AN EXCHANGE OF QUESTIONS
Youth is elastic, and Van was young. An hour of quiet riding restored
him astoundingly. He bore no signs of fatigue that Beth could detect
upon his face. Once more, as he had in the morning, he was riding ahead
in the trail, apparently all but oblivious of the two anxious women in
his charge.
They had wound far downward through a canyon, and now at length were
emerging on a sagebrush slope that lowered to the valley. Van halted for
Beth to ride to his side, and onward they continued together.
"I suppose you have friends to whom you are going in Goldite," he said,
"--or at least there's someone you know."
"Yes," she answered, "my brother."
Van looked at her in his quizzical way, observing:
"I don't believe I know him."
Her glance was almost one of laughter.
"Why, how can you tell? You don't even know his name." She paused, then
added quietly: "It's Glenmore Kent." She felt he had a right to know not
only her brother's name, but also her own, if only for what he had done.
"You might, of course, know him after all," she concluded. "He has quite
a number of acquaintances."
"Kent," said Van. To himself it was "Beth Kent" he was saying. "No,
guess not. No such luck, but I hope you'll find him in the camp."
"Do you think I may not?" She was just a trifle startled by the
possibility.
He was grave for once.
"Men come and go in a mining town, where everyone's unduly excited. If
he isn't on deck, then have you no one else? Have you any alternative
plan?"
"Why, no," she confessed, her alarm increasing, "not unless Mr. Bostwick
has arrived and arranged our accommodations."
"I wouldn't count on Searle," drawled Van significantly. "He may have to
walk."
"Not across the awful desert?"
"If he goes around he'll be longer."
"Why--but----" she gasped, "there is nothing to eat--no water--there
isn't anything on the desert, is there?--anywhere?"
He was looking intently into the deep brown depths of her eyes as he
answered:
"There's so little to eat that the chipmunks have to fetch in their
lunches."
Beth continued to gaze upon him. If she noted the lights of laughter
lying soberly subdued in his eyes, she also discerned something more,
that affected her oddly. Despite the horseman's treatment of her
escort--a treatment she confessed he had partially deserved--and despite
the lightness of his speeches, she felt certain of the depth of his
nature, convinced of the genuine earnestness of his purposes--the honesty
and worth of his friendship.
She knew she was tremendously indebted for all he had done and was doing,
but aside from all that, in her heart of hearts she admired bravery,
courage, and a dash of boldness more than anything else in the world.
She was not yet certain, however, whether the man at her side was brave
or merely reckless, courageous, or indifferent to danger, bold or merely
audacious. She knew nothing about him whatsoever, nothing except he must
be tired, lame, and bruised from exertions undertaken in her behalf. It
had been a long, long day. She felt as if they had known each other
always--and had always been friends.
Her mind went back to the morning as if to an era of the past. The
thought of the convicts who had captured Bostwick aroused new
apprehensions in her breast, though not for the man with the car.
Someway Searle seemed strangely far away and dimmed in her regard. She
was thinking of what she had overheard, back there at the Monte Cristo
mine.
"This has been a trying day," she said, apparently ignoring Van's last
observation. "You have taken a great deal of trouble for--for us--and we
appreciate it fully."
Van said gravely: "Taking trouble is the only fun I have."
"You laugh at everything," she answered, "but isn't it really a serious
thing--a menace to everyone--having those convicts out of prison?"
"It isn't going to be a knitting-bee, rounding them up," Van admitted.
"And meantime they're going to be exacting of everyone they meet."
She looked at him half seriously, but altogether brightly.
"And what if they chance to meet you?"
"Oh, we'd exchange courtesies, I reckon."
She had no intention of confessing how much she had overheard, but she
was tremendously interested--almost fearful for the man's safety, she
hardly dared ask herself why. She approached her subject artfully.
"Do you know them, then?"
"Well, yes, the leader--slightly," he answered. "I sent him up for
murder, stealing cattle, and robbing sluices. He was too annoying to
have around."
"Oh! Then won't he feel ugly, resentful?" she inquired earnestly.
"Won't he try to hunt you up--and pay you back?"
Van regarded her calmly.
"He told me to expect my pay--if ever he escaped--and he's doubtless got
his check-book along."
"His check-book?"
