The Furnace of Gold | Page 4

thank me more for information." He added to the maid in the
car:
"Please alight, your friend is impatient to be starting." He nodded
towards the owner of the auto.
The maid came down, demurely, casting but a glance at the tall,
commanding figure by the wheel. He promptly lifted out a suitcase and
three decidedly feminine-looking bags.
Bostwick by now was furious.
"It's an outrage!" he cried, "a dastardly outrage! You can see I am
wholly unarmed! Do you mean to restrain these ladies here by force?"
The horseman slipped his arm through the reins of his pony's bridle,
surveying Bostwick calmly.
"Do you mean to desert them if I do? I have not yet ordered you to
leave."
"Ordered me to leave!" echoed the car owner fiercely. "I can neither be
ordered to leave nor to stay! But I shall go--do you hear?--I shall

go--and the ladies with me! If you mean to rob us, do so at once and
have it over! My time is precious, if yours is not!"
Van smiled. "I might be tempted to rob a gentleman," he said, "but to
deprive your passengers of your company would be a charity. Pray
waste no more of your precious time if that is your only concern."
Beth had regained a shadow of her former composure. Her courage had
never been absent. She was less alarmed than before and decidedly
curious as to what this encounter might signify. She dared address the
horseman.
"But--but surely--you seem---- You must have some excellent reason
for--for acting so peculiarly."
He could not repress the brightness in his eyes as he met her
half-appealing gaze.
"Reason, advice, and information would apparently be alike
unwelcome to your chauffeur," he answered, doffing his hat. "He is
eager to hasten on his way, therefore by all means let us bid him
begone."
Bostwick grew rapidly wilder at each intimation of his social
standing--a friend of the maid, and Beth's chauffeur! His impatience to
proceed with all possible haste to Goldite was consuming. He had not
intended that anything under the sun should delay him another single
hour--not even Beth, should occasion arise to detain her. Even now he
was far more concerned about himself and the business of his mission
than he was for the women in his charge. He was much afraid, however,
of the horseman's visible gun. He was not at all a person of courage,
and the man before him presented such an unknown quantity that he
found himself more or less helpless. At most he could merely attempt a
bluff.
"You'll pay for this!" he cried somewhat shrilly, his face a black mask
of anger. "I'll give you just half a minute to release these ladies and
permit them to go with me in peace! If you refuse----"

The horseman interrupted.
"I said before you had not been ordered on your way, but now I've
changed my mind. Don't talk any more--get into your car and hike!"
The gleam in his eye achieved two results: It cowed the last vestige of
bravado in Bostwick's composition and ignited all the hatred of his
nature. He hesitated for a moment, his lips parting sidewise as if for a
speech of defiance which his moral courage refused to indorse. Then,
not daring to refuse the horseman's command, he climbed aboard the
car, the motor of which had never ceased its purring.
"You'll pay for this!" he repeated.
The girl, now pale again and tremendously disturbed, was regarding
Bostwick with a new, cold light in her eyes--a light that verged upon
contempt. She had never seen this lack of courageous spirit in the man
before.
"But, Searle! You're not going--you're not really going, like this?"
It was the horseman who replied.
"You see, his time is precious. Also in his present state of mind he is
certainly unfit company for--well, for Dave, here, a man who loves the
pure white dove of peace." The station owner grinned. Van turned once
more to the car owner, adding, placidly: "There, there, driver----"
Bostwick broke in vehemently.
"I refuse to abandon these ladies! Your conduct is not only that of a
coward, it is----"
Van looked him over in mock astonishment.
"Say, Searle," he said, "don't you savvy you've lost your vote in this
convention? I told you to do these ladies the kindness to sweeten the
atmosphere with your absence. Now you hit the trail--and hit it quick!"

Bostwick looked helplessly at the girl.
"I am entirely unarmed," he said as before, though she knew there was
a pistol in the car. "This ruffian----"
The horseman cut him short.
"So long, Searle. I trust you'll meet congenial company on the road, but
I advise you even now to return the way you came."
Bostwick glared at him vindictively,