Meantime, in absolute ignorance of all that was happening on his property, Van continued towards Starlight unmolested. An hour after sundown he rode to the camp, inquired his way to the rough-board shack, where Kent was lying ill, and was met at the door by a stranger, whom Glen had employed as cook and "general nurse."

Bostwick was there. He remained unseen. His instructions were imperative--and the "nurse" had no choice but to obey.

"Of course, Kent's here," he admitted, in response to Van's first question. "He can't see no one, neither--no matter who it is."

"I've brought a letter from his sister," Van explained. "He's got to have it, and have it now. If he wishes to send any answer back, I'm here to take it."

The "nurse" looked him over.

"The orders from the doctor is no visitors!" he said. "And that goes.

If you want to leave the letter, why you kin."

Van produced the letter.

"If the man's as ill as that, I have no desire to b.u.t.t in for an interview," he said. "Oblige me by ascertaining at your earliest convenience whether or not I may be of service to Mr. Kent in returning his reply."

The man looked bewildered. He received the letter, somewhat dubiously, and disappeared. Van waited. The reception was not precisely what he might have expected, but, for the matter of that, neither had the trip been altogether what he might have chosen.

It was fully twenty minutes before the nurse reappeared.

"He was just woke up enough to say thank you and wants to know if you'll oblige him with the favor of takin' his hand-write back to his sister in the mornin'?"

Van looked him over steadily. After all, the man within might be utterly sick and weak. His request was natural. And the service was for Beth.

"Certainly," he said. "I'll be here at seven in the morning."

Starlight was nearly deserted. Gratified to discover sufficient food and bedding for himself and his pony, Van made no complaint.

At six in the morning he was rousing up the blacksmith, fortunately not yet gone to join the reservation rush. Suvy was shod, and at seven o'clock he and Van were again at Glenmore's cabin.

His man was in waiting. In his hand he held an envelope, unsealed.

"Mr. Kent's asleep, but here's his hand-write to his sister," he said.

"He wants you to read it out before you hike."

Van received the envelope, glanced at the man inquiringly, and removed a single sheet of paper. It was not a note from Glen; it appeared to be the final page of Beth's own letter to her brother. Van knew the strong, large chirography. His eye ran swiftly over all the lines.

"--so I felt I ought to know about things, and let you know of what is going on. There is more that I cannot tell you. I wrote you much in my former letter--much, I mean, about the man who will carry this letter, so unsuspiciously--the man I shall yet repay if it lies within my power. For the things he has done--and for what he is--for what he represents--this is the man I hate more than anything or anyone else in the world. You would understand me if you knew it all--all! Let him carry some word from you to Your loving sister, BETH."

Van had read and comprehended the full significance of the lines before he realized some error had been made--that this piece of Beth's letter had been placed by mistake in the envelope for him to take, instead of the letter Glen had written.

He did not know and could not know that Bostwick, within, by the sick man's side, had kept Glen stupid and hazy with drugs, that the one word "hate" had been "love" on the sheet he held in his hand till altered by the man from New York, or that something far different from an utterly despicable treachery towards himself had been planned in Beth's warm, happy heart.

The thing, in its enormity, struck him a blow that made him reel, for a moment, till he could grasp at his self-control. He had made no sign, and he made none now as he folded the sheet in its creases.

"I'm afraid you made some mistake," he said. "This is not the note from Mr. Kent. Perhaps you will bring me the other."

"What?" said the man, unaware of the fact that Bostwick had purposely arranged this scheme for putting the altered sheet in Van Buren's hands.

"What's that?" He glanced at the sheet in genuine surprise.

"Keerect," he said. "I'll go and git you the letter."

Van mounted his horse. His face had taken on a chiseled appearance, as if it had been cut in stone. He had ridden here through desert heat and flood, for this--to fetch such a letter as this, to a man he had never seen nor cared to see, and whose answer he had promised to return.

