to get in touch with success,
rub shoulders with a man who had the gold.

His friends were there in the red-faced mob. They said they were his
friends, and they doubtless knew. Some were, indeed, old acquaintances
whom Van would gladly have assisted towards a needed change of fortune.
He was powerless, not only to aid these men, but also to escape.
Despite his utmost endeavors they held him there an hour, and to make
up the time, he chose the hottest, roughest trail through the range,
when at last he was clear of the town.

The climb he made on his pony to slice a few miles from his route was
over a mountain and through a gulch that was known as The Devil's
Slide. It was gravel that moved underfoot with never-failing
treachery, gravel made hot by the rays of the sun, and flinging up a
scorching heat while it crawled and blistered underfoot. On midsummer
days men had perished here, driven mad by the dancing of the air and
the dread of the movement where they trod. The last two miles of this
desolate slope Van walked and led his broncho.

He entered "Solid Canyon" finally, and mounting once more let Suvy pick
the way between great boulders, where gray rattlesnakes abounded in
exceptional numbers. These were the hardships of the ride, all there
were that Van felt worth the counting. He had reckoned without that
far-off storm, which had raged in the darkness of the night.

He came to the river, the ford between the banks where he and Beth had
found a shallow stream. For a moment he stared at it speechlessly. A
great, swiftly-moving flood was there, tawny, roiled with the mud torn
down and dissolved in the water's violence, and foaming still from a
plunge it had taken above.

It was ten to twenty feet deep. This Van realized as he sat there on
his sweating horse, measuring up the banks. The depth had encroached
upon the slope whereon he was wont to ascend the further side. There
was one place only where he felt assured a landing might be achieved.

"Well, Suvy," he said to the animal presently, "it looks more like a
swim than a waltz quadrille, and neither of us built web-footed."

Without further ado he placed Beth's letter in his hat, then rode his
pony down the bank and into the angry-looking water. Suvy halted a
moment uncertainly, then, like his master, determined to proceed.

Five feet out he was swimming, headed instinctively up the stream and
buried deep under the surface. Van still remained in