Clutching Judge Corey by the arm, Maudie pulled him after her into the narrow space behind the head-board and the wall.
"It was here—see?" She stooped down.
Some of the men pulled the bed farther out, so that they, too, could pass round and see.
"This piece o' board goes down so slick you'd never know it lifted out." She fitted it in with shaking hands, and then with her nails and a hairpin got it out. "And way in, underneath, I had this box. I always set it on a flat stone." She spoke as if this oversight were the thief's chief crime. "See? Like that."
She fitted the cigar-box into unseen depths of space and then brought it out again, wet and muddy. The ground was full of springs hereabouts, and the thaw had loosed them.
"Boys!" She stood up and held out the box. "Boys! it was full."
Eloquently she turned it upside down.
"How much do you reckon you had?" She handed the muddy box to the nearest sympathiser, sat down on the fur-covered bed, and wiped her eyes.
"Any idea?"
"I weighed it all over again after I got in from the Gold Nugget the night we went on the stampede."