'Look at 'em!' he yelled. 'Nuggets as big as hen eggs! I took 'em out in an hour, with a pick, diggin' in the wet sand by the creek! And there's plenty more! It's the richest strike these hills ever seen!'
'Where?' roared a hundred voices.
'Well, I got my claim staked out, all I need,' said the man, 'so I don't mind tellin' you. It ain't twenty miles from here, in a little canyon everybody's overlooked and passed over--Jackrabbit Gorge! The creek's buttered with dust, and the banks are crammed with pockets of nuggets!'
An exuberant whoop greeted this information, and the crowd broke up suddenly as men raced for their shacks.
'New strike,' sighed McBride enviously. 'The whole town will be surgin' down Jackrabbit Gorge. Wish I could go.'
'Gimme your word you'll come back and stand trial, and you can go,' promptly offered Corcoran. McBride stubbornly shook his head.
'No, not till I've been cleared legally. Anyway, only a handful of men will get anything. The rest will be pullin' back into their claims in Whapeton Gulch tomorrow. Hell, I've been in plenty of them rushes. Only a few ever get anything.'
Colonel Hopkins and his partner Dick Bisley hurried past. Hopkins shouted: 'We'll have to postpone your trial until this rush is over, Jack! We were going to hold it today, but in an hour there won't be enough men in Whapeton to impanel a jury! Sorry you can't make the rush. If we can, Dick and I will stake out a claim for you!'
'Thanks, Colonel!'
'No thanks! The camp owes you something for ridding it of that scoundrel Brent. Corcoran, we'll do the same for you, if you like.'
'No, thanks,' drawled Corcoran. 'Minin's too hard work. I've got a gold mine right here in Whapeton that don't take so much labor!'
The men burst into laughter at this conceit, and Bisley shouted back as they hurried on: 'That's right! Your salary looks like an assay from the Comstock lode! But you earn it, all right!'
Joe Willoughby came rolling by, leading a seedy-looking burro on which illy-hung pick and shovel banged against skillet and kettle. Willoughby grasped a jug in one hand, and that he had already been sampling it was proved by his wide-legged gait.
'H'ray for the new diggin's!' he whooped, brandishing the jug at Corcoran and McBride. 'Git along, jackass! I'll be scoopin' out nuggets bigger'n this jug before night--if the licker don't git in my legs before I git there!'
'And if it does, he'll fall into a ravine and wake up in the mornin' with a fifty pound nugget in each hand,' said McBride. 'He's the luckiest son of a gun in the camp; and the best natured.'
'I'm goin' and get some ham-and-eggs,' said Corcoran. 'You want to come and eat with me, or let Pete Daley fix your breakfast here?'
'I'll eat in the jail,' decided McBride. 'I want to stay in jail till I'm acquitted. Then nobody can accuse me of tryin' to beat the law in any way.'
'All right.' With a shout to the jailer, Corcoran swung across the road and headed for the camp's most pretentious restaurant, whose proprietor was growing rich, in spite of the terrific prices he had to pay for vegetables and food of all kinds--prices he passed on to his customers.
While Corcoran was eating, Middleton entered hurriedly, and bending over him, with a hand on his shoulder, spoke softly in his ear.
'I've just got wind that that old miner, Joe Brockman, is trying to sneak his gold out on a pack mule, under the pretense of making this rush. I don't know whether it's so or not, but some of the boys up in the hills think it is, and are planning to waylay him and kill him. If he intends getting away, he'll leave the trail to Jackrabbit Gorge a few miles out of town, and swing back toward Yankton, taking the trail over Grizzly Ridge--you know where the thickets are so close. The boys will be laying for him either on the ridge or just beyond.
'He hasn't enough dust to make it worth our while to take it. If they hold him up they'll have to kill him, and we want as few murders as possible. Vigilante sentiment is growing, in spite of the people's trust in you and me. Get on your horse and ride to Grizzly Ridge and see that the old man gets away safe. Tell the boys Middleton said to lay off. If they won't listen--but they will. They wouldn't buck you, even without my word to back you. I'll follow the old man, and try to catch up with him before he leaves the Jackrabbit Gorge road.
