d spread his blanket. The rest followed
and made down their beds; then, drawing on gloves and hat-nets, and
rolling themselves up in their coverings, fell to snoring. All except
the trader, who lay for hours on his back staring up at the stars, as
if trying to solve some riddle that baffled him.

They awoke early, and in half an hour had eaten, remade their packs,
and were ready to resume their march. As they were about to start, Gale
said:

"I reckon we'd better settle right now who has the choice of locations
when we get up yonder. I've been on stampedes where it saved a heap of
hard feeling."

"I'm agreeable," said Stark. "Then there won't be any misunderstanding."

The others, being likewise old at the game, acquiesced. They knew that
in such cases grave trouble has often occurred when two men have cast
eyes on the same claim, and have felt the miner's causeless "hunch"
that gold lies here or there, or that the ground one of them covets is
wanted by the other.

"I'll hold the straws," said Lee, "and every feller will have an even
break." Turning his back on the others, he cut four splinters of
varying lengths, and, arranging them so that the ends peeped evenly
from his big hand, he held them out.

"The longest one has the first choice, and so on," he said, presenting
them to Gale, who promptly drew the longest of the four. He turned to
Doret, but the Frenchman waved him courteously to Stark, and, when both
he and Runnion had made their choice, Lee handed him the remaining one,
which was next in length to that of the trader. Stark and Runnion
qualified in the order they drew, the latter cursing his evil luck.

"Never min', ole man," laughed Poleon, "de las' shot she's de sure wan."

They took up their burdens again, and filed towards the narrow valley
that stretched away into the hazy distances.

CHAPTER VI

THE BURRELL CODE

Not until his dying day will Burrell lose the memory of that march with
Necia through the untrodden valley, and yet its incidents were never
clear-cut nor distinct when he looked back upon them, but blended into
one dreamlike procession, as if he wandered through some calenture
where every image was delightfully distorted and each act deliriously
unreal, yet all the sweeter from its fleeting unreality. They talked
and laughed and sang with a rush of spirits as untamed as the waters in
the course they followed. They wandered, hand-in-hand, into a land of
illusions, where the