CHAPTER XI

ALGY STIRS UP TROUBLE

Bostwick arrived in Goldite at three in the afternoon, dressed in
prison clothes. He came on a freight wagon, the deliberate locomotion
of which had provided ample time for his wrath to accumulate and
simmer. His car was forty miles away, empty of gasolene, stripped of
all useful accessories, and abandoned where the convicts had compelled
him to drive them in their flight.

A blacker face than his appeared, with anger and a stubble of beard
upon it, could not have been readily discovered. His story had easily
outstripped him, and duly amused the camp, so that now, as he rode
along the busy street, in a stream of lesser vehicles, autos, and dusty
horsemen, arriving by two confluent roads, he was angered more and more
by the grins and ribald pleasantries bestowed by the throngs in the
road.

To complicate matters already sufficiently aggravating, Gettysburg,
Napoleon C. Blink, and Algy, the Chinese cook, from the Monte Cristo
mine, now swung into line from the northwest road, riding on horses and
burros. They were leading three small pack animals, loaded with all
their earthly plunder.

The freight team halted and a crowd began to congregate. Bostwick was
descending just as the pack-train was passing through the narrow way
left by the crowd. His foot struck one of the loaded burros in the
eye. The animal staggered over against the wall of men, trampling on
somebody's feet. Somebody yelled and cursed vehemently, stepping on
somebody else. A small-sized panic and melee ensued forthwith. More
of the animals took alarm, and Algy was frightened half to death. His
pony, a wall-eyed, half-witted brute, stampeded in the crowd. Then
Algy was presently in trouble.

There had been no Chinese in Goldite camp, largely on account of race
prejudice engendered and fostered by the working men, who still
maintained the old Californian hatred against the industrious
Celestials. In the mob, unfortunately near the center of confusion,
was a half-drunken miner, rancorous as poison. He was somewhat roughly
jostled by the press escaping Algy's pony.

"Ye blank, blank chink--I'll fix ye fer that!" he bawled at the top of
his voice, and heaving his fellow white men right and left he laid
vicious hands on the helpless cook and, dragging him down, went at him
in savage brutality.

"Belay there, you son of a shellfish!" yelled Napoleon, dismounting and
madly attempting to push real men