"Haven't _you_ heard?--_you_?" interrogated Rickart. "I thought it was funny you were loafing along so leisurely. Didn't you know to-day was the day for the rush?" "I did," said Van. "What about it?" "Not much," his friend replied, "except your claim has been jumped by McCoppet and one J. Searle Bostwick, who got on to the fact that the reservation line included all your ground." Van looked his incredulity. "What's the joke?" he said. "I bite. What's the answer?" "Joke?" the cashier echoed. "Joke? They had the line surveyed through, yesterday, and Lawrence confirmed their tip. Your claim, I tell you, was on reservation ground, and McCoppet had his crowd on deck at six o'clock this morning. They staked it out, according to law, as the first men on the job after the Government threw it open--and there they are." Van leaned against the counter carelessly, and looked at his friend unmoved. "Who told you the story?" he inquired. "Who brought it into camp?" "Why a dozen men--all mad to think they never got on," said Rickart, not without heat. "It's an outrage, Van! You might have fought them off if you'd been on deck, and made the location yourself! Where have you been?" Van smiled. The neatness of the whole arrangement began to be presented to his mind. "Oh, I was out of the way all right," he said. "My friends took care of that." "I thought there was something in the wind, all along," imparted the little cashier. "Bostwick and McCoppet have been thicker than thieves for a week. But the money they needed wasn't Bostwick's. I wired to New York to get his standing--and he's got about as much as a pin. But the girl stood in, you bet! She's got enough--and dug up thirty thousand bucks to handle the crowd's expenses." Van straightened up slowly. "The girl?" "Miss Kent--engaged to Bostwick--you ought to know," replied the man behind the counter. "She's put up the dough and I guess she's in the game, for she turned it all over like a man." Van laughed, suddenly, almost terribly. "Oh, hell, Rick, come out and git a drink!" he said. "Here," as he noted a bottle in the desk, "give me some of that!" Rickart gave him the bottle and a glass. He poured a stiff amber draught and raised it on high, a wild, fevered look in his eyes. "Here's to the gods of law and order!" he said. "Here's to faith, hope, and charity. Here's to friendship, honor, and loyalty. Here's to the gallant little minority that love their neighbors as themselves. Give me perfidy or give me death! Hurray for treason, strategy, and spoils!" He drank the liquid fire at one reckless gulp, and laughing again, in ghastly humor, lurched suddenly out at the open door and across to the nearest saloon. Rickart, in sudden apprehension for the "boy" he genuinely loved, called out to him shrilly, but in vain. Then he scurried to the telephone, rang up the office of the sheriff, and presently had a deputy on the wire.