r
of many miles, others breaking off to right or to left at tempting
cross-trails, hastening feverishly, dreaming dreams and finding rude
awakenings. The snows were melting everywhere upon the slopes, the
dirty waters running down the trails making an ooze at midday which
sucked up and destroyed the tracks of the men who travelled over it in
the crisp early mornings.

There was no sign to tell whether Drennen had gone straight on during
the seven days he might have been pushing away from the camp and had
made his strike at the end of them, or whether he had turned off
somewhere hardly out of sight of the handful of shacks marking
MacLeod's Settlement. No sign to tell that the golden vein or pocket
lay within shouting distance from the Settlement or fifty, seventy-five
miles removed. And Drennen, lying on his back upon his hard bunk,
stared up at the blackened beams across his ceiling and smiled his
hard, bitter smile as he pictured the frantic, fruitless quest.

Sefton, the man with the coppery Vandyke beard, thin-jawed and with
restless eyes, had given him certain rude help at Marquette's and had
been among the first the following day to offer aid. Drennen dismissed
him briefly, offering to pay for what he had already done but saying he
had no further need of clumsy fingers fooling with his hurt. Sefton
favoured him with a keen scrutiny from the door, hesitated, shrugged
his thin shoulders and went away. Drennen wondered if the girl, who
seemed in the habit of ordering people around, had sent him.

At the end of the week Drennen was about again. He had kept his wound
clean with the antiseptic solutions to be obtained from the store and
under its bandages it was healing. He found that he was weaker than he
had supposed but with a grunt drove his lax muscles to stiffen and obey
his will. From the door he came back, found a broken bit of mirror and
looked curiously at the face reflected in it. No beautiful sight, he
told himself grimly. It was haggard, drawn and wan. A beard three
weeks old, the black of it shot through here and there with white
hairs, made the stern face uncouth.

"I look a savage," he told himself disgustedly, tossing the glass to
the cluttered table. Then, with a grim tightening of the lips, "And
why not?"

He made his way slowly, his side paining him no little, to Joe's Lunch
Counter. It was late afternoon and the street was deserted. A gleam
of satisfaction showed fleetingly in h