“Sure!  But it’s our only chance.  I’d ruther die on the Midas in a fair fight than set here bitin’ my hangnails.  I’m growin’ old and I won’t never make another strike.  As to bein’ caught—­them’s our chances.  I won’t be took alive—­I promise you that—­and before I go I’ll get my satisfy.  Castin’ things up, that’s about all a man gets in this vale of tears, jest satisfaction of one kind or another.  It’ll be a fight in the open, under the stars, with the clean, wet moss to lie down on, and not a scrappin’-match of freak phrases and law-books inside of a stinkin’ court-room.  The cards is shuffled and in the box, pardner, and the game is started.  If we’re due to win, we’ll win.  If we’re due to lose, we’ll lose.  These things is all figgered out a thousand years back.  Come on, boy.  Are you game?”

“Am I game?” Glenister’s nostrils dilated and his voice rose a tone.  “Am I game?  I’m with you till the big cash-in, and Lord have mercy on any man that blocks our game to-night.”

“We’ll need another hand to help us,” said Dextry.  “Who can we get?”

At that moment, as though in answer, the door opened with the scant ceremony that friends of the frontier are wont to observe, admitting the attenuated, flapping, dome-crowned figure of Slapjack Simms, and Dextry fell upon him with the hunger of a wolf.

It was midnight and over the dark walls of the valley peered a multitude of stars, while away on the southern horizon there glowed a subdued effulgence as though from hidden fires beneath the Gold God’s caldron, or as though the phosphorescence of Bering had spread upward into the skies.  Although each night grew longer, it was not yet necessary to light the men at work in the cuts.  There were perhaps two hours in which it was difficult to see at a distance, but the dawn came early, hence no provision had been made for torches.

Five minutes before the hour the night-shift boss lowered the gates in the dam, and, as the rush from the sluices subsided, his men quit work and climbed the bluff to the mess tent.  The dwellings of the Midas, as has already been explained, sat back from the creek at a distance of a city block, the workings being thus partially hidden under the brow of the steep bank.

It is customary to leave a watchman in the pit during the noon and midnight hours, not only to see that strangers preserve a neutral attitude, but also to watch the waste-gates and water supply.  The night man of the Midas had been warned of his responsibility, and, knowing that much gold lay in his keeping, was disposed to gaze on the curious-minded with the sourness of suspicion.  Therefore, as a man leading a pack-horse approached out of the gloom of the creek-trail, his eyes were on him from the moment he appeared.  The road wound along the gravel of the bars and passed in proximity to the flumes.  However, the wayfarer paid no attention to them, and the watchman detected an explanatory weariness in his slow gait.