s grizzled head a cowboy hat, set well back. He could
spit farther than any man in Minook, and by the same token was a better
shot. They had unanimously elected him Judge.

The first-comers had taken possession of the chairs and wooden stools
round the stove. All the later arrivals, including Keith and his
friends, sat on the floor.

"There's a good many here."

"They'll keep comin' as long as a lean man can scrouge in."

"Yes," said Keith, "everybody's got to come, even if it's only the
usual row between pardners, who want to part and can't agree about
dividing the outfit."

"Got to come?"

Keith laughed. "That's the way everybody feels. There'll be a debate
and a chance to cast a vote. Isn't your true-born American always
itching to hold a meeting about something?"

"Don't know about that," said McGinty, "but I do know there's more
things happens in a minute to make a man mad in Alaska, than happens in
a year anywhere else." And his sentiment was loudly applauded. The
plaintiff had scored a hit.

"I don't know but two partnerships," the ex-Governor was saying, "of
all those on my ship and on the Muckluck and the May West--just two,
that have stood the Alaska strain. Everyone that didn't break on the
boats, or in camp, went to smash on the trail."

They all admitted that the trail was the final test. While they smoked
and spat into or at the stove, and told trail yarns, the chief
magistrate arranged papers, conferred with the clerk and another man,
wrinkled deeply his leathery forehead, consulted his Waterbury, and
shot tobacco-juice under the table.

"Another reason everybody comes," whispered Keith, "is because the side
that wins always takes the town up to the Nugget and treats to hootch.
Whenever you see eighty or ninety more drunks than usual, you know
there's either been a stampede or else justice has been administered."

"Ain't Bonsor late?" asked someone.

"No, it's a quarter of."

"Why do they want Bonsor?"

"His case on the docket--McGinty v. Burt Bonsor, proprietor of the Gold
Nugget."

"If they got a row on----"

"If they got a row? Course they got a row. Weren't they pardners?"

"But McGinty spends all his time at the Gold Nugget."

"Well, where would he spend it?"

"A Miners' Meetin's a pretty poor machine," McGinty was saying to the
ex-Governor, "but it's the best we got."

"----in a country bigger than several of the nations of Europe put
together," responded that gentleman, w