, in a fever of impatience, Barger made shift, after strenuous work, to climb his barrier of rock. Then up to the summit of the trail he sped, and down on the farther side.

Meantime Van, disgusted with himself for riding away from a fight, could only revile his useless gun and excuse himself a trifle because of his defenselessness. The skirmish had served to arouse him, however, and for that he was thankful to the convict who had waited in the pass.

Then he wondered how it came at all that Matt should have thus been lying there in wait. The fellow must have been informed, to prepare so elaborate a trap. It hardly seemed as if a plot against his life could explain this trip that Beth had desired him to take. He could scarcely credit a thing so utterly despicable, so murderous, to her, yet for what earthly reasons had she sent him on the trip with a letter the stage could have carried?

The thing was preposterous! No woman on earth could have sanctioned an alliance with Barger. But—what of Bostwick—the man who had spent a portion of his time with the liberated convicts? A revenge like this would appeal to him, would seem to him singularly appropriate. Beth could have lent her assistance to the plan without guilty knowledge of an outcome such as this, and Bostwick—Beth knew that Barger was Van's enemy. He had told her so himself. Facts were facts. Her letter to Glen revealed her state of mind—and here was this attack, a planned attack, proving conclusively that Barger had been prepared beforehand with knowledge of the trip.

From having been depressed before, Van was made thoroughly angry. The whole thing was infamous, dastardly—and Beth could not be acquitted. Strangely enough, against the convict, Barger, the horseman felt no wrath. Barger had a grievance, howsoever mistaken, that was adequate. He was following his bent consistently. He had made his threat in the open; he must plan out his work according to his wits. He was simply a hunted beast, who turned upon his hunters.

It was Bostwick on whom Van concentrated a rising heat—and he promised the man would find things warm in camp, and the fight only well under way.

Even when the summit was achieved, the broncho slacked off nothing of his pace. Sweat glistened wetly upon him. His bleeding ear was going backward and forward tremulously, as he listened for any word from Van, and for anything suspicious before them. Van noted a certain wistfulness in the pony's demeanor.

"Take it easy, boy," he urged in a voice of affection that the broncho understood. "Take it easy." He dismounted to lead the animal down the slope, since a steep descent is far more trying on a ridden horse than climbing up the grade. He halted to pat the pony on the neck, and give his nose a rough caress, then on they went, the shadow they cast the only shade upon the burning hill.

It was fully an hour after leaving the pass, where Barger had piled in the rock, before the horseman and his broncho dropped again in the trail that led onward to the river. Van was again in the saddle. Alert for possible surprises, but assured that his man could find no adequate cover hereabouts, he emerged from behind the last of the turns all eagerness to give his horse a drink.

A yell broke suddenly, terribly, on the desert stillness. It came from Barger, out in the river, on the bar—strangely anchored where he stood.

Van saw him instantly, saw a human fantastic, struggling, writhing, twisting with maniacal might, the while the horrible quicksand held him by the legs, and swallowed him, inch by inch.

"Fer Christ's sake—help!" the creature shrilled in his plight. He had flung away revolvers, cartridges, even his coat, reducing his weight when the stuff only gripped him by the ankles. He was half to his thighs. He was sinking to his waist, and with all of his furious efforts, the frightful sand was shuddering, as if in animal ecstacy—some abominable ecstacy of hunger, voracious from long denial, as it sucked him further down.

"Fer Christ's sake, Van Buren—fer Christ's sake, man! I'm a human being," shrieked the victim of the sand. "I'm a human being, man!"

Van had not hesitated by so much as a moment as to what he meant to do. He was off his horse in a leap. He paused for a second to looked about for any accidental means of assistance the place might afford. It afforded none. The man in the quicksand continued to yell, to struggle hopelessly, to sink in that shivering pool of life-engulfing stuff.

Then the horseman thought of his rope, the raw-hide lasso, always secured upon his saddle. He snatched at the knots to tear it loose.

"Don't move—don't struggle!" he shouted at the man, and down toward the edge he came running, the rope-noose running out as he sped.

He dared not step beyond the bank, and so involve himself. Barger was well out from the edge. The throw at best was long and difficult.

"Hold up your hands, above your head!" he called. "Don't thrash around!"

