the love in her heart, which would not, could
not die, and which, by dint of its intensity, bore her onward to fight
for his rights.

Alone so much in the burning land all day, she had long, long hours in
which to think of Van, long hours in which to contemplate the silence
and the vast dispassion of this mountain world. Her own inward burning
offset the heat of air and earth; a sense of the aridness her heart
would know without Van's love once more returned, was counter to the
aridness of all these barren rocks. The fervor of her love it was that
bore her onward, weary, sore, and drooping.

What would happen at the end of day, if Pratt should confirm the
Lawrence survey, bestowing the claim on Bostwick and McCoppet, she did
not dare to think. Her excitement increased with every chain length
moving her onward towards the cove. She did not know the hills or
ravines, the canyons descended or acclivities so toilsomely climbed,
and, therefore, had not a guide in the world to raise or depress her
hope. There was nothing to do but sustain the weary march and await
the survey's end.

All day in Goldite, meanwhile, Van had been working towards an end. He
had two hundred dollars, the merest drop in the bucket, as he knew,
with which to fight the Bostwick combination. He was thoroughly aware
that even when the line could be run, establishing some error or fraud
on the part of surveyor Lawrence, the fight would barely be opened.

McCoppet and Bostwick, with thousands of dollars at command, could
delay him, block his progress, force him into court, and perhaps even
beat him in the end. The enginery of dollars was crushing in its
might. Nevertheless, if a survey showed that the line had been falsely
moved, he felt he could somewhat rely upon himself to make the seat of
war too warm for comfort.

There was no surveyor nearer than two hundred miles, with Pratt, as Van
expressed it, "camping with the foe." He had shaken his partners
untimely from their beds that morning--(the trio were mining nights, on
the four-to-midnight shift)--and busied them all with the work of the
day, by way of making preparations.

He spent nearly twenty silver dollars on the wire, telegraphing various
towns to secure a competent man. He sent a friend to the Government
office, where Lawrence was up to his ears in work, and procured all the
data, including metes and bounds, of the reservation tract before its
fateful opening.

The day was c