“What’s the matter with your writing hand?  Is this Van-brigand holding them both?  What’s the matter with Searle?  I wrote him two or three aeons ago, when he might have been of assistance.  Now I’m doing my eight hours a day in an effort to sink down to China.  I’m on the blink, in a way, but not for long, for this is the land where opportunity walks night and day to thump on your door—­and I’ll grab her by the draperies yet.

“But me!—­working as a common miner!—­though I’ve got a few days off to go and look at a claim with a friend of mine, so you needn’t answer till you hear again.

“If Searle is dead, why don’t he say so?  I only touched him for a few odd dollars—­I only needed a grub-stake—­fifty would have done the trick—­and he doesn’t come through.  And nobody writes.  I guess it’s me for the Prodigal, but when I do get next to the fatted calf I’ll get inside and eat my way out by way of his hoofs and horns.  Why couldn’t you and Searle and the maid come down and have a look at me—­working? It’s worth it.  Come on.  Maybe it’s easier than writing.  Yours for the rights of labor, GLEN.”

Astonished by the contents of this communication, Beth read it again, in no little bewilderment, to make sure she had made no mistake.  No letter from herself?  No word from Searle?  No answer to Glen’s request for money?  And he had only asked for a “few odd dollars?” There must be something wrong.  He had sent the most urgent requirement for sixty thousand dollars.  And she herself had written, at once.  Searle had assured her he had sent him word by special messenger.  Starlight was less than a long day’s ride away.  Glen had already had time to see that account in the paper and write.

She had no suspicions of Bostwick.  She had seen Glen’s letter and read it for herself.  And Searle had responded immediately with an offer to lend her brother thirty thousand dollars.  There must be some mistake.  Glen might be keeping his news and plans from herself, as men so often will.  Searle might even have overlooked the importance of keeping Glen fully posted, intending to go so soon to Starlight.  Her own letter might have miscarried.

She tried to fashion explanations—­but they would not entirely fit.  Searle had been gone three days.  He had gone before the Goldite News was issued.  The paper had arrived at Glen’s while the man in his car had failed.

For a moment she sickened with the reflection that Searle might once more have fallen captive to the convicts, still at large—­and with all the money!  Then she presently assured herself that news so sinister as this would have been very prompt to return.

It was all too much to understand—­unless Glen were ill—­or out of his reason.  His two letters, the one to Searle and this one to herself, were so utterly conflicting.  It was not to be solved from such a distance.  Moreover, Glen wrote that he was off on a trip, and asked her to wait before replying.  It was irritating, all this waiting, alone here in Goldite, but there seemed to be nothing else to do.