squander time which might be valuable in idle surmises. Ten minutes
after leaving Drennen he had sent a man on horseback scurrying down the
hundred miles of trail to Lebarge. The man carried a letter to the
General Manager. The letter ran in part:

". . . I don't know whether the man is crazy or not. Having seen his
specimens I'm rather inclined to think he's not. But he's fool enough
to have shown the stuff before filing on his claim. Send me Luke and
Berry and Jernigan on the run. Drennen is laid up with a couple of
bullet holes in him. I'll keep him from filing as long as I can; the
rest is up to the men you send me."

Then, his eyes filled with the glint of his purpose, his jaw seeming to
grow lean with the determination upon him, Madden made himself as
comfortable as conditions permitted in MacLeod's Settlement and settled
down to a period of unsleeping watchfulness. He took a room at Pere
Marquette's.

Before the crowd in the camp had thronged Joe's Lunch Counter toward
evening the fever of excitement had grown into a delirium. Madden
hadn't talked; Drennen hadn't talked. And yet the word flew about
mysteriously that Drennen had asked ten per cent of the stock of his
mine and a hundred thousand dollars cash! "God! He had driven his
pick into the mother lode of the world!" That was the thing which many
men said in many ways, over and over and over again. The Canadian
Mining Company was trying to frame a deal with him; Madden had rushed a
man to Lebarge with some sort of message; two other big mining concerns
had their representatives in town. And Drennen hadn't filed on his
claim; the gold lay somewhere in the mountains offering itself to
whatever man might find it. A man who could not buy his own grubstake
to-day might "own the earth" to-morrow.

Before darkness came MacLeod's Settlement, seething with restless
humanity for a few hours, was again pouring itself out into the
wilderness in many erratic streams. And no man left who had not first
gone by Pere Marquette's and seen the nuggets which the old man had put
into his one glass-topped show case, and no man but carried the picture
of them dancing before his eyes as he went. Kootanie George, who had
had no word for Ernestine Dumont since she had shamed him, went with
them. Ramon Garcia, having kissed Ernestine Dumont's hand, went with
them. And, oddly enough, Kootanie George and Ramon Garcia went
together as trail pardners.

The one