The Furnace of Gold

Now Nevada, though robed in gray and white--the gray of sagebrush and the white of snowy summits--had never yet been accounted a nun when once again the early summer aroused the...

Beth stood perfectly still beside the road, watching the auto round the hill where it presently disappeared from view. The station owner picked up a sliver of wood and began to...

Beth had uttered that one cry only, as man and horse careened above the pit. She now sat dumbly staring where the two had disappeared. Nothing could she see of Van or his pony....

He started ahead as he had before, with that show of utter unconcern towards the girl that was absolutely new to her experience. Her eyes were wide with appeal as she watched hi...

The Monte Cristo mining property comprised a tunnel in the hill, a glory hole, a little toy quartz-mill--five stamps strong--the bunk-house, kitchen, blacksmith-shop, stable, co...

Too late to interfere in the struggle about to be enacted, the girl stood rigidly beside a great red pine tree, fixing her gaze upon Van, on whose heels, as he walked, jingled a...

Youth is elastic, and Van was young. An hour of quiet riding restored him astoundingly. He bore no signs of fatigue that Beth could detect upon his face. Once more, as he had in...

From Karrish to Goldite by the road was twenty-seven miles. There were fifteen mile of bottles by the way--all of them empty. A blind man with a nose for glass could have smelle...

Goldite, by the light of day, presented a wonderful spectacle. It was a mining camp positively crystallizing into being before the very eyes of all beholders. It was nearly all...

A man who lives by uncertainties has a singular habit of mind. He is ever lured forward by hopes and dreams that overlap each other as he goes. While the scheme in hand is provi...

Bostwick arrived in Goldite at three in the afternoon, dressed in prison clothes. He came on a freight wagon, the deliberate locomotion of which had provided ample time for his...

The one retreat for Beth was the house where she was lodging. She went there at once, briefly explaining to Bostwick on the way how it chanced she had come the day before. What...

Bostwick effected a change of dress in the rear of the nearest store. A rough blue shirt, stout kahki garments and yellow "hiking" boots converted him into one of the common uni...

Less than a week had passed since Bostwick's arrival in Goldite, but excitement was rife in the air. Despite the angered protests of half a thousand mining men, the Easterner, w...

"We've wasted time and money till to-day." Bostwick rose from his chair, put one foot upon it, and leaned towards the gambler as one assuming a position of equality, if not of s...

Goldite to the Eastern girl, who had found herself practically abandoned for nearly a week, had proved to be a mixture of discomforts, excitements, and disturbing elements. Fasc...

Matt Barger and three others of the convicts, still uncaptured, had pillaged a freight team, of horses, provisions, and arms, murdered a stage driver, robbed the express of a la...

The stranger who had witnessed the trouble at Culver's office had come there at the instance of McCoppet. It was, therefore, to McCoppet that he carried the intelligence of what...

Van was far too occupied to retain for long the anger that Culver had aroused in all his being. Moreover, he had come to camp in a mood of joyousness, youth, and bounding emotio...

The shadows of evening met Van, as he stepped from the outside door and started up the street. Then a figure emerged from the shadows and met him by the corner.

Mob madness is beyond explanation. Cattle stampeding are no more senseless than men in such a state. Goldite, however, was not only habitually keyed to the highest of tension, b...

For a moment neither Beth nor Van could speak. The girl, like a startled moon-sprite, wide-eyed and grave, had taken on a mood of beauty such as the man had never seen. She seem...

Bostwick succeeded in making an early start to the southward in his car. McCoppet had provided not only a couple of men as guides to the field where Lawrence was working, but al...

Her work had been admirably done. She looked no more rawly new or youthful than scores of young tenderfeet, daily in the streets of the camp. The stain on her face had furnished...

How long she lay there Beth could never have known. It seemed a time interminable, with the horror of the storm in all the universe. It was certainly more than an hour before th...

At ten o'clock that night the moon had not yet risen. Its glow was on the eastern sky, however, and at length it appeared, a broken orb with its waning side lopped from its bulk.

Daylight had barely broadened into morning when Van was astir from his bed. The air was chill and wonderfully clean. Above the eastern run of hills the sun was ready to appear.

There was not much to see, but it was picturesque. In their lack of funds the partners had constructed the simplest known device for collecting the gold from the sand. They had...

Beth and Van rode away from the claim just after lunch; she on a borrowed horse. The girl had not slept, but she had rested well and was far more fit for the journey back to tow...

Bostwick had told Beth partial truths. His journey had been hard. His car had been twice disabled on the desert; Lawrence had been difficult to find; delays had confronted him a...

Unfortunately for Bostwick he knew no ruffians in the camp--none of the Trimmers who would, perhaps, accept a sum of money to waylay a man, bash him over the head, and filch req...

In the night, far out to the northward, a storm descended like a cataclysm. Torrential rains were poured upon the hills from a cloudburst exceptionally savage. Only the scattere...

By the route beyond the river that Van was obliged to choose, the distance from his claim to Starlight was more than forty miles. His pony had no shoes, and having never been ri...

The night had been one long revel of drinking, gambling, and excitement. No one had slept in the reservation town--for no one had dared. Bawling, singing, and shouting, the joll...

Matt Barger, riding in the night, intent upon nothing save the chance to deal out his vengeance to Van Buren, had camped beside the river, at the turn where Van and Beth had ski...

Instead of turning northward in the mountain range and riding on to the "Laughing Water" claim, Van continued straight ahead to Goldite. The letter to Beth was heavy in his pock...

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 grou...

Beth Kent, while the camp was writing its feverish annals, had undergone emotions in the whole varied order of the gamut. She had felt herself utterly deserted and utterly unhap...

Van and the new supply of provender arrived together at the tent where the partners made their temporary home. It was nearly dusk, the mellow end of a balmy day. Gettysburg, Nap...

How she spent that night Beth never could have told. Her mind had refused to work. Only her heart was sensible of life and emotions, for there lay her wound, burning fiercely al...

If a single ray of far-off hope had lingered in Van's meditations concerning Beth, and the various occurrences involving himself and his mining property, it vanished when he tol...

All the following day, which was Thursday, two small companies were out in the hills. One was Beth's, where she, Glen, and Pratt toiled slowly over miles and miles of baking mou...

Beth Kent, as the sun was going from the sky, fell down three times in utter exhaustion. She and the others had come to within a mile of the "Laughing Water" claim. Pratt was fa...

McCoppet was in town. He had come to camp at midnight of the previous day, duly followed by his friend Larry Trimmer. The lumberman had waxed impatient. Fully two thousand dolla...

Trimmer, the lumberman, not to be stayed, had broken in upon McCoppet ruthlessly, with perceptions unerring concerning the troubles in the air, when Lawrence was arrested. The g...

Van was conveyed to Mrs. Dick's. The fever attacked him in his helplessness and delirium claimed him for its own. He glided from unconsciousness into a wandering state of mind b...

Love is a healer without a rival in the world. Van proved it--Van and Beth, of course, together, with Gettysburg, Dave, and Napoleon to help, and Algy to furnish the sauce. All...