“No, you didn’t even wait for an invitation,” answered Van with a smile.  “Everybody’s got to hike now.  I’m busy, trying to breathe.”

She clung on.  Unfortunately, down in an Arizona town, Van had trounced a ruffian once in Queenie’s protection—­simply because of her gender and entirely without reference to her character or her future attitude towards himself.  In her way she personified a sort of adoration and gratitude, which could neither be slain nor escaped by anything that he or anyone else could do.  Her devotion, however, had palled upon him early, perhaps more because of its habit of increasing.  It had recently become a pest.

“Busy?” she echoed.  “You said that before.  When ain’t you going to be busy?”

“When I’m dead,” he answered, and wrenching loose he dived inside a hardware store, to purchase a hunting knife for Gettysburg, then went at once to a barber shop and shut out the torment of friends.

He escaped at the rear, when his face had been groomed, and made his way unseen to Mrs. Dick’s.

Beth was not at home.  She and Bostwick were together at the office of the telegraph company, where Searle was assisting her, as she thought to aid her brother, to such excellent purpose that her thirty thousand dollars bid fair to repose in the bank at his call before the business day should reach its end.

Mrs. Dick seemed to Van the one and only person in the camp unaffected by the news of his luck.  She treated him precisely as she always had and doubtless always should.  Therefore, he had no difficulty in getting away to Culver at his office.

The official surveyor was a fat-cheeked, handsome man, with a silky brown beard, an effeminate voice, and prodigious self-conceit.  He was pacing up and down the inside office, at the rear of the rough board building, when Van came in and found him.  The horseman’s business was one of maps and land-office data made essential to his needs by the new recording of the “Laughing Water” property as a placer instead of a quartz claim.  He had drawn a crude outline of his holdings and in taking it forth from his pocket found the knife bought for Gettysburg in the way.  He removed the weapon and placed it on the table near at hand.

“There’s so much of this desert unsurveyed,” he said, “that no man can tell whether he’s just inside or just outside of Purgatory.”

“So you come to me to find out?” Culver demanded somewhat shortly.  “Do you tin-horn miners think that’s all this office is for?”

“Well, in my instance, I had to come to some wiser spirit than myself to get my bearings,” answered Van drawlingly.  “You can see that.”

“There are the maps.”  Culver waved his hand towards a drawer in the office table, and moved impatiently over to a window, the view from which commanded a section of the street, including the bank.

Van was presently engrossed in a search for quarter sections, ranges, and townships.