CHAPTER XXVII

TALL STORIES

Daylight had barely broadened into morning when Van was astir from his bed. The air was chill and wonderfully clean. Above the eastern run of hills the sun was ready to appear.

Beth still lay deep in slumber. She had curled up like a child in her meager covering. Van watched her from his distance. A little shiver pa.s.sed through her form, from time to time. Her hat was still in place, but how girlish, how sweet, how helpless was her face--the little he could see! How he wished he might permit her to sleep it out as nature demanded. For her own sake, not for his, he must hasten her onward to Goldite, by way of the "Laughing Water" claim.

He walked off eastward where a natural furrow made a deep depression in the valley. His pony followed, the la.s.so dragging in the sand. Once over at the furrow edge, the man took out his pistol and fired it off in the air.

Beth was duly aroused. Van saw her leap to her feet, then he disappeared in the hollow, with his broncho at his heels.

The girl was, if possible, stiffer than before. But she was much refreshed. For a moment she feared Van was deserting, till she noted his saddle, near at hand. Then he presently emerged upon the level of the plain and returned to the site of their camp.

"First call for breakfast in the dining-car," he said. "We can make it by half-past eight."

"If only we could have a cup of good hot coffee first, before we start," said Beth, and she smiled at the vainness of the thought.

"We won't get good coffee at the claim," Van a.s.sured her dryly. "But near-coffee would lure me out of this."

He was rapidly adjusting the blanket and saddle on his horse.

"You'll have to ride or we can't make speed," he added. "As a walker you're sure the limited."

She appreciated thoroughly the delicacy with which he meant to continue the fiction of her s.e.x. But he certainly was frank.

"Thank you," she answered amusedly. "I'd do better, perhaps, if I weren't so over-burdened with flattery."

"You'll have to do better, anyhow," he observed, concluding preparations with Suvy. "There you are. Get on. Father Time with hobbles on could beat us getting a move."

He started off, leaving her to mount by herself. She managed the matter somewhat stiffly, suppressing a groan at the effort, and then for an hour she was gently pummeled into limberness as the pony followed Van.

They came at the end of that time to one of the upper reaches of that same river she had forded the previous day. To all appearances the wide shallow bed was a counterpart of the one over which her horse had waded. But the trail turned sharply down the stream, and followed along its bank.

They had halted for the pony to drink. Van also refreshed himself and Beth dismounted to lie flat down and quench her long, trying thirst.

"Right across there, high up in the hills, is the 'Laughing Water'

claim," said Van, pointing north-eastward towards the mountains. "Only three miles away, if we could fly, but six as we have to go around."

"And why do we have to go around?" Beth inquired. "Aren't we going to cross the river here?"

"Looks like a river, I admit," he said, eying the placid stream.

"That's a graveyard there--quicksand all the way across."

Beth's heart felt a shock at the thought of what could occur to a traveler here, unacquainted with the treacherous waters.

"Good gracious!" she said. She added generously: "Couldn't I walk a little now, and--share the horse?"

"When you walk it gets on Suvy's nerves to try to keep step," he answered. "Fall in."

They went two miles down the river, then, across on a rock-and-gravel bottom, at a ford directly opposite a jagged rift in the mountains.

This chasm, which was short and steep, they traversed perspiringly.

The sun was getting warm. Beyond them then the way was all a rough, hard climb, over ridges, down through canyons, around huge d.y.k.es of rock and past innumerable foldings of the range. How Van knew the way was more than Beth could understand. She was already growing wearied anew, since the night had afforded her very little rest, and she had not eaten for nearly a day.

Van knew she was in no condition for the ride. He was watching her constantly, rejoicing in her spirit, but aching for her aches. He set a faster pace for the broncho to follow, to end the climb as soon as possible.

At length, below a rounded ridge, where stunted evergreens made a welcome bit of greenery, he came to a halt.

"We're almost there," he said. "You'll have to remain at the claim till somewhere near noon, then I'll show you the way down to Goldite."

"Till noon?" She looked at him steadily, a light of worry in her eyes as she thought of arriving so late at Mrs. d.i.c.k's, with what consequences--the Lord alone knew.

"I can't get away much earlier," he said, and to this, by way of acting his part, he added: "Do you want to wear me out?"

She knew what he meant. He would wait till noon to give her time to rest. She would need all the rest he could make possible. And then he would only "show her the way to Goldite." He would not ride with her to town. She might yet escape the compromising plight into which she had been thrust. His thoughtfulness, it seemed, could have no end.

"Very well," she murmured. "I'm sorry to have made you all this trouble." She was not--someways; she was lawlessly, inordinately glad.

The "trouble" for Van had been the most precious experience in all his life.

"It has been one wild spasm of delight," he said in his dryest manner of sarcasm. "But between us, Kent, I'm glad it's no continuous performance."

He went over the ridge, she following. A moment later they were looking down upon the "Laughing Water" claim from that self-same eminence from which Searle Bostwick had seen it when he rode one day from the Indian reservation.

"This," said Van, "is home."

"Oh," said the girl, and tears sprang into her eyes.

And a very home, indeed, it presently seemed, when they came to the shack, where Gettysburg, Napoleon, old Dave, and even Algy, the Chinese cook, came forth to give them cordial welcome.

Beth was introduced to all as Glenmore Kent--and pa.s.sed inspection.

"Brother of Miss Beth Kent," said Van, "who honored us once with a visit to the Monte Cristo fiasco. He's been lost on the desert and he's too done up to talk, so I want him to be fed and entertained. And of the two requirements, the feed's more important than the vaudeville show, unless your stunts can put a man to sleep."

Algy and Gettysburg got the impromptu breakfast together. The placer sluices outside were neglected. n.o.body wished to shovel sand for gold when marvelous tales might be exchanged concerning the wind storm that had raged across the hills the day before.

Indeed, as Van and Beth sat together at the board, regaling themselves like the two famished beings they were, their three entertainers proceeded to liberate some of the tallest stories concerning storms that mortal ever heard.

Napoleon and Gettysburg became the hottest of rivals in an effort to deliver something good. Gettysburg furnished a tale of a breeze in the unpeopled wilds of Nebraska where two men's farms, fully twenty miles apart, had undergone an astounding experience whereby a complete exchange of their houses, barns, and sheds had been effected by a cyclone, without the slightest important damage to the structures.

When this was concluded, Napoleon looked pained. "I think you lie, Gett--metaphorical speakin'!" he hastened to add. "But shiver my bowsprit if I didn't see a ship, once, ten days overdue, jest s.n.a.t.c.hed up and blowed into port two days ahead of time, and never touched nothing all the way, I remember the year 'cause that was the winter ma had twins and pa had guinea pigs."

"Wal," drawled Dave, who had all this time maintained a dignified silence, "I've saw some wind, in my time, but only one that was really a leetle mite too obstreperous. Yep, that was a pretty good blow--the only wind I ever seen which blew an iron loggin' chain off the fence, link by link."

Napoleon paid Dave a compliment. He said: