"Dear Sis: I can only write a line or two. Had a thump on the head, but it didn't knock off my block. Don't worry. All right in a few days, sure. Guess you couldn't come, or you'd be here, in response to my last. But Searle might show up, anyhow. You can write me now. Hope you're well and happy. Is the brigand still on the job? Can't really write. With love, GLEN."
Her heart stood still as she; read her brother's lines, in a scrawled hand indicative of weakness. She resolved in that instant to go.
"Mr. Stitts," she raid in remarkable calm, for all that she felt, "my brother needs some clothing—everything complete, boots, shirts, and all. He's just about my size. I wish you'd go and buy them."
"Lord, I know the best and the cheapest in camp!" said Billy eagerly. "I'll have 'em here before you can write him your letter—but the stage don't go back till Friday."
She had given no thought to the tri-weekly stage. She dismissed it now, with a wave of gratitude towards Van for the horse—gratitude, or something, surging warmly in her veins. She almost wished he could ride at her side, but checked that lawlessness sternly. She would ride to Glen alone!
At daylight Beth was dressed as a man and surveying herself in the mirror. She had passed a sleepless night. She was fevered, excited, and nervous.
Her work had been admirably done. She looked no more rawly new or youthful than scores of young tenderfeet, daily in the streets of the camp. The stain on her face had furnished an astonishing disguise, supported as it was by male attire. Her hair was all up in the crown of her hat, which was set on the back of her head. It was fastened, moreover, with pins concealed beneath the leather band. Altogether the disguise was most successful. Beth had disappeared: a handsome young man had been conjured in her place.
Her mare, which Billy had ordered, came promptly to the door. She heard her arrive—and her heart stroked more madly than before. Trembling in every limb, and treading as softly as a thief, she made her way downstairs.
On the dining-room table was the package of lunch that Mrs. Dick had agreed to prepare. Beth had told her she meant to take an early morning ride and might not be back in time for breakfast. With this bundle in hand she went out at the door, her courage all but failing at thought of the man with the horse at the threshold. She shrank from being seen in such an outfit.
It was too late now to retreat, however, she told herself bravely, and out she went.
"Say, git a move, young feller," said the hostler with her pony. "I ain't got time to play horse-post here all day."
"Thank you for being so prompt," said Beth, in a voice that was faint, despite her efforts to be masculine, and she gave him a coin.
"I'll tie that there bundle on behind," he volunteered, less gruffly, and Beth was glad of his assistance.
A moment later she took a gasp of breath and mounted to the seat. Collapse of all the project had seemed imminent, but an actual feeling of relief and security ensued when she was settled in the saddle.
"So long," said the hostler, and Beth responded manfully, "So long."
She rode out slowly, towards the one main road. A feeling of the morning's chill assailed her, making her shiver. The noise of her pony's hoof-beats seemed alarmingly resonant.
But nothing happened. The streets were deserted, save for a few half-drunken wanderers, headed for the nearest saloon. On the far-off peaks of the mountains the rosy light of sunrise faintly appeared. In the calm of the great barren spaces, even Goldite was beautiful at last.
A sense of exhilaration pervaded Beth's youthful being. She was glad of what she had done. It was joyous, it was splendid, this absolute freedom in all this stern old world!
The road wound crookedly up a hill, as it left the streets of the town behind. The scattered tents extended for a mile in this direction, the squares of silent canvas, like so many dice, cast on the slopes by a careless fate that had cast man with them in the struggle.
Beth and her pony finally topped the hill, to be met by a sea of mountains out beyond. Up and down these mighty billows of the earth the highway meandered, leading onward and southward through the desert.
The mare was urged to a gallop, down an easy slope, then once more she walked as before. All the mountains in the west were rosy now, till presently the sun was up, a golden coin, struck hot from the very mints of God, giving one more day with its glory.
Its very first rays seemed a comfort, suggesting a welcome warmth. Beth could have called out songs of gladness well nigh uncontainable. She had all the big world to herself. Even the strangely twisted clouds in the sky seemed made for her delight. They were rare in this wonderful dome of blue and therefore things of beauty.
For an hour or more her way was plain, and to ride was a god-like privilege. Her ease of mind was thoroughly established. What had been the necessity for all those qualms of fear? The matter was simple, after all.
