bearing
of both men quite overcame her indignation at this blow against herself.

"No, no, don't have any trouble," she pleaded, as she clung to the
trader. "For my sake, daddy, sit down." Then she whispered fiercely
into his ear: "Can't you see he's trying to make you fight? There's too
many of them. Wait! Wait!"

Burrell attempted to speak, but Stark, who was presiding, turned upon
him fiercely:

"Now this is one time when you can't butt in, Mr. Soldier Man. This is
our business. Is that plain?"

The Lieutenant realized that he had no place in this discussion, and
yet their move was so openly brazen that he could restrain himself with
difficulty. A moment later he saw the futility of interference, when
Stark continued, addressing the trader:

"This isn't aimed at you in particular, Gale, nor at your girl, for a
motion to disqualify her isn't necessary. She isn't old enough to hold
mining property."

"She's eighteen," declared the trader.

"Not according to her story."

"Well, I can keep her claims for her till she gets of age."

"We've just fixed it so you can't," grinned Runnion, cunningly. "No man
can hold more than one claim on a creek. You voted for that yourself."

Too late, Gale saw the trick by which Stark had used him to rob his own
daughter. If he and his two friends had declined to be a part of this
meeting, the others could not have held it, and before another assembly
could have been called the creek would have been staked from end to
end, from rim to rim, by honest men, over whom no such action could
pass; but, as it was, his own votes had been used to sew him up in a
mesh of motions and resolutions.

"No Creek" Lee had the name of a man slow in speech and action, and one
who roused himself to anger deliberately, much as a serpent stings
itself into a painful fury; but now it was apparent that he was boiling
over, for he stammered and halted and blurted explosively.

"You're a bunch of rascals, all of you, tryin' to down a pore girl and
get her ground; but who put ye wise to this thing, in the first place?
Who found this gold? Just because there's enough of you to vote that
motion through, that don't make it legal, not by a damned sight, and it
won't hold, because I won't write it in the book. You--you--" He glared
at them malevolently, searching his mind for an epithet sufficiently
vile, and, finding it, spat it out--"dressmakers!"

So this was why both Stark and Runnion had gone up the c