m. He was weeping.

"What did I sh-sh-sh-sh-(whistle) shay?" he interrogated brokenly,
"home from a foreign--quoth the r-r-r-r-r-(whistle) raven--NEVER MORE!"

Gettysburg waxed apologetic, as he held his glass eye in his hand.

"Didn't mean to git in thish condition, Van--didn't go to do it," he
imparted confidentially. "Serpent that lurks in the glash."

Van resumed his paternal role with a meed of ready forgiveness.

"Let him who hath an untainted breath cast the first bottle," he said.
Even old Dave, thought sober, was disqualified, and Algy was asleep.

CHAPTER XXXVII

THE PRIMITIVE LAW

Bostwick and McCoppet had made ample provision against attack at the
claim. Their miners, who set to work at once to enlarge the facilities
for extracting the gold from the ground, were gun-fighters first and
toilers afterward. The place was guarded night and day, visitors being
ordered off with a strictness exceptionally rigid.

Van and his partners were down and out. They had saved almost nothing
of the gold extracted from the sand, since the bulk of their treasure
had fallen, by "right of law" into the hands of the jumpers.

Bostwick avoided Van as he would a plague. There was never a day or
night that fear did not possess him, when he thought of a possible
encounter; yet Van had planned no deed of violence and could not have
told what the results would be should he and Bostwick meet.

In his customary way of vigor, the horseman had begun a semi-legal
inquiry the first day succeeding the rush. He interviewed Lawrence,
the Government representative, since Culver's removal from the scene.
Lawrence was prepared for the visit. He expressed his regrets at the
flight Van's fortunes had taken. Bostwick had come, he said, with
authority from Washington, ordering the new survey. No expectation had
been entertained, he was sure, that the old, "somewhat imaginary" and
"decidedly vague" reservation line would be disturbed, or that any
notable properties would be involved. Naturally, after the line was
run, establishing the inclusion of the "Laughing Water" claim, and much
other ground, in the reservation tract, Mr. Bostwick had been justified
in summary action. It was the law of human kind to reach for all
coveted things.

Van listened in patience to the exposition of the case. He studied the
maps and data as he might have studied the laws of Confucius written in
their native tongue. The thing looked convinci