It was ten o'clock before she ate her breakfast. She had come to the so-called river, the only one in perhaps a hundred miles. It was quite a respectable stream at this particular season, but spread very thinly and widely at the ford.
By noon she was half way of her distance. The sun was hot; summer baking of the desert had begun. Her mare was sweating profusely. She had urged her to the top of her strength. Nevertheless she was still in excellent condition. To the westward the sky was overcast in a manner such as Beth had never seen, with a dark, copperous storm-head that massed itself prodigiously above the range.
Already she had come to three branchings of the road and chosen her way in confidence, according to Billy Stiff's directions. When she came to a fourth, where none had been indicated, she was sure, either in Billy's instructions, or upon his drawing, she confessed herself somewhat uncertain. She halted and felt for the map.
It was not to be found. She had left it behind at Mrs. Dick's. Dimly she fancied she remembered that Billy had said on the fourth branch, keep to the right. There could be no doubt that this branch was the fourth, howsoever out of place it appeared. She rode to the right, and, having passed a little valley, found herself enfolded in a rolling barrier of hills where it seemed as if the sun and rocks were of almost equal heat.
At mid-afternoon Beth abruptly halted her pony and stared at the world of desert mountains in confusion not unmixed with alarm. She was out at the center of a vast level place, almost entirely devoid of vegetation—and the road had all but disappeared. It branched once more, and neither fork was at all well defined, despite the fact that travel to Starlight was supposed to be reasonably heavy. She had made some mistake. She suddenly remembered something that Billy had said concerning a table mountain she should have passed no later than half-past one. It had not been seen along her way. She was tired. Weariness and the heat had broken down a little of the bright, joyous spirit of the morning. A heart-sinking came upon her. She must turn and ride back to—she knew not which of the branches of the road, any one of which might have been wrongly selected.
Her mare could not be hurried now; she must last to get her to Starlight. To add to other trifles of the moment, the bank of cloud, so long hung motionless above the western summits, moved out across the path of the sun and blotted out its glory with a density that would have seemed impossible.
Scarcely had Beth fairly turned her back to the west when a wind storm swooped upon the desert. It came as a good stiff breeze, at first, flecking up but little of the dust. Then a sudden, ominous change occurred. All the blue of the sky was overwhelmed, under a sudden expansion of the copperous clouds. An eclipse-like darkness enveloped the world, till the farthest mountains disappeared and the near-by ranges seemed to magnify themselves as they blended with the sky.
With a sound as of an on-rushing cataclysm the actual storm, cyclonic in all but the rotary motion, came beating down upon the startled earth like a falling wall of air.
In less than two minutes the world, the atmosphere, everything had ceased to be. It was a universe of dust and sand, hurtling—God knew whither.
In the suddenness of the storm's descent upon her, Beth became speechless with dismay. Her mare dropped her head and slowly continued to walk. Road, hills, desert—all had disappeared. To go onward was madness; to remain seemed certain death. Despair and horror together gripped Beth by the heart. There was nothing in the world she could do but to close her eyes and double low above the saddle, her hat bent down to shield her face.
At the end of a few minutes only the frightfulness of the thing could no longer be endured. Beth had been all but torn from her seat by the sheer weight and impact of the wind. All the world was roaring prodigiously. The sand and dust, driving with unimaginable velocity, smoked past in blinding fury.
The mare had ceased to move. Beth was aware of her inertia, dimly. She remembered at last to dismount and stand in the animal's shelter. At length on the raging and roaring of the air-sea, crashing onward in its tidal might, came a fearful additional sound. It was rushing onward towards the girl with a speed incredible—a sound of shrieking, or whistling, that changed to a swishing as if of pinions, Titanic in size, where some monstrous winged god was blown against, his will in a headlong course through the tumult.
Then the something went by—the whole roof of a house—from twenty miles away. It scraped in the earth, not ten feet off from where the pony stood—and she bolted and ran for her life.
Down went Beth, knocked over by the mare. With a hideous crash the flying roof was hurled against a nearby pinnacle of rock. The wooden wings split upon the immovable obstruction, and on they went as before.
The pony had disappeared, in panic that nothing could have allayed. The storm-pall swallowed her instantly, Beth could not have seen her had she halted a rod away. Her eyes had been opened for half a moment only before she was flung to the earth. She was rolling now, and for the moment was utterly powerless to rise or to halt her locomotion.
