VAN RUNS AMUCK
Instead of turning northward in the mountain range and riding on to the
"Laughing Water" claim, Van continued straight ahead to Goldite. The
letter to Beth was heavy in his pocket. Until he should rid himself of
its burden he knew he should have no peace--no freedom to act for
himself.
He had been delayed. The sun was setting when at last he rode his
broncho to the hay-yard in the camp, and saw that he was fed with
proper care. Then he got some boots and walked to Mrs. Dick's.
Beth, from her window, looking towards the sun, discovered him coming
to the place. She had never in her life felt so wildly joyous at
beholding any being of the earth. She had watched for hours, counting
his steps across the desert's desolation one by one, tracing his course
from Starlight "home" by all the signs along the trail which she and he
had traveled together.
She ran downstairs like a child. She had momentarily forgotten even
Glen. Nothing counted but this sight of Van--his presence here with
herself. When she suddenly burst from the door into all the golden
glory of the sunset, herself as glorious with color, warmth, and youth
as the great day-orb in the west, Van felt his heart give one
tumultuous heave in his breast, despite the resentment he harbored.
There had never been a moment when her smile had been so radiant, when
the brown of her eyes had been so softly lighted and glowing, when her
cheeks had so mirrored her beauty.
How superb she was, he said to himself--how splendid was her acting!
He could almost forgive himself for having played the fool. His
helplessness, his defenselessness had been warranted. But--her smile
could befuddle him no more. He took off his hat, with a certain cold
elegance of grace. His face still wore that chiseled appearance of
stone-like hardness.
"Oh!" she cried, in her irrepressible happiness of heart. "You're
home! You're safe! I'm glad!"
It was nothing, her cry that he was safe. She had worried only for the
desert's customary perils, but this he could not know. He thought she
referred to a possible meeting with Barger. He was almost swept from
his balance by her look, for a bright bit of moisture had sprung in her
eyes and her smile took on a tenderness that all but conquered him anew.
"I delivered your letter in Starlight," he said. "I return your
brother's reply."
He had taken the letter from his pocket. He held it forth.
She took it. If memories of Glen started rushingly upon her, they were
halted by something she felt in the air, something in the cold, set
speech of the man she loved as never she had thought to love a creature
of the earth. She made no reply, but stood looking peculiarly upon
him, a question written plainly in her glance.
"If there is nothing more," he added, "permit me to wish you good-day."
He swept off his hat as he had before, turned promptly on his heel, and
departed the scene forthwith.
She tried to cry out, to ask him what it meant, but the thing had come
like a blow. It had not been what he had said, so much as the manner
of its saying--not so much what she had heard as what her heart had
felt. A deluge of ice water, suddenly thrown upon her, could scarcely
have chilled or shocked her more than the coldness that had bristled
from his being.
Wholly at a loss to understand, she leaned in sudden weakness against
the frame of the door, and watched him disappearing. Her smile was
gone. In its place a dumb, white look of pain and bewilderment had
frozen on her face. Had not that something, akin to anger, which her
nature had felt to be emanating from him remained so potently to
oppress her, she could almost have thought the thing a joke--some
freakish mood of playfulness after all the other moods he had shown.
But no such thought was possible. The glitter in his eyes had been
unmistakable. Then, what could it mean?
She almost cried, as she stood there and saw him vanish. She had
counted so much upon this moment. She had prayed for his coming safely
back from the desert. She had so utterly unbound the fetters from her
love. Confession of it all had been ready in her heart, her eyes, and
on her lips. Reaction smote her a dulling blow. Her whole impulsive
nature crept back upon itself, abashed--like something discarded, flung
at her feet ingloriously.
"Oh--Van!" she finally cried, in a weak, hurt utterance, and back along
the darkening hall she went, her hand with Glen's crushed letter
pressed hard upon her breast.
Van, for his part, far more torn than he could have believed possible,
proceeded down the street in such a daze as a drunken man might
experience, emerging from liquor's false delights to life's cold,
merciless facts. The camp was more emptied than he had ever known it
since first it was discovered. Only a handful of the reservation
stragglers had returned. The darkness would pour them in by hundreds.
Half way down the thoroughfare Van paused to remember what it was his
body wanted. It was food. He started again, and was passing the bank
when someone called from within.
"Hello, there--Van!" came the cry. "Hello! Come in!"
Van obeyed mechanically. The cashier, Rickart, it was who had shouted
the summons--a little, gray-eyed, thin-faced man, with a very long
moustache.
"How are you, Rick?" said the horseman familiarly. "What's going on?"
"Haven't _you_ heard?--_you_?" interrogated Rickart. "I thought it was
funny you were loafing along so leisurely. Didn't you know to-day was
the day for the rush?"
"I did," said Van. "What about it?"
"Not much," his friend replied, "except your claim has been jumped by
McCoppet and one J. Searle Bostwick, who got on to the fact that the
reservation line included all your ground."
Van looked his incredulity.
"What's the joke?" he said. "I bite. What's the answer?"
"Joke?" the cashier echoed. "Joke? They had the line surveyed
through, yesterday, and Lawrence confirmed their tip. Your claim, I
tell you, was on reservation ground, and McCoppet had his crowd on deck
at six o'clock this morning. They staked it out, according to law, as
the first men on the job after the Government threw it open--and there
they are."
