"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 a moment from the window. "I thought it would. You know you couldn't expect to keep anything like that all to yourself, Van Buren. You're not the only ladies' man on the beach. And as for this clod of a Bostwick----" He had turned to look out as before, and grew suddenly excited. Beth was in view at the bank. "By the G.o.ds!" he exclaimed with a sudden change of tone, "she is the handsomest bit of confectionery on earth. If I don't win her----"

His utterance promptly ceased, together with his abominable activities and primping in the window. Van, who did not know that this creature had been Beth's particular annoyance, had crossed the room without a sound and laid his grip on Culver's collar.

"You cur!" he said quietly, and choking the man he flung him down against the floor and wall as if he had been the merest puppet.

Someone had entered the outside door. Neither Culver nor Van heard the sound. Culver rolled over, scrambled to his feet, and with his face and 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 angered foe by putting his hand against the surveyor's face and sending him reeling as before. "Don't tell me what you'll do to me--or to anyone else in this camp! And if ever I hear of you opening your mouth again as you did here a moment ago, I'll tie a knot so hard in your carca.s.s you'll have to be buried in a hat box!"

He glanced towards the doorway. A stranger stood on the threshold.

Bowing, Van pa.s.sed him and left the place, too angered to think either of the maps or of his knife.

Culver, raging like a maniac, bowled headlong into the visitor, in his effort to overtake the horseman, but found himself baffled and took out his wrath in foul vituperation that presently drove the stranger from the place.

CHAPTER XVIII

WHEREIN MATTERS THICKEN

The stranger who had witnessed the trouble at Culver's office had come there at the instance of McCoppet. It was, therefore, to McCoppet that he carried the intelligence of what had taken place, so far as he had seen.

The gambler was exceedingly pleased. That Culver would now be ready, as never before, to receive a proposition whereby the owners of the "Laughing Water" claim could be deprived of their ground, he was well convinced.

For reasons best known to himself and skillfully concealed from all acquaintances, McCoppet had remained practically in hiding since the moment in which he had beheld that half-breed Piute Indian in the saloon. He remained out of sight even now, dispatching a messenger to Culver, in the afternoon, requesting his presence for a conference for the total undoing of Van Buren.

Culver, who in ordinary circ.u.mstances might have refused this request with haughty insolence, responded to the summons rather sooner than McCoppet had expected. He was still red with anger, and meditating personal violence to Van at the earliest possible meeting.

McCoppet, with his smokeless cigar in his mouth, and his great opal sentient with fire, received his visitor in the little private den to which Bostwick had been taken.

"How are you, Culver?" he said off-handedly.

"I wanted to have a little talk. I sent a man up to your shop a while ago, and he told me you fired Van Buren out of the place on the run."

"That's n.o.body's business but mine," said Culver aggressively. "If that is all you care to talk about----"

"Don't roil up," interrupted the gambler. "I don't even know what the fight was about, and I don't care a tinker's whoop either. I got you here to give you a chance to put Van Buren out of commission and make a lifetime winning."

Culver looked at him sharply.

"It must be something crooked."

"Nothing's crooked that works out straight," said McCoppet. "What's life anyhow but a sure-thing game? It's stacked for us all to lose out in the end. What's the use of being finniky while we live--as long as even the Almighty's dealing brace?"

Culver was impatient. "Well?"

"I won't beat around the chapparal," said McCoppet. "It ain't my way."

Nevertheless, with much finesse and art he contrived to put his proposition in a manner to rob it of many of its ugly features.

However, he made the business plain.

"You see," he concluded, "the old reservation line might actually be wrong--and all you'd have to do would be to put it right. That's what we want--we want the line put right."

Culver was more angered than before. He understood the conspiracy thoroughly. No detail of its cleverness escaped him.

"If you thought you could trade on my personal unpleasantness with an owner of the 'Laughing Water' claim," he said hotly, "you have made the mistake of your life. I wish you good-day."

He rose to go. McCoppet rose and stopped him.

"Don't get feverish," said he. "It don't pay. I ain't requesting this service from you for just your feelings against a man. There's plenty in this for us all."

"You mean bribe money, I suppose," said Culver no less aggressively than before. "Is that what you mean?"

"Don't call it hard names," begged the gambler. "It's just a retainer--say twenty thousand dollars."

Culver burned to the top of his ears. He looked at McCoppet intently with an expression the gambler could not interpret.

"Just to change that line a thousand feet," urged the man of gambling propensities. "I'll make it twenty-five."

Still Culver made no response. With all his other hateful attributes of character he was tempered steel on incorruptibility. He was not even momentarily tempted to avenge himself thus on Van Buren.

McCoppet thought he had him wavering. He attempted to push him over the brink.

"Say," said he persuasively, lowering his voice to a tone of the confidential, "I can strain a little more out of one of my partners and make it thirty thousand dollars." He had no intention of employing a cent of his own. Bostwick was to pay all these expenses. "Thirty thousand dollars, cash," he repeated, "the minute you finish your work--and make it look like a Government _correction_ of the line."

Culver broke forth on him with acc.u.mulated wrath.

"You d.a.m.nable puppy!" he said in a futile effort to be adequate to the situation. "You sneak! Of all the accursed intrigues--insults--robberies that ever were hatched---- By G.o.d, sir, if you offered me a million of money you shouldn't alter that Government line by a hair! If you speak to me again--I'll knock you down!"

He flung the door wide open, went out like a rocket, and bowled a man half over in his blind haste to be quit the place.

McCoppet was left there staring where he had gone--staring and afraid of what the results would probably be to all the game. He had no eyes to behold a man who had suddenly discerned him from the crowds. A moment later he started violently as a huge form stood in the door.

"Trimmer!" he said, "I'm busy!"

"You're goin' to be busier in about a minute, if I don't see you right now," said the man addressed as Trimmer, a raw, bull-like lumberman from the mountains. "Been waitin' to see you some time."

"Come in," said the gambler instantly regaining his composure. "Come in and shut the door. How are you, anyway?" He held out his hand to shake.

Trimmer closed the door. "Ain't ready to shake, jest yet," he said.

"I come here to see you on business."

"That's all right, Larry," answered McCoppet. "That's all right. Sit down."