ly
back from the desert. She had so utterly unbound the fetters from her
love. Confession of it all had been ready in her heart, her eyes, and
on her lips. Reaction smote her a dulling blow. Her whole impulsive
nature crept back upon itself, abashed--like something discarded, flung
at her feet ingloriously.

"Oh--Van!" she finally cried, in a weak, hurt utterance, and back along
the darkening hall she went, her hand with Glen's crushed letter
pressed hard upon her breast.

Van, for his part, far more torn than he could have believed possible,
proceeded down the street in such a daze as a drunken man might
experience, emerging from liquor's false delights to life's cold,
merciless facts. The camp was more emptied than he had ever known it
since first it was discovered. Only a handful of the reservation
stragglers had returned. The darkness would pour them in by hundreds.

Half way down the thoroughfare Van paused to remember what it was his
body wanted. It was food. He started again, and was passing the bank
when someone called from within.

"Hello, there--Van!" came the cry. "Hello! Come in!"

Van obeyed mechanically. The cashier, Rickart, it was who had shouted
the summons--a little, gray-eyed, thin-faced man, with a very long
moustache.

"How are you, Rick?" said the horseman familiarly. "What's going on?"

"Haven't _you_ heard?--_you_?" interrogated Rickart. "I thought it was
funny you were loafing along so leisurely. Didn't you know to-day was
the day for the rush?"

"I did," said Van. "What about it?"

"Not much," his friend replied, "except your claim has been jumped by
McCoppet and one J. Searle Bostwick, who got on to the fact that the
reservation line included all your ground."

Van looked his incredulity.

"What's the joke?" he said. "I bite. What's the answer?"

"Joke?" the cashier echoed. "Joke? They had the line surveyed
through, yesterday, and Lawrence confirmed their tip. Your claim, I
tell you, was on reservation ground, and McCoppet had his crowd on deck
at six o'clock this morning. They staked it out, according to law, as
the first men on the job after the Government threw it open--and there
they are."

Van leaned against the counter carelessly, and looked at his friend
unmoved.

"Who told you the story?" he inquired. "Who brought it into camp?"

"Why a dozen men--all mad to think they never got on," said Rickart,
not without heat. "It's an outrage, Van! You