Equipped with this latest means of squeezing McCoppet, the creature emerged from his hole in time to meet the gambler at the bar, during a moment of Bostwick's temporary absence.

"Opal," he said significantly, "I need to see you fer a minute. It won't be no healthier to refuse me now than it was the first time I come."

The gambler looked at him coldly. "I haven't got time to talk now, Larry, but some of your money is at your order any time you want it, in gold, or poker chips, or gin."

Trimmer was placated. "All right," he said, and cunningly resolved, upon the spot, to keep his latest secret on the ice.

Lawrence had already disappeared to hasten arrangements for getting out upon his work.

Bostwick had waited half an hour in the utmost impatience. With a hundred things to increase his restlessness of mind and body, he had finally gone to the postoffice and there discovered a letter from Glenmore Kent.

It was short, and now no longer fresh. It had been composed just after the young man's accident, and after relating how he had received a not inconsiderable injury, requested Searle to come to Starlight at once, if possible, and not to divulge any needless facts to Beth.

"I'm broke, and this knock puts me down and out," the letter concluded.

"Come down, like a good old chap, and cheer me up."

Bostwick destroyed the letter promptly, lest it fall by some accident into other hands than his own. Not without a slight feeling of guilt, the man shut out all thought, for the present, of deserting Goldite and the plot. That Beth would learn nothing from himself as to Glen's condition was a certainty. He was glad of this wisdom in the boy--this show of courage whereby he had wished his sister spared.

But the more he thought upon Beth's att.i.tude towards himself, and the mystifying confessions old Billy St.i.tts had made, concerning the errands he was running for the girl, the more Bostwick fretted and warmed with exasperation, suspicion, and jealousy. He returned to McCoppet's. The door to the den was still barred. Impatiently he started again for Mrs. d.i.c.k's. He was not in the least certain as to what he meant to do or say, but felt obliged to do something.

Meantime, Beth had written to her brother. Bostwick's evasions and lies had aroused more than merely a vague alarm in her breast. She had begun to feel, perhaps partially by intuition, that something was altogether wrong. Searle's anxiety to a.s.sure her she need not write to Glen--that he was coming to Goldite--had provided the one required element to excite a new trend in her thought. She knew that Glen would not come soon to town. She knew she must get him word. She had thought of one way only to insure herself and Glen against deceit--ask Van to go in person with her letter, and bring her Glen's reply.

Had she felt the affair to be in the slightest degree unimportant she might have hesitated to think of making this request, but the more she dwelt upon it the more essential it seemed to become. Her brothers very life might be dependent upon this promptness of action. A very large sum of money was certainly involved in some sort of business of which, she felt, both she and Glen were in ignorance. Bostwick had certainly not seen Glen at all. His deceptions might mean anything!--the gravest of dangers to them all!

It had taken her the briefest time only to resolve upon her course--and then old Billy came upon the scene, as if in answer to a question she had asked--how to get her request and the letter to Glen across the hills to Van, at the "Laughing Water" claim?

Three letters she wrote, and tore to sc.r.a.ps, before one was finally composed to express all she felt, in the way that she wished it expressed. Old Billy went off to wait and returned there duly, enormously pleased by his commission. He knew the way to the "Laughing Water" claim and could ride the borrowed pony.

As pleased as a dog with a parcel of meat, entrusted to his keeping by a confident master, he finally started for the hay-yard, with two dainty letters in his keeping. One was to Van, with Beth's request; the other was, of course, to her brother.

Bostwick met the proud old beau at the corner of the street.

"Say, Uncle, what did I tell you," said Billy at once. "This time it's the biggest errand yet."

Bostwick had wondered if he might not catch Mr. St.i.tts in some such service as he boasted now, and his wit was worthy of his nature.

"Yes," he said readily, "Miss Kent was saying she thought perhaps she could get you to carry a note to Mr. Van Buren." It was a hazardous coup but he dared it with the utmost show of pleasure in his smile.

For a second, however, as he watched the old man's face, he feared he had overshot the mark.

Old Billy was pleased and disappointed together. However, his wish to prove his importance greatly outweighed his chagrin that Beth should have taken even "Uncle" Bostwick into her confidence.

