“For God’s sake give a man a chance,” implored the man who had trespassed in the night.  “I’ll move the shack to-morrow.”

“You won’t have to,” Van informed him, “but you’d better move your meat to-day.”

He took out a match, scratched it with quiet deliberation and lighted the end of the fuse.

“For God’s sake—­man!” cried the carpenter, and without even waiting to climb from the roof he rolled to the edge in a panic, fell off on his feet, and ran as if all the fiends of Hades were fairly at his heels.

Van and Napoleon also moved away with becoming alacrity.  Three minutes later the charge went off.  It sounded like the crack of doom.  It seemed to split the earth and very firmament.  A huge black toadstool of smoke rose up abruptly.  Something like a blot of yellowish color spattered all over the landscape.  It was the shack.

It had moved.  The smoke cloud drifted rapidly away.  On the hill was a great jagged hole, lined with rock, but there was nothing more.  The cabin was hung in lumber shreds on the stunted trees for hundreds of feet in all directions.  With it went hammers, saws and a barrel of nails whose usefulness was ended.

Gettysburg, aproned, and fresh from his labors at the stove, came hastening out of the cabin to where his partners stood, in great distress of mind.

“Holy toads, Van!” he said excitedly, “it must have been the shot!  I’ve dropped an egg—­and what in the world shall I do?”

“Cackle, man, cackle,” Van answered him gravely.  “That’s a mighty rare occurrence.”

“And two-bits apiece!” almost wailed poor Gettysburg, diving back into the cabin, “and only them four in the shack!”

That was also the day that Bostwick came out upon the scene.  He came with his prospectors, all the party somewhat disillusionized as to all that fabled gold upon the Indian reservation.

Some word of the wealth of the “Laughing Water” claim had come to Searle early in the week.  He did not visit the cabin or the owners of the cove.  For fifteen minutes, however, he sat upon his horse and scanned the place in silence.  Then out of his newly-acquired knowledge of the boundaries of the reservation the hounds of his mind jumped up a half-mad plan.  His cold eyes glittered as he looked across to where Van and his partners were toiling.  His lips were compressed in a smile.

He rode to Goldite hurriedly and sought out his friend McCoppet.  When the two were presently closeted together where their privacy was assured, a conspiracy, diabolically insidious, was about to have its birth.

CHAPTER XV

HATCHING A PLOT

“You’re back pretty pronto,” drawled the gambler, by way of an opening remark.  “Found something too big to keep hidden?”

“That reservation is a false alarm, as Billy and the others will tell you,” answered Bostwick, referring to McCoppet’s chosen prospectors.  “The rush will prove a farce.”