The Furnace of Gold Part 24

"You shan't!" she repeated. "You ought to be ashamed! How dare you treat me----"

He had turned abruptly, looking towards the door. Her utterance was halted by his movement of listening. She had barely time to take up her papers, and make an effort at regaining her composure. Bostwick was coming down the hall. He presently appeared at the door. For a moment there was silence.

Van was the first to speak.

"How are you, Searle?" he said cheerily. "Got over your grouch?"

Bostwick looked him over with ill-concealed loathing.

"You thought you were clever, I suppose," he said in a growl-like tone that certainly fitted his face. "What are you doing here, I'd like to know?"

"Tottering angels!" said Van, "didn't that experience do you any good after all? No wonder the convicts wouldn't have you!"

Beth was afraid for what Bostwick might have heard. She could not censure Van for what he had done; she saw he would make no explanations. At best she could only attempt to put some appearance of the commonplace upon the horseman's visit.

"Mr. Van Buren came--to see Mrs. d.i.c.k," she faltered, steadying her voice as best she might. "They're--very old friends."

"What's that?" demanded Bostwick, coming into the room and pointing at the bright nugget pin, lying exposed upon the table. "Some present, I suppose, for Mrs. d.i.c.k?" He started to take it in his hand.

Van interposed. "It's neither for Mrs. d.i.c.k nor for you. It's a present I've made to Miss Kent."

Bostwick elevated his brows.

"Indeed?"

Beth fluttered in with a word of defense.

"It's just a little souvenir--that's all--a souvenir of--of my escape from those terrible men."

"And Searle's return," added Van, who felt the very devil in his veins at sight of Bostwick helpless and enraged.

Searle opened his lips as if to fling out something of his wrath. He held it back and turned to Beth.

"It will soon be night. We have much to do. I suppose I may see you, privately--even here?"

Beth was helpless. And in the circ.u.mstances she wished for Van to go.

"Certainly," she answered, raising her eyes for a second to the horseman's, "--that is--if----"

"Certainly," Van answered cordially. "Good-by." He advanced and held out his hand.

She gave him her own because there was nothing else to do--and the tingling of his being made it burn. She did not dare to meet his gaze.

"So long, Searle," he added smilingly. "Better turn that grouch out to pasture."

Then he went.

CHAPTER XX

QUEENIE

The shadows of evening met Van, as he stepped from the outside door and started up the street. Then a figure emerged from the shadows and met him by the corner.

It was Queenie. Her eyes were red from weeping. A smile that someway affected Van most poignantly, he knew not why, came for a moment to her lips.

"You didn't expect to see me here," she said. "I had to come to see if it was so."

"What is it, Queenie? What do you mean? What do you want?" he answered. "What's the trouble?"

"Nothing," she said. "I don't want nothing I can git--I guess--unless--Oh, _is_ it her, Van? Is it sure all over with me?"

"Look here," he said, not unkindly, "you've always been mistaken, Queenie. I told you at the time--that time in Arizona--I'd have done what I did for an Indian squaw--for any woman in the world. Why couldn't you let it go at that?"

"You know why I couldn't," she answered with a certain intensity of utterance that gave him a species of chill. "After what you done--like the only real friend I ever had--I belonged to you--and couldn't even take myself away."

"But I didn't want anyone to belong to me, Queenie. You know that. I could barely support my clothes."

Her eyes burned with a strange luminosity. Her utterance was eager.

"But you want somebody to belong to you now? Ain't that what's the matter with you now?"

He did not answer directly.

"I didn't think it was in you, Queenie, to follow me around and play the spy. I've liked you pretty well--but--I couldn't like this."

She stared at him helplessly, as an animal might have looked.

"I couldn't help it," she murmured, repressing some terrible emotion of despair. "I won't never trouble you no more."

She turned around and went away, walking uncertainly, as if from physical weakness and the blindness of pain.

Van felt himself inordinately wrung--felt it a cruelty not to run and overtake her--give her some measure of comfort. There was nothing he could do that would not be misunderstood. Moreover, he had no adequate idea of what was in her mind--or in her homeless heart. He had known her always as a b.u.t.terfly; he could not take her tragically now.

"Poor girl," he said as he watched her vanis.h.i.+ng from sight, "if only she had ever had a show!"

He looked back at Mrs. d.i.c.k's. Bostwick had ousted him after all, before he could extenuate his madness, before he could ascertain whether Beth were angry or not--before he could bid her good-by.

Now that the cool of evening was upon him, along with the chill of sober reflection, he feared for what he had done. He was as mad, as crude as Queenie. Yet his fear of Beth's opinion was a sign that he loved her as a woman should be loved, sacredly, and with a certain awe, although he made no such a.n.a.lysis, and took no credit to himself for the half regrets that persistently haunted his reflections.

It would be a moonlight night, he pondered. He had counted on riding by the lunar glow to the "Laughing Water" claim. Would Beth, by any possibility, attempt to see him--come out, perhaps, in the moonlight--for a word before he should go?

He could not entertain a thought of departing without again beholding her. He wanted to know what she would say, and when he might see her again. After all, what was the hurry to depart? He might as well wait a little longer.

He went to the hay-yard. Dave had disappeared. Half an hour of search failed to bring him to light. On the point of entering a restaurant to allay his sense of emptiness, Van was suddenly accosted by a wild-eyed man, bare-headed and sweating, who ran at him, calling as he came.