THE CLOUDS OF TROUBLE GATHER
By the route beyond the river that Van was obliged to choose, the
distance from his claim to Starlight was more than forty miles. His
pony had no shoes, and having never been ridden far, was a trifle soft
for a trip involving difficulties such as this mountain work abundantly
afforded. When they came to Phonolite Pass, the last of the cut-offs
on the trail, Van rode no more than a hundred yards into its shadows
before he feared he must turn.
Phonolite is broken shale, a thin, sharp rock that gives forth a
pleasant, metallic sound when struck, like shattered crockery. For a
mile this deposit lay along the trail across the width of the pass.
For the bare-footed pony there was cruelty in every step. The barrier
of rock was far more formidable than the river in its flood.
Van was not to be halted in his object. He had a letter to deliver; he
meant to take it through, though doom itself should yawn across his
path. The hour was late; the sun was rapidly sinking. Van pulled up
his broncho and debated.
Absolute silence reigned in the world of mountains. But if the place
seemed desolate, it likewise seemed secure. Nevertheless, death lurked
in the trail ahead. Barger was there. He was lying in the rocks,
concealed where the chasm was narrow. He had ridden four hours--on the
mare Beth had lost--to arrive ahead of Van Buren. The muzzle of a long
black revolver that he held in hand rested upon a shattered boulder.
His narrow eyes lay level with a rift in the group of rocks that hid
him completely from view. Van was in sight, and the convict's breath
came quickly as he waited.
Van dismounted from his pony's back and picked up one of his hoofs.
"Worn down pretty flat," he told the animal. "Perhaps if I walk we can
make it." He started on foot up the tinkling way, watching the broncho
with solicitude.
Suvy followed obediently, but the pointed rocks played havoc with his
feet. He lurched, in attempting to right his foot on one that turned,
and the long lassoo, secured to the saddle, flopped out, fell back, and
made him jump. Van halted as before. The convict was barely fifty
yards away. His pistol was leveled, but he waited for a deadlier aim,
a shorter shot.
"Nope! We'll have to climb the hill," Van decided reluctantly.
"You're a friend of mine, Suvy, and even if you weren't, you'd have to
last to get back." He turned his back on death, unwittingly, to spare
the horse he loved.
Delayed no less than an hour by this enforced retreat, he patiently led
the broncho back to the opening of the pass, and, still on foot, led
the steep way up over the mountain.
Barger rose up and cursed himself for not having risked a shot. He
dared not attempt a dash upon his man; he could not know where Van
might again be intercepted; he was helpless, baffled, enraged. Half
starved, keenly alive only in his instinct to accomplish his revenge,
the creature was more like a hunted, retaliating animal than like a
man. He had sworn to even the score with Van Buren; he was not to be
deflected from his course. But to get his man here was no longer
possible. The horse Beth had lost, now in the convict's possession,
was all but famished for water, not to mention food. There was nothing
to choose but retreat towards the river, to the northward, where the
mountains might yet afford an ambush as Van was returning home.
Far away in the mountains, at the "Laughing Water" claim, while the sun
was setting on a scene of labors, all but concluded for the day, the
group of surveyors, with Lawrence in charge, appeared along the
southern ridge.
Gettysburg, Napoleon, and Dave were still in the water by the sluices.
They were grimed, soiled with perspiration, wearied by the long, hard
day of toil. Shovel in hand old Gettysburg discovered the men with an
instrument who trekked along the outside edge of the claim. Chain-man,
rod-man, and Lawrence with his shining theodolite, set on its three
slender legs, they were silhouetted sharply against the evening sky.
Their movements and their presence here were beyond the partners'
comprehension. It was Gettysburg who climbed up the slope, and
anchored himself in their path.
"What you doin'?" he said to the rod-man presently, when that tired
individual approached and continued on his way.
"What does it look like--playing checkers?" said the man. "Can't the
Government do nuthin'--run no county line ner nuthin' without everybody
sittin' up to notice?"
No less than fifty men they had met that day had questioned what the
Government was doing. The "county line" suggestion had been the only
hint vouchsafed--and that had sufficed to allay the keenest suspicion.
"That all?" said Gettysburg, and, watching as he went, he slowly
returned to his partners. His explanation was ample. The surveyors
proceeded on.
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 butt 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 passion that she hated him for what he had
done. Her anger that night upon the hill by Mrs. Dick'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.