When she presently grasped at a little gray shrub, came to a halt, and tried to stand erect, she was buffeted bodily along by the wind with no strength in her limbs to resist.
She was blown to the big rock pinnacle on which the roof had been divided. An eddy twisted her rudely around to the shelter, and she flung herself down upon the earth.
How long she lay there Beth could never have known. It seemed a time interminable, with the horror of the storm in all the universe. It was certainly more than an hour before the end began to come. Then clouds and the blizzard of sand and dust, together with all the mighty roaring, appeared to be hurled across the firmament by the final gust of fury and swept from the visible world into outer space.
Only a brisk half-gale remained in the wake of the huger disturbance. The sky and atmosphere cleared together. The sun shone forth as before—but low to the mountain horizon. When even the clean wind too had gone, trailing behind its lawless brother, the desert calm became as absolute as Beth had beheld it in the morning.
She crept from her shelter and looked about the plain. Her eyes were red and smarting. She was dusted through and through. In all the broad, gray expanse there was not a sign of anything alive. Her mare had vanished. Beth was lost in the desert, and night was fast descending.
Deliverance from the storm, or perhaps the storm's very rage, had brought her a species of calm. The fear she had was a dull, persistent dread—an all-pervading horror of her situation, too large to be acute. Nevertheless, she determined to seek for the road with all possible haste and make her way on foot, as far as possible, towards the Starlight highway and its possible traffic.
She was stiff from her ride and her cramped position on the earth. She started off somewhat helplessly, where she felt the road must be.
She found no road. Her direction may have been wrong. Possibly the storm of wind had swept away the wagon tracks, for they had all been faint. It had been but half a road at best for several miles. Her heart sank utterly. She became confused as to which way she had traveled. Towards a pass in the hills whence she felt she must have come she hastened with a new accession of alarm.
She was presently convinced that she had chosen entirely wrong. A realizing sense that she was hopelessly mixed assailed her crushingly. To turn in any direction might be a grave mistake. But to stand here and wait—do nothing—with the sun going down—this was preposterous—suicidal! She must go on—somewhere! She must find the road! She must keep on moving—till the end! Till the end! How terrible that thought appeared, in such a situation!
She almost ran, straight onward towards the hills. Out of breath very soon, she walked with all possible haste and eagerness, all the time looking for the road she had left, which the storm might have wiped from the desert. She was certain now that the mountains towards which she was fleeing were away from the Goldite direction.
Once more she changed her course. She realized then that such efforts as these must soon defeat themselves. At least she must stick to one direction—go on in a line as straight as possible, till she came to something! Yet if she chose her direction wrong and went miles away from anything——
She had to go on. She had to take the chance. She plodded southwestward doggedly, for perhaps a mile, then halted at something like a distant sound, and peered towards the shadows of the sunset.
There was nothing to be seen. A hope which had risen for a moment in her breast, at thought of possible deliverance, sank down in collapse, and left her more faint than before. The sun was at the very rim of the world. Its edge began to melt its way downward into all the solid bulk of mountains. It would soon be gone. Darkness would ensue. The moon would be very late, if indeed it came at all. Wild animals would issue from their dens of hiding, to prowl in search of food. Perhaps the sound she heard had been made by an early night-brute of the desert, already roving for his prey!
Once more she went on, desperately, almost blindly. To keep on going, that was the one essential! She had proceeded no more than a few rods, however, when she heard that sound again—this time more like a shout.
Her heart pounded heavily and rapidly. She shaded her eyes with her hand, against the last, slanted sun-rays, and fancied she discerned something, far off there westward, in the purples flung eastward by the mountains. Then the last bit of all that molten disk of gold disappeared in the summits, and with its going she beheld a horseman, riding at a gallop towards herself.
The relief she felt was almost overwhelming—till thoughts of such an encounter came to modify her joy. She was only an unprotected girl—yet—she had no appearance of a woman! This must be her safeguard, should this man now approaching prove some rough, lawless being of the mines.
She stood perfectly still and waited. A man would have hurried forward to meet this deliverance, so unexpectedly vouchsafed. But she was too excited, too uncertain—too much of a girl. Then presently, when the horseman was still a hundred yards away, her heart abruptly turned over in her bosom.
