"Now that the news is out and my men are determined to quit, I want everybody to have an equal chance," O'Neil announced, as they rose to go. "There's bound to be a great rush and a lot of suffering—maybe some deaths—so I'm going to call the boys together and have you talk to them."
Thorn and Baker agreed and departed. As the door closed behind them Gray exploded, but Murray checked him quickly, saying with an abrupt change of manner: "Wait! Those fellows are lying!"
Seizing the telephone, he rang up Dan Appleton and swiftly made known the situation. Stanley could hear the engineer's startled exclamation.
"Get the cable to Cortez as quickly as you can," O'Neil was saying. "You have friends there, haven't you? Good! He's just the man, for he'll have Gordon's pay-roll. Find out if Joe Thorn and Henry Baker are known, and, if so, who they are and what they've been doing lately. Get it quick, understand? Then 'phone me." He slammed the receiver upon its hook. "That's not Alaskan quartz," he said, shortly; "it came from Nevada, or I'm greatly mistaken. Every hard-rock miner carries specimens like those in his kit."
"You think Gordon—"
"I don't know. But we've got rock-men on this job who'll recognize ore out of any mine they ever worked in. Go find them, then come back here and hold the line open for Dan."
"Suppose he can't locate these fellows in Cortez?"
"Then—Let's not think about that."