On the way home McGinty found he could let the thing go for “two thousand spot cash.”

“Make it quarter shares,” suggested the Boy, thrilled at such a chance, “and the Colonel and I together’ll raise five hundred and do the rest of the assessment work for you.”

But they were nearly back at Minook before McGinty said, “Well, I ain’t twins, and I can’t personally work two gold-mines, so we’ll call it a deal.”  And the money passed that night.

And the word passed, too, to an ex-Governor of a Western State and his satellites, newly arrived from Woodworth, and to a party of men just down from Circle City.  McGinty seemed more inclined to share his luck with strangers than with the men he had wintered amongst.  “Mean lot, these Minook fellers.”  But the return of the ex-Governor and so large a party from quietly staking their claims, roused Minook to a sense that “somethin’ was goin’ on.”

By McGinty’s advice, the strangers called a secret meeting, and elected McGinty recorder.  All the claim-holders registered their properties and the dates of location.  The Recorder gave everybody his receipt, and everybody felt it was cheap at five dollars.  Then the meeting proceeded to frame a code of Laws for the new district, stipulating the number of feet permitted each claim (being rigidly kept by McGinty within the limits provided by the United States Laws on the subject), and decreeing the amount of work necessary to hold a claim a year, settling questions of water rights, etc., etc.

Not until Glory Hallelujah Gulch was a full-fledged mining district did Minook in general know what was in the wind.  The next day the news was all over camp.

If McGinty’s name inspired suspicion, the Colonel’s and the ex-Governor’s reassured, the Colonel in particular (he had already established that credit that came so easy to him) being triumphantly quoted as saying, “Glory Hallelujah Gulch was the richest placer he’d ever struck.”  Nobody added that it was also the only one.  But this matter of a stampede is not controlled by reason; it is a thing of the nerves; while you are ridiculing someone else your legs are carrying you off on the same errand.

In a mining-camp the saloon is the community’s heart.  However little a man cares to drink, or to dance, or to play cards, he goes to the saloon as to the one place where he may meet his fellows, do business, and hear the news.  The saloon is the Market Place.  It is also the Cafe, the Theatre, the Club, the Stock Exchange, the Barber’s Shop, the Bank—­in short, you might as well be dead as not be a patron of the Gold Nugget.

Yet neither the Colonel nor the Boy had been there since the night of their arrival.  On returning from that first triumphant inspection of McGinty’s diggings, the Colonel had been handed a sealed envelope without address.

“How do you know it’s for me?”

“She said it was for the Big Chap,” answered Blandford Keith.