All that might come later, when, their desires
satisfied, the weary body sick and aching, sends fearful thoughts
ahead towards the drab sunset awaiting them. For the moment the full
tide of youth is still running strong. Sickness and death have no
terrors. The fine strength of powerful bodies will not allow the mind
to focus such things.

Out of the rugged hills backing the camp the gold-seekers struggle to
their resting-place. Here, one man comes clambering over the rough
bowlder-strewn path at the base of a forest-clad hill. Here, an atom
of humanity emerges from the depths of a vast woodland that dwarfs all
but the towering hills. Another toils up a steep hillside from the
sluggish creek. Another slouches along a vague, unmade trail. Yet
another scrambles his way through a low, dense-growing scrub which
lines the sides of a vast ravine, the favored locality of the
gold-seeker.

So they come, one by one, from every direction radiating about the
building, which is Minky's store. Their faces are hard. Their skin is
tanned to a leathery hue, and is of a texture akin to hide. They are
silent, thoughtful men, too. But their silence is of the vast world in
which they delve, and their thought is the thought of men absorbed in
their quest. No, there is no lightness, even in their happiest
moments. To be light, an intelligent swiftness of brain is needed. And
these derelicts have little of such. Although, when Minky's spirit has
circulated its poison through their veins, they are sometimes apt to
assume a burlesque of it.

Now the camp is wide awake. But it is only the wakefulness of the
mother who is roused by the hungry crying of her infant. It will
slumber again when appetites have been duly appeased.

The milk of human kindness is soured by the intense summer heat. The
men are "grouchy." They jostle harshly as they push up to Minky's
counter for the "appetizers" they do not need. Their greetings are
few, and mostly confined to the abrupt demand, "Any luck?" Then, their
noon-day drink gulped down, they slouch off into the long, frowsy
dining-room at the back of the store, and coarsely devour the rough
fare provided by the buxom Birdie Mason, who is at once the kindliest
and worst caterer imaginable.

This good-natured soul's position was not as enviable as one might
reasonably have supposed. The only woman in a camp of men, any one of
whom might reasonably strike a fortune in five minutes. The situation
suggests pos