The convict obeyed. His haggard, bearded face was turned to Van like a mask of horror. The eyes were blazing fearfully. The fellow's attitude, as he held his hands above his head, and continued to sink, was a terrible pose of supplication—an awful eloquence of prayer.

Van threw—and the cast fell short.

Barger groaned. He had ceased to yell. He remained mutely holding up his hands, while the cold abyss crept upward to his waist—the wet lips swallowing, swallowing in silence.

Van jerked in the rope with one impatient gesture. He coiled it swiftly, but with nicety. Then round and round he swung the gaping loop—and threw with all his strength.

For a second the loop hung snake-like in the air, above the convict's head. Then it fell about him, splashed the curdled sand, and was pulled up taut, embracing Barger's waist.

"Hoist it up under your arms!" called Van. "Try to move your legs when I pull!"

He wasted no time in attempting to haul the convict out himself. He led his pony quickly to the edge, took two half hitches of the rope about the pommel of the saddle, then shouted once more to his man.

"Ready, Barger. Try to kick your feet." To the horse he said: "Now, Suvy, a strong, steady pull." And taking the pony's bit in hand he urged him slowly forward,

It was wonderful, the comprehension in the broncho's mind. But the pull was an awful thing. The rope came taut—and began to be strained, and Suvy was sweating as he labored. Out on the end of it, bitten by the loop, that slipped ever tighter about him, the human figure was bent over sharply, between the two contending forces.

He let out one yell, for the pain about his chest—then made no further sound. The rawhide rope was like a fiddle-string. It seemed absurd that an anchor so small, so limber, in the sand, could hold so hard against the horse. Van urged a greater strain. He knew that the rope would hold. He did not know how much the man could bear before something awful might occur. There was nothing else to do.

It seemed a time interminable. No one made a sound. The queer, distorted figure out in the stream could have uttered no sound to save his life. The silence was beginning to be hideous.

Then an inch of the rope came landward, as the broncho strained upon it. The anchor had started from its hold.

"Now! now!" said Van, and with quick, skillful urging he caught at the slight advantage.

Like an old, half-buried pile, reluctant to budge from its bed in sand and ooze, the human form was slowly dragged from the place. No corpse, rudely snatched from its grave, could have been more helplessly inert—more stretched out of all living semblance to a man.



Across the firmer sand, and through a lagoon of water, Barger was hurriedly drawn. The pony was halted when the man was at the bank, and back to the convict Van went running, to loosen the bite of the noose.

Barger lay prostrate on the earth, his eyes dully blinking in the sun. His feet were bare. They had slipped from his boots, which were buried beyond in the sand. His face had taken on a hue of death. From hair to his ankles he was shockingly emaciated—a gaunt, wasted figure, motionless as clay.

Van fetched a pint of water in his hat. He sprinkled it roughly in the convict's face, and, propping up his head, helped him to take a drink.

Barger could not lift a hand, or utter a word. Van recoiled the rope, secured it on the saddle, then sat down to await the man's recovery. It was slow. Barger's speech was the first returning function. It was faint, and weak, and blasphemous.

"It's hell," he said, "when God Almighty turns agin a man. Ain't the sheriff's enough—without a thing like that?" His thumb made a gesture towards the river, which he cursed abominably—cursing it for a trap, a seeming benefit, here in the desert, ready to eat a man alive.

Van made no reply. He rather felt the man was justified—at least in some opinions. Towards Barger he felt no anger, but rather a pity instead.

After a time the convict moved sufficiently to prop himself up against the bank. He looked at Van dully. This was the man who had "sent him up"—and saved him from the sand. There was much that lay between them, much that must always lie. He had no issues to dodge. There was nothing cowardly in Barger, despite his ways.

"I nearly got you, up yonder," he said, and he jerked his thumb towards the mountains, to indicate the pass where he and Van had met an hour before.

Van nodded. "You sure did. Who told you to look for me here?"

Barger closed his eyes. "Nothing doing." He could not have been forced to tell.

Van smiled. "That's all right." There was no resentment in the tone.

Barger looked at him curiously.

"What for did you pull me out?"

"Don't know," Van confessed. "Perhaps I hated to have the quicksand cheat the pen."

"Must have had some good reason," agreed the prostrate man. He was silent for a moment, and then he added: "I s'pose I'm your meat."

As before, Van nodded: "I reckon you are."