The man on the horse was Van. She knew him—knew that impudent pose, that careless grace and oneness with his broncho! She did not know he was chasing that flying roof which had frightened her horse from her side; that he had bought an old cabin, far from his claim, to move it to the "Laughing Water" ground—only to see it wrenched from his hold by the mighty gale and flung across the world. She knew nothing of this, but she suddenly knew how glad was her whole tingling being, how bounding was the blood in her veins! And she also knew, abruptly, that now if ever she must play the man. She had all but forgotten she was angry with Van. That, and a hundred reasons more, made it absolutely imperative now that he should not know her for herself!
She made a somewhat wild attempt at a toilet of her hair—in case the wind had ripped the tell-tale strands from beneath her hat. Then with utter faintness in her being, and weakness in her knees, she prepared to give him reception.
He had slowed his horse to a walk. He rode up deliberately, scrutinizing in obvious puzzlement the figure before him in the sand.
"Hullo," he said, while still a rod away, "what in blazes are you doing here, man—are you lost?"
Beth nodded. "I'm afraid I am." Her utterance was decidedly girlish, and quavering.
"Lost your voice somewhere, too, I reckon," said Van. "Where are you going? Where are you from?"
"Starlight," answered Beth, at a loss for a better reply, and making an effort to deepen her tones as she talked. "I lost my horse in the storm."
Van looked around the valley.
"Did, hey? Didn't happen to see a stray roof, anywhere, did you? I lost one."
"I—haven't seen anything," faltered Both, whose only wish was to have him say something about her escape from this terrible place. "But something frightened my pony."
"I was curious to see how far that roof would hike, that's all," he told her by way of explanation of his presence here on his horse, and he turned to look at her again. "Didn't you know this so-called cut-off to Starlight would take you more time than the road?"
"No, I—I didn't know it," said Beth, afraid he must presently penetrate her masquerade if he looked like that upon her. "What do you advise me to do?"
He ignored her question, demanding:
"Say, is your name Kent?—Glenmore Kent?"
Beth felt her heart begin new gymnastics. This was her cue.
"Why, yes. But—how did you know—know me?"
"I've met your sister, in Goldite. You can't get to Starlight to-night."
She had passed muster! A herd of wild emotions were upon her. But first here was her predicament—and what he said was not at all reassuring. Certain alarms that his coming had banished returned in a vague array.
She showed her dread in her eyes. "Perhaps I could get to Goldite."
"How?" He was half unconsciously patting Suvy, the horse, whose ecstasy thereat was not to be concealed.
Beth knew not how. She wished Van would cease that study of her face. Perhaps she could think more clearly.
"Why—I suppose I could walk—if I knew the way," she said. "Is it very far? I admit I'm bewildered. I was lost."
"It would be a long ride," he told her. "A lost man is hopeless. I couldn't even show you the way so you could keep it—especially at night."
New fears came surging upon her in all their force and numbers.
"But—what shall I do?"
Van reflected.
"My claim is the nearest camp from here, since the wind took down that shack. And that was abandoned anyway. Can you hike some twenty-odd miles?"
Twenty-odd miles!—on foot! For a second she was almost tempted to disclose herself, and beg him, for something a trifle more sympathetic than what he seemed to be offering another fellow man. But that could not be done. And night was descending rapidly. The twilight was brief—and on the wane.
"Why—perhaps so," she answered, attempting to smile. "I'll try."
Something in her smile went straight to his heart—he wondered why. To feel as he did towards this unknown man, even the brother of the girl he madly loved—this was certainly absurd. It was not to be explained; it was simply upon him, that was enough. He dismounted.
"Here, get on my horse and ride. I want to walk and stretch my legs."
Beth all but gasped. She!—ride on Suvy!—the horse she had seen so nearly kill this man!—a horse that might perhaps permit no other living thing upon his back! Yet she knew not how to refuse—and to walk very far would be impossible.
"I'm—afraid I'm a very poor horseman," she admitted guardedly. "If your pony should happen——"
Van had thought that Suvy might resent a stranger's liberties. He turned to the broncho peculiarly.
"How about it, boy?" he asked the horse gravely. "I want you to stand for it, savvy?" He looked at the animal inquiringly. How he knew that Suvy consented was only for him to comprehend. He squared about to Beth, who was watching with wonder, and something far softer, in her heart. "Get on," he said. "He was raised as a cradle for babies."
