A group of men were reading a notice newly posted upon the wall of the log building which served as restaurant and hotel, and after scanning it Pierce explained:
"It's another call for a miners' meeting. We're having quite a time with cache-robbers. If we catch them we'll hang them."
The Countess nodded. "Right! They deserve it. You know we don't have
any stealing on the 'inside.' Now, then, I'll say good-by." She paid
Pierce and extended her hand to him. "Thank you for helping me across.
I'll be in Dyea by dark."
"I hope we'll meet again," he said, with a slight flush.
The woman favored him with one of her generous, friendly smiles. "I hope so, too. You're a nice boy. I like you." Then she stepped into the building and was gone.
"A nice boy!" Phillips was pained. A boy! And he the sturdiest packer on the pass, with perhaps one exception! That was hardly just to him. If they did meet again—and he vowed they would—he'd show her he was more than a boy. He experienced a keen desire to appear well in her eyes, to appear mature and forceful. He asked himself what kind of man Count Courteau could be; he wondered if he, Pierce Phillips, could fall in love with such a woman as this, an older woman, a woman who had been married. It would be queer to marry a countess, he reflected.
As he walked toward his temporary home he beheld quite a gathering of citizens, and paused long enough to note that they were being harangued by the confidence-man who had first initiated him into the subtleties of the three-shell game. Mr. Broad had climbed upon a raised tent platform and was presenting an earnest argument against capital punishment. Two strangers upon the fringe of the crowd were talking, and Pierce heard one of them say:
"Of course he wants the law to take its course, inasmuch as there isn't any law. He's one of the gang."
"The surest way to flush a covey of crooks is to whistle for old Judge
Lynch," the other man agreed. "Listen to him!"
"Have they caught the cache-robbers?" Phillips made bold to inquire.