“Look here,” said Culver, turning upon him aggressively, “what’s this racket I hear about you taking the inside track with that stunning new petticoat in town?”

Van looked up without the least suspicion of the man’s real meaning.

“If you are referring to that reckless young woman called Queenie——­”

“Oh, Queenie—­rats!” interrupted Culver irritably.  “You know who I mean.  I guess you call her Beth.”

Van’s face took on a look of hardness as if it were chiseled in stone.  He had squared around as if at a blow.  For a moment he faced the surveyor in silence.

“You are making some grave mistake,” he said presently in ominous calm.  “Please don’t make such an allusion as that again.”

“So, the shot went home,” Culver laughed unctuously, turning for a moment from the window.  “I thought it would.  You know you couldn’t expect to keep anything like that all to yourself, Van Buren.  You’re not the only ladies’ man on the beach.  And as for this clod of a Bostwick——­” He had turned to look out as before, and grew suddenly excited.  Beth was in view at the bank.  “By the gods!” he exclaimed with a sudden change of tone, “she is the handsomest bit of confectionery on earth.  If I don’t win her——­”

His utterance promptly ceased, together with his abominable activities and primping in the window.  Van, who did not know that this creature had been Beth’s particular annoyance, had crossed the room without a sound and laid his grip on Culver’s collar.

“You cur!” he said quietly, and choking the man he flung him down against the floor and wall as if he had been the merest puppet.

Someone had entered the outside door.  Neither Culver nor Van heard the sound.  Culver rolled over, scrambled to his feet, and with his face and neck engorged with rage, came rushing at the horseman like a fury.

“You blackguard!” he screamed, “I’ll tear out your heart for that!  I’ll kill you like——­”

“Shut up!” Van commanded quietly, stopping the onrush of his angered foe by putting his hand against the surveyor’s face and sending him reeling as before.  “Don’t tell me what you’ll do to me—­or to anyone else in this camp!  And if ever I hear of you opening your mouth again as you did here a moment ago, I’ll tie a knot so hard in your carcass you’ll have to be buried in a hat box!”

He glanced towards the doorway.  A stranger stood on the threshold.  Bowing, Van passed him and left the place, too angered to think either of the maps or of his knife.

Culver, raging like a maniac, bowled headlong into the visitor, in his effort to overtake the horseman, but found himself baffled and took out his wrath in foul vituperation that presently drove the stranger from the place.

CHAPTER XVIII

WHEREIN MATTERS THICKEN

The stranger who had witnessed the trouble at Culver’s office had come there at the instance of McCoppet.  It was, therefore, to McCoppet that he carried the intelligence of what had taken place, so far as he had seen.