Beth was pale, but she had to be a man. She stepped to the broncho's side and mounted to the saddle. Suvy trembled in every sinew of his being.
Van gave him a pat on the neck again, turned his back and started straight northward. The pony followed at his heels like a dog with a master he loves.
At ten o'clock that night the moon had not yet risen. Its glow was on the eastern sky, however, and at length it appeared, a broken orb with its waning side lopped from its bulk.
Beth was still in the saddle. She was utterly exhausted; she could scarcely remain in her seat. For more than an hour Van had plodded onward without even turning to speak. They had talked intermittently, and he had told her his name. Far off in the dimness of the desert level—the floor of a second mighty valley—a lone coyote began his dismal howling. Beth, on the horse, felt a chill go down her spine. Van seemed not to hear. The howl was repeated from time to time intermittently, like the wail of a ghost, forever lost to hope.
When the moon at last shone fairly on the broncho and the girl, Van cast a glance at her face. He was startled. The young rider looked so much like Beth—and looked so utterly tired!
Van halted, and so did the pony. The man looked up at his companion.
"You're in no fit condition to go on," he said. "What's the use of our trying to make it? To camp right here is as good as going on all night, which don't suit my legs worth a cent."
Beth was wearied almost to collapse. But—to camp out here—all night!—they two! Aside from the terrors that had crept to her soul at sound of the distant coyote, this present aspect of the situation was appalling. Indeed, she began to see that whether they went on or remained, she must spend the night in this man's company.
She was almost too tired to care how such a thing would appear. He thought her a man—it had been inescapable—there was nothing she could do to prevent the course of events. And come what might she must presently slip from that saddle, in her weakness, faintness, and hunger, if the penalty were all but life itself.
"I'm—sure I can walk—and let you ride," she said. "I'd like to go on, but I know I can't sit here any longer."
She tried to dismount by herself—as any man must do. In her stiffness she practically fell from the saddle, sinking on her side upon the ground. Only for a second was she prostrate thus at his feet, but her coat fell back from her kahki vest—and a gleam of the moonlight fell upon a bright little object, pinned above her heart.
Van beheld it—and knew what it was—his nugget, washed from the "Laughing Water" claim!
The truth seemed to pour upon him like the waters of an all-engulfing wave—the overwhelming, wonderful truth that was also almost terrible, in what it might mean to them both.
There was one thing only the man could do—ignore this fact that he had discovered and treat her like a man. This he knew instantly. He turned with a man's indifference to one of his sex and vaulted to Suvy's back.
"Come on," he said, "if you're anxious to get under cover."
He could trust himself to say no more. He rode ahead.
Beth did her best to follow, and make no complaint. The broncho, however, was a rapid walker. This she had not realized while Van was striding on in the lead. She fell behind repeatedly, and Van was obliged to halt his horse and wait. She began to be lame. It had been a torture to ride; it was agony to walk.
Van now became strangely urgent. He had never loved her more. His love had taken on a sacredness, out here in the night, with Beth so weary and helpless. More than anything he had ever desired in his life he wished to keep her sacred—spared from such a complication as their night out here alone might engender.
Yet he saw the first little limp when she began to falter. He was watching backward constantly, his whole nature eager to protect her—save her from hurt, from this merciless toil across the desert. He longed to take her in his arms and carry her thus, securely. He was torn between the wish to hasten her along, for her own greater ease of mind, and the impulse to halt this hardship. He knew not what to do.
They had gone much less than a mile when he brought up his pony at her side.
"Here, Kent," he said, "you walk like a bride-groom going up the aisle. You'll have to get up here and ride." He dismounted actively.
Beth could have dropped in her tracks for weariness. She was tired to the marrow of her bones.
"I can't," she answered. "Perhaps—we'd better camp." A hot flush rushed upward to her very scalp, fortunately, however, unseen.
Van regarded her sternly.
"I've changed my mind. I haven't time to camp out here to-night. You'll have to ride."
It seemed to Beth that, had it been to save her life, she could scarcely have climbed to that saddle. To remain on the horse would, she knew, be far beyond her strength. She continued on her feet only by the utmost exertion of her will. Someway since Van had found her in this dreadful place she had lost strength rapidly—perhaps for the leaning on him. With Van's ultimatum now to confront, she could summon no nerve or resolution.