He made no effort to understand it--why she should send him when the regular mail would have answered every purpose. The vague, dark hints contained in her letter--hints at things going on--things she could not tell--held little to arouse his interest. A stabbed man would have taken more interest in the name of the maker of the weapon, stamped on the dagger's blade, than did Van in the detail of affairs between Glenmore Kent and his sister. Beth had done this thing, and he had fondly believed her love was welded to his own. She had meant it, then, when she cried in her pa.s.sion that she hated him for what he had done. Her anger that night upon the hill by Mrs. d.i.c.k's had not been jealousy of Queenie, but rage against himself. She was doubtless in love with Bostwick after all--and would share this joke with her lover.

He shrugged his shoulders. Luck had never been his friend. By what right had he recently begun to expect her smile? And why had he continued, for years, to believe in man or in Fate? All the madness of joy he had felt for days, concerning Beth and the "Laughing Water"

claim, departed as if through a sieve. He cared for nothing, the claim, the world, or his life. As for Beth--what was the use of wishing to understand?

The "nurse" came out at the door again, this time with a note which Bostwick had written, with a few suggestions from Glen, in an unsealed cover as before.

"I told young Kent you didn't take no time to read the other," he said, holding up the epistle. "If you want to read this----"

"Thank you," Van interrupted, taking the letter and thrusting it at once in his pocket. "Thank Mr. Kent for his courtesies, in my behalf."

He turned and rode away.

CHAPTER x.x.xIV

THE TAKING OF THE CLAIM

Before six o'clock that morning, while Van was arousing the blacksmith, the reservation madness broke its bounds. Twenty-five hundred gold-blinded men made the rush for coveted grounds.

The night had been one long revel of drinking, gambling, and excitement. No one had slept in the reservation town--for no one had dared. Bawling, singing, and shouting, the jollier element had shamed the coyotes from the land. Half a thousand camp fires had flared all night upon the plain. The desert had developed an oasis of flowing liquors, glaring lights, and turmoil of life, l.u.s.t, and laughter. Good nature and bitter antagonism, often hand in hand, had watched the night hours pale.

By daylight the "dead line" of the reservation boundary--the old, accepted line that all had acknowledged--resembled a thin, dark battle formation, ready for the charge. It was a heterogeneous array, where every unit, instead of being one of an army mobilized against a common foe, was the enemy of all the others, lined up beside him. There were men on foot, men on horses, mules, and burros, men in wagons, buckboards, and buggies, and men in automobiles.

At half-past five the pressure of greed became too great to bear. A few unruly stragglers, far down the line, no longer to be held in check, bent portions of the long formation inward as they started out across the land. The human stampede began almost upon the instant.

Keepers on their horses, riding up and down, were swept away like chips before a flood. Scattering wildly over hill and plain, through gulches, swales, and canyons, the mad troop entered on the unknown field, racing as if for their lives.

Gettysburg, Napoleon, and Dave had watched for an hour the human hedge below the "Laughing Water" claim. They, too, had been up since daylight, intent upon seeing the fun. They had eaten their breakfast at half-past four. At a quarter of six they returned, to their shack and began at their daily work.

The cold mountain stream, diverted to the sluices, went purling down over the riffles. The drip from countless negligible leaks commenced in its monotony. Into the puddles of mud and water the three old miners sloshed, with shovels and picks in hand. They were tired before their work began. Gettysburg, at sixty-five, had been tired for twenty-five years. Nevertheless, he began his day with song, his cheery,

Rinktum bolly kimo.

They were only fairly limbered up when four active men appeared abruptly on the property, at the corners of the claim, and began the work of putting up white location posts, after knocking others down.

They were agents employed by McCoppet, in behalf of Bostwick and himself.

Napoleon was the first to note their presence. He was calling attention to the nearest man when a fifth man appeared by the cabin.

He, too, had a new location post, or stake, to be planted at the center of the claim. He was not only armed as to weapons, but protruding from his pocket was a wad of "legal" doc.u.ments, more to be feared than his gun.

He came straight towards Gettysburg, walking briskly.