The “nurse” came out at the door again, this time with a note which Bostwick had written, with a few suggestions from Glen, in an unsealed cover as before.

“I told young Kent you didn’t take no time to read the other,” he said, holding up the epistle.  “If you want to read this——­”

“Thank you,” Van interrupted, taking the letter and thrusting it at once in his pocket.  “Thank Mr. Kent for his courtesies, in my behalf.”  He turned and rode away.

CHAPTER XXXIV

THE TAKING OF THE CLAIM

Before six o’clock that morning, while Van was arousing the blacksmith, the reservation madness broke its bounds.  Twenty-five hundred gold-blinded men made the rush for coveted grounds.

The night had been one long revel of drinking, gambling, and excitement.  No one had slept in the reservation town—­for no one had dared.  Bawling, singing, and shouting, the jollier element had shamed the coyotes from the land.  Half a thousand camp fires had flared all night upon the plain.  The desert had developed an oasis of flowing liquors, glaring lights, and turmoil of life, lust, and laughter.  Good nature and bitter antagonism, often hand in hand, had watched the night hours pale.

By daylight the “dead line” of the reservation boundary—­the old, accepted line that all had acknowledged—­resembled a thin, dark battle formation, ready for the charge.  It was a heterogeneous array, where every unit, instead of being one of an army mobilized against a common foe, was the enemy of all the others, lined up beside him.  There were men on foot, men on horses, mules, and burros, men in wagons, buckboards, and buggies, and men in automobiles.

At half-past five the pressure of greed became too great to bear.  A few unruly stragglers, far down the line, no longer to be held in check, bent portions of the long formation inward as they started out across the land.  The human stampede began almost upon the instant.  Keepers on their horses, riding up and down, were swept away like chips before a flood.  Scattering wildly over hill and plain, through gulches, swales, and canyons, the mad troop entered on the unknown field, racing as if for their lives.

Gettysburg, Napoleon, and Dave had watched for an hour the human hedge below the “Laughing Water” claim.  They, too, had been up since daylight, intent upon seeing the fun.  They had eaten their breakfast at half-past four.  At a quarter of six they returned, to their shack and began at their daily work.

The cold mountain stream, diverted to the sluices, went purling down over the riffles.  The drip from countless negligible leaks commenced in its monotony.  Into the puddles of mud and water the three old miners sloshed, with shovels and picks in hand.  They were tired before their work began.  Gettysburg, at sixty-five, had been tired for twenty-five years.  Nevertheless, he began his day with song, his cheery,