harply the surveyor started as a figure materialized out of
the gloom where the moonlight streamed down between the trees not far
away. The man stood amidst the silvery radiance, and Devine was
relieved to notice that he had nothing in his hand. Then he turned
partly around, and his voice reached the pair who watched him.

"Have you struck it yet?" he asked.

An invisible man replied that he had not yet found whatever he was
searching for; and in another moment a sharp snapping suggested that a
third stranger was floundering through the bush. He came into sight
close by the first and stopped.

"I can't strike that post," he said. "The bush down that way is black
as pitch. Guess I'll have to look for a pine-knot and get a light."

"They'd hear you chopping," said the man who had appeared first. "The
tent's just back there among the firs. We have got to have that post
shifted before they know we are about."

There was no doubt as to who it was that he referred to, and Devine
saw Saunders hitch himself forward a little.

"If I'd only three or four ca'tridges!" he said half aloud.

Devine sympathized with him. His comrade was a very indifferent shot,
but it would have been a relief to feel that they had something
besides the ax to fall back on as a last resort. Firearms, as he was
aware, are seldom made use of in a dispute in British Columbia, but,
for all that, men have now and then been rather badly injured during
an altercation over a mineral claim. At close quarters a shovel or a
big hammer is apt to prove an effective weapon.

Then, and neither was afterward quite sure how it happened, Saunders
lost his balance and fell forward amidst the fern. He did not do it
noiselessly, and one of the two jumpers sprang backward a pace.

"Somebody in that clump of fern," he said, and then apparently
recovered a little from his alarm. "It's that blame fool Charley."

There was no longer any possibility of concealment, and Saunders
suddenly stood up in the moonlight which had crept close up to the
brake, a tall, gaunt figure with the rifle glinting at his hip.

"It's not," he said laconically. "It's going to be a funeral unless
you light out of this."

The men did not stop to consider, but vanished on the instant, and
Devine, breaking into a little laugh from sheer relief, fancied that
they had jumped behind adjacent trees. Saunders, who stood gazing into
the shadows, waved his hand.

"You'll stop right where you are,