"He t'ink he joomp de claims," asserted Pierre, promptly. "Dat tam sure t'ing!"
Laurance laughed at the sudden start and guilty shrinking of Morris.
"Why, a kid could spot that," the old Klondiker assured him. "Simpson, this law-juggler as Britton speaks of, gets the nerve to jump likely claims on Samson Creek. It's just as well he's found out. If he had per-sum-veered he'd surely got jumped hisself–at the jumpin'-off station. I'm certainly certain of that! How-sum-do-ever, as me friend here goes vamoosin' into Dawson shortly, he'll put a handspike in Mr. Simpson's choo-choo gear."
Britton got up and shook himself as a great, shaggy bear stretches its muscles.
"That's all for to-night," he yawned. "The saggy trail made me sleepy. But take my advice, Morris, and cut away from Simpson. You're not bound by ties unbreakable–yet you soon will be. And that's saying a good deal if you stop to analyze it. Let's roll up, Pierre!"
"Oui," cried Giraud, slinging out the blankets. "Ah dream w'at Ah get wit' dat five hondred." In the height of his buoyancy he broke forth in song, and, while Britton dropped to sleep, Pierre's voice rang up to the ceiling in the tune:
"En roulant ma boule roulante,
En roulant ma boule–
Derrièr' chez-nous y-a-t-un 'ètang
En roulant ma boule!"
CHAPTER XI.
A great commotion stirred Ainslie's camp on the following afternoon. The narrow passages, called streets, between ugly log and canvas buildings were thronged with heterogeneous concourses of miners and others. They moved back and forth along the pounded trail from restaurants and stores to the bunk-houses, from bunk-houses to dance-halls or riotous saloons, and an air of expectancy pervaded the movements of everyone within the camp's confines.
Outside Anderson's cabin the crowd began to concentrate, talking in incessant murmurs, while all eyes were fixed upon the closed door. A trial was going on inside. The news had spread through Ainslie's that the cache-thief had been taken and was now up before a miners' meeting. Word passed from man to man, and the throng continually grew in volume.