He drank the liquid fire at one reckless gulp, and laughing again, in ghastly humor, lurched suddenly out at the open door and across to the nearest saloon.

Rickart, in sudden apprehension for the "boy" he genuinely loved, called out to him shrilly, but in vain. Then he scurried to the telephone, rang up the office of the sheriff, and presently had a deputy on the wire.

"Say, friend," he called, "if Bostwick or McCoppet should return to camp to-night, warn them to keep off the street. Van Buren's in, and I don't want the boy to mix himself in trouble."

"All right," came the answer, "I'm on."

In less than an hour the town was "on." Men returning by the scores and dozens, nineteen out of every twenty exhausted, angered with disappointment, and clamorous for refreshments, filled the streets, saloons, and eating houses, all of them talking of the "Laughing Water" claim, and all of them ready to sympathize with Van—especially at his expense.

His night was a mixture of wildness, outflamings of satire on the virtues, witty defiance of the fates, and recklessness of everything save reference to women. Not a word escaped his lips whereby his keenest, most delighted listener could have probed to the heart of his mood. To the loss of his claim was attributed all his pyrotechnics, and no one, unless it was Rickart, was aware of the old proverbial "woman in the case," who had planted the sting that stung.

Rickart, like a worried animal, following the footsteps of his master, sought vainly all night to head Van off and quiet him down in bed. At two in the morning, at McCoppet's gambling hall, where Van perhaps expected to encounter the jumpers of his claim, the little cashier succeeded at last in commanding Van's attention. Van had a glass of stuff in his hand—stuff too strong to be scathed by all the pure food enactments in the world.

"Look here, boy," said Rickart, clutching the horseman's wrist in his hand, "do you know that Gettysburg, and Nap, and Dave are camping on the desert, waiting for you to come home?"

Van looked at him steadily. He was far from being dizzied in his brain. Since the blow received at the hands of Beth had not sufficed to make him utterly witless, then nothing drinkable could overcome his reason.

"Home?" he said. "Waiting for me to come home."

Suddenly wrenching his hand from Rickart's grip he hurled the glass of liquor with all his might against the mirror of the bar. The crash rose high above the din of human voices. A radiating star was abruptly created in the firmament of glass, and Van was starting for the door.

The barkeeper scarcely turned his head. He was serving half a dozen men, and he said: "Gents, what's your poison?"

A crowd of half-intoxicated revelers started for Van and attempted to haul him back. He flung them off like a lot of pestiferous puppies, and cleared the door.

He went straight to the hay-yard, saddled his horse, and headed up over the mountains. He had eaten no dinner; he wanted none. The fresh, clean air began its work of restoration.

It was daylight when he reached the camp his partners had made on the desert. Napoleon and Gettysburg were drunk. Discouraged by his long delay, homeless, and utterly disheartened, they had readily succumbed to the conveniently bottled sympathy of friends.

No sooner had the horseman alighted at the camp than Napoleon flung himself upon him. He was weeping.

"What did I sh-sh-sh-sh-(whistle) shay?" he interrogated brokenly, "home from a foreign—quoth the r-r-r-r-r-(whistle) raven—NEVER MORE!"

Gettysburg waxed apologetic, as he held his glass eye in his hand.

"Didn't mean to git in thish condition, Van—didn't go to do it," he imparted confidentially. "Serpent that lurks in the glash."

Van resumed his paternal role with a meed of ready forgiveness.

"Let him who hath an untainted breath cast the first bottle," he said. Even old Dave, thought sober, was disqualified, and Algy was asleep.



CHAPTER XXXVII

THE PRIMITIVE LAW

Bostwick and McCoppet had made ample provision against attack at the claim. Their miners, who set to work at once to enlarge the facilities for extracting the gold from the ground, were gun-fighters first and toilers afterward. The place was guarded night and day, visitors being ordered off with a strictness exceptionally rigid.

Van and his partners were down and out. They had saved almost nothing of the gold extracted from the sand, since the bulk of their treasure had fallen, by "right of law" into the hands of the jumpers.

Bostwick avoided Van as he would a plague. There was never a day or night that fear did not possess him, when he thought of a possible encounter; yet Van had planned no deed of violence and could not have told what the results would be should he and Bostwick meet.

In his customary way of vigor, the horseman had begun a semi-legal inquiry the first day succeeding the rush. He interviewed Lawrence, the Government representative, since Culver's removal from the scene. Lawrence was prepared for the visit. He expressed his regrets at the flight Van's fortunes had taken. Bostwick had come, he said, with authority from Washington, ordering the new survey. No expectation had been entertained, he was sure, that the old, "somewhat imaginary" and "decidedly vague" reservation line would be disturbed, or that any notable properties would be involved. Naturally, after the line was run, establishing the inclusion of the "Laughing Water" claim, and much other ground, in the reservation tract, Mr. Bostwick had been justified in summary action. It was the law of human kind to reach for all coveted things.

Van listened in patience to the exposition of the case. He studied the maps and data as he might have studied the laws of Confucius written in their native tongue. The thing looked convincing. It was not at all incredible or unique. It bore Government sanction, if not its trademark. And granting that the reservation tract did actually extend so far as to lap across the "Laughing Water" claim, the right of an entrant to locate the ground and oust all previous trespassers after the legal opening was undeniable.

Much of the natural fighting spirit, welded by nature into Van's being, had been sickened into inactivity by the blow succeeding blow received at the hands of Beth Kent. The case against her was complete.

Her letter to her brother was sufficient in itself. The need for its delivery in person to her brother he thought undoubtedly a ruse to get himself out of the way. If she had not planned with the others to warn the convict, Barger, of his trip, she had certainly loaned her money to Bostwick for his needs—and her letter contained the threat, "I will repay!"

At the end of three days of dulling disgust and helplessness, Van and his "family" were camping in a tent above the town of Goldite, on a hill. They were all but penniless: they had no occupation, no hope. They were down once more at the ladder's bottom rung, depleted in spirit, less young than formerly, and with no idea of which way to turn.

Van meant to fight, if the slightest excuse could be discovered. His partners would back him, with their lives. But he and they, as they looked their prospects fairly in the face, found themselves utterly disarmed. Except for the credit, extended by friends of Van, starvation might have lurked about their tent. All delayed seeking for outside work while the prospect of putting up a fight to regain their property held forth a dim glimmer of hope.

The last of Van's money went to meet a debt—such a debt as he would not disregard. The account was rendered by a cutter of stone, who had carved upon a marble post the single legend:

QUEENIE.

This post was planted where a small earth mound was raised upon the hill—and word of the tribute went the rounds of the camp, where everyone else had forgotten.

The town's excitement concerning the rush had subsided with greater alacrity as reports came back, in rapid procession—no gold on the reservation. The normal excitements of the mining field resumed where the men had left them off. News that Matt Barger was not only still at large, but preying on wayside travelers, aroused new demands for the sheriff's demonstrations of his fitness to survive. The fact was recalled that Cayuse, the half-breed murderer of Culver, was as yet unreported from the hills.

The sheriff, who had ridden day and night, in quest of either of the "wanted" men, came back to Goldite from a week's excursion, packed full of hardships, vigilance, and work, to renew his force and make another attempt. He offered a job to Van.

"There's ten thousand dollars in Barger," he said. "And I guess you could use the money. There's nothing but glory in gittin' Cayuse, but I'll give you your pick of the pair."

That some half-formed notion of procuring a secret survey of the reservation line, in his own behalf, had occupied Van's thoughts somewhat insistently, was quite to be expected. That the work would prove expensive was a matter of course. Money was the one particular thing of which he stood in need. Nevertheless, at the sheriff's suggestion he calmly shook his head.

"Thanks, old man. Blood-money wouldn't circulate worth a whoop in my system. But I think I could land Cayuse." He held no grudge against Culver now. Perhaps he regretted the fuss he had made on the day of Culver's death. "I'll take ten dollars a day," he added, "and see what I can do about the Indian."

"I knew it! I knew you'd do more than all the gang—myself in the count," the sheriff exclaimed in profound relief. "I'm beat! I own it! I ain't seen a trace of that black-headed devil since I started. If you'll fetch him in——"

"Don't promise more than ten dollars a day," Van interrupted. "If you do you can get him yourself. I haven't said I'll fetch him in. I merely said perhaps I could get him."

"All right," said the sheriff, bewildered. "All right. I don't care what happens, if you git him."

Glad, perhaps, to escape the town—to flee from the air that Beth was breathing, Van rode off that afternoon.

He did not seek the Indian murderer, nor for traces of his place of concealment. He went due west, to the nearest Indian camp, on the now diminished reservation. He called upon a wise and grave Piute, as old as some of the hills.

"Captain Sides," he said, when the due formalities of greeting had been gratified, "I want you to get Cayuse. He stabbed a white man, Culver, Government man—and you Piutes know all about it. Indians know where an Indian hides. This man has broken the law. He's got to pay. I want your men to get him."

Old Captain Sides was standing before his house. He was tall and dignified.

"Yesh—he's broke the law," he agreed. "Mebbe my boys, they's get him."



That was all, but a strange thing happened. On the following night four grim Piutes brought Cayuse from his mountain retreat. They were all his kinsmen, uncles, brothers, and cousins. He was taken to a council in the brush, a family council with Captain Sides as Chieftain, Magistrate, and father of the tribe. And a solemn procedure followed. Cayuse was formally charged with infraction of the law and asked for his defense. He had no defense—nothing but justification. He admitted the killing, and told of why it had been done. He had taken an eye for an eye.

"I have broken the white man's law," he said. "The white man first broke mine. I'm ready to pay. The Indian stands no show to get away. I broke the law, and I am glad. They want my life. That's all right. That's the law. But I don't want the white man to hang me. That ain't good Indian way. My people can satisfy this law. They can shoot me like a man. No white is going to hang Cayuse, and that's all I've got to say."