Her face paled. "You'd better go on, if you have to be at your claim," she said, aware that she could offer no argument, no alternative plan to his wish for an onward march. "I'm—not used to riding—much. I can't ride any more tonight."
He knew she told the truth, knew how gladly she would have continued riding, knew what a plight of collapse she must be approaching to submit to a thought of remaining here till morning. He could not go and leave her here. The thought of it aroused him to something like anger. He realized the necessity of assuming a rougher demeanor.
"Damn it, Kent," he said, "you're no less lost than you were before. You know I can't go off and leave you. And I want to get ahead."
She only knew she could not ride, come what might.
"You didn't say so, a little while ago," she ventured, half imploringly. "I'm sorry I'm so nearly dead. If you must go on——"
That cut him to the heart. How could he be a brute?
"I ought to go!" he broke in unguardedly. "I mean I've got to think—I've got work to do in the morning. Don't you suppose you could try?"
The moonlight was full on his face. All the laughter she knew so well had disappeared from his eyes. In its place she saw such a look of yearning and worry—such a tenderness of love as no woman ever yet saw and failed to comprehend. She divined in that second that he knew who she was—she felt it, through all her sense of intuition and the fiber of her soul. She understood his insistence on the march, the saving march, straight onward without a halt. She loved him for it. She had loved him with wild intensity, confessed at last to herself, ever since the moment he had appeared in the desert to save her.
If a certain reckless abandon to this love rocked her splendid self-control, it was only because she was so utterly exhausted. Her judgment was sound, unshaken. Nevertheless, despite judgment and all—to go on was out of the question. God had flung them out here together, she thought, for better or for worse. That Van would be the fine chivalrous gentleman she had felt him to be at the very first moment of their accidental acquaintance, she felt absolutely assured. She accepted a certain inevitable fatality in the situation—-perhaps the more readily now that she knew he knew, for she seemed so much more secure.
His question remained unanswered while she thought of a thousand things. Could she try to go on?
She shook her head. "What's the use of my riding—perhaps another mile? You might go on and send a man to guide me in the morning."
What an effort it cost her to make such a harsh suggestion not even Van could know. A terrible fear possessed her that he might really act upon her word. To have him stay was bad enough, but to have him go would be terrible.
"Hell!" he said, keeping up his acting. "You talk like a woman. Haven't I wasted time enough already without sending someone out here to-morrow morning? What makes you think you're worth it?" He turned his back upon her, hung the stirrup of the saddle on the horn, and began to loosen the cinch.
Like the woman that she was, she enjoyed his roughness, his impudence, and candor. It meant so much, in such a time as this. After a moment she asked him:
"What do you mean to do?"
He hauled off the saddle and dropped it to the ground.
"Make up the berths," he answered. "Here's your bedding." He tossed the blanket down at her feet. It was warm and moist from Suvy's body. He then uncoiled his long lasso, secured an end around the pony's neck, and bade him walk away and roll.
The broncho obeyed willingly, as if he understood. Van took up the saddle, carried it off a bit, and dropped it as before.
Beth still remained there, with the blanket at her feet.
Van addressed her. "Got any matches?"
"No," she said. "I'm afraid——"
"Neither have I," he interrupted. "No fire in the dressing-room. Good-night. No need to set the alarm clock. I'll wake you bright and early." Once more he took up his saddle and started off in the ankle-high brush of the plain.
Beth watched him with many misgivings at her heart.
"Where—where are you going?" she called.
"To bed," he called in response. "Want room to kick around, if I get restless."
She understood—but it was hard to bear, to be left so alone as this, in such a place. He went needlessly far, she was sure.
Grateful to him, but alarmed, made weaker again by having thus to make her couch so far from any protection, she continued to stand there, watching him depart. He stooped at last, and his pony halted near him, like a faithful being who must needs keep him always in sight. Even the pony would have been some company for Beth, but when Van stretched himself down upon the earth, with the saddle for a pillow, she felt horribly alone.
There was nothing to do but to make the best of what the fates allowed. She curled herself down on the chilly sand with the blanket tucked fairly well around her. But she did not sleep. She was far too tired and alarmed.
