and the surveyor, had lingered.  Some of them had held a drunken carouse at their rendezvous at Heavy Tree.  Others were still engaged in procuring shovels and picks and pans for their mock equipment as miners, and this, again, gave Marshall’s adherents the advantage.  They knew that their opponents would probably first approach the empty claim encumbered only with their peaceful implements, while they themselves had brought their rifles with them.

Stacy, who by tacit consent led the party, on reaching the claim at once posted Demorest and Barker each behind a separate heap of quartz tailings on the ledge, which afforded them a capital breastwork, and stationed himself at the mouth of the tunnel which was nearest the trail.  It had already been arranged what each man was to do.  They were in possession.  For the rest they must wait.  What they thought at that moment no one knew.  Their characteristic appearance had slightly changed.  The melancholy and philosophic Demorest was alert and bitter.  Barker’s changeful face had become fixed and steadfast.  Stacy alone wore his “fighting look,” which the others had remembered.

They had not long to wait.  The sounds of rude laughter, coarse skylarking, and voices more or less still confused with half-spent liquor came from the rocky trail.  And then Steptoe appeared with part of his straggling followers, who were celebrating their easy invasion by clattering their picks and shovels and beating loudly upon their tins and prospecting-pans.  The three partners quickly recognized the stamp of the strangers, in spite of their peaceful implements.  They were the waifs and strays of San Francisco wharves, of Sacramento dens, of dissolute mountain towns; and there was not, probably, a single actual miner among them.  A raging scorn and contempt took possession of Barker and Demorest, but Stacy knew their exact value.  As Steptoe passed before the opening of the tunnel he heard the cry of “Halt!”

He looked up.  He saw Stacy not thirty yards before him with his rifle at half-cock.  He saw Barker and Demorest, fully armed, rise from behind their breastworks of rock along the ledge and thus fully occupy the claim.  But he saw more.  He saw that his plot was known.  Outlaw and desperado as he was, he saw that he had lost his moral power in this actual possession, and that from that moment he must be the aggressor.  He saw he was fighting no irresponsible hirelings like his own, but men of position and importance, whose loss would make a stir.  Against their rifles the few revolvers that his men chanced to have slung to them were of little avail.  But he was not cowed, although his few followers stumbled together at this momentary check, half angrily, half timorously like wolves without a leader.  “Bring up the other men and their guns,” he whispered fiercely to the nearest.  Then he faced Stacy.