To an Anglo Saxon mind this attitude is not to be readily comprehended. To the Indian members of Cayuse's clan it addressed itself as wisdom, logic, and right. The council agreed to his demands. The case, historical, but perhaps not unique, has never been widely known.

As solemnly as doom itself, the council proceeded with its task. Some manner of balloting was adopted, and immediate members of the Cayuse totem drew lots as to which must perform the lawful deed. It fell to a brother of the prisoner—a half-brother only, to be accurate, since the doomed man's father had been white.

Together Cayuse and this kinsman departed from the camp, walking forth through the darkness in the brush. They chatted in all pleasantness, upon the way. Cayuse could have broken and run. He never for a moment so much as entertained the thought.

They came to a place appropriate, and, still in all friendliness, backed by a sense of justice and of doom, the guiltless brother shot the half-breed dead—and the chapter, with the Indians, was concluded.

Van was gone three days from Goldite camp. He returned and reported all that had been done. He had seen the executed man. An even thirty dollars he accepted for his time, and with it bought food for his partners.



CHAPTER XXXVIII

BETH MAKES DEMANDS

Beth Kent, while the camp was writing its feverish annals, had undergone emotions in the whole varied order of the gamut. She had felt herself utterly deserted and utterly unhappy. She had hoped against hope that Van would come, that something might explain away his behavior, that she herself might have an opportunity of ascertaining what had occurred.

One clew only was vouchsafed her puzzling mind: Searle had actually gone to Glen at last, had been there at the hour of Van's arrival, and had written Glen's letter to herself. Some encounter between the men had doubtless transpired, she thought, and Van had been poisoned against her. What else could it mean, his coldness, his abrupt departure, after all that had been, and his stubborn silence since?

The letter from Glen had been wholly unsatisfactory. Bostwick had written it, he said, at Glen's dictation. It echoed the phrases that Searle himself had employed so persistently, many of them grossly mendacious, as Beth was sufficiently aware. Her effort had been futile, after all. She was not at all certain as to Glen's condition; she was wholly in the dark in all directions.

On the day succeeding the reservation rush she received the news at Mrs. Dick's, not only that Van had lost his claim, and that McCoppet and Searle were its latest owners, but also that Van had run amuck that night after leaving herself.

Some vague, half-terrifying intuition that Searle was engaged in a lawless, retaliatory enterprise crept athwart her mind and rendered her intensely uneasy. Her own considerable sum of money might even be involved in—she could not fathom what. Something that lay behind it all must doubtless explain Van's extraordinary change. It was maddening; she felt there must be something she could do—there must be something! She was not content to wait in utter helplessness for anything more to happen—anything more that served to wreck human happiness, if not very life itself!

She felt, moreover, she had a right to know what it was affecting Van. He had come unbidden into her life. He had swept her away with his riotous love. He had taught her new, almost frightening joys of existence. He had drawn upon her very soul—kissing into being a nature demanding love for love. He had taken her all for himself, despite her real resistance. She could not cease to love so quickly as he. She had rights, acquired in surrender—at least the right to know what evil thing had wrought its way upon him.

But fret as she might, and burn as she might, with impatience, love-created anger and resentment of some infamy, doubtless practiced on them both, there was nothing in the world she could do.

She wrote again to Glen and had the letter posted in the mail. She asked for information. Was he better? Could he come to Goldite soon? Had he met Mr. Van? Had he understood that confession in her letter? Had he really purchased a mine, with Searle, or had he, by some strange mischance, concerned himself with the others in taking the "Laughing Water" claim?

She explained that she was wholly in the dark, that worry was her only companion. She begged him to come, if traveling were possible, and told of her effort to see him.

That Bostwick had opened and read her letter to Glen, suppressing that final page, together with sundry questions and references to himself, she could never have dreamed. It is ignorance always that baffles, as we grope our way in the world. And Beth had not yet entirely lost all trust in Bostwick himself.

Searle, in the meantime, having gone straight to the "Laughing Water" claim from Glenmore Kent, had remained three days away from Goldite and had taken no time to write. When he came at last the girl's suspicions were thoroughly aroused. That the man was a dangerous trickster, a liar, and perhaps a scoundrel she was rapidly becoming convinced.

He arrived at the house in the late afternoon while Mrs. Dick and Beth were engaged together in the dining-room, sewing at a quilt. The meeting was therefore a quiet one and Beth escaped any lover-like demonstrations he might otherwise have made.

Mrs. Dick, in her frank dislike of Bostwick, finally carried her work upstairs.

"Well, well, sweetheart!" Bostwick exclaimed. "You must have heard the news, of course. I expect your congratulations!"

He rose and approached her eagerly. She was standing. She moved a chair and placed herself behind it.

"I suppose you mean the claim you've—taken," she said. "You're elated over that?"

"Good Lord! aren't you?" he answered. "It's the biggest thing I've ever done! It's worth a million, maybe more—that 'Laughing Water' claim! And to think that Van Buren, the romantic fool, putting marble slabs on the graves of the demi-monde, and riding about like a big tin toreador, should have bought a property on reservation ground, and lost it, gold and all!"

His relish in the triumph was fairly unctuous. His jaw seemed to oscillate in oil as he mouthed his contempt of the horseman.

Beth flamed with resentment. Her love for Van increased despite her judgment, despite her wish, as she heard him thus assailed. She knew he had placed a stone on Queenie's grave. She admired the fearless friendliness of the action—the token whereby he had linked the unfortunate girl in death to the human family from which she had severed herself in life.

Not to be goaded to indiscretion now she sat down as before with her work.

"And the money—yours and mine—did it go to assist in this unexpected enterprise, and not to buy a claim with Glen?"

"Certainly. No—no—not all of it—certainly not," he stammered, caught for a moment off his guard. "Some of my funds I used, of course, in necessary ways. Don't you worry about your thirty thousand. You'll get it back a hundredfold, from your interest in the claim."

She glanced up suddenly, startled by what he had said.

"My interest in the claim?"

"Certainly, your interest. You didn't suppose I'd freeze you out, my little woman—my little wife—to be? You are one of the company, of course. You'll be a director later on—and we'll clean up a fortune in a year!"

She was exceedingly pale. What wonder Van had a grievance! He had doubtless heard it all before he came that night to deliver Glen's letter from Starlight. He might even have thought she had sent him to Glen to got him away from his claim.

A thousand thoughts, that seemed to scorch like fire, went rocketing through her brain. The thing was too much to be understood at once—it went too deep—it involved such possibilities. She must try to hold herself in check—try to be clever with this man.

"Oh," she said, dropping her eyes to her work, "and Glen is in it too?"

Bostwick was nervous. He sat down.

"Well, yes—to some extent—a little slice of mine," he faltered. "Naturally he has less than I've given to you."

"But—didn't he discover the opportunity—the chance?"

"Certainly not!" he declared vehemently. "It's all my doing—everything! Wholly my idea from the start!" The impulse to boast, to vaunt his cleverness, was not to be resisted. "I told Van Buren the game had only begun! He thought himself so clever!"

She clung to her point.

"But—of course you told me Glen had found the chance, requiring sixty thousand dollars."

"That was a different proposition—nothing to do with this. I've dropped that game entirely. This is big enough for us all!"

She looked the picture of unsophisticated innocence, sewing at a gaudy square of cloth.

"Did this affair also require the expenditure of sixty thousand dollars?"

"No, of course not. Didn't I say so before?"

"How much did it need—if I may ask?"

Bostwick colored. He could not escape. He dared not even hint at the sum he had employed.

"Oh, just the bare expenses of the survey—nothing much."

"Then," she said, "if you don't mind returning my thirty thousand dollars, I think I'll relinquish my share."

He rose hurriedly.

"But I—but you—it won't be possible—just yet," he stammered. "This is perfectly absurd! I want you in—want you to retain your interest. There are certain development expenses—and—they can't be handled without considerable money."

"Why not use your own? I much prefer to withdraw." She said it calmly, and looked him in the eye.

He avoided her glance, and paced up and down the room.

"It can't be done!" he said. "I've pledged my support—our support—to get the claim on its feet."

She grew calmer and colder.

"Wasn't the claim already on its feet. I heard it was paying well—that quite a lot of gold was seized when—when you and the others took the place."

His impatience and uneasiness increased.

"Oh, it was being worked—in a pickyune, primitive fashion. We're going at it right!"

The color came and went in her face. She felt that the man had employed her money, and could not repay it if he would. She pushed the point.

"Of course, you'll remember I gave you the money to assist my brother Glen. It was not to help secure or develop this other property. I much prefer not to invest my money this way. I shall have to request its return."

Bostwick was white.

"Look here, Beth, is this some maudlin sentiment over that brigand, Van Buren? Is that what you mean?"

She rose once more and confronted him angrily. It was not a mere girl, but a strong and resolute woman he was facing.

"Mr. Bostwick," she said, "you haven't yet acquired the right to demand such a thing as that of me. For reasons of my own, maudlin or otherwise, I refuse to have my funds employed in the manner you say you mean to use them. I insist upon the immediate return to me of thirty thousand dollars."

If rage at Van Buren consumed his blood, Bostwick's fear was a greater emotion. Before him he could plainly discern the abject failure of his plans—the plan to marry this beautiful girl, the plan to go on with McCoppet and snatch a fortune from the earth. It was not a time for defiance. He must fence. He must yield as far as possible—till the claim should make him independent. Of the tirade on his tongue against Van Buren he dared not utter a word. His own affairs of love would serve no better.

He summoned a smile to his ghastly lips and attempted to assume a calm demeanor.

"Very well," he said. "If that is the way you feel about your money, I will pay you back at once."

"If you please," she said. "To-day."

"But—the bank isn't open after three," he said in a species of panic. "You can't be utterly unreasonable."

"It was open much later when we were wiring New York some time ago," she reminded him coldly. "I think you'll find it open to-night till nine."

"Well—perhaps I can arrange it, then," he said in desperation. "I'll get down there now and see what I can do."