Half an hour later three coyotes began a fearsome serenade. Beth sat up abruptly, as terrified as if she had been but a child. She endured it for nearly five minutes, hearing it come closer all the while. Then she could bear it no more. She rose to her feet, caught up her blanket, and almost ran towards the pony. More softly then she approached the place where Van lay full length upon the ground. She beheld him in the moonlight, apparently sound asleep.
As closely as she dared she crept, and once more made her bed upon the sand. There, in a child-like sense of security, with her fearless protector near, she listened in a hazy way to the prowling beasts, now cruising away to the south, and so profoundly slept.
Van had heard her come. Into his heart snuggled such a warmth and holy joy as few men are given to feel. He, too, went to sleep, thinking of his nugget on her breast.
Daylight had barely broadened into morning when Van was astir from his bed. The air was chill and wonderfully clean. Above the eastern run of hills the sun was ready to appear.
Beth still lay deep in slumber. She had curled up like a child in her meager covering. Van watched her from his distance. A little shiver passed through her form, from time to time. Her hat was still in place, but how girlish, how sweet, how helpless was her face—the little he could see! How he wished he might permit her to sleep it out as nature demanded. For her own sake, not for his, he must hasten her onward to Goldite, by way of the "Laughing Water" claim.
He walked off eastward where a natural furrow made a deep depression in the valley. His pony followed, the lasso dragging in the sand. Once over at the furrow edge, the man took out his pistol and fired it off in the air.
Beth was duly aroused. Van saw her leap to her feet, then he disappeared in the hollow, with his broncho at his heels.
The girl was, if possible, stiffer than before. But she was much refreshed. For a moment she feared Van was deserting, till she noted his saddle, near at hand. Then he presently emerged upon the level of the plain and returned to the site of their camp.
"First call for breakfast in the dining-car," he said. "We can make it by half-past eight."
"If only we could have a cup of good hot coffee first, before we start," said Beth, and she smiled at the vainness of the thought.
"We won't get good coffee at the claim," Van assured her dryly. "But near-coffee would lure me out of this."
He was rapidly adjusting the blanket and saddle on his horse.
"You'll have to ride or we can't make speed," he added. "As a walker you're sure the limited."
She appreciated thoroughly the delicacy with which he meant to continue the fiction of her sex. But he certainly was frank.
"Thank you," she answered amusedly. "I'd do better, perhaps, if I weren't so over-burdened with flattery."
"You'll have to do better, anyhow," he observed, concluding preparations with Suvy. "There you are. Get on. Father Time with hobbles on could beat us getting a move."
He started off, leaving her to mount by herself. She managed the matter somewhat stiffly, suppressing a groan at the effort, and then for an hour she was gently pummeled into limberness as the pony followed Van.
They came at the end of that time to one of the upper reaches of that same river she had forded the previous day. To all appearances the wide shallow bed was a counterpart of the one over which her horse had waded. But the trail turned sharply down the stream, and followed along its bank.
They had halted for the pony to drink. Van also refreshed himself and Beth dismounted to lie flat down and quench her long, trying thirst.
"Right across there, high up in the hills, is the 'Laughing Water' claim," said Van, pointing north-eastward towards the mountains. "Only three miles away, if we could fly, but six as we have to go around."
"And why do we have to go around?" Beth inquired. "Aren't we going to cross the river here?"
"Looks like a river, I admit," he said, eying the placid stream. "That's a graveyard there—quicksand all the way across."
Beth's heart felt a shock at the thought of what could occur to a traveler here, unacquainted with the treacherous waters.
"Good gracious!" she said. She added generously: "Couldn't I walk a little now, and—share the horse?"
"When you walk it gets on Suvy's nerves to try to keep step," he answered. "Fall in."
They went two miles down the river, then, across on a rock-and-gravel bottom, at a ford directly opposite a jagged rift in the mountains. This chasm, which was short and steep, they traversed perspiringly. The sun was getting warm. Beyond them then the way was all a rough, hard climb, over ridges, down through canyons, around huge dykes of rock and past innumerable foldings of the range. How Van knew the way was more than Beth could understand. She was already growing wearied anew, since the night had afforded her very little rest, and she had not eaten for nearly a day.
Van knew she was in no condition for the ride. He was watching her constantly, rejoicing in her spirit, but aching for her aches. He set a faster pace for the broncho to follow, to end the climb as soon as possible.
