The Furnace of Gold Part 20

Beth's eyes were blazing with excitement. She had never dreamed that Searle could be so generous--so splendid. An impulse of grat.i.tude and admiration surged throughout her being.

"You'd _do_ it?" she said. "You'll do as much as that for Glen?"

"Why, how can I do less?" he answered. "That claim will doubtless be worth half a million, maybe more--if all I hear is reliable--and I get it from disinterested parties. The boy has done a good big thing.

I've got to help him out. It seems too bad to offer him only half of what he needs, but I'm not a very wealthy man. I can't be utterly Quixotic. We've all got to help him all we can."

"Oh, thank you, Searle--thank you for saying 'we,'" she said in a voice that slightly trembled. "I'm glad of the chance--glad to show dear Glen that a sister can help a little, too."

He stared at her with an excellent imitation of surprise in his gaze.

"You'll--help?" he said in astonishment, masterfully simulated. "Not with the other thirty thousand?"

"Why not?" she cried. "Why not, when Glen has the chance of his life?

You don't really think I'd hesitate?"

"But," said he, leading her onward, "he needs the money now--at once.

You'd have to get it here by wire, and all that sort of trouble."

"Then we'd better get things started," she said. "You'll help me, Searle, I'm sure."

"If you wish it," said Bostwick, "certainly."

"Dear Glen!" she said. "Dear boy! I'll write him a letter at once."

Bostwick started, alertly, as she ran in her girlish pleasure to a stand where she had placed her materials for writing.

"Good," he commented drily, "I'll mail it with one of my own."

She dashed off a bright effusion with all her spontaneous enthusiasm.

Bostwick supplied her with the address, and presently took the letter in his hand. He had much to do at the bank, he informed her, by way of preparing for the deal. He promised to return when he could.

On his way down street be deliberately tore the letter to the smallest of fragments and scattered them widely on the wind.

CHAPTER XVII

UNEXPECTED COMPLICATIONS

On the following morning news arrived in Goldite that temporarily dimmed the excitement attendant upon stories of the "Laughing Water"

property and the coming stampede to the Indian reservation.

Matt Barger and three others of the convicts, still uncaptured, had pillaged a freight team, of horses, provisions, and arms, murdered a stage driver, robbed the express of a large consignment of gold, and escaped as before to the mountains.

Two separate posses were in pursuit. Rewards aggregating ten thousand dollars were offered for Barger, dead or alive, with smaller sums for each of his companions. Their latest depredations had occurred alarmingly close to the mining camp, from which travel was becoming hazardous.

The gold theft was particularly disquieting to the Goldite mining contingent. Dangers beset their enterprises in many directions at the very best. To have this menace added, together with worry over every man's personal safety in traveling about, was fairly intolerable. The inefficient posses were roundly berated, but no man volunteered to issue forth and "get" Matt Barger--either alive or as a corpse.

The man who arrived with the news was one of Van's cronies, Dave, the little station man whom Beth had met the morning of her coming. He was here in response to a summons from Van, who thought he saw an opportunity to a.s.sist his friend to better things. Everything Dave owned he had fetched across the desert, including both the horses that Beth and Elsa once had ridden. The station itself he had sold. He had launched forth absolutely on Van's new promises, burning all his bridges, as it were, behind him.

Van came down to meet him. He had other concerns in Goldite, some with Culver, the Government representative, and others a trifle more personal, and intended to combine them all in one excursion.

No sooner had he appeared on the street, after duly stabling "Suvy" at the hay-yard, than a hundred acquaintances, suddenly transformed into intimate friends, by the change in his fortunes, pounced upon him in a spirit of generosity, hilarity, and comaraderie that cloyed not only his senses, but even his movements in the camp.

He was dragged and carried into four saloons like a helpless, good-natured bear cub, strong enough to resist by inflicting injuries, but somewhat amused by the game. Intelligence of his advent went the rounds. The local editor and the girl he had addressed as "Queenie,"

on the day of the fight in the street, were rivals in another joyous attack as he escaped at last to proceed about his own affairs.

The editor stood no chance whatsoever. Van had nothing to say, and said so. Moreover, Queenie was a very persistent, as well as a very pretty, young person, distressingly careless of deportment. She clung to Van like a bur.

"Gee, Van!" she cried with genuine tears in her eyes, "didn't I always say you was the candy? Didn't I always say I'd give you my head and breathe through my feet--day or night? Didn't I tell 'em all you was the only one? You're the only diamonds there is for me--and I didn't never wait for you to strike it first."

"No, you didn't even wait for an invitation," answered Van with a smile. "Everybody's got to hike now. I'm busy, trying to breathe."

She clung on. Unfortunately, down in an Arizona town, Van had trounced a ruffian once in Queenie's protection--simply because of her gender and entirely without reference to her character or her future att.i.tude towards himself. In her way she personified a sort of adoration and grat.i.tude, which could neither be slain nor escaped by anything that he or anyone else could do. Her devotion, however, had palled upon him early, perhaps more because of its habit of increasing. It had recently become a pest.

"Busy?" she echoed. "You said that before. When ain't you going to be busy?"

"When I'm dead," he answered, and wrenching loose he dived inside a hardware store, to purchase a hunting knife for Gettysburg, then went at once to a barber shop and shut out the torment of friends.

He escaped at the rear, when his face had been groomed, and made his way unseen to Mrs. d.i.c.k's.

Beth was not at home. She and Bostwick were together at the office of the telegraph company, where Searle was a.s.sisting her, as she thought to aid her brother, to such excellent purpose that her thirty thousand dollars bid fair to repose in the bank at his call before the business day should reach its end.

Mrs. d.i.c.k seemed to Van the one and only person in the camp unaffected by the news of his luck. She treated him precisely as she always had and doubtless always should. Therefore, he had no difficulty in getting away to Culver at his office.

The official surveyor was a fat-cheeked, handsome man, with a silky brown beard, an effeminate voice, and prodigious self-conceit. He was pacing up and down the inside office, at the rear of the rough board building, when Van came in and found him. The horseman's business was one of maps and land-office data made essential to his needs by the new recording of the "Laughing Water" property as a placer instead of a quartz claim. He had drawn a crude outline of his holdings and in taking it forth from his pocket found the knife bought for Gettysburg in the way. He removed the weapon and placed it on the table near at hand.

"There's so much of this desert unsurveyed," he said, "that no man can tell whether he's just inside or just outside of Purgatory."

"So you come to me to find out?" Culver demanded somewhat shortly. "Do you tin-horn miners think that's all this office is for?"

"Well, in my instance, I had to come to some wiser spirit than myself to get my bearings," answered Van drawlingly. "You can see that."

"There are the maps." Culver waved his hand towards a drawer in the office table, and moved impatiently over to a window, the view from which commanded a section of the street, including the bank.

Van was presently engrossed in a search for quarter sections, ranges, and towns.h.i.+ps.

"Look here," said Culver, turning upon him aggressively, "what's this racket I hear about you taking the inside track with that stunning new petticoat in town?"

Van looked up without the least suspicion of the man's real meaning.

"If you are referring to that reckless young woman called Queenie----"

"Oh, Queenie--rats!" interrupted Culver irritably. "You know who I mean. I guess you call her Beth."

Van's face took on a look of hardness as if it were chiseled in stone.

He had squared around as if at a blow. For a moment he faced the surveyor in silence.