"Just eight months!" roared a man in the crowd.
"Eight months! Ten of 'em!" and he fell to counting on his fingers, as he turned to the crowd and continued right on up to July, with perfect confidence.
The camp roared, and shouted, and danced, as never before. Why had it been so stupid as not to set this thing right from the first? It was the most penitent community that had ever been. The Widow was once more its patron saint.
The Gopher stood up by the wall.
"Are you all satisfied now?"
Satisfied! They would never doubt any woman any more as long as they lived.
He took his bowie-knife while the crowd turned to take a drink, and cut the date from the wall; and the only record, perhaps, of the first marriage in the Sierras was no more.
The sharp-nosed man, one of those miserable men who never are satisfied unless they are either miserable or making some one else so, came up to the wall out of the crowd and began to look on the wall for the date, as if he thought there might have been some mistake, and he wanted to count it all over again.
This man began to count on his fingers and to look along on the wall. Suddenly there was a something gleaming in his face like a flash of lightning.
It was the Gopher's bowie-knife. It was within two inches of his throat.