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The door to the den was still barred. Impatiently he started again for Mrs. Dick's. He was not in the least certain as to what he meant to do or say, but felt obliged to do something. Meantime, Beth had written to her brother. Bostwick's evasions and lies had aroused more than merely a vague alarm in her breast.
I insist upon the immediate return to me of thirty thousand dollars." If rage at Van Buren consumed his blood, Bostwick's fear was a greater emotion. Before him he could plainly discern the abject failure of his plans the plan to marry this beautiful girl, the plan to go on with McCoppet and snatch a fortune from the earth. It was not a time for defiance. He must fence.
He departed hurriedly, glancing at his watch as he went. Not a block from the house he met old Billy Stitts, who, though quite unknown to the New York man, knew Bostwick in a way of his own. "Morning, Uncle. Howdy?" he said, blocking Bostwick's path. "Back, I see. Welcome home. I guess you don't know me as well as I know you. My name is Stitts Billy Stitts and I'm gittin' on fine with your niece.
"I don't want your money." Across the horseman's handsome visage passed a look that, to the girl, boded anything but peace. Bostwick's manner was an almost intolerable affront, in a land where affronts are resented. However, the stranger answered quietly, despite the fact that Bostwick nettled him to an extraordinary degree.
Equipped with this latest means of squeezing McCoppet, the creature emerged from his hole in time to meet the gambler at the bar, during a moment of Bostwick's temporary absence. "Opal," he said significantly, "I need to see you fer a minute. It won't be no healthier to refuse me now than it was the first time I come." The gambler looked at him coldly.
The brush was small, six inches high, but the wheels bounced over it madly. The whole car hurtled and bounded in a riot of motion. It dived, it plunged nose upward, it roared like a fiend but it shot with cannon-ball velocity across the desert's floor. Five minutes later Bostwick's car was almost fronting the team in the road, with its score of dusty mules.
Now, she would willingly have become a tramp for the purpose of getting out of the affliction which enmeshed her. She could not, nevertheless, yield to this temptation. If she ran away from the Balls and Big Wreck Cove, she would tacitly admit the truth of all Ida May Bostwick's claims, and possibly involve Tunis in the wreckage.
At dusk a messenger boy arrived with the briefest note, in Bostwick's familiar hand. "Sudden, urgent call to the claim. No time for business. Back as soon as possible. With love and faith, yours, SEARLE." How she loathed his miserable lie! Van and the new supply of provender arrived together at the tent where the partners made their temporary home.
Their drivers dismounted to join the gathering throng. One of the men was Bostwick, down from the hills. He had searched for Beth at Mrs. Dick's, and then had followed here. "Barger! Barger's dead in camp and the 'Laughing Water' claim was stolen and Culver killed!" One man bawled it to the crowd and it sped to Bostwick's ears.
"Keeps him on the move." He threw away his chewed cigar, placed a new one in his mouth, and started for the door. "Come on," he added, "I'll identify you over at the postoffice and show you where you sleep." Less than a week had passed since Bostwick's arrival in Goldite, but excitement was rife in the air.
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