CHAPTER XVII
UNEXPECTED COMPLICATIONS
On the following morning news arrived in Goldite that temporarilydimmed 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, hadpillaged a freight team, of horses, provisions, and arms, murdered astage driver, robbed the express of a large consignment of gold, andescaped as before to the mountains.
Two separate posses were in pursuit. Rewards aggregating ten thousanddollars were offered for Barger, dead or alive, with smaller sums foreach of his companions. Their latest depredations had occurredalarmingly close to the mining camp, from which travel was becominghazardous.
The gold theft was particularly disquieting to the Goldite miningcontingent. Dangers beset their enterprises in many directions at thevery best. To have this menace added, together with worry over everyman's personal safety in traveling about, was fairly intolerable. Theinefficient posses were roundly berated, but no man volunteered toissue 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, thelittle station man whom Beth had met the morning of her coming. He washere in response to a summons from Van, who thought he saw anopportunity to assist his friend to better things. Everything Daveowned he had fetched across the desert, including both the horses thatBeth and Elsa once had ridden. The station itself he had sold. He hadlaunched forth absolutely on Van's new promises, burning all hisbridges, as it were, behind him.
Van came down to meet him. He had other concerns in Goldite, some withCulver, the Government representative, and others a trifle morepersonal, and intended to combine them all in one excursion.
No sooner had he appeared on the street, after duly stabling "Suvy" atthe hay-yard, than a hundred acquaintances, suddenly transformed intointimate friends, by the change in his fortunes, pounced upon him in aspirit of generosity, hilarity, and comaraderie that cloyed not onlyhis 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 therounds. The local editor and the girl he had addressed as "Queenie,"on the day of the fight in the street, were rivals in another joyousattack as he escaped at last to proceed about his own affairs.
The editor stood no chance whatsoever. Van had nothing to say, andsaid so. Moreover, Queenie was a very persistent, as well as a verypretty, young person, distressingly careless of deportment. She clungto Van like a bur.
"Gee, Van!" she cried with genuine tears in her eyes, "didn't I alwayssay you was the candy? Didn't I always say I'd give you my head andbreathe through my feet--day or night? Didn't I tell 'em all you wasthe only one? You're the only diamonds there is for me--and I didn'tnever wait for you to strike it first."
"No, you didn't even wait for an invitation," answered Van with asmile. "Everybody's got to hike now. I'm busy, trying to breathe."
She clung on. Unfortunately, down in an Arizona town, Van had trounceda ruffian once in Queenie's protection--simply because of her genderand entirely without reference to her character or her future attitudetowards himself. In her way she personified a sort of adoration andgratitude, which could neither be slain nor escaped by anything that heor anyone else could do. Her devotion, however, had palled upon himearly, perhaps more because of its habit of increasing. It hadrecently become a pest.
"Busy?" she echoed. "You said that before. When ain't you going to bebusy?"
"When I'm dead," he answered, and wrenching loose he dived inside ahardware store, to purchase a hunting knife for Gettysburg, then wentat 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 hisway unseen to Mrs. Dick's.
Beth was not at home. She and Bostwick were together at the office ofthe telegraph company, where Searle was assisting her, as she thoughtto aid her brother, to such excellent purpose that her thirty thousanddollars bid fair to repose in the bank at his call before the businessday should reach its end.
Mrs. Dick seemed to Van the one and only person in the camp unaffectedby the news of his luck. She treated him precisely as she always hadand doubtless always should. Therefore, he had no difficulty ingetting away to Culver at his office.
The official surveyor was a fat-cheeked, handsome man, with a silkybrown beard, an effeminate voice, and prodigious self-conceit. He waspacing up and down the inside office, at the rear of the rough boardbuilding, when Van came in and found him. The horseman's business wasone of maps and land-office data made essential to his needs by the newrecording of the "Laughing Water" property as a placer instead of aquartz claim. He had drawn a crude outline of his holdings and intaking it forth from his pocket found the knife bought for Gettysburgin the way. He removed the weapon and placed it on the table near athand.
"There's so much of this desert unsurveyed," he said, "that no man cantell whether he's just inside or just outside of Purgatory."
"So you come to me to find out?" Culver demanded somewhat shortly. "Doyou tin-horn miners think that's all this office is for?"
"Well, in my instance, I had to come to some wiser spirit than myselfto get my bearings," answered Van drawlingly. "You can see that."
"There are the maps." Culver waved his hand towards a drawer in theoffice table, and moved impatiently over to a window, the view fromwhich commanded a section of the street, including the bank.
Van was presently engrossed in a search for quarter sections, ranges,and townships.
"Look here," said Culver, turning upon him aggressively, "what's thisracket I hear about you taking the inside track with that stunning newpetticoat 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 Imean. 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 thesurveyor in silence.
"You are making some grave mistake," he said presently in ominous calm."Please don't make such an allusion as that again."
"So, the shot went home," Culver laughed unctuously, turning for amoment from the window. "I thought it would. You know you couldn'texpect to keep anything like that all to yourself, Van Buren. You'renot the only ladies' man on the beach. And as for this clod of aBostwick----" He had turned to look out as before, and grew suddenlyexcited. Beth was in view at the bank. "By the gods!" he exclaimedwith a sudden change of tone, "she is the handsomest bit ofconfectionery on earth. If I don't win her----"
His utterance promptly ceased, together with his abominable activitiesand primping in the window. Van, who did not know that this creaturehad been Beth's particular annoyance, had crossed the room without asound and laid his grip on Culver's collar.
"You cur!" he said quietly, and choking the man he flung him downagainst the floor and wall as if he had been the merest puppet.
Someone had entered the outside door. Neither Culver nor Van heard thesound. Culver rolled over, scrambled to his feet, and with his faceand neck engorged with rage, came rushing at the horseman like a fury.
"You blackguard!" he screamed, "I'll tear out your heart for that!I'll kill you like----"
"Shut up!" Van commanded quietly, stopping the onrush of his angeredfoe by putting his hand against the surveyor's face and sending himreeling as before. "Don't tell me what you'll do to me--or to anyoneelse in this camp! And if ever I hear of you opening your mouth againas you did here a moment ago, I'll tie a knot so hard in your carcassyou'll have to be buried in a hat box!"
He glanced towards the doorway. A stranger stoo
d on the threshold.Bowing, Van passed him and left the place, too angered to think eitherof the maps or of his knife.
Culver, raging like a maniac, bowled headlong into the visitor, in hiseffort to overtake the horseman, but found himself baffled and took outhis wrath in foul vituperation that presently drove the stranger fromthe place.
The Furnace of Gold Page 17