The world about was one of rocks and treeless ridges, spewed from some vast volcanic forge of ages past.  It was all a hard, gray, adamantine world, unlovely and severe—­a huge old gold furnace, minus heat or fire, lying neglected in a universe of mountains that might have been a workshop in the ancient days when Titans wrought their arts upon the earth.

Beth gazed upon it all in wonder not unmingled with awe.  What a place it was for man to live and wage his puny battles!  Yet the fever of all of it, rising in her veins, made her eager already to partake of the dream, the excitement that made mere gold-slaves of the men who had come here compelling this forbidding place to yield up some measure of comfort and become in a manner their home.

Van, in the meanwhile, having spent the time till midnight on his feet, and the small hours asleep on a bale of hay, was early abroad, engaged in various directions.  He first proceeded to the largest general store in the camp and ordered a generous bill of supplies to be sent to his newest claim.  Next he arranged with a friendly teamster for the prompt return of the two borrowed horses on which Beth and her maid had come to camp.  Then, on his way to an assayer’s office, where samples of rock from the claim in question had been left for the test of fire, he encountered a homely, little, dried-up woman who was scooting about from store to store with astonishing celerity of motion.

“Tottering angels!” said he.  “Mrs. Dick!”

“Hello—­just a minute,” said the lively little woman, and she dived inside the newest building and was out almost immediately with a great sack of plunder that she jerked about with most diverting energy.

“Here, fetch this down to the house,” she demanded imperiously.  “What’s the good of my finding you here in Goldite if you don’t do nothing for your country?”

Van shouldered the sack.

“What are you doing here anyhow?” said he, “—­up before breakfast and busy as a hen scratching for one chicken.”

“Come on,” she answered, starting briskly towards a new white building, off the main thoroughfare, eastward.  “I live here—­start my boarding-house today.  I’m going to get rich.  Every room’s furnished and every bed wanted as fast as I can make ’em up.  Have you had your breakfast?”

“Say, you’re my Indian,” answered Van.  “I’ve got you two customers already.  You’ve got to take them in and give them your best if you turn someone else inside out to do it.”

Mrs. Dick paused suddenly.

“Bronson Van Buren!  You’re stuck on some woman at last!”

“At last?” said Van.  “Haven’t I always been stuck after you?”

Mrs. Dick resumed her brisk locomotion.

“Snakes alive!” she concluded explosively.  “She’s respectable, of course?  But you said two.  Now see here, Van, no Mormon games with me!”

“Her maid—­it’s her maid that’s with her,” Van explained.  “Don’t jump down my throat till I grease it.”