st
year telling us to come out and giving us the Golden West quartz claim
that he had just located in this region, somewhere. He said it was a
bonanza, with plenty for all. The letter didn't get to us for six
months, and that's the last we heard from him, though we wrote him we
were coming as soon as we could. I've the letter, as this camp knows."

"You're talkin'," approved the crowd, emphatically.

"So, thanks to you, sir, we got this far, and then we ran up against
the fact that nobody seemed to know anything about a Golden West quartz
claim. My uncle was in the diggings early, and he prospected alone,
evidently, and nobody knew him, except a few people remembered his
name--and one man did recollect something about a quartz claim from
which there were samples. My uncle was a queer, quiet sort of a
man--never talked much."

"Let the stranger tell his story, now," bade the red-shirt.

So Mr. Adams did, from the beginning in St. Louis, to the apparent end
here; and he concluded:

"Your right to the mine evidently is prior to ours, sir, and we
wouldn't think of contesting it--especially not with a woman," and he
bowed to Mrs. Motte, who flushed, ill at ease among all these men.

"You're O. K.!" approved the crowd. "Especially not with a woman, you
say; an' with the only woman in Rough an' Ready. Hooray!"

"But you've made a long trip," protested young Mr. Motte, also
flushing. "You've found the claim for us, and if it hadn't have been
for you I might have been in Panama yet, either alive or dead. So I
don't agree----"

"Let's act fust an' talk afterward," interrupted the red-shirt. "Fust
thing is to oust those thar claim-jumpers yonder, for the good of the
camp, an' to put the little lady in possession. Get yore tools an'
weapons, boys, an' come on."

With a great shout the crowd rushed hither-thither; and away they all
went, streaming through the valley, laden with picks and spades and
crow-bars and guns, hustling Mr. and Mrs. Motte and Mr. Adams and
Charley and Billy along in their midst. They acted like a lot of
school-boys on a frolic, but there was an undercurrent of earnestness.

To the three men on the ridge it must have looked as though an army was
advancing; and Charley could see Mr. Walker and the Fremonter staring
from their posts whence they were keeping watch on the claim. Well,
this was pretty tough: to have traveled clear from St. Louis, and spent
a lot of money, and acted honestly