At length, below a rounded ridge, where stunted evergreens made a welcome bit of greenery, he came to a halt.
"We're almost there," he said. "You'll have to remain at the claim till somewhere near noon, then I'll show you the way down to Goldite."
"Till noon?" She looked at him steadily, a light of worry in her eyes as she thought of arriving so late at Mrs. Dick's, with what consequences—the Lord alone knew.
"I can't get away much earlier," he said, and to this, by way of acting his part, he added: "Do you want to wear me out?"
She knew what he meant. He would wait till noon to give her time to rest. She would need all the rest he could make possible. And then he would only "show her the way to Goldite." He would not ride with her to town. She might yet escape the compromising plight into which she had been thrust. His thoughtfulness, it seemed, could have no end.
"Very well," she murmured. "I'm sorry to have made you all this trouble." She was not—someways; she was lawlessly, inordinately glad.
The "trouble" for Van had been the most precious experience in all his life.
"It has been one wild spasm of delight," he said in his dryest manner of sarcasm. "But between us, Kent, I'm glad it's no continuous performance."
He went over the ridge, she following. A moment later they were looking down upon the "Laughing Water" claim from that self-same eminence from which Searle Bostwick had seen it when he rode one day from the Indian reservation.
"This," said Van, "is home."
"Oh," said the girl, and tears sprang into her eyes.
And a very home, indeed, it presently seemed, when they came to the shack, where Gettysburg, Napoleon, old Dave, and even Algy, the Chinese cook, came forth to give them cordial welcome.
Beth was introduced to all as Glenmore Kent—and passed inspection.
"Brother of Miss Beth Kent," said Van, "who honored us once with a visit to the Monte Cristo fiasco. He's been lost on the desert and he's too done up to talk, so I want him to be fed and entertained. And of the two requirements, the feed's more important than the vaudeville show, unless your stunts can put a man to sleep."
Algy and Gettysburg got the impromptu breakfast together. The placer sluices outside were neglected. Nobody wished to shovel sand for gold when marvelous tales might be exchanged concerning the wind storm that had raged across the hills the day before.
Indeed, as Van and Beth sat together at the board, regaling themselves like the two famished beings they were, their three entertainers proceeded to liberate some of the tallest stories concerning storms that mortal ever heard.
Napoleon and Gettysburg became the hottest of rivals in an effort to deliver something good. Gettysburg furnished a tale of a breeze in the unpeopled wilds of Nebraska where two men's farms, fully twenty miles apart, had undergone an astounding experience whereby a complete exchange of their houses, barns, and sheds had been effected by a cyclone, without the slightest important damage to the structures.
When this was concluded, Napoleon looked pained. "I think you lie, Gett—metaphorical speakin'!" he hastened to add. "But shiver my bowsprit if I didn't see a ship, once, ten days overdue, jest snatched up and blowed into port two days ahead of time, and never touched nothing all the way, I remember the year 'cause that was the winter ma had twins and pa had guinea pigs."
"Wal," drawled Dave, who had all this time maintained a dignified silence, "I've saw some wind, in my time, but only one that was really a leetle mite too obstreperous. Yep, that was a pretty good blow—the only wind I ever seen which blew an iron loggin' chain off the fence, link by link."
Napoleon paid Dave a compliment. He said:
"You old son of a gun!"
Van thought the storms had raged sufficiently.
"Is work unpopular, or did the wind blow the water from the creek?"
"I like to work," admitted Gettysburg, "but it's fun to watch you epicures eatin'."
Beth felt embarrassed.
"Epicures?" echoed Napoleon. "You don't know what an epicure is? That's a vulgar remark when you don't know no meaning of a word."
"Epicure? Me not know what an epicure is?" replied old Gettysburg aggressively. "You bet I do. An epicure's a feller which chaws his fodder before he swallers it."
Napoleon subsided. Then he arose and sauntered out to work, Dave and Gettysburg following. Van hastily drank his cup of coffee, which, as he had predicted, was not particularly good, and started for the others. He halted in the door.
"Make yourself comfortable, if you can here, Kent," he said. "You had an exhausting experience yesterday. Perhaps you had better lie down."
Beth merely said: "Thank you." But her smile was more radiant than sunshine.