He took his hat and, glad to escape a further inquisition, made remarkable haste from the house.

Trembling with excitement, quivering on the verge of half-discovered things, flashes of intuition, fragments of deduction, Beth waited an hour for developments.

Searle did not return. She had felt he would not. She was certain her money was gone.

At dusk a messenger boy arrived with the briefest note, in Bostwick's familiar hand.

"Sudden, urgent call to the claim. No time for business. Back as soon as possible. With love and faith, yours, SEARLE."

How she loathed his miserable lie!



CHAPTER XXXIX

ALGY'S COOKING AND BETH'S DESPAIR

Van and the new supply of provender arrived together at the tent where the partners made their temporary home. It was nearly dusk, the mellow end of a balmy day. Gettysburg, Napoleon, and Dave were all inside the canvas, filling the small hollow cube of air with a mighty reek from their pipes, and playing seven-up on a greasy box. The Chinese cook was away, much to Van's surprise.

"Gett," he said, throwing off his belt and revolver, "if Nap was to deal the cards on your tombstone, on the day of Gabriel's trump, I'll bet you'd break the crust and take a hand. What have you done with Algy?"

"He's went to git a job," said Gettysburg. "He called us all a lot of babies. I doggone near kicked him in the lung."

Outside, where a wagon had halted with Van's new purchases, the driver hauled out two respectable boxes and dropped them on the earth.

"What's that?" demanded Napoleon, leaping to his feet. "If it's pirates come to board us again——"

"Don't scare it away," Van interrupted warningly. "It's grub."

With one accord the three old cronies started for the door of the tent. Van followed, prepared to get a dinner under way, since his system was woefully empty.

To the utter astonishment of all, a visitor was bustling up the hill. It was Mrs. Dick.

"Where's Van?" she panted, while still a rod away. "Here, Van!" she exclaimed, the moment she clapped her eyes upon him, "you're just the one I want to see, and I'm an awful busy woman, but I've got to make a deal with you and the sooner it's over the better. So as long as Charlie Sing is cookin' our victuals already I just run up to fight it out, and we might as well begin the program tonight, so all you boys come down to dinner in just about half an hour."

The men were all at sea, even Napoleon, who had once sailed a near-briny river.

"Sit down," said Van, "and give the grounds a chance to settle. We can almost see daylight through what you said, but who, for instance, is Charlie Sing?"

"As if you didn't know!" Mrs. Dick responded warmly. "If you think I'm goin' to call that Chinaman Algy, or anything white, you're way off your ca-base! Algy! for a Chinaman! Not but what he's a good enough cook, and I like him as a friend of yours—and him almost makin' me cry with his tryin' to nurse you four old helpless galoots, but I draw the line at fancy names, and don't you forget it!"

The "four old galoots" looked at one another in bewilderment. Van led Mrs. Dick gently but firmly to a box of provisions and pushed her down upon it.

"Now take a breath," he said, "and listen. Do we understand you to say that Algy has gone to your boarding-house and taken a job as cook?"

"He has," said Mrs. Dick, "but I've named him Charlie."

"That'll turn his stomick," ventured Gettysburg gravely. "He was proud of 'Algy.'"

"He certainly must be desperate," added Van. "I don't quite savvy how it happened."

"Oh, you don't?" said little Mrs. Dick. "Well, I do. He come down there and says to me, says he, 'We're broke, Van and us,' he says, 'and I'll go to work and cook for you if you'll board all the family,' or words to that effect, says he, 'and give Van twenty dollars a month, salary,' he says, and I says I'll do it, quicker than scat. And that's all there is to say, and if Charlie wasn't a Chinaman I'd kiss him in the bargain!" With a quick, impatient gesture she made a daub at her eye and flecked away a jewel.

Van hauled at his collar, which was loose enough around his neck.

"Say, boys," he said, "think of Algy, being kissed in the bargain. I always thought he got his face at a bargain counter."

"That's all right, Bronson Van Buren!" answered Mrs. Dick indignantly, "but I never come that near to kissin' you!"

Van suddenly swooped down upon her, picked her up bodily, and kissed her on the cheek. Then he placed her again on the box.

"Why didn't you say what you wanted, earlier?" he said. "Now, don't talk back. I want you to harken intently. I'm perfectly willing that Algy should waste his sweetness on the desert air of your boarding-house, if it pleases you and him. I'm willing these old ring-tailed galoots should continue to eat his fascinating poisons, and I certainly hope he'll draw his monthly wage, but I'm going to be too busy to board in any one place, and Algy's salary would make a load I must certainly decline to carry."

Mrs. Dick looked at the horseman in utter disappointment.

"You won't come? Maybe you mean my house ain't good enough?"

Napoleon was somewhat excited by prospects of again beholding Elsa, of whose absence he was wholly unaware.

"We won't go, neither!" he declared. "Doggone you, Van, you know we won't go without the skipper, and you're shovin' us right out of heaven!"

Gettysburg added: "I don't want to say nuthin', but my stomach will sure be the seat of anarchy if it has to git cheated out of goin' down to Mrs. Dick's."

Van was about to reply to them all. He had paused to frame his answer artfully, eager as he was to foster the comfort of his three old partners, but wholly unwilling to accept from either Mrs. Dick or Algernon the slightest hint of aid.

"I admit that a man's reach should be above the other fellow's grasp, and all that," he started, "but here's the point——"

He was interrupted suddenly. A man, running breathlessly up the slope and waving his hat in frantic gestures, began to shout as he came.

"Mrs. Dick! Mrs. Dick!" he cried at the top of his voice. "Help! help! You've got to come!"

Mrs. Dick leaped quickly to her feet to face the oncoming man. It was old Billy Stitts. He had come from Beth.

"Come on! Come on!" he cried as he neared the group, towards which he ceased to run, the better to catch his breath and yell. "There's hell a-poppin' in the boarding-house! You've got to come!"

He surged up the last remaining ascent at a lively stride.

"What's the matter? What in the world are you drivin' at?" demanded Mrs. Dick. "Hold your tongue long enough to tell me what's the matter."

"It's the chink!" exploded Billy pantingly. "They tried to run him off the place! He's locked the kitchen and gone to throwin' out hot water and Chinese language like a fire-engine on a drunk. And now they're all a-packin' up to quit the house, and you won't have a doggone boarder left, fer they won't eat Chinese chuck!"

"What?" said Van drawlingly, "refuse to eat Algy's confections?—a crowd like that? By all the culinary gods of Worcestershire and mustard, they'll eat out of Algy's hand."

He dived inside the tent, caught up his gun, and was strapping it on before Mrs. Dick could catch her breath to utter a word of her wrath.

"Well," said Gettysburg dubiously, "I hate trouble on an empty stomach, but——"

"You stay in camp till you hear the dinner bell," Van interrupted. "This game is mine and Mrs. Dick's. You'll get there in time for dessert."

He did not wait for Mrs. Dick. He started at a pace that none could follow. Mrs. Dick began to run at his heels, calling instructions as she went.

"Be careful of the crock'ry, Van! The stove's bran'-new! I'd hate to have you break the chairs! And don't forgit Miss Kent!"

Old Billy Stitts had remained with the others at the camp.

"Ain't she the female woman?" he said. "Ain't she just about it?"

No one answered. The three old cronies were watching Van as he went.

Van, for his part, heard nothing of what Mrs. Dick was saying, except the name "Miss Kent." He had not forgotten for a moment that Beth was at the seat of war, or that he would perhaps be wiser by far never to behold her again. He was speeding there despite all he felt at what she had done, for she might be involved in trouble at the house, and—at least she was a woman.

He arrived in the midst of a newly concerted plan on the part of lodgers and strangers combined to smoke Algy out of the kitchen. They had broken windows, overturned the furniture, and worked up a lively humor. Algy had exhausted his supply of hot water, but not his supply of language. It seemed as if the stream of Oriental invective being poured through the walls of the building might have withered almost anything extant. But Goldite whisky had failed on his besiegers earlier and their vitals were proof against attack.

Van arrived among them abruptly.

"What's all this pillow-fight about?" he demanded in a voice that all could hear. "Which one of you fellows is it that's forgotten he's a man? Who's looking for trouble with my Chinese cook and Mrs. Dick?"

He boded no good to any man sufficiently hardy to argue the matter to a finish. The attackers lost heart as they faced about and found him there ready for action. From a half-open window above the scene Beth was watching all that was done.

A spokesman for the lodgers found his voice.

"Well, we ain't a-goin' to stay in no doggone house with a chink shoved in fer a cook."

Van nodded: "Have you ever tried Algy's cooking?"

"No, we ain't! And we ain't a-goin' to, neither!"

The others murmured their assent.

"You're a fine discriminating cluster of bifurcated, viviparous idiots," said Van in visibly disturbing scorn. "You fellows would have to be grabbed by the scruff of the neck and kicked into Eden, I reckon, even if the snake was killed and flung over the fence, and the fruit offered up on silver platters. The man who hasn't eaten one of Algy's dinners isn't fit to live. The man who refuses to eat one better begin right now on his prayers." He took out his gun and waved it loosely about, adding: "Which one of you remembers 'Now I lay me down to sleep'?"

There was no response. The ten or twelve disturbers of the peace were stirring uneasily in their tracks.

Van gave them a chance.

"All who prefer to recite, 'Now I sit me up to eat,' please raise their hands. Raise 'em up, raise 'em up!" he commanded with the gun. "Put up both hands, while you're at it."

Up went all the hands. Mrs. Dick arrived, and stood looking on and panting in excitement.

"Thanks for this unanimous vote," Van resumed. "I want to inform you boarders in particular that if ever I hear of one of you missing a meal of Algy's cooking, or playing hookey from this lodging-house, as long as Mrs. Dick desires your inglorious company, I'll hand you forthwith over to the pound-keeper with instructions not to waste his chloroform, but to drown the whole litter in a bag."

"Oh, well!" said the spokesman, "I'd just as soon eat the chink's cookin', if it's good."

