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 beforgery—obtaining money under false pretences! He may have done anything—anythingto 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!"
"Vanisthe 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 alittlepride. 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."
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 fiancée 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.
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—ahlove! 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.