ie's protection--simply because of her gender
and entirely without reference to her character or her future attitude
towards himself. In her way she personified a sort of adoration and
gratitude, which could neither be slain nor escaped by anything that he
or anyone else could do. Her devotion, however, had palled upon him
early, perhaps more because of its habit of increasing. It had
recently become a pest.

"Busy?" she echoed. "You said that before. When ain't you going to be
busy?"

"When I'm dead," he answered, and wrenching loose he dived inside a
hardware store, to purchase a hunting knife for Gettysburg, then went
at once to a barber shop and shut out the torment of friends.

He escaped at the rear, when his face had been groomed, and made his
way unseen to Mrs. Dick's.

Beth was not at home. She and Bostwick were together at the office of
the telegraph company, where Searle was assisting her, as she thought
to aid her brother, to such excellent purpose that her thirty thousand
dollars bid fair to repose in the bank at his call before the business
day should reach its end.

Mrs. Dick seemed to Van the one and only person in the camp unaffected
by the news of his luck. She treated him precisely as she always had
and doubtless always should. Therefore, he had no difficulty in
getting away to Culver at his office.

The official surveyor was a fat-cheeked, handsome man, with a silky
brown beard, an effeminate voice, and prodigious self-conceit. He was
pacing up and down the inside office, at the rear of the rough board
building, when Van came in and found him. The horseman's business was
one of maps and land-office data made essential to his needs by the new
recording of the "Laughing Water" property as a placer instead of a
quartz claim. He had drawn a crude outline of his holdings and in
taking it forth from his pocket found the knife bought for Gettysburg
in the way. He removed the weapon and placed it on the table near at
hand.

"There's so much of this desert unsurveyed," he said, "that no man can
tell whether he's just inside or just outside of Purgatory."

"So you come to me to find out?" Culver demanded somewhat shortly. "Do
you tin-horn miners think that's all this office is for?"

"Well, in my instance, I had to come to some wiser spirit than myself
to get my bearings," answered Van drawlingly. "You can see that."

"There are the maps." Culver waved his hand towards a drawer in th