"Me, too," said a follower, meek as a lamb. A number echoed "Me, too." One added: "We was just having a little bit of fun."

"Well," said Van judicially, "Algy's entitled to his share." He raised his voice: "Hey there, Algy—come out here and play with the boys."

Mrs. Dick had caught sufficient breath to explode.

"Fun!" she said. "My windows broken! My house all upset. Snakes alive, if ever I heard——"

Algy appeared and interrupted.

"What's mallah you, Van?" he said. "I got no time fool lound now. Been play too much. All time play, that velly superstich! Nobody got time to work."

"That's all right," Van assured him. "The boys here wish to apologize for wasting your valuable time. In fact, they insist. Now then, boys, down on your knees, every Jack in the crowd."

That gun of his had a horribly loose way of waving about to cover all the men. They slumped to, rather than knelt on, their knees.

"Suminagot!" said Algy. "All time too muchee monkey fooling! My dinner not git leady, Van, you savvy that? What's mallah you?"

Van ignored the cook, in addressing the men.

"It's your earnest desire to apologize, boys, I believe," he said. "All in favor will please say Aye."

The men said Aye in growlings, rumblings, and pipings.

Van addressed his cook. "Do you want them to kiss your hand?"

"Ah! Unema! hong oy!" said Algy blasphemously. "You makee me velly sick! Just wash my hands for finish my dinner. Too much monkey-doodle!" and off he went to his work, followed at once by Mrs. Dick.

"Algy's too modest," Van assured the crowd. "And none of you chaps are fit to apologize to Mrs. Dick, so you'd better go wash up for dinner. But don't let me hear so much as a peep about Algy from one of this bunch, or Eden will turn into Hades." As the men arose to their feet sheepishly, and began to slink away he added to the spokesman, "You there with the face for pie, go up to my camp and call the boys to feed."

The men disappeared. Van, left alone, was turning away when his glance was attracted to the window, up above, where Beth was looking down. His face turned red to the topmost rim of his ears.

The girl was pale, but resolute.

"May I see you a moment, please?" she said, "before the men come in?"

"Certainly." Van went to the front and waited at the foot of the stairs.

When Beth came down he was standing in the doorway, looking off at the shadowy hills. He heard her steps upon the stairs and turned, removing his hat.

For a moment Beth faced him silently, her color coming and going in rapid alternations. She had never seemed more beautiful than now, in her mood of worry and courage.

"Thank you for waiting," she said to him faintly, her heart beating wildly in her bosom, "I felt as if I had the right—felt it only right—won't you please tell me what I have done?"

It was not an easy matter for Van to hold his own, to check an impulse utterly incontinent, utterly weak, that urged him fairly to the edge of surrender. But his nature was one of intensity, and inasmuch as he had loved intensely, he distrusted now with equal force.

"What you have done?" he repeated. "I'm sure I can't tell you of anything that you do not know yourself. What do you wish me to say?"

"I don't know! I don't know," she told him honestly. "I thought if I asked you—asked you like this—you'd tell me what is the matter."

"There's nothing the matter."

"But there is!" she said. "Why not be frank? I know that you're in trouble. Perhaps you blame——"

"I told you once that taking trouble and having trouble supply all the fun I have," he interrupted. "The man without trouble became extinct before he was born."

"Oh, please don't jest," she begged him earnestly. "You and I were friends—I'm sure we were friends—but now——"

"Now, if we are not, do you think the fault is mine?"

He, too, was white, for the struggle was great in his soul.

"It isn't mine!" she said. "I want to say that! I had to say that. I stopped you—just to say that." She blushed to say so much, but she met his stern gaze fearlessly with courage in her eyes.

He could not understand her in the least, unless she still had more to do, and thought to hold his friendship, perhaps for Searle's protection. He forced himself to probe in that direction.

"And you'd wish to go on being friends?"

It was a hard question—hard to ask and hard to answer. She colored anew, but she did not flinch. Her love was too vast, too strong and elemental to shrink at a crucial moment.

"I valued your friendship—very much," she confessed steadily. "Why shouldn't I wish it to continue?"

It was aggravating to have her seem so honest, so splendid, so womanly and fine, when he thought of that line in her letter. He could not spare himself or her in the agitation of his nature.

"Your way and mine are different," he said. "My arts in deceit were neglected, I'm afraid."

Her eyes blazed more widely than before. Her color went like sunset tints from the sky, leaving her face an ashen hue of chill.

"Deceit?" she repeated. "You mean that I—I have deceived you? What do you mean?"

He could bear no more of her apparent innocence. It was breaking his resolution down.

"Oh, we may as well be candid!" he exclaimed. "What's the use of beating round the bush? I saw your letter—read your letter—by mistake."

"My letter?"

"Your letter to your brother. Through some mistake I was given the final page—a fragment merely—instead of your brother's reply to be brought to you. I was asked to read it—which I did. Is that enough?"

"My letter to—— The last——" At a sudden memory of that letter's last page, with her heart's confession upon it, she burned a blinding crimson. "You read——" she stammered, "—and now——" She could not look him in the face. She leaned against the stair in sudden weakness.

"After that," he said, "does my conduct occasion surprise?"

What he meant, in the light of the letter as she had written it to Glen, as she thought he must have read it, was beyond her comprehension. She had fondly believed he loved her. He had told her so in actions, words, and kisses. What terrible secret, deep hidden in his breast, could possibly lie behind this thing was more than mind could fathom. Or did he scorn and loathe her now for having succumbed to his love? He had read her confession that she loved him more than anything else in all the world. He knew the last faint word in her heart—and flung her away like this!

She cast one frightened, inquiring look at his face. It was set and hard as stone. The light in his eyes was cold, an accusing glitter. She felt herself utterly abashed, utterly shamed. Her heart had lain naked before him, throbbing with its secret. His foot was upon it. There was nothing to cover its nakedness—nothing to cover her confusion.

For a moment she stood there, attempting to shrink within herself. Her attitude of pain and shame appeared to him as guilt. He felt the whole thing poignantly—felt sorry to send his shaft so truly home, sorry to see the effect of the blow. But, what was the use? His was the way of plain, straightforward dealing. Better one swift wound, even unto death, than a lingering torture for years.

He opened his lips as if to speak. But there was nothing more to say. He turned towards the door.

Beth could not suppress one little cry.

"Oh!" It was half a moan, half a shuddering gasp.

With her last rally of strength she faced the stairway, and weakly stumbled up the steps.

A spasm of agony seized Van by the cords of his heart. He went blindly away, with a vision in his eyes of Beth groping weakly up the stairs—a doe with a mortal hurt.



CHAPTER XL

GLEN AND REVELATIONS

How she spent that night Beth never could have told. Her mind had refused to work. Only her heart was sensible of life and emotions, for there lay her wound, burning fiercely all the long hours through. That Van had made excuses to his partners and disappeared on "business" was a matter of which she received no account.

In the morning the unexpected happened. Her brother Glen arrived in Goldite, having driven from Starlight with a friend. He appeared at Mrs. Dick's while Beth was still in her room, indisposed. She had eaten no dinner. She took no breakfast. But with Glenmore's advent she was suddenly awakened to a new excitement, almost a new sort of hope.

Young Kent was a smooth-faced, boyish chap, slightly stooped, exceedingly neat, black-haired, and of medium height. He was like Beth only in a "family" manner. His nose was a trifle large for his face, but something in his modest, good-natured way, coupled to his earnest delivery of slang in all his conversation, lent him a certain charm that no one long resisted.

He was standing in his characteristic pose, with one hand buried in his pocket, as he laughingly explained himself to Mrs. Dick, when Beth came running down the stairs.

"Glen!" she cried, as she ran along the hall, and casting herself most fervently upon him, with her arms about his neck, she had a good, sky-clearing cry, furious and brief, and looked like a rain-wet rose when she pushed him away and scrutinized him quickly through her tears.

"I say, Sis, why this misplaced fountain on the job?" he said. "Do I look as bad as that?"

"Oh, Glen," she said, "you've been ill! You were hurt! I've worried so. You're well? You've entirely recovered? Oh, I'm so glad to see you. Glen! There's so much I've got to say!"

"Land snakes!" said Mrs. Dick. "If I don't hurry——" and off she went.

"You're the phonograph for mine," said Glen. "What's the matter with your eyes? Searle hasn't got you going on the lachrymals already?"

"No, I—I'm all right," she said excitedly. "I didn't sleep well, that's all. Do sit down. I've so many things to say, so much to ask, I don't know where to begin. It was such a surprise, your coming like this! And you're looking so well. You got my letter, of course?"

Glen sat down, and Beth sat near, her hand upon his arm. They had been more like companions than mere half-brother and sister, all their lives. The bond of affection between them was exceptionally developed.

"I came up on account of your letter," he said. "Either my perceptive faculties are on the blink or there's something decaying in Denmark. It's you for the Goddess of Liberty enlightening the unenlightened savage. I'm from Missouri and I want you to start the ticker on the hum."

"You know what Searle has done?" she said. "How much do you know of what has happened?"

"Nothing. I've been retired on half knowledge for a month," said Glen. "I haven't been treated right. I'm here to register a roar. Nobody tells me you're in the State till I read that account in the paper. I dope it out to Searle that I am bumping the bumps, and there is nothing doing. He shows up at last and hands me a species of coma and leaves me with twenty-five dollars! That's what I get. What I've been doing is a longer story. I apologize for not having seen your friend who brought the letter, but it's up to you to apologize for a bum epistle to the Prodigal."

"Wait a minute, Glen—wait a minute, please; don't go so fast," she said, gripping tighter to his arm. "I must get this all as straight and plain as possible. You don't mean to say that Searle really drugged you, or something like that—what for?"

"I want to know," said Glen. "What's the answer? Perhaps he preferred I should not behold your Sir Cowboy Gallahad."

