The Furnace of Gold. Philip Verrill Mighels
the boulder. This explained his directions, "stand aside!" If it came—it must not involve the girl. There was nothing for him but to trust to its weight against his own. He was strong. He began to come up, bracing a foot against the crumbling wall, winding the rope around one of his legs—or his leg around the rope, and resting whensoever he could.
Beth stood there, nearly as tense as the rope. Her brown eyes were fixed on the bedded boulder; her face was more gray than its bulk.
At the edge, where the lasso impinged upon the granite, small particles were breaking and falling ominously. Scarcely daring to breathe, as she felt how the man was toiling up from the maw of the chasm, Beth could not bear to look where he must come—if come he ever should.
It seemed an eternity of waiting. At last, when new misgivings had seized upon her heart, she heard his labored breathing. Even then she did not turn. She feared to watch his efforts; she feared to break the spell. A minute later she heard his even voice.
"It's a wonderful view—from down below."
The glad, eager light in her eyes, which his eyes met from the brink, put strength in both his arms. He came up to safety in an outburst of vigor that was nothing short of magnificent.
"Oh!" said the girl, and she leaned against the wall in a sudden need for support.
"I really had no intention of—deserting like that," panted Van, with a smile that was just a trifle forced. "But it's so much easier to—drop into a habit than it—ever is to get out."
She made no reply, but remained where she was, weakly leaning against the wall and slowly regaining the strength she had lost at the moment of beholding him safe. She was not the fainting kind, but she was human—womanly human.
Van began immediately to release and re-coil the rope.
"Too bad to throw away a pony like that," he resumed regretfully. "I always intended, if he died a Christian death, to have his hide tanned for a rug."
He was saying anything, no matter what, to dissipate the reactionary collapse into which he feared the girl was falling.
"Now then," he added, when the rope was well in hand, "we've wasted all the time we can spare on a second-rate vaudeville performance. Come along."
CHAPTER IV
CONGENIAL COMPANY
He started ahead as he had before, with that show of utter unconcern towards the girl that was absolutely new to her experience. Her eyes were wide with appeal as she watched him striding up the trail. For herself she wanted nothing; but her womanly nature craved some trifling sign, some word of assurance that the man was uninjured—really safe again and whole—after that terrible plunge. But this from the horseman was impossible. He had not even thanked her for the rescue.
"You horrid, handsome wretch!" she murmured vexedly, stimulated to renewed activity by her resentment; then she followed along the narrow way.
They came to the flat, beyond the wall, where Elsa sat keeping the horses. The maid looked the horseman over quite calmly, inquiring:
"What for dit you did it—go down there?"
"Just for ducks," said Van. He halted for Beth's approach, put her up on the roan, and once more strode off in the trail ahead with a promptness that was certainly amazing.
There was no understanding such a person. Beth gave it up. The whole affair was inexplicable—his attitude towards Searle at the station, his abduction of herself and the maid, and this trailing of the pair of them across these terrible places, for no apparent reason in the world.
Her mare followed on in the tracks of the muscular figure, over whom, for a moment, she had almost wished to yearn. His escape from death had been so slender—and he would not even rest!
The flat was, in reality, the hog's back or ridge of a lofty spur of the mountains. Except for the vast bluish canyons and gorges far below, the view was somewhat restricted here, since towering summits, in a conclave of peaks, arose to right and left.
After a time, as they swung around on the trend of the ridge, they came abreast a mighty gap in the mountains to the left, and there, far down, lay a valley as flattened by perspective as the unruffled surface of a lake.
Here Van presently halted, peering down and searching the vast gray floor with the keenest attention. He went on further, and halted again, Beth meanwhile watching his face with increasing curiosity.
At the third of his stops she gazed no more on the panorama of immensity, but rather gazed at him.
"What is it you expect to see?" she inquired at last. "Goldite isn't down there, is it?"
"I'm rather expecting—if I haven't miscalculated on the time—— There he is now," he answered, still staring afar off down upon the valley. He raised his arm and extended a finger to point towards the north-most limit of the level stretch of land. "Do you see that small, dark object in the road? That's a road, that slender yellow streak that you can follow."
Beth obeyed directions and thereby discerned, with remarkable clearness, the moving object, far away below. She did not in the least suspect its nature.
"Why, yes—what is it?" she asked with languid interest, having expected something more significant. "Is it some small animal?"
"Yes," responded Van. "It's Searle."
Beth was instantly all attention.
"Not Mr. Bostwick, in his car?"
Van continued to study the gray of the world-wide map.
"I rather wonder——" he mused, and there he halted, presently adding, "He's climbing a hill. You might not think so, looking down from here, but it's steep and sandy, for a car."
She was watching eagerly.
"And he's no further along towards Goldite than this?"
"He's had some tough old going," answered Van. "He's in luck to——" then to himself, as he continued to scan the scene for something he did not apparently find. "By Jupe! I'd have sworn Matt Barger——" He broke off abruptly, adding in a spirit of fairness, "Searle is getting right up to the ridge all right. Good boy! He must have a powerful motor under the—There! By George! I knew it! I knew it! Got him! right there in the gravel!"
The girl looked suddenly upon him, wholly unable to comprehend the sharp exclamations he was making.
"What has got him? What do you mean?" she demanded in vague alarm. "I don't see what you——"
"That's Matt every time—I thought so," he resumed, as he stepped a little closer to the girl. "Don't you see them?—those lively little specks, swarming all around the machine?"
Beth bent her gaze on the drama, far below—a play in which she knew but one of the characters, and nothing of the meaning of the scene.
"I see—yes—something like a lot of tiny ants—or something. What are they?—not robbers?—not men?"
"Part men, part hyenas," he told her quietly. "It's a lot of State convicts, escaped from their prison, two days free—and desperate."
She was suddenly very pale. Her eyes were blazing.
"Convicts! Out of prison?"
"A good long way out," he told her watching, "and clever enough to hike for the mines, with the camps all full of strangers. They learn to be good mixers, when they're trying to escape."
Beth