UNEXPECTED COMPLICATIONS
On the following morning news arrived in Goldite that temporarily
dimmed the excitement attendant upon stories of the "Laughing Water"
property and the coming stampede to the Indian reservation.
Matt Barger and three others of the convicts, still uncaptured, had
pillaged a freight team, of horses, provisions, and arms, murdered a
stage driver, robbed the express of a large consignment of gold, and
escaped as before to the mountains.
Two separate posses were in pursuit. Rewards aggregating ten thousand
dollars were offered for Barger, dead or alive, with smaller sums for
each of his companions. Their latest depredations had occurred
alarmingly close to the mining camp, from which travel was becoming
hazardous.
The gold theft was particularly disquieting to the Goldite mining
contingent. Dangers beset their enterprises in many directions at the
very best. To have this menace added, together with worry over every
man's personal safety in traveling about, was fairly intolerable. The
inefficient posses were roundly berated, but no man volunteered to
issue forth and "get" Matt Barger--either alive or as a corpse.
The man who arrived with the news was one of Van's cronies, Dave, the
little station man whom Beth had met the morning of her coming. He was
here in response to a summons from Van, who thought he saw an
opportunity to assist his friend to better things. Everything Dave
owned he had fetched across the desert, including both the horses that
Beth and Elsa once had ridden. The station itself he had sold. He had
launched forth absolutely on Van's new promises, burning all his
bridges, as it were, behind him.
Van came down to meet him. He had other concerns in Goldite, some with
Culver, the Government representative, and others a trifle more
personal, and intended to combine them all in one excursion.
No sooner had he appeared on the street, after duly stabling "Suvy" at
the hay-yard, than a hundred acquaintances, suddenly transformed into
intimate friends, by the change in his fortunes, pounced upon him in a
spirit of generosity, hilarity, and comaraderie that cloyed not only
his senses, but even his movements in the camp.
He was dragged and carried into four saloons like a helpless,
good-natured bear cub, strong enough to resist by inflicting injuries,
but somewhat amused by the game. Intelligence of his advent went the
rounds. The local editor and the girl he had addressed as "Queenie,"
on the day of the fight in the street, were rivals in another joyous
attack as he escaped at last to proceed about his own affairs.
The editor stood no chance whatsoever. Van had nothing to say, and
said so. Moreover, Queenie was a very persistent, as well as a very
pretty, young person, distressingly careless of deportment. She clung
to Van like a bur.
"Gee, Van!" she cried with genuine tears in her eyes, "didn't I always
say you was the candy? Didn't I always say I'd give you my head and
breathe through my feet--day or night? Didn't I tell 'em all you was
the only one? You're the only diamonds there is for me--and I didn't
never wait for you to strike it first."
"No, you didn't even wait for an invitation," answered Van with a
smile. "Everybody's got to hike now. I'm busy, trying to breathe."
She clung on. Unfortunately, down in an Arizona town, Van had trounced
a ruffian once in Queenie's protection--simply because of her gender
and entirely without reference to her character or her future attitude
towards himself. In her way she personified a sort of adoration and
gratitude, which could neither be slain nor escaped by anything that he
or anyone else could do. Her devotion, however, had palled upon him
early, perhaps more because of its habit of increasing. It had
recently become a pest.
"Busy?" she echoed. "You said that before. When ain't you going to be
busy?"
"When I'm dead," he answered, and wrenching loose he dived inside a
hardware store, to purchase a hunting knife for Gettysburg, then went
at once to a barber shop and shut out the torment of friends.
He escaped at the rear, when his face had been groomed, and made his
way unseen to Mrs. Dick's.
Beth was not at home. She and Bostwick were together at the office of
the telegraph company, where Searle was assisting her, as she thought
to aid her brother, to such excellent purpose that her thirty thousand
dollars bid fair to repose in the bank at his call before the business
day should reach its end.
Mrs. Dick seemed to Van the one and only person in the camp unaffected
by the news of his luck. She treated him precisely as she always had
and doubtless always should. Therefore, he had no difficulty in
getting away to Culver at his office.
The official surveyor was a fat-cheeked, handsome man, with a silky
brown beard, an effeminate voice, and prodigious self-conceit. He was
pacing up and down the inside office, at the rear of the rough board
building, when Van came in and found him. The horseman's business was
one of maps and land-office data made essential to his needs by the new
recording of the "Laughing Water" property as a placer instead of a
quartz claim. He had drawn a crude outline of his holdings and in
taking it forth from his pocket found the knife bought for Gettysburg
in the way. He removed the weapon and placed it on the table near at
hand.
"There's so much of this desert unsurveyed," he said, "that no man can
tell whether he's just inside or just outside of Purgatory."
"So you come to me to find out?" Culver demanded somewhat shortly. "Do
you tin-horn miners think that's all this office is for?"
"Well, in my instance, I had to come to some wiser spirit than myself
to get my bearings," answered Van drawlingly. "You can see that."
"There are the maps." Culver waved his hand towards a drawer in the
office table, and moved impatiently over to a window, the view from
which commanded a section of the street, including the bank.
Van was presently engrossed in a search for quarter sections, ranges,
and townships.
"Look here," said Culver, turning upon him aggressively, "what's this
racket I hear about you taking the inside track with that stunning new
petticoat in town?"
Van looked up without the least suspicion of the man's real meaning.
"If you are referring to that reckless young woman called Queenie----"
"Oh, Queenie--rats!" interrupted Culver irritably. "You know who I
mean. I guess you call her Beth."
Van's face took on a look of hardness as if it were chiseled in stone.
He had squared around as if at a blow. For a moment he faced the
surveyor in silence.
"You are making some grave mistake," he said presently in ominous calm.
"Please don't make such an allusion as that again."
"So, the shot went home," Culver laughed unctuously, turning for a
moment from the window. "I thought it would. You know you couldn't
expect to keep anything like that all to yourself, Van Buren. You're
not the only ladies' man on the beach. And as for this clod of a
Bostwick----" He had turned to look out as before, and grew suddenly
excited. Beth was in view at the bank. "By the gods!" he exclaimed
with a sudden change of tone, "she is the handsomest bit of
confectionery on earth. If I don't win her----"
His utterance promptly ceased, together with his abominable activities
and primping in the window. Van, who did not know that this creature
had been Beth's particular annoyance, had crossed the room without a
sound and laid his grip on Culver's collar.
"You cur!" he said quietly, and choking the man he flung him down
against the floor and wall as if he had been the merest puppet.
Someone had entered the outside door. Neither Culver nor Van heard the
sound. Culver rolled over, scrambled to his feet, and with his face
and neck engorged with rage, came rushing at the horseman like a fury.
"You blackguard!" he screamed, "I'll tear out your heart for that!
I'll kill you like----"
"Shut up!" Van commanded quietly, stopping the onrush of his angered
foe by putting his hand against the surveyor's face and sending him
reeling as before. "Don't tell me what you'll do to me--or to anyone
else in this camp! And if ever I hear of you opening your mouth again
as you did here a moment ago, I'll tie a knot so hard in your carcass
you'll have to be buried in a hat box!"
He glanced towards the doorway. A stranger stood on the threshold.
Bowing, Van passed him and left the place, too angered to think either
of the maps or of his knife.
Culver, raging like a maniac, bowled headlong into the visitor, in his
effort to overtake the horseman, but found himself baffled and took out
his wrath in foul vituperation that presently drove the stranger from
the place.