"There is something going on," she said, "something dark and horrible. How did you happen to show Mr. Van Buren—let him see the last page of my letter?"

"I didn't let him see anything," said Glen. "I was dopy, I tell you. I didn't even see the letter myself. Searle sat on the bed and read it aloud—and lit his cigar with part of it later."

"My letter?" she said, rising abruptly, and immediately sitting down again. "You never saw—— Searle got it—read it! Oh, the shamelessness! Then—it must have been Searle who made the mistake—let Mr. Van Buren see it—see what I wrote—see—— What did he read you—read about Van—Mr. Van Buren—almost the last thing in the letter?"

Glen was surprised at her agitation. He glanced at her blankly.

"Nothing," he said. "He read me nothing—as I remember—about your friend. Was it something in particular?"

She arose again abruptly and wrung her hands in a gesture of baffled impatience.

"Oh, I don't know what it all means!" she said. "To think of Searle being there, and intercepting my letter!—daring to read it!—burning it up!—reading you only a portion! Of course, he didn't read you my suspicions concerning himself?"

"Not on your half-tone," Glen assured her. "What's all this business, anyway? Put me wise, Sis, I'm groping like a blind snail in the mulligatawny."

Beth sat down as before and leaned her chin in her palm in an attitude of concentration.

"Don't you know what Searle has done—taking the 'Laughing Water' claim?—Mr. Van Buren's claim?"

"I don't know anything!" he told her convincingly. "I'm a howling wilderness of ignorance. I want to know."

"Let's start at the very beginning," she said. "Just as soon as Searle brought your letter—the first one, I mean—in which you asked for sixty thousand dollars to buy a mine——"

"Whoap! Jamb on the emergency!" Glen interrupted. "I never wrote such a letter in my life!"

She looked at him blankly.

"But—Glen—I saw your letter. I read it myself—at this very table."

Glen knitted his brows and became more serious.

"A letter from me?—touching Searle for sixty thou? Somebody's nutty."

"But Glen—what I saw with my own eyes——"

"Can't help it. Nothing doing!" he interrupted as before. "If Searle showed you any such letter as that he wrote it him—hold on, I wrote him for a grub-stake, fifty dollars at the most, but I haven't even seen a mine that any man would buy, that the other man would sell, and Searle sure got my first before I was bug-house from that wollop on the block." He put his hand to the sore spot on his head and rubbed it soothingly.

Beth was pale. She failed to observe his gesture, so absorbed were all her faculties in the maze of facts in which she was somewhat helplessly struggling.

"Could Searle have written such a letter as that?" she said. "What for?"

"For money—if he wrote it," said Glen. "Did he touch you for a loan?"

Beth's eyes were widely blazing. Her lips were white and stiff.

"Why, Glen, I advanced thirty thousand dollars—I thought to help you buy a mine. Searle was to put in a like amount—but recently——"

"Searle! Thirty thousand bucks!" said Glen. "He hasn't got thirty thousand cents! The man who drove me up last night knows the bank cashier, Mr. Rickart, like a brother—and Rickart told him Searle is a four-flusher—hasn't a bean—and looks like a mighty good imitation of a crook. Searle! You put up thirty—stung, Beth, stung, good and plenty!"

Beth's hand was on her cheek, pressing it to whiteness.

"Oh, I've been afraid that something was wrong—that something terrible—— Why, Glen, that would be forgery—obtaining money under false pretences! He may have done anything—anything to get the 'Laughing Water' claim! He may have done something—said something—written something to make Van—Mr. Van Buren think that I—— Oh, Glen, I don't know what to do!"

Her brother looked at her keenly.

"You're in trouble, Sis," he hazarded. "Is 'Van' the candy boy with you?"

She blushed suddenly. The contrast from her paleness was striking.

"He's the one who is in trouble," she answered. "And he may think that I—he does think something. He has lost his mine—a very valuable property. Searle and some Mr. McCoppet have taken it away from Mr. Van Buren and all those poor old men—after all their work, their waiting—everything! You've got to help me to see what we can do!"

"McCoppet's a gambler—a short-card, tumble weed," said Glen. "You've got to put me next. Tell me the whole novelette, beginning at chapter one."

"As fast as I can," she answered, and she did. She related everything, even the manner in which she and Searle had first become engaged—a business at which she marveled now—and of how and when she had encountered Van, the results of the meeting, the subsequent events, and the heart-breaking outcome of the trip that Van had made to carry her letter to Starlight.

In her letter, her love had been confessed. She glossed that item over now as a spot too sensitive for exposure. She merely admitted that between herself and Van had existed a friendship such as comes but once in many a woman's life—a friendship recently destroyed, she feared, by some horrible machinations of Bostwick.

"You can see," she concluded, "that Mr. Van Buren must think me guilty of almost anything. He doubtless knows my money, that I thought was helping you, went to meet the expense of taking away his property. He probably thinks I sent him to you to get him out of the way, while Searle and the others were driving his partners off the claim.

"My money is gone. I asked for its return and I'm sure Searle cannot repay me. I'm told he couldn't have used so much as thirty thousand dollars in anything legitimate, so far, on the 'Laughing Water' claim. If he'd forge a letter from you, and lie like this and deceive me so, what wouldn't he do to rob these men of their mine?"

"I scent decay," said Glenmore gravely. "Have you got any plans in your attic?"

"Why, I don't know what to do, of course!" she admitted. "But I've got to do something. I've got to show Mr. Van Buren I'm not a willful party to these horrible things. I don't believe I'll ever get my money back. I don't want a share of a stolen mine. I'd be glad to let the money go, and more—all I've got in the world—if only I could prove to Van that I haven't deceived him, haven't taken part in anything wrong—if only I could make these cheats give the 'Laughing Water' back!"

"Van is the candy. I'll have to meet him, sure," said Glen with conviction, looking on her face. "I wish you were wise to more of this game—the way they worked it—how they doped it out. I'll look around and find out how the trick was done, and then we'll go to it together. Guess I'll look for Van right off the bat."

She glanced at him with startled eyes.

"No, Glen—please don't. I'd rather you wouldn't—just yet. You don't understand. I can't let him think I'm—making overtures. He must think I have a little pride. If his mine has been stolen I want to give it back—before he ever sees me again. If you knew how much—oh, how very much, I wish to do that——"

"I'm on," he interrupted. "It will do me good to put a crimp in Searle."



CHAPTER XLI

SUVY PROVES HIS LOVE

If a single ray of far-off hope had lingered in Van's meditations concerning Beth, and the various occurrences involving himself and his mining property, it vanished when he told her of the letter he had seen and beheld her apparent look of guilt.

One thing the interview had done: it had cleared his decks for action. He had lain half stunned, as it were, till now, while Bostwick held the "Laughing Water" claim and worked it for its gold. A look that was grim and a heat that would brook no resistance had come together upon him.

That claim was his, by right of purchase, by right of discovery as to its worth! He had earned it by hardships, privations, suffering! He meant to have it back! If the law could avail him, well and good! If not, he'd make a law!

McCoppet he knew for a thief—a "law-abiding" criminal of the subtlest type. Bostwick, he was certain, was a crook. Behind these two lay possibilities of crime in all its forms. That suddenly ordered survey of the line was decidedly suspicious. Bostwick and his fiancee had come prepared for some such coup—and money was a worker of miracles such as no man might obstruct.

Van became so loaded full of fight that had anyone scratched a match upon him he might have exploded on the spot. He thought of the simplest thing to do—hire a private survey of the reservation line, either to confirm or disprove the work that Lawrence had done, and then map out his course. The line, however, was long, surveyors were fairly swamped with work, not a foot could be traveled without some ready cash.

He went to Rickart of the bank. Rickart listened to his plan of campaign and shook his head.

"Don't waste your money, Van," he said. "The Government wouldn't accept the word of any man you could hire. Lawrence would have to be discredited. Nobody doubts his ability or his squareness. The reservation boundary was wholly a matter of guess. You'll find it includes that ground—and the law will be against you. I'd gladly lend you the money if I could, but the bank people wouldn't stand behind me. And every bean I've got of my own I've put in the Siwash lease."

Van was in no mood for begging.

"All right, Rick," he said. "But I'll have that line overhauled if I have to hold up a private surveyor and put him over the course at the front of a gun." He went out upon the street, more hot than before.

In two days time he was offered twenty dollars—a sum he smilingly refused. He was down and out, in debt all over the camp. He could not even negotiate a loan. From some of his "friends" he would not have accepted money to preserve his soul.

Meantime, spurred to the enterprise by little Mrs. Dick, old Gettysburg, Napoleon, and Dave accepted work underground and began to count on their savings for the fight.

At the "Laughing Water" claim, during this period, tremendous elation existed. Not only had three lines of sluices been installed, with three shifts of men to shovel night and day, but a streak of gravel of sensational worth had been encountered in the cove. The clean-up at sunset every day was netting no less than a thousand dollars in gold for each twenty-four hours at work.

This news, when it "leaked," begot another rush, and men by the hundreds swarmed again upon the hills, in all that neighborhood, panning the gravel for their lives. Wild-catting started with an impetus that shook the State itself. And Van could only grit his teeth and continue, apparently, to smile.

All this and more came duly to the ears of Glenmore Kent and Beth. The girl was in despair as the days went by and nothing had been accomplished. The meager fact that Lawrence had run and corrected the reservation line, at Searle's behest, was all that Glen had learned.

But of all the men in Goldite he was doubtless best equipped with knowledge concerning Bostwick's Eastern standing. He knew that Searle had never had the slightest Government authority to order the survey made—and therein lay the crux of all the matter. It was all he had to go upon, but he felt it was almost enough.

The wires to New York were tapped again, and Beth was presently a local bank depositor with a credit of twenty thousand dollars. In a quiet, effective manner, Glen then went to work to secure a surveyor on his own account, or rather at Beth's suggestion.

