Over the road innumerable caravans were passing.  Everything was rushing to Goldite.  There were horsemen, hurried persons on foot, men in carriages and autos, twenty-horse freight teams, and men on tiny burros.  Nearly all were shedding bottles as they went.  A waterless land is not necessarily devoid of all manner of moisture.

A dozen of the slowly laboring freight outfits were passed by Van and his two companions.  What engines of toil they represented!  The ten pairs of sweating, straining animals seemed almost like some giant caterpillar, harnessed to a burden on wheels.  They always dragged three wagons, two of which were huge gray hulks, incredibly heavy with giant-powder, canned goods, bottled goods, picks, shovels, bedding, hay, great mining machinery, and house-hold articles.  These wagons were hitched entrain.  The third wagon, termed a “trailer,” was small and loaded merely with provisions for the teamster and the team.  The whole thing, from end to end, beat up a stifling cloud of dust.

The sun went down while Beth, Van, and Elsa were still five miles from their goal.  They rode as rapidly as possible.  The horses, however, were jaded, and the way was slightly up grade.  The twilight was brief.  It descended abruptly from the western bank of clouds, by now as thick and dark as mud.  Afar off shone the first faint light of the gold-camp to which the three were riding.  This glimmering ray was two miles out from the center of town.  Goldite was spread in a circle four miles wide, and the most of it was isolated tents.

The darkness shut down like a pall.  A vivid, vicious bolt of lightning—­a fiery serpent, overcharged with might—­struck down upon the mountain tops, pouring liquid flame upon the rocks.  A sweeping gust of wind came raging down upon the town, hurling dust and gravel on the travelers.

Van rode ahead like a spirit of the storm.  He knew the need for haste.  Beth simply let her pony go.  She was cramped and far too wearied for effort.

They were galloping now past the outskirts of the camp, the many scattered tents of the men who were living on their claims.  All the world was a land of claims, staked off with tall white posts, like ghosts in the vanishing light.  Ahead, a multitude of lights had suddenly broken on the travelers’ vision, like a nearby constellation of stars.

They rode into all of it, blazing lights, eager crowds upon the streets, noise of atrocious music from the brilliant saloons, and rush of wind and dust, not a minute too soon.  They had barely alighted and surrendered their horses to a friend of Van’s when the rain from the hilltops swooped upon the camp in a fury that seemed like an elemental threat to sweep all the place, with its follies, hopes, and woes, its excitements, lawlessness, and struggles, from the face of the barren desert world.

Beth and her maid were lame and numb.  Van could only hustle them inside a grocery-and-hardware store to save them from a drenching.  The store was separated from a gambling-hall saloon by the flimsiest board partition.  Odors of alcohol, confusion of voices, and calls of a gamester came unimpeded to the women’s senses, together with some mighty bad singing, accompanied lustily by strains and groans pounded from a ghastly piano.