"That ain't all she give me," he announced, as foolishly as a child.

"I've got her letter to her brother, over to Starlight, too, and nothin' couldn't stop me from takin' it up to the 'Laughing Water'

claim. You bet I'll see Van Buren gits it right into his hand from me!"

If Bostwick had contemplated making an attempt to bribe the old beau into permitting him a glance at the letters, he abandoned the thought with sagacious alacrity. He must think of something safer. A letter to Van Buren and one to Glen was more than he had counted on discovering. It made him decidedly uneasy.

"I'm sure you'll deliver everything safely," he said, masking his annoyance with a smile. "Before you go, perhaps, you'd take something to drink."

The suggestion in his mind was crude, but at least it was something.

"Huh!" said old Billy, "Me!--drink and git a jag when she's expectin'

me to hike right out of camp? Guess you don't know me, Uncle, not worth a mice! Didn't I say nuthin' couldn't stop me? And I'm goin'

right now."

He clapped his bony old hand over his pocket, where the two precious letters reposed, and winking prodigiously at Bostwick, departed forthwith from the scene.

Bostwick could have run him down, beaten him to the ground and s.n.a.t.c.hed the letters from him, but he did not dare. Instead, he merely continued to grin while Billy remained in sight. Then instead of going on to Beth's, he circled a building and returned down street towards McCoppet's.

CHAPTER x.x.xI

MCCOPPET BUSIES HIS MIND

Unfortunately for Bostwick he knew no ruffians in the camp--none of the Trimmers who would, perhaps, accept a sum of money to waylay a man, bash him over the head, and filch required letters from his pocket. He was not precisely willing, moreover, to broach such an undertaking to the gambler. This, after all, was his private affair, to be shared with no one he knew.

The man had arrived at the truth concerning the letters with commendable skill in deduction. He had himself destroyed Beth's earlier letter to her brother, for reasons of policy. He had found her conduct cold, if not suspicious, this morning. How far she had been excited to distrust himself or the mails he could not estimate. He was certain, however, she had sent a request to Van Buren to carry a letter to Glen.

Her reasons for taking precautions so extraordinary were undoubtedly significant. He was galled; his anger against Van Buren was consuming.

But first and foremost he must block the harm Beth's letter to her brother might accomplish. For two days more young Kent and Beth must remain in ignorance of what was being done through the use of her money--of the fact that no mine of Glen's discovery was the object of the scheme he was working, and that none of his own alleged money was being employed in the game.

He made up his mind to go to Starlight himself--to be on hand when Van Buren should arrive. With Glenmore ill, or injured, in his bed, the case might offer simple handling, Further neglect of Glenmore might, indeed, be fatal, at a juncture so delicate. From every possible viewpoint the thing to do was to intercept Van Buren.

He found McCoppet just returned from launching Lawrence forth upon his work. Three of the gambler's chosen men had accompanied the Government's surveyor. They had taken Bostwick's car. Instructions had been simple enough. Push over the reservation line to cover the "Laughing Water" claim, by night of the following day.

Searle was taken to the private den. McCoppet imparted his information with the utmost brevity.

"Nothing for us to do but to wait till six o'clock, day after to-morrow morning," he concluded, "then play our cards--and play 'em quick."

"You've taken my car?" said Bostwick, whose personal plans were thrown into utter confusion, for the moment. "I wanted that car for my own use. I've got to go to Starlight to-morrow."

"Sit down," said McCoppet, throwing away his unsmoked cigar and taking another from his pocket. "What's going on at Starlight?"

Bostwick had no intention of divulging his personal affairs, but there was something in this that trenched upon "company" concerns.

"Van Buren's going over there, to see young Kent," he admitted. "I've got to see him first."

McCoppet looked up at him sharply.

"Young Kent ain't next to anything?" he demanded.

"Not yet."

"Look here," said the gambler, whose wits were inordinately keen, "is anything leaking, Bostwick? What about the girl--the young chump's sister? You're not putting her wise to the layout?"

"Certainly not!" said Bostwick. "She knows nothing. But it wouldn't be safe for this mix-up to occur. At any rate, I propose to be there when Van Buren arrives."