The Furnace of Gold. Philip Verrill Mighels
somewhat of which obviously concerned the auto and its passengers, since the lank little host made several ill-concealed gestures in the car's direction and once turned to look at the girl.
She had halted by the orchard fence from which, as a post of vantage, she was apparently looking over all the place. Her brown eyes, however, swung repeatedly around to the calico pony and its rider.
Yes, she agreed, the horseman was equal to the scene. He fitted it all, mountains, sky, the sense of wildness and freedom in the air. What was he, then? Undoubtedly a native—perhaps part Indian—perhaps——
There was something sinister, she was certain, in the glance he cast towards the car. He was armed. Could it be that he and the station man were road-agents, plotting some act of violence? They were certainly talking about the machine, or its owner, with exceptional earnestness of purpose.
Bostwick had finished with the tire.
"Come along, Beth, come along!" he called abruptly.
No sooner had she turned to walk to the car than the horseman rode up in her path. Her heart sank suddenly with misgivings. She halted as the unknown visitor addressed himself to Bostwick.
"May I speak to you a moment privately?"
Bostwick bristled with suspicions at once.
"I have nothing of a private nature to discuss with you," he answered. "If you have anything to say to me, please say it and be prompt."
The horseman changed color, but lost no whit of the native courtesy that seemed a part of his being.
"It isn't particularly private," he answered quietly. "I only wished to say I wouldn't rush off to Goldite this morning. I'd advise you to stay here and rest."
Bostwick, already irritated by delay, and impervious to any thought of a possible service in the horseman's attitude, grew more impatient and far more irritating.
"I haven't desired your advice," he answered sharply. "Be good enough to keep it to yourself." He advanced to the station owner, held out a bill, and added: "Here you are, my man, for your trouble."
"Heck!" said the lank little host. "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.
"I agree that the sooner you vamoose, the prompter the improvement in the landscape. But you're not going off to Goldite with these ladies in the car."
Matters might still have culminated differently had Bostwick even asked a civil "Why?" for Van was a generous and easy-going being.
Beth, in the road, felt her heart beat violently, with vague excitement and alarm. Bostwick glared, in sudden apprehension as to what the horseman had in mind.
"Is this a hold-up?" he demanded. "What do you mean?"
The rider dismounted, in a quick, active manner, and opened the door of the tonneau.
"You wouldn't have thanked me for advice," he replied; "you would hardly thank me more for information." He added to the maid in the car:
"Please alight, your friend is impatient to be starting." He nodded towards the owner of the auto.
The maid came down, demurely, casting but a glance at the tall, commanding figure by the wheel. He promptly lifted out a suitcase and three decidedly feminine-looking bags.
Bostwick by now was furious.
"It's an outrage!" he cried, "a dastardly outrage! You can see I am wholly unarmed! Do you mean to restrain these ladies here by force?"
The horseman slipped his arm through the reins of his pony's bridle, surveying Bostwick calmly.
"Do you mean to desert them if I do? I have not yet ordered you to leave."
"Ordered me to leave!" echoed the car owner fiercely. "I can neither be ordered to leave nor to stay! But I shall go—do you hear?—I shall go—and the ladies with me! If you mean to rob us, do so at once and have it over! My time is precious, if yours is not!"
Van smiled. "I might be tempted to rob a gentleman," he said, "but to deprive your passengers of your company would be a charity. Pray waste no more of your precious time if that is your only concern."
Beth had regained a shadow of her former composure. Her courage had never been absent. She was less alarmed than before and decidedly curious as to what this encounter might signify. She dared address the horseman.
"But—but surely—you seem—— You must have some excellent reason for—for acting so peculiarly."
He could not repress the brightness in his eyes as he met her half-appealing gaze.
"Reason, advice, and information would apparently be alike unwelcome to your chauffeur," he answered, doffing his hat. "He is eager to hasten on his way, therefore by all means let us bid him begone."
Bostwick grew rapidly wilder at each intimation of his social standing—a friend of the maid, and Beth's chauffeur! His impatience to proceed with all possible haste to Goldite was consuming. He had not intended that anything under the sun should delay him another single hour—not even Beth, should occasion arise to detain her. Even now he was far more concerned about himself and the business of his mission than he was for the women in his charge. He was much afraid, however, of the horseman's visible gun. He was not at all a person of courage, and the man before him presented such an unknown quantity that he found himself more or less helpless. At most he could merely attempt a bluff.
"You'll pay for this!" he cried somewhat shrilly, his face a black mask of anger. "I'll give you just half a minute to release these ladies and permit them to go with me in peace! If you refuse——"
The horseman interrupted.
"I said before you had not been ordered on your way, but now I've changed my mind. Don't talk any more—get into your car and hike!"
The gleam in his eye achieved two results: It cowed the last vestige of bravado in Bostwick's composition and ignited all the hatred of his nature. He hesitated for a moment, his lips parting sidewise as if for a speech of defiance which his moral courage refused to indorse. Then, not daring to refuse the horseman's command, he climbed aboard the car, the motor of which had never ceased its purring.
"You'll pay for this!" he repeated.
The girl, now pale again and tremendously disturbed, was regarding Bostwick with a new, cold light in her eyes—a light that verged upon contempt. She had never seen this lack of courageous spirit in the man before.
"But, Searle! You're not going—you're not really going, like this?"
It was the horseman who replied.
"You see, his time is precious. Also in his present state of mind he is certainly unfit company for—well, for Dave, here, a man who loves the pure white dove of peace." The station owner grinned. Van turned once more to the car owner, adding, placidly: "There, there, driver——"
Bostwick broke in vehemently.
"I refuse to abandon these ladies! Your conduct is not only that of a coward, it is——"
Van looked him over in mock astonishment.
"Say, Searle," he said, "don't you savvy you've lost your vote in this convention? I told you to do these ladies the kindness to sweeten the atmosphere with your absence. Now you hit the trail—and hit it quick!"
Bostwick looked helplessly at the girl.
"I am entirely unarmed," he said as before, though she knew there was a pistol in the car. "This ruffian——"
The horseman cut him short.
"So