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."
"Yesh—he's broke the law."[Illustration: "Yesh—he's broke the law."]
"Yesh—he's broke the law."[Illustration: "Yesh—he's broke the law."]
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.
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 besomethingshe could do—theremustbe 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 thedemi-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.
"Myinterest 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!
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, Ido. 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 thechink!" 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.