With the fact of young Kent's advent in the town Van was early made acquainted. When Beth procured the transfer of her money from New York to Goldite, Rickart promptly reported the news. It appeared to Van a confirmation of all his previous suspicions. He could not fight a woman, and Bostwick and McCoppet remained upon the claim. Searle wrote nearly every day to Beth, excusing his absence, relating his success, and declaring the increase of his love.

On a Wednesday morning Glenmore's man arrived by stage from Starlight, instruments and all. His name was Pratt. He was a tall, slow-moving, blue-eyed man, nearly sixty years of age, but able still to carry a thirty-pound transit over the steepest mountain ever built. Glen met him by appointment at the transportation office and escorted him at once to Mrs. Dick's.

Already informed as to what would be required, the surveyor was provided with all the data possible concerning the reservation limits.

Beth was tremendously excited. "I'm glad you've come," she told him candidly. "Can you start the work to-day?"

"You will want to keep this quiet," he said. "I need two men we can trust, and then I'm ready to start."

"Two?" said Glen. "That's awkward. I thought perhaps you could get along with little me."

Beth, in her tumult of emotions, was changing color with bewildering rapidity.

"Why—I expected to go along, of course," she said. "I've got a suit—I've done it before—I mean, I expect to dress as you are, Glen, and help to run the line."

Pratt grinned good-naturedly. "Keeps it all in the family. That's one advantage."

"All right," said Glen. "Hike upstairs and don your splendors."

He had hired a car and stocked it with provisions, tents, and bedding. He hastened off and returned with the chauffeur to the door.

Beth, in the costume she had worn on the day when Van found her lost in the desert, made a shy, frightened youth, when at length she appeared, but her courage was superb.

At ten o'clock they left the town, and rolled far out to the westward on their course.

Van learned of their departure. He was certain that Beth had gone to the "Laughing Water" claim, perhaps to be married to Bostwick. Three times he went to the hay-yard that day, intent upon saddling his broncho, riding to the claim himself, and fighting out his rights by the methods of primitive man.

On the third of his visits he met a stranger who offered to purchase Suvy on the spot at a price of two hundred dollars.

"Don't offer me a million or I might be tempted," Van told him gravely. "I'll sell you my soul for a hundred."

The would-be purchaser was dry.

"I want a soul I can ride."

Van looked him over critically.

"Think you could ride my cayuse?"

"This broach?" said the man. "Surest thing you know."

"I need the money," Van admitted. "I'll bet you the pony against your two hundred you can't."

"You're on."

Van called to his friend, the man who ran the yard.

"Come over here, Charlie, and hold the stakes. Here's a man who wants to ride my horse."

Charlie came, heard the plan of the wager, accepted the money, and watched Van throw on the saddle.

"I didn't know you wanted to sell," he said. "You know I want that animal."

"If he goes he sells himself," said Van. "If he doesn't, you're next, same terms."

"Let me have that pair of spurs," said the stranger, denoting a pair that hung upon a nail. "I guess they'll fit."

He adjusted the spurs as one accustomed to their use. Van merely glanced around. Nevertheless, he felt a sinking of the heart. Five hundred dollars, much as he needed money, would not have purchased his horse. And inasmuch as luck had been against him, he suddenly feared he might be on the point of losing Suvy now for a price he would have scorned.

"Boy," he said in a murmur to the broncho, "if I thought you'd let any bleached-out anthropoid like that remain on deck, I wouldn't want you anyway—savvy that?"

Suvy's ears were playing back and forth in excessive nervousness and questioning. He had turned his head to look at Van with evident joy at the thought of bearing him away to the hills—they two afar off together. Then came a disappointment.

"There you are," said Van, and swinging the bridle reins towards the waiting man, he walked to a feed-trough and leaned against it carelessly.

"Thanks," said the stranger. He threw away a cigarette, caught up the reins, adjusted them over Suvy's neck, rocked the saddle to test its firmness, and mounted with a certain dexterity that lessened Van's confidence again. After all, Suvy was thoroughly broken. He had quietly submitted to be ridden by Beth. His war-like spirit might be gone—and all would be lost.

Indeed, it appeared that Suvy was indifferent—that a cow would have shown a manner no less docile or resigned. He did look at Van with a certain expression of surprise and hurt, or so, at least, the horseman hoped. Then the man on his back shook up the reins, gave a prick with the spurs, and Suvy moved perhaps a yard.

The rider pricked again, impatiently. Instantly Suvy's old-time fulminate was jarred into violent response. He went up in the air prodigiously, a rigid, distorted thing of hardened muscles and engine-like activities. He came down like a new device for breaking rocks—and the bucking he had always loved was on, in a fury of resentment.

"Good boy!" said Van, who stood up stiffly, craning and bending to watch the broncho's fight.

But the man in the saddle was a rider. He sat in the loose security of men who knew the game. He gave himself over to becoming part of the broncho's very self. He accepted Suvy's momentum, spine-disturbing jolts, and sudden gyrations with the calmness and art of a master.

All this Van beheld, as the pony bucked with warming enthusiasm, and again his heart descended to the depths. It was not the bucking he had hoped to see. It was not the best that lay in Suvy's thongs. The beating he himself had given the animal, on the day when their friendship was cemented, had doubtless reduced the pony's confidence of winning such a struggle, while increasing his awe of man. Some miners passing saw the dust as the conflict waged in the yard. They hastened in to witness the show. Then from everywhere in town they appeared to pour upon the scene. The word went around that the thing was a bet—and more came running to the scene.

Meantime, Suvy was rocketing madly all over the place. Chasing a couple of cows that roamed at large, charging at a monster pile of household furnishings, barely avoiding the feed-trough, set in the center of the place, scattering men in all directions, and raising a dust like a concentrated storm, the broncho waxed more and more hot in the blood, more desperately wild to fling his rider headlong through the air. But still that rider clung.

Van had lost all sense save that of worry, love for his horse, and desire to see him win this vital struggle. A wild passion for Suvy's response to himself—for a proving love in the broncho's being—possessed his nature. He leaned far forward, awkwardly, following Suvy about.

"I'm ashamed of you, Suvy!" he began to cry. "Suvy! Suvy, where's your pride? Why don't you do him, boy? Why don't you show them? Where's your pride? My boy! my boy!—don't you love me any more? You're a baby, Suvy! You're a baby!" He paused for a moment, following still and watching narrowly. "Suvy! Suvy! You're gone if you let him ride you, lad! If you love me, boy, don't break my heart with shame!"

Suvy and a hundred men heard his wild, impassioned appeal. The men responded as if in some pain of the heart they could not escape, thus to see Van Buren so completely wrapped up in his horse. Then some all but groaned to behold the bucking cease.

It seemed as if Suvy had quit. The man in the saddle eased.

"Boy!" yelled Van, in a shrill, startling cry that made the pony shiver. He had seen some sign that no one but himself could understand. "Boy! not that! not that!"

Already Suvy had started to rise, to drop himself backwards on his rider.

He heard and obeyed. He went up no more than to half his height, then seemed to be struck by a cyclone. Had all the frightful dynamic of an earthquake abruptly focused in his being, the fearful convulsion of his muscles could scarcely have been greater. It was all so sudden, so swift and terrible, that no man beheld how it was done. It was simply a mad delirium of violence, begun and ended while one tumultuous shudder shook the crowd.

Everyone saw something loose and twisting detached from the pony's back. Everyone witnessed a blur upon the air and knew it was the man. He was flung with catapultic force against a frightened cow. He struck with arms and legs extended. He clung like a bur to the bovine's side, for a moment before he dropped—and everyone roared unfeelingly, in relief of the tension on the nerves.

The next they knew Van was there with his horse, shaking the animal's muzzle.

"My boy!" he said. "My boy! My luck has changed!"

Apparently it had. The man who had thought he could ride the horse limped weakly to a blanket-roll, and sat himself down to gather up the pieces of his breath and consciousness. He wanted no more. He felt it was cheap at the price he had paid to escape with a hint of his life.

Van waited for nothing, not even the money that Charlie of the hay-yard was holding. He mounted to the saddle that had been the seat of hell, and in joy unspeakable Suvy walked away, in response to the pressure of his knees.



CHAPTER XLII

THE FURNACE OF GOLD

All the following day, which was Thursday, two small companies were out in the hills. One was Beth's, where she, Glen, and Pratt toiled slowly over miles and miles of baking mountains and desert slopes and rocks, tracing out the reservation boundary with a long slender ribbon of steel.

The other group, equally, if less openly, active, comprised the sheriff and three of his men. They were trailing out the boundary of one man's endurance, against fatigue, starvation, and the hatred of his kind.

Barger had been at his work once more, slaying and robbing for his needs. He had killed a Piute trailer, put upon his tracks; he had robbed a stage, three private travelers, and a freight-team loaded with provisions. He had lived on canned tomatoes and ginger snaps for a week—and the empty tins sufficiently blazed his orbit.

He was known to be mounted, armed, and once more reduced to extremities in the way of procuring food. A trap had been laid, a highway baited with an apparently defenseless wagon, with two mere desert prospectors and their outfit for a load—and this he was expected to attack.

The morning waned and the afternoon was speeding. Old Pratt, with Beth and Glen, was eager to finish by sunset. The farther he walked the more the surveyor apparently warmed to his work. Beth became footsore by noon. But she made no complaint. She plodded doggedly ahead, the ribbon-like "chain" creeping like a serpent, on and on before her.

At the forward end Glen was dragging the thing persistently over hills and dales, and bearing the rod for Pratt with his transit to sight.

The surveyor himself was at times as much as a mile or more behind, dumbly waving Glen to right or left, as he peered through his glass and set the course by the compass and angles of his transit. Anon he signaled the two to wait, and Beth sat down to watch him come, "set up," and wave them onward as before.

She was thus alone, at the end of the chain, for hours at a stretch. So often as Pratt came up from the rear and established a station for his instrument, she asked how the line was working out, and what were the prospects for the end.

"Can't tell till we get much closer to the claim," said Pratt, with never varying patience. "We'll know before we die."

