k at last! A
couple of men, who from the beginning had been well in advance of
everyone else, and often out of sight, had seemed for the last five
minutes to be losing ground. But now they put on steam, Maudie too. She
stepped out of her snowshoes, and flung them up on the low roof of the
first cabin. Then she ducked her head, crooked her arms at the elbow,
and, with fists uplifted, she broke into a run, jumping from pile to
pile of frozen pay, gliding under sluice-boxes, scrambling up the bank,
slipping on the rotting ice, recovering, dashing on over fallen timber
and through waist-deep drifts, on beyond No. 10 up to the bench above.

When the Boy got to Pitcairn's prospect hole, there were already six
claims gone. He proceeded to stake the seventh, next to Maudie's. That
person, with flaming cheeks, was driving her last location-post into a
snow-drift with a piece of water-worn obsidian.

The Colonel came along in time to stake No. 14 Below, under Maudie's
personal supervision.

Not much use, in her opinion, "except that with gold, it's where you
find it, and that's all any man can tell you."

As she was returning alone to her own claim, behold two brawny Circle
City miners pulling out her stakes and putting in their own. She flew
at them with remarks unprintable.

"You keep your head shut," advised one of the men, a big, evil-looking
fellow. "This was our claim first. We was here with Pitcairn yesterday.
Somebody's took away our location-posts."

"You take me for a cheechalko?" she screamed, and her blue eyes flashed
like smitten steel. She pulled up her sweater and felt in her belt.
"You--take your stakes out! Put mine back, unless you want----" A
murderous-looking revolver gleamed in her hand.

"Hold on!" said the spokesman hurriedly. "Can't you take a joke?"

"No; this ain't my day for jokin'. You want to put them stakes o' mine
back." She stood on guard till it was done. "And now I'd advise you,
like a mother, to back-track home. You'll find this climate very tryin'
to your health."

They went farther up the slope and marked out a claim on the incline
above the bench.

In a few hours the mountain-side was staked to the very top, and still
the stream of people struggled out from Rampart to the scene of the new
strike. All day long, and all the night, the trail was alive with the
coming or the going of the five hundred and odd souls that made up the
population. In the town itself the excitement grew rat