A NIGHT'S EXPENSES
From Karrish to Goldite by the road was twenty-seven miles. There were
fifteen mile of bottles by the way--all of them empty. A blind man
with a nose for glass could have smelled out the trail unerringly
across that desert stretch. Karrish was the nearest town for a very
great distance around.
Over the road innumerable caravans were passing. Everything was
rushing to Goldite. There were horsemen, hurried persons on foot, men
in carriages and autos, twenty-horse freight teams, and men on tiny
burros. Nearly all were shedding bottles as they went. A waterless
land is not necessarily devoid of all manner of moisture.
A dozen of the slowly laboring freight outfits were passed by Van and
his two companions. What engines of toil they represented! The ten
pairs of sweating, straining animals seemed almost like some giant
caterpillar, harnessed to a burden on wheels. They always dragged
three wagons, two of which were huge gray hulks, incredibly heavy with
giant-powder, canned goods, bottled goods, picks, shovels, bedding,
hay, great mining machinery, and house-hold articles. These wagons
were hitched entrain. The third wagon, termed a "trailer," was small
and loaded merely with provisions for the teamster and the team. The
whole thing, from end to end, beat up a stifling cloud of dust.
The sun went down while Beth, Van, and Elsa were still five miles from
their goal. They rode as rapidly as possible. The horses, however,
were jaded, and the way was slightly up grade. The twilight was brief.
It descended abruptly from the western bank of clouds, by now as thick
and dark as mud. Afar off shone the first faint light of the gold-camp
to which the three were riding. This glimmering ray was two miles out
from the center of town. Goldite was spread in a circle four miles
wide, and the most of it was isolated tents.
The darkness shut down like a pall. A vivid, vicious bolt of
lightning--a fiery serpent, overcharged with might--struck down upon
the mountain tops, pouring liquid flame upon the rocks. A sweeping
gust of wind came raging down upon the town, hurling dust and gravel on
the travelers.
Van rode ahead like a spirit of the storm. He knew the need for haste.
Beth simply let her pony go. She was cramped and far too wearied for
effort.
They were galloping now past the outskirts of the camp, the many
scattered tents of the men who were living on their claims. All the
world was a land of claims, staked off with tall white posts, like
ghosts in the vanishing light. Ahead, a multitude of lights had
suddenly broken on the travelers' vision, like a nearby constellation
of stars.
They rode into all of it, blazing lights, eager crowds upon the
streets, noise of atrocious music from the brilliant saloons, and rush
of wind and dust, not a minute too soon. They had barely alighted and
surrendered their horses to a friend of Van's when the rain from the
hilltops swooped upon the camp in a fury that seemed like an elemental
threat to sweep all the place, with its follies, hopes, and woes, its
excitements, lawlessness, and struggles, from the face of the barren
desert world.
Beth and her maid were lame and numb. Van could only hustle them
inside a grocery-and-hardware store to save them from a drenching. The
store was separated from a gambling-hall saloon by the flimsiest board
partition. Odors of alcohol, confusion of voices, and calls of a
gamester came unimpeded to the women's senses, together with some
mighty bad singing, accompanied lustily by strains and groans pounded
from a ghastly piano.
"Sit down," said Van, inverting a tub at the feet of the wondering
women. "I'll see if I can rustle up your brother."
He went out in the rain, dived impartially into the first of the
crowded saloons, was somewhat hilariously greeted by a score of
convivial fellows, found no one who knew of young Glen Kent, and
proceeded on to the next.
The horseman was well and favorably known in all directions. He was
eagerly cornered wheresoever he appeared by a lot of fellows who were
friends to little purpose, in an actual test. However, he clung to his
mission with commendable tenacity of purpose, and kept upon his way.
Thus he discovered at length, when he visited the bank--an institution
that rarely closed before ten o'clock in the evening--that Kent had
been gone for the past two weeks, no one knew where, but somewhere out
south, with a party.
There was nothing to do after that but to look for fit apartments for
the gently reared girl and her maid. Hunting a needle in the ocean
would have been a somewhat similar task. Van went at once at the
business, with his customary spirit. He was presently informed there
was nothing resembling a room or a bed to be had in all the place. A
hundred men would walk the streets or sleep in chairs that night. The
one apartment suitable for two lone women to occupy had been secured
the previous day by "Plunger" Trask, an Eastern young man who would bet
that grass was not green.
Van searched for Trask and found him "cashing in" a lot of assorted
chips, representing his winnings at a faro game at which he had been
"bucking."
"Hello, there, Van," he said familiarly as the horseman touched him on
the shoulder. "Come and have a drink."
"My teeth are floating now from drink," said Van, "but I'll take
something else if you say so. I want your apartments for the night."
"Say, wire me!" answered the plunger. "That's the cutest little bunch
of nerve I ever saw off the Bowery! How much money have you got in
your clothes?"
"About forty-five dollars," said Van. "Is it good?"
"Not as a price, but O.K. in a flip," said Trask, with an itch for
schemes of chance. "I'll throw you the dice, my room against your
forty-five--and the devil take your luck if you win!"
Van agreed. They borrowed a box of dice, threw three times apiece--and
the horseman paid over his money.
"There you are, old man," said the plunger cheerfully. "Satisfied, I
hope."
"Not quite," said Van. "I'll owe you forty-five more and throw you
again."
"Right ho!" responded Trask. "Go as far as you like."
They shook again. Van lost as before. He borrowed again,
undiscouraged. For the third time they cast the little cubes of
uncertainty and this time Van actually won. The room was his to
dispose of as he pleased. It had cost him ninety dollars for the night.
In his pocket he had cautiously retained a little money--seven and
one-half dollars, to be accurate. He returned to Beth, informed her of
all he had discovered concerning her brother, took herself and Elsa to
dine in the camp's one presentable restaurant, paid nearly seven
dollars for the meal, and gave what remained to the waiter.
Then Beth, who had never in her life been so utterly exhausted,
resigned herself to Elsa's care, bade Van good-night, and left him
standing in the rain before the door, gallant, and smiling to the end.