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Whitehead and the others out there would be surprised to see him coming into camp again so soon. Well, that was nothing. Perhaps, too, it was just as well he was going back early. There was the new shaft-house to get up, and the sooner that was ready the sooner they could work the new lead. He raised his head, conscious of a disturbing factor, and then arose and closed the door into the hall.
That they were not to be long left undisturbed was promised by an increasing number of figures distinctly visible around the distant shaft-house and dump, as well as the continuous shouting, indistinguishable as to words but pronounced in volume, borne through the clear air to their ears. "I 'm a liar if ther was n't twenty in that last bunch," Hicks muttered, just a trifle uneasily.
When Van at last could oversee the vast, unpeopled lands of the Piute Indian reservation, near the boundary of which his salted claim had been staked, he had only a mile or so to ride, and all the way down hill. He came to the property by eleven o'clock of the morning. He looked about reflectively. The rough board cabin and the rougher shaft-house were scarcely worth knocking down for lumber.
Moore remained outside, apparently checking the fellows off as they passed, and when the last one vanished again hailed the shaft-house: "What's the matter with you, Tom? Why don't you close down and come and get your stuff?" "You want me too?" "Sure we're here waitin' fer yer." Westcott clung to his hiding-place, but greatly relieved in mind.
At the very edge of the black, concealing chaparral, within easy rifle range of the "Independence" shaft-house, Hicks and Brown lay flat on their faces, waiting and watching for some occasion to take a hand.
At the claim in the cove the fortunate holders of a private treasury of gold had lost no time. In the absence of better lumber, for which they had no money, Van and his partners had torn down the shaft-house, made it into sluices, and turned in the water from the stream. That was all the plant required.
As Percival and Uncle Peter left their car for the shaft-house after breakfast, the occupants of the other car were bestirring themselves. From one of the open windows a low but impassioned voice was exhausting the current idioms of damnation in sweeping dispraise of all land-areas north and west of Fifty-ninth Street, New York. Uncle Peter smiled grimly.
The door closed behind them, shutting out the yellow glow, and leaving the hillside black and lonely. A bucket of rock rattled onto the dump, and Moore, limping painfully, swearing with every step, clambered up the dark trail toward the shaft-house. Miss Donovan did not go down to supper.
Wiley walked behind and as they mounted to the shaft-house his eyes wandered restlessly about; until, at the tool-shed, they suddenly focussed and a half-crouching man stepped out. He was tall and gnarly and the point of his chin rested stiffly on the slope of his shoulder. It was Stiff Neck George and he kept a crook in his elbow as he glanced from Blount to Wiley.
It was a dark night, with scarcely a star visible, the only gleam of radiance coming from a light across the gulch, which he knew burned in the shaft-house of the La Rosita. Everything about was still, with the intense silence of mountain solitude. Not a breath of air stirred the motionless cedars. Cautiously he circled the black cabin, every nerve taut for struggle, every sense alert.
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