Barger spat. It was his first vigorous indication of returning strength.

"Someways," he said, "I'd rather you'd shoot me here, right now, than send me back to the pen. But I couldn't stand fer that!" He made his characteristic gesture towards the river. As Van made no comment the fellow concluded: "I s'pose you need the reward."

Van was aware there was ten thousand dollars as a price on the convict's head, a fact which he someway resented. To-day, more than at any time within his life, he felt out of sympathy with law—with man's law, made against man.

He began to pull off his boots.

"No," he said, "I don't want any State's reward, much less express company money. Maybe if it wasn't for those rewards I'd take you into camp." He inverted his boots and shook out a few grains of sand.

Barger glanced at him suspiciously.

"What are you goin' to do with me, then, now you've got me to rights?"

"Nothing," said Van, "nothing this afternoon." He stood up. "You and I break even, Barger, understand? Don't take me wrong. I'm not turning you loose entirely. You belong to me. Whenever I call for the joker, Matt, I want you to come."

He would never call, and he knew it. He merely left the matter thus to establish a species of ownership that Barger must acknowledge. There is law of the State, and law of God, and law of man to man. The latter it was that concerned Van Buren now, and upon it he was acting.

Laboriously, weakly, Barger arose to his feet. He looked at Van peculiarly, with a strange light dully firing in his eyes.

"I agree to that," he answered slowly. "I agree to that."

He put out his hand to shake—to bind his agreement. It was almost like offering his oath.

Van took it, and gave it his usual grip.

"So long, Barger," he said. "I reckon you need these boots."

He waved his hand loosely at the boots that lay upon the ground, went at once to his horse, and mounted to his seat.

"The regular ford of this river's down below," he added to the speechless convict, standing there gaunt and wondering upon the marge. "So long."

Barger said nothing. Van rode away on the trail by the stream, and was presently gone, around the bend.



CHAPTER XXXVI

VAN RUNS AMUCK

Instead of turning northward in the mountain range and riding on to the "Laughing Water" claim, Van continued straight ahead to Goldite. The letter to Beth was heavy in his pocket. Until he should rid himself of its burden he knew he should have no peace—no freedom to act for himself.

He had been delayed. The sun was setting when at last he rode his broncho to the hay-yard in the camp, and saw that he was fed with proper care. Then he got some boots and walked to Mrs. Dick's.

Beth, from her window, looking towards the sun, discovered him coming to the place. She had never in her life felt so wildly joyous at beholding any being of the earth. She had watched for hours, counting his steps across the desert's desolation one by one, tracing his course from Starlight "home" by all the signs along the trail which she and he had traveled together.

She ran downstairs like a child. She had momentarily forgotten even Glen. Nothing counted but this sight of Van—his presence here with herself. When she suddenly burst from the door into all the golden glory of the sunset, herself as glorious with color, warmth, and youth as the great day-orb in the west, Van felt his heart give one tumultuous heave in his breast, despite the resentment he harbored.

There had never been a moment when her smile had been so radiant, when the brown of her eyes had been so softly lighted and glowing, when her cheeks had so mirrored her beauty.

How superb she was, he said to himself—how splendid was her acting! He could almost forgive himself for having played the fool. His helplessness, his defenselessness had been warranted. But—her smile could befuddle him no more. He took off his hat, with a certain cold elegance of grace. His face still wore that chiseled appearance of stone-like hardness.

"Oh!" she cried, in her irrepressible happiness of heart. "You're home! You're safe! I'm glad!"

It was nothing, her cry that he was safe. She had worried only for the desert's customary perils, but this he could not know. He thought she referred to a possible meeting with Barger. He was almost swept from his balance by her look, for a bright bit of moisture had sprung in her eyes and her smile took on a tenderness that all but conquered him anew.

"I delivered your letter in Starlight," he said. "I return your brother's reply."

He had taken the letter from his pocket. He held it forth.

She took it. If memories of Glen started rushingly upon her, they were halted by something she felt in the air, something in the cold, set speech of the man she loved as never she had thought to love a creature of the earth. She made no reply, but stood looking peculiarly upon him, a question written plainly in her glance.

"If there is nothing more," he added, "permit me to wish you good-day." He swept off his hat as he had before, turned promptly on his heel, and departed the scene forthwith.

