"God, man! If I know'd that I wouldn't be standin' here, would I?" He jerked his thumb toward the rear of the room where men were frenziedly crowding the stranger. "That's what they all want to know. Lord, if he'd let the word slip what a stampede there'd be! Every man for himself an' the devil take the hindmost. Out of every hundred that's in on a stampede, about one makes a stake, an' ten gets their ante back, an' the rest goes broke. They all know what they're going up against—but the damned fools! Every one of 'em would stake all they've got, an' their life throw'd in, to be in on it."
"It's the lure of gold," muttered Brent, "I've heard of it, but I never felt it before. Are they damned fools? Wouldn't you?"
"Wouldn't I—what?"
"Wouldn't you go—along with the rest?"
"Hell—yes! An' so would anyone else that had any red guts in 'em!"
Brent poured himself a drink, and shoved the decanter toward the other, "Let's liquor," he said, "and then maybe if we can get that fellow away from the crowd where we can talk——"
The bartender interrupted the thought before it was expressed; "No chance. Take a look at him. Believe me, there's one hombre that ain't goin' to spill nothin' he don't want to. An' when a man makes a strike like that he don't hang around bars runnin' off at the chin about it—not what you could notice, he don't. Far as I can see we got just one chance. It's a damn slim one, but you can't always tell what's runnin' in these birds' heads. He asked me if Patsy Kelliher was runnin' this dump, an' when I told him he was, he had me send for him. Said he wanted to see him pronto. An' then he kind of throw'd his eyes around over the faces of the boys an' he says: 'You're all friends of Patsy's?' He seen in a minute how Patsy stood acehigh with them all, an' then he says; 'Well, just kind of stick around 'till Patsy gets down here an' it might be I'll explode somethin' amongst his friends that'll clean this dump out.' Now, you might take that two ways, but he don't look like one of these, what you might call, anarchists, does he? An' when he said that he laughed, an' he says: 'Belly up to the bar an' I'll buy a little drink—an' I'll pay for it with coarse gold!' Well, you seen how much drinkin' they done, an'—Here's Patsy, now!"
Brent turned and nodded greeting as the proprietor of "The Ore Dump" entered the door.
"Is it yersilf that sint fer me, Mister Brint, ye spalpeen?" he grinned, "Bein' a gintleman yersilf, ye'll be knowin' Oi'd still be at me newspaper an'
seegar. Whut's on yer mind thot ye'll be dhraggin' a mon from the bossom of his family befoor lunch?"