Van looked at him steadily.  He was far from being dizzied in his brain.  Since the blow received at the hands of Beth had not sufficed to make him utterly witless, then nothing drinkable could overcome his reason.

“Home?” he said.  “Waiting for me to come home.”

Suddenly wrenching his hand from Rickart’s grip he hurled the glass of liquor with all his might against the mirror of the bar.  The crash rose high above the din of human voices.  A radiating star was abruptly created in the firmament of glass, and Van was starting for the door.

The barkeeper scarcely turned his head.  He was serving half a dozen men, and he said:  “Gents, what’s your poison?”

A crowd of half-intoxicated revelers started for Van and attempted to haul him back.  He flung them off like a lot of pestiferous puppies, and cleared the door.

He went straight to the hay-yard, saddled his horse, and headed up over the mountains.  He had eaten no dinner; he wanted none.  The fresh, clean air began its work of restoration.

It was daylight when he reached the camp his partners had made on the desert.  Napoleon and Gettysburg were drunk.  Discouraged by his long delay, homeless, and utterly disheartened, they had readily succumbed to the conveniently bottled sympathy of friends.

No sooner had the horseman alighted at the camp than Napoleon flung himself upon him.  He was weeping.

“What did I sh-sh-sh-sh-(whistle) shay?” he interrogated brokenly, “home from a foreign—­quoth the r-r-r-r-r-(whistle) raven—­NEVER MORE!”

Gettysburg waxed apologetic, as he held his glass eye in his hand.

“Didn’t mean to git in thish condition, Van—­didn’t go to do it,” he imparted confidentially.  “Serpent that lurks in the glash.”

Van resumed his paternal role with a meed of ready forgiveness.

“Let him who hath an untainted breath cast the first bottle,” he said.  Even old Dave, thought sober, was disqualified, and Algy was asleep.

CHAPTER XXXVII

THE PRIMITIVE LAW

Bostwick and McCoppet had made ample provision against attack at the claim.  Their miners, who set to work at once to enlarge the facilities for extracting the gold from the ground, were gun-fighters first and toilers afterward.  The place was guarded night and day, visitors being ordered off with a strictness exceptionally rigid.

Van and his partners were down and out.  They had saved almost nothing of the gold extracted from the sand, since the bulk of their treasure had fallen, by “right of law” into the hands of the jumpers.

Bostwick avoided Van as he would a plague.  There was never a day or night that fear did not possess him, when he thought of a possible encounter; yet Van had planned no deed of violence and could not have told what the results would be should he and Bostwick meet.