In the heat that poured from sky and rocks it might have been possible to doubt the surveyor's prediction. But Beth went on. Her exhaustion increased. The glare of the cloudless sky and greenless earth seemed to burn all the moisture from her eyes. The terrible silence, the dread austerity of mountains so rock-ribbed and desolate, oppressed her with a sense of awe.

She was toiling as many a man has toiled, through the ancient, burned-out furnace of gold, so intensely physical all about her; and also she was toiling no less painfully through the furnace of gold that love must ever create so long as the dross must be burned from human ore that the bullion of honor, loyalty, and faith may shine in its purity and worth.

She began to feel, in a slight degree, the tortures that Van, old Gettysburg, Napoleon, and Dave had undergone for many weary years. It was not their weakness for the gold of earth that had drawn them relentlessly on in lands like these; it was more their fate, a species of doom, to which, like the helpless puppets that we are, we must all at last respond.

She felt a new weight in the cruelty whereby the owners of the "Laughing Water" claim had been suddenly bereft of all they possessed after all their patient years of serving here in this arid waste of minerals. The older men in Van's partnership she pitied.

For Van she felt a sense of championing love. His cause was her cause, come what might—at least until she could no longer keep alive her hope. Her passion to set herself to rights in his mind was great, but secondary, after all, to the love in her heart, which would not, could not die, and which, by dint of its intensity, bore her onward to fight for his rights.

Alone so much in the burning land all day, she had long, long hours in which to think of Van, long hours in which to contemplate the silence and the vast dispassion of this mountain world. Her own inward burning offset the heat of air and earth; a sense of the aridness her heart would know without Van's love once more returned, was counter to the aridness of all these barren rocks. The fervor of her love it was that bore her onward, weary, sore, and drooping.

What would happen at the end of day, if Pratt should confirm the Lawrence survey, bestowing the claim on Bostwick and McCoppet, she did not dare to think. Her excitement increased with every chain length moving her onward towards the cove. She did not know the hills or ravines, the canyons descended or acclivities so toilsomely climbed, and, therefore, had not a guide in the world to raise or depress her hope. There was nothing to do but sustain the weary march and await the survey's end.

All day in Goldite, meanwhile, Van had been working towards an end. He had two hundred dollars, the merest drop in the bucket, as he knew, with which to fight the Bostwick combination. He was thoroughly aware that even when the line could be run, establishing some error or fraud on the part of surveyor Lawrence, the fight would barely be opened.

McCoppet and Bostwick, with thousands of dollars at command, could delay him, block his progress, force him into court, and perhaps even beat him in the end. The enginery of dollars was crushing in its might. Nevertheless, if a survey showed that the line had been falsely moved, he felt he could somewhat rely upon himself to make the seat of war too warm for comfort.

There was no surveyor nearer than two hundred miles, with Pratt, as Van expressed it, "camping with the foe." He had shaken his partners untimely from their beds that morning—(the trio were mining nights, on the four-to-midnight shift)—and busied them all with the work of the day, by way of making preparations.

He spent nearly twenty silver dollars on the wire, telegraphing various towns to secure a competent man. He sent a friend to the Government office, where Lawrence was up to his ears in work, and procured all the data, including metes and bounds, of the reservation tract before its fateful opening.

The day was consumed in the petty affairs attendant upon such a campaign. When his three old partners went away to their work at four o'clock in the afternoon, a wire had come from far out north that a man who was competent to run the line was starting for Goldite forthwith.

The moonless night, at ten o'clock, found Van alone at his tent. From the top of the hill whereon he had camped a panoramic view of all the town swung far in both directions. The glare of the lamps, the noise of life—even the odor of man upon the air—impinged upon his senses here, as he sat before the door and gazed far down upon it. He thought that man with his fire, smells, and din made chaos in a spot that was otherwise sacred to nature.

He thought of the ceaseless persistence with which the human family haunts all the corners of the earth, pursues life's mysteries, invades its very God. He thought of this desert as a place created barren, lifeless, dead, and severe for some inscrutable purpose—perhaps even fashioned by the Maker as His place to be alone. But the haunter was there with his garish town, his canvas-tented circus of a day, and God had doubtless moved.

How little the game amounted to, at the end of a man's short span! What a senseless repetition it seemed—the same old comedies, the same old tragedies, the same old bits of generosity, and greed, of weakness, hope, and despair! Except for a warm little heartful of love—ah love! He paused at that and laughed, unmirthfully. That was the thing that made of it a Hades, or converted the desert into heaven!

"Dreamers! dreamers—all of us!" he said, and he went within to flatten down his blankets for the night.

He had finally blown out his candle and stretched himself upon the ground, to continue his turmoil of thinking, when abruptly his sharp ear caught at a sound as of someone slipping on a stone that turned, just out upon the slope. He sat up alertly.

Half a minute passed. Then something heavy lurched against the tent, the flap was lifted, and a man appeared, stooped double as if in pain.

"Who's there?" demanded Van. "Is that you, Gett?" He caught up his gun, but it and the hand that held it were invisible.

"It's me," said a voice—a croaking voice. "Matt Barger."

He fell on the floor, breathing in some sort of anguish, and Van struck a match, to light the candle.

The flame flared blindingly inside the canvas whiteness. A great, moving shadow of Van was projected behind him on the wall. The light gleamed brightly from his gun. But it fell on an inert mass where Barger had fallen to the earth.

He did not move, and Van, mechanically igniting the candle's wick, while he eyed the man before him, beheld dry blood, and some that was fresh, on the haggard face, on the tattered clothing, and even on one loose hand.

"Barger!" he said. "What in thunder, man——"

The outlaw rallied his failing strength and raised himself up on one hand. He could barely speak, but his lips attempted a smile.

"I thought I heard you—call fer the joker," he said, "and so—I come."

Van was up. He saw that the man had been literally shot to pieces. One of his arms was broken. A portion of his scalp was gone. He was pierced in the body and leg. He had met the posse, fought his fight, escaped with wounds that must have stopped any animal on earth, and then had dragged himself to Van, to repay his final debt.

"I haven't called—I haven't called for anything," said Van. "You're wounded, man, you're——"

Barger rose up weakly to his knees.

"Need the money, don't you—now?" he interrupted. "You can—use the reward, I guess."

"Good God, I don't want that kind of money!" Van exclaimed. "Who got you, Matt—who got you?"

"Sheriff," said the convict dispassionately. "Good man, Christler—and a pretty good shot—but I got away with his lead."

He slumped again, like a waxen thing on melting props, deprived of all support.

Van plunged out to the water bench, with its bucket, near the door. He brought back a basin of water, knelt on the ground, and bathed the convict's face. He poured some liquor between the dead-white lips. He slashed and unbuttoned the clothing and tried to staunch the wounds. He bound up the arm, put a bandage on the leg and body, continuing from time to time to dash cold water in the pallid, bearded face.

Barger had fainted at last. What hideous tortures the fellow had endured to drag and drive himself across the mountain roughnesses to win to this tent, Van could but weakly imagine.

The convict finally opened his eyes and blinked in the light of the candle.

"What in hell—was the use of my comin' here," he faltered, "if you don't take the money—the reward?"

"I don't want it!" said Van. "I told you that before."

Barger spoke with difficulty.

"It's different now; they've—got you in a hole. Van Buren, I'm your meat! I'm—nuthin' but meat, but you acted—as if I was a man!"

"We're all in a hole—it's life," said Van, continuing his attentions to the wounds. "I don't want a cent of blood-money, Matt, if I have to starve on the desert. Now lie where you are, and maybe go to sleep. You won't be disturbed here till morning."

"By mornin'—all hell can't—disturb me," Barger told him painfully, with something like a ghastly smile upon his lips. "I'm goin'—there to see."

He lapsed off again into coma. Van feared the man was dead. But having lived a stubborn life, Barger relinquished his hold unwillingly, despite his having ceased at last to care.

For nearly an hour Van worked above him, on the ground. Then the man not only aroused as before, but sat up, propped on his arm.

"God, I had to—wake!" he said. "I was sure—forgettin' to tell you."

Van thought the fellow's mind was wandering.

"Lie down, Matt, lie down," he answered. "Try to take it easy."

"Too late—fer me to take—anything easy," replied the outlaw, speaking with a stronger voice than heretofore. "Gimme a drink of whisky."

Van gave him the drink and he tossed it off at a draught.

"I said to myself I'd be—hanged if I'd tell you, that—day you cheated the quicksand," Barger imparted jerkily, "but you've got—a—right to know. McCoppet and that—pal of his give Lawrence twenty thousand—dollars, cash, to queer you on the—reservation line and run you off your claim."

Van scrutinized the sunken face and glittering eyes with the closest attention.

"What's that?" he said. "Bought Lawrence to fake out the reservation line? Who told you, Matt? Who told you that?"

The convict seemed to gain in strength. He was making a terrible effort to finish all he had to impart.

"Trimmer put me—on to all the game. It was him that told me—you was goin' through, when I—pretty near got you, in the pass."

Van's eyes took on a deep intensity.

"Trimmer? Trimmer?"

"Larry Trimmer—Pine-tree Trimmer," explained the convict impatiently. "McCoppet—wanted you detained, the day they—jumped your claim. Lawrence—he run the line out crooked fer—twenty thousand bucks. Culver was put away by Cayuse, mebbe because—he was square—Larry wasn't sure—— I guess—that's all, but it ought to—help you some."

He dropped himself down and languidly closed his eyes.

"Good heavens, man," said Van, still staring, "are you sure of what you're saying?"

There was no response for a time. Then Barger murmured:

"Excuse me, Van Buren, fer—bein' so damn—long—dyin'."

"You're not dying, Matt—go to sleep," said. Van. "I'll be here beside you, all night."