"Colt--forty-four," Van drawled by way of explanation.
She turned a trifle pale.
"He'd shoot you on sight?"
"If he sighted me first."
Her breath came hard. She realized that the quiet-seeming horseman at
her side would kill a fellow-being--this convict, at least--as readily as
he might destroy a snake.
"How long ago did you put him in jail?" she inquired.
"Four years ago this summer."
"Have you always lived here--out West?"
"I've lived every day I've been here," he answered evasively. "Do I look
like a native?"
She laughed. "Oh, I don't know. We came here straight from New York, a
week ago, Elsa and I. Mr. Bostwick joined us two days later. I really
know nothing of the country at all."
"New York," he said, and relapsed into silent meditation. How far away
seemed old New Amsterdam! How long seemed the brief six years since he
had started forth with his youthful health, his strength, determination,
boyish dreams, and small inheritance to build up a fortune in the West!
What a mixture of sunshine and failure it had been! What glittering
hopes had lured him hither and yon in the mountains, where each great
gateway of adventure had charged its heavy toll!
He had lost practically all of his money; he had gained his all of
manhood. He had suffered privation and hardship; he had known the vast
comfort of friends--true friends, as certain as the very heart in his
breast to serve him to the end.
Like a panoramic dream he beheld a swift procession of mine-and-cattle
scenes troop past for swift review. He lived again whole months of
nights spent out alone beneath the sky, with the snow and the wind hurled
down upon him from a merciless firmament of bleakness. Once more he
stumbled blindly forward in the desert--he and Gettysburg--perishing for
water, giving up their liquid souls to the horribly naked and insatiate
sun. Again he toiled in the shaft of a mine till his back felt like a
crackly thing of glass with each aching fissure going deeper.
Once more the gold goddess beckoned with her smile, and fortune was
there, almost in reach--the fortune that he and his partners had sought
so doggedly, so patiently--the fortune for which they had starved and
delved and suffered--only to see it vanish in the air as the sunshine
will vanish from a peak.
Old hopes, like ghosts, went skulking by, vain charlatans, ashamed. But
friendships stood about in every scene--bright presences that cast a
roseate glow on all the tribulations of his life. And it seemed as if a
failure here was half a failure only, after all. It had not robbed him
either of his youth, his strength, or a certain boyish credulity and
trust in all his kind. He still believed he should win his golden goal,
and he loved the land that had tried him.
His last, his biggest venture, the Monte Cristo mine was, however,
gone--everything sold to meet the company debts. Nevertheless, he had
once more purchased a claim, with all but his very last dollar in the
world, and he and his partners would soon be on the ground, assaulting
the stubborn adamant with powder, pick, and drill, in the fever of the
miner's ceaseless dream.
To-day, as he rode beside the girl, he wondered at it all--why he had
labored so persistently. The faint, far-off shadow of a sweetheart, long
since left behind, failed to supply him a motive. She had grown
impatient, listened to a suitor more tangible than Van's absent self, and
so, blamelessly, had faded from his scheme of hopes, leaving no more than
a fragrance in his thoughts, with certainly no bitterness or anger.
"Old New York," he repeated, at the end of his reverie, and meeting once
more the steady brown eyes of the girl with whom the fates had thrown
him, he fetched up promptly with the present.
"How long has your brother been out here in Goldite?"
"About a month," she answered. "He's been in the West for nearly a year,
and wrote Mr. Bostwick to come."
"Mr. Bostwick is doubtless a very particular friend of your family."
"Why, yes, he's my---- That is, he _was_--he always has been a very
particular friend--for several years," she faltered suddenly turning red.
"We haven't any family, Glen and I--and he's my half brother only--but
we're just like chums---and that was why I wanted to come. I expect to
surprise him. He doesn't know I'm here."
Van was silent and she presently added:
"I hope you and Glen will be friends. I know how much he'll wish to
thank you."
He looked at her gravely.
"I hope he won't. It's up to me to thank him."
They had come to a road at the level of the valley--a desert valley,
treeless, grassless, gray, and desolate. The sun was rapidly nearing the
rim of the mountains, as if to escape pursuit of a monstrous bank of
clouds.
Van spurred his chestnut to a gallop, and the horses bearing the women
responded with no further need of urging.