CHAPTER XXX
BETH'S ONE EXPEDIENT
Bostwick had told Beth partial truths. His journey had been hard. His car had been twice disabled on the desert; Lawrence had been difficult to find; delays had confronted him at every turn, and not until midnight of the day before this had he come with his quarry to Goldite—barely in time to save the situation, with the reservation opening less than forty-eight hours away.
He had not seen Glen, nor approached the town of Starlight closer than fifteen miles. He had not yet expended Beth's money, which only that morning had been practically placed at McCoppet's disposal. But having finally landed the Government surveyor in camp, he had achieved the first desirable end in the game they were playing, and matters were moving at last with a speed to suit the most exacting.
During the interim between Searle's departure and return affairs had been a trifle complicated in another direction—affairs that lay between the gambler and his friend, the lumberman, big Trimmer.
Trimmer had been paid one thousand dollars only of the sum agreed upon when he gave the name of Culver to the half-breed Indian, Cayuse. He had since spent his money, demanded the balance due, and threatened McCoppet with exposure, only to be met with a counter threat of prison for life as the half-breed's accomplice in the crime. McCoppet meant to pay a portion of the creature's price, but intended to get it from Bostwick. Indeed, to-day he had the money, but was far too much engrossed with Lawrence to give the lumberman a thought.
Trimmer, waxing greedy through the ease with which he had blackmailed McCoppet, had developed a cunning of his own. Convinced that the gambler was accustomed to incubating plans in his private office, the lumberman made shift to excavate a hole beneath the floor of that particular den of privacy, and, after having spent half a night in vain, in this place of concealment, was at last being duly rewarded as he listened to McCoppet and Lawrence.
With his ear to a knot-hole he gathered in everything essential to a knowledge of the plot. He became aware that Lawrence "fell" for twenty thousand dollars; he overheard the details of the "survey" about to be made; but to save his very life he could not have fathomed the means that were about to be employed to "jump" the mining property belonging to Van Buren and his partners.
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. "I haven't got time to talk now, Larry, but some of your money is at your order any time you want it, in gold, or poker chips, or gin."
Trimmer was placated. "All right," he said, and cunningly resolved, upon the spot, to keep his latest secret on the ice.
Lawrence had already disappeared to hasten arrangements for getting out upon his work.
Bostwick had waited half an hour in the utmost impatience. With a hundred things to increase his restlessness of mind and body, he had finally gone to the postoffice and there discovered a letter from Glenmore Kent.
It was short, and now no longer fresh. It had been composed just after the young man's accident, and after relating how he had received a not inconsiderable injury, requested Searle to come to Starlight at once, if possible, and not to divulge any needless facts to Beth.
"I'm broke, and this knock puts me down and out," the letter concluded. "Come down, like a good old chap, and cheer me up."
Bostwick destroyed the letter promptly, lest it fall by some accident into other hands than his own. Not without a slight feeling of guilt, the man shut out all thought, for the present, of deserting Goldite and the plot. That Beth would learn nothing from himself as to Glen's condition was a certainty. He was glad of this wisdom in the boy—this show of courage whereby he had wished his sister spared.
But the more he thought upon Beth's attitude towards himself, and the mystifying confessions old Billy Stitts had made, concerning the errands he was running for the girl, the more Bostwick fretted and warmed with exasperation, suspicion, and jealousy. He returned to McCoppet's. 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. She had begun to feel, perhaps partially by intuition, that something was altogether wrong. Searle's anxiety to assure her she need not write to Glen—that he was coming to Goldite—had provided the one required element to excite a new trend in her thought. She knew that Glen would not come soon to town. She knew she must get him word. She had thought of one way only to insure herself and Glen against deceit—ask Van to go in person with her letter, and bring her Glen's reply.
Had she felt the affair to be in the slightest degree unimportant she might have hesitated to think of making this request, but the more she dwelt upon it the more essential it seemed to become. Her brothers very life might be dependent upon this promptness of action. A very large sum of money was certainly involved in some sort of business of which, she felt, both she and Glen were in ignorance. Bostwick had certainly not seen Glen at all. His deceptions might mean anything!—the gravest of dangers to them all!
It had taken her the briefest time only to resolve upon her course—and then old Billy came upon the scene, as if in answer to a question she had asked—how to get her request and the letter to Glen across the hills to Van, at the "Laughing Water" claim?
Three letters she wrote, and tore to scraps, before one was finally composed to express all she felt, in the way that she wished it expressed. Old Billy went off to wait and returned there duly, enormously pleased by his commission. He knew the way to the "Laughing Water" claim and could ride the borrowed pony.
As pleased as a dog with a parcel of meat, entrusted to his keeping by a confident master, he finally started for the hay-yard, with two dainty letters in his keeping. One was to Van, with Beth's request; the other was, of course, to her brother.
Bostwick met the proud old beau at the corner of the street.
"Say, Uncle, what did I tell you," said Billy at once. "This time it's the biggest errand yet."
Bostwick had wondered if he might not catch Mr. Stitts in some such service as he boasted now, and his wit was worthy of his nature.
"Yes," he said readily, "Miss Kent was saying she thought perhaps she could get you to carry a note to Mr. Van Buren." It was a hazardous coup but he dared it with the utmost show of pleasure in his smile. For a second, however, as he watched the old man's face, he feared he had overshot the mark.
Old Billy was pleased and disappointed together. However, his wish to prove his importance greatly outweighed his chagrin that Beth should have taken even "Uncle" Bostwick into her confidence.
"That ain't all she give me," he announced, as foolishly as a child. "I've got her letter to her brother, over to Starlight, too, and nothin' couldn't stop me from takin' it up to the 'Laughing Water' claim. You bet I'll see Van Buren gits it right into his hand from me!"
If Bostwick had contemplated making an attempt to bribe the old beau into permitting him a glance at the letters, he abandoned the thought with sagacious alacrity. He must think of something safer. A letter to Van Buren and one to Glen was more than he had counted on discovering. It made him decidedly uneasy.
"I'm sure you'll deliver everything safely," he said, masking his annoyance with a smile. "Before you go, perhaps, you'd take something to drink."
The suggestion in his mind was crude, but at least it was something.
"Huh!" said old Billy, "Me!—drink and git a jag when she's expectin' me to hike right out of camp? Guess you don't know me, Uncle, not worth a mice! Didn't I say nuthin' couldn't stop me? And I'm goin' right now."
He clapped his bony old hand over his pocket, where the two precious letters reposed, and winking prodigiously at Bostwick, departed forthwith from the scene.
Bostwick could have run him down, beaten him to the ground and snatched the letters from him, but he did not dare. Instead, he merely continued to grin while Billy remained in sight. Then instead of going on to Beth's, he circled a building and returned down street towards McCoppet's.