He sat down, got up and sat down again, stirred to the depths of his being by the story the man had revealed. Beth's money, then, had gone for this, to bribe a Government agent! A tumult of mad, revengeful thoughts went roaring through his mind. A grim look came upon his face, and fire was flashing from his eyes. He arose and sat down a dozen times, all the while looking at the worn, broken figure that lay on the earth at his feet. What an ill-used, gaunt, and exhausted frame it was, loose and abandoned by the strength that once had filled it with vigor and might. What a boyish look had come at last upon the haggard, sunken face!

The night wind was chill. He had forgotten for himself, but he thought of it now for Barger. He laid his blankets on the inert limbs and up around the shoulders.

Perhaps another hour went by, with Van still sleepless by his charge. The convict stirred.

"Van—Buren," he said in a hoarse, rattling whisper, "Van——"

Van was instantly alert.

"Hello."

Barger partially raised his hand.

"So long,"—and the hand dropped downward.

"Matt!" answered Van, quickly kneeling on the earth. He caught up the fingers, felt their faint attempt to close upon his own—and the man on the ground was dead.



CHAPTER XLIII

PREPARING THE NET FOR A DRAW

Beth Kent, as the sun was going from the sky, fell down three times in utter exhaustion. She and the others had come to within a mile of the "Laughing Water" claim. Pratt was far away in the rear, on the last of his stations. Glen, in the lead, was forging ahead on a second supply of strength. Hidden from the sight of either of the others, Beth was ready for collapse.

But onward crept that merciless ribbon of steel that Glen was dragging. Three times the girl rose and stumbled onward, up the last acclivity. Her legs were like lead. She stubbed her toes on every rock. She could almost have cried with the aches of weariness. It seemed as if that terrible hill unfolded new and steeper slopes for every one she climbed.

She went down repeatedly. To have lain there, hungry, but indifferent to anything but sleep, would have been the most heavenly thing she could conceive. She was literally falling up the hill, with all her machinery slumping towards inertia, when finally Pratt, on his distant hill, sent the signal for Glen to halt.

"All right, Beth—rest!" he called from the end of the chain, and she sank at once in her tracks.

It was almost dusk when Pratt came toiling up the hill. Glen had come down to Beth's position. He too was thoroughly tired. How the line had come out was more than he could care. But Beth, with the last of her flickering strength, arose to hasten Pratt.

"No use in the three of us being seen," he said, planting his transit in the sand, but making no effort to adjust it to a level. "That ridge there overlooks the claim. I'll climb up alone and take a bird's-eye view."

"We're as near as that!" cried Beth in startled surprise. "Then what do you think? Does the line include the claim?"

"I'll have to look around from the ridge," repeated Pratt with aggravating caution. "You can wait ten minutes here."

He started laboriously up the slope—and Beth stood tensely watching. She thought she saw him top the ridge, but he disappeared from sight.

The darkness was gathering swiftly in all the desert world. The girl's excitement and impatience grew with a new flare up of energy. To think that Searle was so near at hand, with fate a-hover in the air, sent her pulses bounding madly.

It seemed as if Pratt would never return from the hill. She could almost have dashed to the summit herself, to learn the outcome of their labors. Then at last, from a small ravine, not far away, he appeared in his leisurely manner.

Beth ran along the slope to meet him.

"Well?" she cried. "What did you find?"

He smiled. "Unless I'm crazy, Lawrence is either a liar or a fool. That claim is safe outside the line by nearly an eighth of a mile."

"Oh!" cried the girl. She collapsed on the ground and sobbed in exhaustion and joy.

She could go no further. She had kept her strength and courage up for this, and now, inside the goal, she cared not what might happen.

They camped upon the spot. The man with the car, which had taken them out, had been ordered to meet them down at Reservation town—the mushroom camp which had sprung into being no more than a week before the rush. All the way down there Pratt continued alone. He and the chauffeur, long after dark, returned with provisions and blankets. They had driven the car as far as possible, then climbed the ravine on foot.

At nine o'clock Beth was asleep beneath the stars, dreaming of her meeting with Van.

At daylight all were up, and in the chill of the rarified mountain air were walking stiffly to the car. The chauffeur, who had slept in his machine, promised breakfast by eight at Mrs. Dick's. He tore up the road and he tore away their breath, but he came into Goldite half an hour ahead of time, and claimed he had driven "pretty slow."

Meantime, the night in the mining-camp had brought no untoward excitement. Van, at his tent, with the covered figure lying on the earth, had welcomed his partners at midnight with the news that a "homeless and worn-out pilgrim of the desert" had come desiring rest. He was sleeping hard; he was not to be disturbed. In the morning he was scheduled to depart.

Tired to utter unconcern, the three old worthies made their beds with Van beside the man at peace. And the whole five slept with a trust and abandon to nature that balanced the living and the dead.

Van was out, had eaten his breakfast, and was waiting for the sheriff when Beth and her party returned. He beheld them, felt his heart lift upward like a lever in his breast, at sight of Beth in her male attire, and grimly shut his jaws.

Christler, the sheriff, arrived a little after eight, bringing in a wounded deputy. Barger had shot him in the thigh. Van did not wait for his man to eat, but urged him home to his bachelor shack and sat him down to a drink of something strong, with a cracker to munch for a meal.

Christler was tired. He was somewhat stout; he had been in the saddle almost constantly for weeks, and now, as a victim of chagrin and disappointment, he was utterly dejected and done.

"Good Lord, Van, ain't a man to breathe—hain't he got no rights to live, whatsoever?" he inquired. "You'd chase me up, or somebody would, if I was in my grave."

"You'd break out of your grave," Van told him, "if you knew what's going on."

Christler looked dubious, draining at his glass.

"Well, I dunno. It 'ud have to be something pretty rich."

"Bill," said Van, "you're going to stand in and work with me as you haven't worked for a year. It's going to be worth it. Opal McCoppet, and one Searle Bostwick, of New York, have stolen my claim by corrupting Lawrence for twenty thousand dollars, running a false reservation line, and maybe putting Culver out of the way because he was square in his business."

Christler paused in the act of biting his cracker.

"What!"

"There's going to be something doing, Bill," Van added, leaning forward on the table. "I'm going to round up all this gang to-day if it kills you to keep on the trail."

Christler still sat staring.

"By the Lord Harry!" he said. "By the Lord—but, Van, I didn't come home to rest. I've got Barger going, somewhere, shot to a sieve. But he's some disappeared. If that ain't just my luck! I'm goin' to git him though, you bet! Lord!—my pride—my profession pride—not to mention that little old reward! I admit I want that money, Van. I reckon I've pretty near——"

"Yes, you've earned it," Van interrupted. "I'm going to see that you get it. Bill, but first you get busy with me."

"You'll see that I get——" Christler put the cracker in his mouth. "Don't talk to a genuine friend like that. I'm tired already."

"Are you?" said Van. "Let's see. Barger is here—in camp."

Up shot the sheriff as if from the force of a blast.

"What!" he shrilled. "Barger! Van, I'll——"

Van grinned.

"Don't forget you're tired, Bill. Matt won't get away."

"Good Lord, boy—tell me where's he at!" cried Christler, dancing on the floor as he strapped his guns upon him. "Me a-thinkin' I had shot him up and all this time——"

"You shot him enough, poor devil," Van interrupted quietly. "He's dead in my tent on the hill."

The sheriff paused with one hand held in the air.

"Dead! Crawled all the way to Goldite!" He started for the door.

"Hold on," said the horseman, blocking his path. "I told you Matt can't get away. We're going out to get Lawrence first, and then McCoppet and his friend."



CHAPTER XLIV

THE ENGINES OF CLIMAX

McCoppet was in town. He had come to camp at midnight of the previous day, duly followed by his friend Larry Trimmer. The lumberman had waxed impatient. Fully two thousand dollars of the money he had "earned" was still unpaid—and hard to get. He had gone to the "Laughing Water" claim, in vain, and a surly heat was rising in his veins.

Bostwick was due, in his car, at nine o'clock, His visit to Goldite was not entirely one of business. He had grown alarmed at the lack of news from Beth. His letters had been ignored. He not only feared for the fate of his affairs of the heart, but perhaps even more for what she might have done with respect to the money she had asked him to return, a very small proportion of which he was now prepared to repay.

Meantime, Beth, her brother, and Pratt had gratified their most crying needs on Algy's cooking, much to that worthy Celestial's delight. There were two things Beth intended to perform: report the results of her labors to Van, and attack Mr. Lawrence in his den.

Precisely what she meant to say or do to the Government representative she did not or could not determine. Some vague idea of making him confess to an infamy practiced at Bostwick's instance was the most she had in mind. If half the success already achieved could be expected here, she would have a report worth while to make when Van should be presently encountered.

Impetuous, eager to hasten with her work, she insisted upon an immediate advance. Glenmore readily supported her position. Pratt developed shyness. His forte was hiking over desert hills, lugging a transit, running lines or levels; he felt out of place as a fighter, or even an accuser. Nevertheless, he went, for Beth insisted.

Already the streets were crowded full of life, as the three proceeded down the thoroughfare. A mining-camp is a restless thing; its peoples live in the streets. Freight teams, flowing currents of men, chains of dusty mules, disordered cargoes on the sidewalks, and a couple of automobiles were glaringly cut out from their shadows, as the sunlight poured upon them. Sunlight and motion, false-fronted buildings, tents, and mountains, and fever—that is the camp on the desert.

With excitement increasing upon her at every step, Beth glanced at the crowds in a rapid search for Van. He was not to be seen. In all the throng, where old men and youths, pale and swarthy, lazy and alert were circulating like the blood of Goldite's arteries, there was not a face that she knew.

They came to the office where Lawrence presided just as a stranger was departing, Lawrence was alone. He occupied the inner apartment, as Culver had done, but the door was standing open.

It was Beth who knocked and entered first as the man called out his invitation. She had never in her life appeared more beautiful. Color was flaming in her cheeks as on a rose. Her eyes were exceptionally bright and brown. The exquisite coral of her lips was delicately tremulous with all her short, quick breathing.