ntly to discover. He was walking towards the
surging mob when a miner he had frequently seen came running up and
halted in the light of a window. Then the man began to yell.

"Here he is!" he cried. "Van Buren!"

The mob appeared to break at the cry. Fifty men charged down the
street in a species of madness and Van was instantly surrounded.

CHAPTER XXI

IN THE SHADOW OF THE ROPE

Mob madness is beyond explanation. Cattle stampeding are no more
senseless than men in such a state. Goldite, however, was not only
habitually keyed to the highest of tension, but it had recently been
excited to the breaking point by several contributing factors. Lawless
thefts of one another's claims, ore stealing, high pressure over the
coming rush to the Indian reservation, and a certain apprehension
engendered by the deeds of those liberated convicts--all these elements
had aroused an over-revulsion of feeling towards criminality and a
desire to apply some manner of law. And the primal laws are the laws
that spring into being at such a time as this--the laws that cry out
for an eye for an eye and a swiftness of legal execution.

Into the vortex of Goldite's sudden revulsion Van was swept like a
straw. There was no real chance for a hearing. His friends of the
morning had lost all sense of loyalty. They were almost as crazed as
those whom his recent success had irritated. The story of his row with
Culver had spread throughout the confines of the camp. No link in the
chain of circumstantial evidence seemed wanting to convict him. A
bawling sea of human beings surrounded him with violence and menace.

To escape the over-wrought citizens, the sheriff, assuming charge of
Van, dragged him on top of a stack of lumber, piled three feet high
before a building. The cry for a rope and a lynching began with a
promptness that few would have expected. In normal times it could
scarcely have been broached.

Snatching new-made deputies, hit-or-miss from the mob, and summarily
demanding their services, the sheriff exerted his utmost powers to stem
the tide that was rising. Something akin to a trial began then and
there. A big red-faced drummer from Chicago, a man that Van had never
seen, became his voluntary advocate, standing between him and the mob.

He had power, that man, both of limb and presence. His voice, also,
was mighty. He shoved men about like rubber puppets and shouted his
demands for law and order.

Van, h