THESE MEN HAD FLED FROM CIVILIZATION IN PURSUIT OF THE WILL-'O-THE WISP OF GOLD.
For long seconds the stillness endured. Then, abruptly, there came a huge cachinnation. It was the mellow, roaring laughter of Bert Black, the only negro in this Aladdin village so close up under the Pole. The company looked at the man expectantly, and he answered the interrogation in their eyes:
"We-all is just shohly goin' to have a stampede!"
Then, again, the silence held for a little, while each and every man of them saw the vision of the straggled crowd trailing the waste places, lured on by the will-o'-the-wisp of gold.
CHAPTER XII
The Fates, in weaving the intricate web of human lives, smile grimly oftentimes over the curious intermingling of the threads. Often, too, the incomplete design might well move them to a cruel mirth, but that they see beyond the seeming tangle of events to the perfecting of their pattern at the last. So, perhaps, they are content of their task, though we mortals, with short-sighted eyes, seeing dimly, look on the happenings of our lives as the blessed or the baneful work of chance. Thus, now, the Fates had brought here, beneath the flickering of the Northern Lights, all the actors in the drama of the years agone, when the happiness of a home had been shattered by a villain's ruthless passion. Their presence within a short radius of miles had every appearance of purest chance. Nevertheless, the Fates had brought them within reach of one another, that thus the seeming snarl in the threads of these lives might be shown as in fact untangled and woven into a design just and harmonious and beautiful.
Dan McGrew moved sociably among the men of the village, as they celebrated the wedding with many jovial libations. He was hail-fellow-well-met with each and all, for it had come to be a matter of professional necessity with him to attain a fair measure of popularity whithersoever he went. He had deteriorated much with the passage of the years. He had sunk to be a common gambler, and on occasion had not scrupled at worse methods in pursuit of ill-gotten gains. To-day his keen eyes were speedily drawn to one of the men, who was especially lavish in hospitality.
"Who is he?" Dan asked of the bar-tender. "Seems flush, all right."
"That's Sam Ward," was the answer. "He's got a hole somewhere up in the hills, which nobody don't know nothin' about—'cept it's cussed rich. Sam blows a pokeful o' dust ev'ry time he hits town."