The Furnace of Gold

by Philip Verrill Mighels

She had no suspicions of Bostwick. She had seen Glen's letter and read it for herself. And Searle had responded immediately with an offer to lend her brother thirty thousand dollars. There must be some mistake. Glen might be keeping his news and plans from herself, as men so often will. Searle might even have overlooked the importance of keeping Glen fully posted, intending to go so soon to Starlight. Her own letter might have miscarried.

She tried to fashion explanations—but they would not entirely fit. Searle had been gone three days. He had gone before the Goldite News was issued. The paper had arrived at Glen's while the man in his car had failed.

For a moment she sickened with the reflection that Searle might once more have fallen captive to the convicts, still at large—and with all the money! Then she presently assured herself that news so sinister as this would have been very prompt to return.

It was all too much to understand—unless Glen were ill—or out of his reason. His two letters, the one to Searle and this one to herself, were so utterly conflicting. It was not to be solved from such a distance. Moreover, Glen wrote that he was off on a trip, and asked her to wait before replying. It was irritating, all this waiting, alone here in Goldite, but there seemed to be nothing else to do.

The long morning passed, and she fretted. In the afternoon the Goldite News broke its record. It printed an extra—a single sheet, in glaring type, announcing the capture of the convicts. By a bold and daring coup, it said, the entire herd of criminals, all half starved and weakened by privations, had been rounded up and transported back to prison. Unfortunately, the report was slightly inaccurate. Matt Barger, the leader in the prison delivery, and the most desperate man in the lot, had escaped the posse's vigilance. Of this important factor in the welcome story of the posse's work Goldite was ignorant, and doomed to be in ignorance a week.

The news to Beth was a source of great relief. But her troubles in other directions were fated to increase. That evening three men called formally—formally, that is to say, in so far as dressing in their best was concerned and putting on their "company manners." But Beth and courtship were their objects, a fact that developed, somewhat crudely with the smallest possible delay.

One of these persons, Billy Stitts by name, was fairly unobjectionable as a human being, since he was a quaint, slow-witted, bird-like little creature, fully sixty years of age and clearly harmless. The others were as frankly in pursuit of a mate as any two mountain animals.

Beth was frightened, when the purport of their visit flashed upon her. She felt a certain sense of helplessness. Mrs. Dick was too busy to be constantly present; Elsa was gone; the ways of such a place were new and wholly alarming. She felt when she made her escape from the three that her safety was by no means assured. Her room was her only retreat. Except for Mrs. Dick, there was not another woman in the house. She was wholly surrounded by men—a rough, womanless lot whose excitements, passions, and emotions were subjected to changes constantly, as well as to heats, by the life all around them in the mines.

That night was her first of real terror. Every noise in the building, and some in the streets, made her start awake like a hunted doe, with imaginings of the most awful description. She scarcely slept at all.

The following day old Billy Stitts called again, very shortly after breakfast. He proved such an amiable, womanly old chap that he was almost a comfort to the girl. She sent him to the postoffice, for a possible letter from Glen. He went with all the pleasure and alacrity of a faithful dog, apologizing most exuberantly on his return for the fact that no letter had come.