'I've sent McNab up to watch the jail, just as a formality. I know McBride won't try to escape, but we mustn't be accused of carelessness.'
'Let McNab be mighty careful with his shootin' irons,' warned Corcoran. 'No 'shot while attemptin' to escape', Middleton. I don't trust McNab. If he lays a hand on McBride, I'll kill him as sure as I'm sittin' here.'
'Don't worry. McNab hated Brent. Better get going. Take the short cut through the hills to Grizzly Ridge.'
'Sure.' Corcoran rose and hurried out in the street which was all but deserted. Far down toward the other end of the gulch rose the dust of the rearguard of the army which was surging toward the new strike. Whapeton looked almost like a deserted town in the early morning light, foreshadowing its ultimate destiny.
Corcoran went to the corral beside the sheriff's cabin and saddled a fast horse, glancing cryptically at the powerful pack mules whose numbers were steadily increasing. He smiled grimly as he remembered Middleton telling Colonel Hopkins that pack mules were a good investment. As he led his horse out of the corral his gaze fell on a man sprawling under the trees across the road, lazily whittling. Day and night, in one way or another, the gang kept an eye on the cabin which hid the cache of their gold. Corcoran doubted if they actually suspected Middleton's intentions. But they wanted to be sure that no stranger did any snooping about.
Corcoran rode into a ravine that straggled away from the gulch, and a few minutes later he followed a narrow path to its rim, and headed through the mountains toward the spot, miles away, where a trail crossed Grizzly Ridge, a long, steep backbone, thickly timbered.
He had not left the ravine far behind him when a quick rattle of hoofs brought him around, in time to see a horse slide recklessly down a low bluff amid a shower of shale. He swore at the sight of its rider.
'Glory! What the hell?'
'Steve!' She reined up breathlessly beside him. 'Go back! It's a trick! I heard Buck Gorman talking to Conchita; he's sweet on her. He's a friend of Brent's--a Vulture! She twists all his secrets out of him. Her room is next to mine, she thought I was out. I overheard them talking. Gorman said a trick had been played on you to get you out of town. He didn't say how. Said you'd go to Grizzly Ridge on a wild-goose chase. While you're gone they're going to assemble a 'miners' court,' out of the riff-raff left in town. They're going to appoint a 'judge' and 'jury,' take McBride out of jail, try him for killing Ace Brent--and hang him!'
A lurid oath ripped through Steve Corcoran's lips, and for an instant the tiger flashed into view, eyes blazing, fangs bared. Then his dark face was an inscrutable mask again. He wrenched his horse around.
'Much obliged, Glory. I'll be dustin' back into town. You circle around and come in another way. I don't want folks to know you told me.'
'Neither do I!' she shuddered. 'I knew Ace Brent was a Vulture. He boasted of it to me, once when he was drunk. But I never dared tell anyone. He told me what he'd do to me if I did. I'm glad he's dead. I didn't know Gorman was a Vulture, but I might have guessed it. He was Brent's closest friend. If they ever find out I told you--'
'They won't,' Corcoran assured her. It was natural for a girl to fear such black-hearted rogues as the Vultures, but the thought of them actually harming her never entered his mind. He came from a country where not even the worst of scoundrels would ever dream of hurting a woman.
He drove his horse at a reckless gallop back the way he had come, but not all the way. Before he reached the Gulch he swung wide of the ravine he had followed out, and plunged into another, that would bring him into the Gulch at the end of town where the jail stood. As he rode down it he heard a deep, awesome roar he recognized-- the roar of the man-pack, hunting its own kind.
A band of men surged up the dusty street, roaring, cursing. One man waved a rope. Pale faces of bartenders, store clerks and dance hall girls peered timidly out of doorways as the unsavory mob roared past. Corcoran knew them, by sight or reputation: plug-uglies, barroom loafers, skulkers--many were Vultures, as he knew; others were riff-raff, ready for any sort of deviltry that required neither courage nor intelligence--the scum that gathers in any mining camp.
Dismounting, Corcoran glided through the straggling trees that grew behind the jail, and heard McNab
