"What"s the good of my finding you here in Goldite if you don"t do nothing for your country?"
Van shouldered the sack.
"What are you doing here anyhow?" said he, "--up before breakfast and busy as a hen scratching for one chicken."
"Come on," she answered, starting briskly towards a new white building, off the main thoroughfare, eastward. "I live here--start my boarding-house today. I"m going to get rich. Every room"s furnished and every bed wanted as fast as I can make "em up. Have you had your breakfast?"
"Say, you"re my Indian," answered Van. "I"ve got you two customers already. You"ve got to take them in and give them your best if you turn someone else inside out to do it."
Mrs. d.i.c.k paused suddenly.
"Bronson Van Buren! You"re stuck on some woman at last!"
"At last?" said Van. "Haven"t I always been stuck after you?"
Mrs. d.i.c.k resumed her brisk locomotion.
"Snakes alive!" she concluded explosively. "She"s respectable, of course? But you said two. Now see here, Van, no Mormon games with me!"
"Her _maid_--it"s her maid that"s with her," Van explained. "Don"t jump down my throat till I grease it."
"Her maid!" Mrs. d.i.c.k said no more as to that. The way she said it was enough. They had come to the door of her newly finished house, a clean, home-like place from which a fragrance of preparing breakfast flowed like a ravishing nectar. "Where are they now?" she demanded impatiently. "Wherever they are it ain"t fit for a horse! Why don"t you go and fetch "em?"
Van put the bag inside the door, then his hands on Mrs. d.i.c.k"s shoulders.
"I"ll bet your mother was a little red firecracker and your father a bottle of seltzer," he said. Then off he went for Beth.
She was not, of course, at "home" when he arrived at the place he had found the previous evening. Disturbed for a moment by her absence, he presently discerned her, off there westward on the hill from which she was making a survey of the camp.
Three minutes after he was climbing up the slope and she turned and looked downward upon him.
"By heavens!" he said beneath his breath, "--what beauty!"
The breeze was molding her dress upon her rounded form till she seemed like the statue of a G.o.ddess--a G.o.ddess of freedom, loveliness, and joy, sculptured in the living flesh--a figure vibrant with glowing health and youth, startlingly set in the desert"s gray austerity. With the sunlight flinging its gold and riches upon her, what a marvel of color she presented!--such creamy white and changing rose-tints in her cheeks--such a wonderful brown in her hair and eyes--such crimson of lips that parted in a smile over even little jewels of teeth! And she smiled on the horseman, tall, and active, coming to find her on the hill.
"Good morning!" she cried. "Oh, isn"t it wonderful--so big, and bare, and _clean_!"
Van smiled.
"It"s a hungry-looking country to me--looks as if it has eaten all the trees. If it makes you think of breakfast, or just plain coffee and rolls, I"ve found a place I hope you"ll like, with a friend I didn"t know was here."
"You are very kind, I"m sure," she said. "I"m afraid we"re a great deal of trouble."
"That"s what women were made for," he answered her frankly, a bright, dancing light in his eyes. "They couldn"t help it if they would, and I guess they wouldn"t if they could."
"Oh, indeed?" She shot him a quick glance, half a challenge. "I _guess_ if you don"t mind we won"t go to the place you"ve found, for breakfast, this morning."
"You"d better guess again," he answered, and taking her arm, in a masterful way that bereft her of the power of speech or resistance, he marched her briskly down the slope and straight towards Mrs. d.i.c.k"s.
"Thank your stars you"ve struck a place like this," he said. "If you don"t I"ll have to thank them for you."
"Perhaps I ought to thank you first," she ventured smilingly. It would have seemed absurd to resent his boyish ways.
"You may," he said, "when I get to be one of your stars."
"Oh, really? Why defer mere thanks _indefinitely_?"
"It won"t be indefinitely, and besides, thanks will keep--and breakfast won"t."
He entered the house, with Beth and her maid humbly trailing at his heels. Mrs. d.i.c.k came bustling from the kitchen like a busy little ant. Van introduced his charges briefly. Mrs. d.i.c.k shook hands with them both.
"Well!" she said, "I like you after all! And it"s lucky I do, for if I didn"t I don"t know"s I should take you or not, even if Van did say I had to."
Van took her by the shoulders and shook her boyishly.
"You"d take a stick of dynamite and a house afire, both in one hand, if I said so," he announced. "Now don"t get hostile."
"Well--I s"pose I would," agreed Mrs. d.i.c.k. She added to Beth: "Ain"t he the d.i.c.kens and all? Just regular brute strength. Come right upstairs till I show you where you"re put. I"ve turned off two men to let you have the best room in the house."
Beth had to smile. She had never felt so helpless in her life--or so amused. She followed Mrs. d.i.c.k obediently, finding the two-bed room above to be a bright, new-smelling apartment of acceptable size and situation. In answer to a score of rapid-fire questions on the part of Mrs. d.i.c.k, she imparted as much as Van already knew concerning herself and her quest.
Mrs. d.i.c.k became her friend forthwith, then hastened downstairs to the kitchen. Van and Beth presently took breakfast together, while Elsa, with a borrowed needle and thread, was busied with some minor repairing of garments roughly used the day before. Other boarders and lodgers of the house had already eaten and gone, to resume their swirl in the maelstrom of the camp.
For a time the two thus left alone in the dining-room appeased their appet.i.tes in silence. Van watched the face of the girl for a time and finally spoke.
"I"ll let you know whatever I hear about your brother, if there is any more to hear. Meantime you"ll have to remain here and wait."
She was silent for a moment, reflecting on, the situation.
"You took my suitcase away from Mr. Bostwick, you"ll remember," she said, "and left it where we got the horses."
"It will be here to-day," he answered. "I arranged for that with Dave."
"Oh. But of course you cannot tell when Mr. Bostwick may appear."
"His movements couldn"t be arranged so conveniently, otherwise he wouldn"t appear at all."
She glanced at him, startled.
"Not come at all? But I need him! Besides, he"s my---- I expect him to go and find my brother. And the trunk checks are all in his pocket--wait!--no they"re not, they"re in my suitcase after all."
"You"re in luck," he a.s.sured her blandly, "for Searle has doubtless lost all his pockets."
"Lost his pockets?" she echoed. "Perhaps you mean the convicts took them--took his clothing--everything he had."
"Everything except his pleasant manner," Van agreed. "They have plenty of that of their own."
She was lost for a moment in reflection.