Van leaned against the counter carelessly, and looked at his friend
unmoved.
"Who told you the story?" he inquired. "Who brought it into camp?"
"Why a dozen men--all mad to think they never got on," said Rickart,
not without heat. "It's an outrage, Van! You might have fought them
off if you'd been on deck, and made the location yourself! Where have
you been?"
Van smiled. The neatness of the whole arrangement began to be
presented to his mind.
"Oh, I was out of the way all right," he said. "My friends took care
of that."
"I thought there was something in the wind, all along," imparted the
little cashier. "Bostwick and McCoppet have been thicker than thieves
for a week. But the money they needed wasn't Bostwick's. I wired to
New York to get his standing--and he's got about as much as a pin. But
the girl stood in, you bet! She's got enough--and dug up thirty
thousand bucks to handle the crowd's expenses."
Van straightened up slowly.
"The girl?"
"Miss Kent--engaged to Bostwick--you ought to know," replied the man
behind the counter. "She's put up the dough and I guess she's in the
game, for she turned it all over like a man."
Van laughed, suddenly, almost terribly.
"Oh, hell, Rick, come out and git a drink!" he said. "Here," as he
noted a bottle in the desk, "give me some of that!"
Rickart gave him the bottle and a glass. He poured a stiff amber
draught and raised it on high, a wild, fevered look in his eyes.
"Here's to the gods of law and order!" he said. "Here's to faith,
hope, and charity. Here's to friendship, honor, and loyalty. Here's
to the gallant little minority that love their neighbors as themselves.
Give me perfidy or give me death! Hurray for treason, strategy, and
spoils!"
He drank the liquid fire at one reckless gulp, and laughing again, in
ghastly humor, lurched suddenly out at the open door and across to the
nearest saloon.
Rickart, in sudden apprehension for the "boy" he genuinely loved,
called out to him shrilly, but in vain. Then he scurried to the
telephone, rang up the office of the sheriff, and presently had a
deputy on the wire.
"Say, friend," he called, "if Bostwick or McCoppet should return to
camp to-night, warn them to keep off the street. Van Buren's in, and I
don't want the boy to mix himself in trouble."
"All right," came the answer, "I'm on."
In less than an hour the town was "on." Men returning by the scores
and dozens, nineteen out of every twenty exhausted, angered with
disappointment, and clamorous for refreshments, filled the streets,
saloons, and eating houses, all of them talking of the "Laughing Water"
claim, and all of them ready to sympathize with Van--especially at his
expense.
His night was a mixture of wildness, outflamings of satire on the
virtues, witty defiance of the fates, and recklessness of everything
save reference to women. Not a word escaped his lips whereby his
keenest, most delighted listener could have probed to the heart of his
mood. To the loss of his claim was attributed all his pyrotechnics,
and no one, unless it was Rickart, was aware of the old proverbial
"woman in the case," who had planted the sting that stung.
Rickart, like a worried animal, following the footsteps of his master,
sought vainly all night to head Van off and quiet him down in bed. At
two in the morning, at McCoppet's gambling hall, where Van perhaps
expected to encounter the jumpers of his claim, the little cashier
succeeded at last in commanding Van's attention. Van had a glass of
stuff in his hand--stuff too strong to be scathed by all the pure food
enactments in the world.
"Look here, boy," said Rickart, clutching the horseman's wrist in his
hand, "do you know that Gettysburg, and Nap, and Dave are camping on
the desert, waiting for you to come home?"
Van looked at him steadily. He was far from being dizzied in his
brain. Since the blow received at the hands of Beth had not sufficed
to make him utterly witless, then nothing drinkable could overcome his
reason.
"_Home_?" he said. "Waiting for me to come _home_."
Suddenly wrenching his hand from Rickart's grip he hurled the glass of
liquor with all his might against the mirror of the bar. The crash
rose high above the din of human voices. A radiating star was abruptly
created in the firmament of glass, and Van was starting for the door.
The barkeeper scarcely turned his head. He was serving half a dozen
men, and he said: "Gents, what's your poison?"
A crowd of half-intoxicated revelers started for Van and attempted to
haul him back. He flung them off like a lot of pestiferous puppies,
and cleared the door.
He went straight to the hay-yard, saddled his horse, and headed up over
the mountains. He had eaten no dinner; he wanted none. The fresh,
clean air began its work of restoration.
It was daylight when he reached the camp his partners had made on the
desert. Napoleon and Gettysburg were drunk. Discouraged by his long
delay, homeless, and utterly disheartened, they had readily succumbed
to the conveniently bottled sympathy of friends.
No sooner had the horseman alighted at the camp than Napoleon flung
himself upon him. He was weeping.
"What did I sh-sh-sh-sh-(whistle) shay?" he interrogated brokenly,
"home from a foreign--quoth the r-r-r-r-r-(whistle) raven--NEVER MORE!"
Gettysburg waxed apologetic, as he held his glass eye in his hand.
"Didn't mean to git in thish condition, Van--didn't go to do it," he
imparted confidentially. "Serpent that lurks in the glash."
Van resumed his paternal rôle with a meed of ready forgiveness.
"Let him who hath an untainted breath cast the first bottle," he said.
Even old Dave, thought sober, was disqualified, and Algy was asleep.