these, in already distorted minds, inflamed a hell.  So that the most primitive passions of mankind found outlet and held sway.  The operations of the Border Legion were lost in deeds done in the gambling dens, in the saloons, and on the street, in broad day.  Men fought for no other reason than that the incentive was in the charged air.  Men were shot at gaming-tables—­and the game went on.  Men were killed in the dance-halls, dragged out, marking a line of blood on the rude floor—­and the dance went on.  Still the pursuit of gold went on, more frenzied than ever, and still the greater and richer claims were struck.  The price of gold soared and the commodities of life were almost beyond the dreams of avarice.  It was a tune in which the worst of men’s natures stalked forth, hydra-headed and deaf, roaring for gold, spitting fire, and shedding blood.  It was a time when gold and fire and blood were one.  It was a tune when a horde of men from every class and nation, of all ages and characters, met on a field were motives and ambitions and faiths and traits merged into one mad instinct of gain.  It was worse than the time of the medieval crimes of religion; it made war seem a brave and honorable thing; it robbed manhood of that splendid and noble trait, always seen in shipwrecked men or those hopelessly lost in the barren north, the divine will not to retrograde to the savage.  It was a time, for all it enriched the world with yellow treasure, when might was right, when men were hopeless, when death stalked rampant.  The sun rose gold and it set red.  It was the hour of Gold!

One afternoon late, while Joan was half dreaming, half dozing the hours away, she was thoroughly aroused by the tramp of boots and loud voices of excited men.  Joan slipped to the peephole in the partition.  Bate Wood had raised a warning hand to Kells, who stood up, facing the door.  Red Pearce came bursting in, wild-eyed and violent.  Joan imagined he was about to cry out that Kells had been betrayed.

“Kells, have you—­heard?” he panted.

“Not so loud, you—!” replied Kells, coolly.  “My name’s Blight. ...  Who’s with you?”

“Only Jesse an’ some of the gang.  I couldn’t steer them away.  But there’s nothin’ to fear.”

“What’s happened?  What haven’t I heard?”

“The camp’s gone plumb ravin’ crazy. ...  Jim Cleve found the biggest nugget ever dug in Idaho! ...  Thirty pounds!”

Kells seemed suddenly to inflame, to blaze with white passion.  “Good for Jim!” he yelled, ringingly.  He could scarcely have been more elated if he had made the strike himself.

Jesse Smith came stamping in, with a crowd elbowing their way behind him.  Joan had a start of the old panic at sight of Gulden.  For once the giant was not slow nor indifferent.  His big eyes glared.  He brought back to Joan the sickening sense of the brute strength of his massive presence.  Some of his cronies were with him.  For the rest, there were Blicky and Handy Oliver and Chick Williams.  The whole group bore resemblance to a pack of wolves about to leap upon its prey.  Yet, in each man, excepting Gulden, there was that striking aspect of exultation.