at when it offended them, took
advantage of its light at all times, and more like ants than ever
appeared to be running back and forth foolishly and aimlessly. But,
apparently, Bettins got his stakes and his friends' back and the men
with whom he had returned hastily staked out their own claims, all
feverishly and by crude guesswork. There was perhaps not a man among
them who knew the first thing about mining. Helen watched them in
sheer fascination. Down there half in light, half in shadow, darting
this way and that, they were like little gnomes playing some wild game
of their own.

'They act like madmen,' she whispered. 'They run about as if
everything had to be done in a minute.'

'Between them the crowd down there don't own, I'd say, fifty dollars.
Each one is figuring that he has his chance to be a millionaire
to-morrow. And they know that more men are coming. That's the way men
think when they're in the gold rush. Look, there come some more!'

This time there were three men. They broke into a run when they heard
voices; perhaps they had hoped to be first. Down into the bed of the
gulch they plunged; one of them slipped and rolled and cursed; men
laughed, and with the laughter dying in their throats broke off to yell
a warning to some one to keep his feet off a claim already staked out.
Within an hour after the return of Bettins there were a score of men on
the spot; again and again rose sharp words as every man, alert to
protect his own interests, was ready for a quarrel. They dragged
stones to mark their boundaries; they cut and hammered stakes, they
left their chosen sites now and then and altered their first judgments
and restaked somewhere else. They swarmed up the banks of the gulch on
both sides, they hastened back and forth, they staked everywhere. As
the time passed more and more came plunging into the orgy of gold until
at last the night was never quiet. Harsh words passed and once blows
were struck and a man went down and lay still. Another time there was
the report of a gun and a boom of many voices commanding order and that
quarrels be taken to a safe distance and out of the way of busy men.

'It's dreadful,' whispered Helen. 'They're like wild animals.'

'It's just the gold fever,' he returned. 'Poor devils! they are drunk
with their visions.'

But Helen wondered if they were capable of visions. Down in the
shadow-filled sink they were to her imagination like so many swine
plu