"'We're goin' to have a band o' men waitin' for 'em in the dark on our side o' the ledge, an' everyone o' those men is goin' to be armed. The moment that the picks o' the Bloody Thunder drive through an' the wall goes down, the men o' the Fair-Haired Annie are goin' to fire.'
"'All right,' I said. 'I'm wi' you. I'll be there.'
"So next day I, an' twenty other men, were lowered down the shaft; an' before we saw daylight again, the Fair-Haired Annie an' the Bloody Thunder had gone to war. That was the first o' the underground fights which took place on the Comstock. I picked my men, and paid 'em ten dollars a day, an' called my gang 'The Avengers o' the Lord.' No one 'cept myself knew what that meant, but they learnt t' fear us, for we fought to the death. Often when I was waitin' in the dark, listenin' to the sound o' the rival miners comin' nearer, I would repeat to myself the words, 'I will make a man more precious 'an gold; even a man than the golden wedge o' Ophir.' An' when a poor chap lay dyin', I would say to him those words."
"So you were sorry for the men you killed?"
"Oh, I was sorry, though that did small good to 'em. When the Lord's bent on destroyin', He don't take much account o' persons. When the first born o' Egypt were slain, He killed the evil wi' the good—served 'em all alike. But it's heart-breakin' work to be made an avenger o' the Lord."
"But I don't understand. What was there to avenge?"
"What was there to avenge? Why, the sinfulness o' those men, who was diggin' out the power an' temptation to sin from the place where God had hidden it. He meant that it should stay there forever; but now it'll be handed down from generation to generation, as is King Solomon's gold, temptin' our sons' sons to lose their souls as ours were lost."
"And when all the fighting was done, did the soldiers get after you?" asked Granger. But Beorn's eyes were closing, and the soul was departing as day returned. Already the sun was leaping above the horizon, and the sigh of the waking forest was heard. Granger seized him by the arm and shook him—he had learnt only the least part of that which he desired to know. "Was it for that crime that you fled, till you came at last to Keewatin for safety?" he shouted. "Quick, Beorn, tell me. Why did you go to the Forbidden River?"
The eyes did not open; but, as if the soul were answering him with a last warning as it passed out of the door of the body, the lips stirred, "Ay, man, it's terrible—the things men give for gold."
The face had become so ashy pale that Granger bent above it, painfully listening for the intake of the breath, to assure himself that Beorn was not dead. His clamour had aroused Eyelids; looking down towards him, he saw that his eyes were wide and motionless, gazing towards the window with an expression of drunken terror.