She tried to cry out, to ask him what it meant, but the thing had come like a blow. It had not been what he had said, so much as the manner of its saying—not so much what she had heard as what her heart had felt. A deluge of ice water, suddenly thrown upon her, could scarcely have chilled or shocked her more than the coldness that had bristled from his being.

Wholly at a loss to understand, she leaned in sudden weakness against the frame of the door, and watched him disappearing. Her smile was gone. In its place a dumb, white look of pain and bewilderment had frozen on her face. Had not that something, akin to anger, which her nature had felt to be emanating from him remained so potently to oppress her, she could almost have thought the thing a joke—some freakish mood of playfulness after all the other moods he had shown. But no such thought was possible. The glitter in his eyes had been unmistakable. Then, what could it mean?

She almost cried, as she stood there and saw him vanish. She had counted so much upon this moment. She had prayed for his coming safely back from the desert. She had so utterly unbound the fetters from her love. Confession of it all had been ready in her heart, her eyes, and on her lips. Reaction smote her a dulling blow. Her whole impulsive nature crept back upon itself, abashed—like something discarded, flung at her feet ingloriously.

"Oh—Van!" she finally cried, in a weak, hurt utterance, and back along the darkening hall she went, her hand with Glen's crushed letter pressed hard upon her breast.

Van, for his part, far more torn than he could have believed possible, proceeded down the street in such a daze as a drunken man might experience, emerging from liquor's false delights to life's cold, merciless facts. The camp was more emptied than he had ever known it since first it was discovered. Only a handful of the reservation stragglers had returned. The darkness would pour them in by hundreds.

Half way down the thoroughfare Van paused to remember what it was his body wanted. It was food. He started again, and was passing the bank when someone called from within.

"Hello, there—Van!" came the cry. "Hello! Come in!"

Van obeyed mechanically. The cashier, Rickart, it was who had shouted the summons—a little, gray-eyed, thin-faced man, with a very long moustache.

"How are you, Rick?" said the horseman familiarly. "What's going on?"

"Haven't you heard?—you?" interrogated Rickart. "I thought it was funny you were loafing along so leisurely. Didn't you know to-day was the day for the rush?"

"I did," said Van. "What about it?"

"Not much," his friend replied, "except your claim has been jumped by McCoppet and one J. Searle Bostwick, who got on to the fact that the reservation line included all your ground."

Van looked his incredulity.

"What's the joke?" he said. "I bite. What's the answer?"

"Joke?" the cashier echoed. "Joke? They had the line surveyed through, yesterday, and Lawrence confirmed their tip. Your claim, I tell you, was on reservation ground, and McCoppet had his crowd on deck at six o'clock this morning. They staked it out, according to law, as the first men on the job after the Government threw it open—and there they are."

Van leaned against the counter carelessly, and looked at his friend unmoved.

"Who told you the story?" he inquired. "Who brought it into camp?"

"Why a dozen men—all mad to think they never got on," said Rickart, not without heat. "It's an outrage, Van! You might have fought them off if you'd been on deck, and made the location yourself! Where have you been?"

Van smiled. The neatness of the whole arrangement began to be presented to his mind.

"Oh, I was out of the way all right," he said. "My friends took care of that."

"I thought there was something in the wind, all along," imparted the little cashier. "Bostwick and McCoppet have been thicker than thieves for a week. But the money they needed wasn't Bostwick's. I wired to New York to get his standing—and he's got about as much as a pin. But the girl stood in, you bet! She's got enough—and dug up thirty thousand bucks to handle the crowd's expenses."

Van straightened up slowly.

"The girl?"

"Miss Kent—engaged to Bostwick—you ought to know," replied the man behind the counter. "She's put up the dough and I guess she's in the game, for she turned it all over like a man."

Van laughed, suddenly, almost terribly.

"Oh, hell, Rick, come out and git a drink!" he said. "Here," as he noted a bottle in the desk, "give me some of that!"

Rickart gave him the bottle and a glass. He poured a stiff amber draught and raised it on high, a wild, fevered look in his eyes.

"Here's to the gods of law and order!" he said. "Here's to faith, hope, and charity. Here's to friendship, honor, and loyalty. Here's to the gallant little minority that love their neighbors as themselves. Give me perfidy or give me death! Hurray for treason, strategy, and spoils!"