Van straightened up slowly.

“The girl?”

“Miss Kent—­engaged to Bostwick—­you ought to know,” replied the man behind the counter.  “She’s put up the dough and I guess she’s in the game, for she turned it all over like a man.”

Van laughed, suddenly, almost terribly.

“Oh, hell, Rick, come out and git a drink!” he said.  “Here,” as he noted a bottle in the desk, “give me some of that!”

Rickart gave him the bottle and a glass.  He poured a stiff amber draught and raised it on high, a wild, fevered look in his eyes.

“Here’s to the gods of law and order!” he said.  “Here’s to faith, hope, and charity.  Here’s to friendship, honor, and loyalty.  Here’s to the gallant little minority that love their neighbors as themselves.  Give me perfidy or give me death!  Hurray for treason, strategy, and spoils!”

He drank the liquid fire at one reckless gulp, and laughing again, in ghastly humor, lurched suddenly out at the open door and across to the nearest saloon.

Rickart, in sudden apprehension for the “boy” he genuinely loved, called out to him shrilly, but in vain.  Then he scurried to the telephone, rang up the office of the sheriff, and presently had a deputy on the wire.

“Say, friend,” he called, “if Bostwick or McCoppet should return to camp to-night, warn them to keep off the street.  Van Buren’s in, and I don’t want the boy to mix himself in trouble.”

“All right,” came the answer, “I’m on.”

In less than an hour the town was “on.”  Men returning by the scores and dozens, nineteen out of every twenty exhausted, angered with disappointment, and clamorous for refreshments, filled the streets, saloons, and eating houses, all of them talking of the “Laughing Water” claim, and all of them ready to sympathize with Van—­especially at his expense.

His night was a mixture of wildness, outflamings of satire on the virtues, witty defiance of the fates, and recklessness of everything save reference to women.  Not a word escaped his lips whereby his keenest, most delighted listener could have probed to the heart of his mood.  To the loss of his claim was attributed all his pyrotechnics, and no one, unless it was Rickart, was aware of the old proverbial “woman in the case,” who had planted the sting that stung.

Rickart, like a worried animal, following the footsteps of his master, sought vainly all night to head Van off and quiet him down in bed.  At two in the morning, at McCoppet’s gambling hall, where Van perhaps expected to encounter the jumpers of his claim, the little cashier succeeded at last in commanding Van’s attention.  Van had a glass of stuff in his hand—­stuff too strong to be scathed by all the pure food enactments in the world.

“Look here, boy,” said Rickart, clutching the horseman’s wrist in his hand, “do you know that Gettysburg, and Nap, and Dave are camping on the desert, waiting for you to come home?”