The storm died out over Hurley's Gulch, and except for the high current in the creek there was nothing to indicate that the land had been recently deluged.
The bluest of cloudless skies bent over the landscape; the verdureless rocks glistened in the light of the sun, as if they had recently been subjected to a furnace heat instead of being drenched by a flood.
The lines of the Sierra Madre Mountains, to the east, were so clear and sharply defined that they seemed to be but a short walk away instead of being seventy miles.
Only the ragged tents and dilapidated cabins showed the effects of the storm; perhaps we should include the crowd of red-eyed miners, who, with the evidences of unbridled dissipation on their faces, crowded about the principal saloon.
Frank Shirley and Badger were disappointed in the work they had planned for the night before.
They had spent much money and time in working the mob up to a pitch of unreasoning and brutal frenzy, and yet nothing had been done.
"'Tain't the boys' fault," said Badger, as on the following morning he and Frank Shirley walked along the banks of the creek.
"Whose fault is it, then?" asked Shirley, sulkily.
"Why, it's the fault of them other two fellers—Collins and Brill—that was sot to guard the prizners; they ain't no good; they've gone clar back on us," said Badger, with an angry light in his single eye.
"Well, I left the management to you, and I don't understand why you failed," said Shirley, who evidently felt that the man he had employed to do his vile work was not keeping his part of the contract.