Maudie had caught up again, and here was Little Minook at last!  A couple of men, who from the beginning had been well in advance of everyone else, and often out of sight, had seemed for the last five minutes to be losing ground.  But now they put on steam, Maudie too.  She stepped out of her snowshoes, and flung them up on the low roof of the first cabin.  Then she ducked her head, crooked her arms at the elbow, and, with fists uplifted, she broke into a run, jumping from pile to pile of frozen pay, gliding under sluice-boxes, scrambling up the bank, slipping on the rotting ice, recovering, dashing on over fallen timber and through waist-deep drifts, on beyond No. 10 up to the bench above.

When the Boy got to Pitcairn’s prospect hole, there were already six claims gone.  He proceeded to stake the seventh, next to Maudie’s.  That person, with flaming cheeks, was driving her last location-post into a snow-drift with a piece of water-worn obsidian.

The Colonel came along in time to stake No. 14 Below, under Maudie’s personal supervision.

Not much use, in her opinion, “except that with gold, it’s where you find it, and that’s all any man can tell you.”

As she was returning alone to her own claim, behold two brawny Circle City miners pulling out her stakes and putting in their own.  She flew at them with remarks unprintable.

“You keep your head shut,” advised one of the men, a big, evil-looking fellow.  “This was our claim first.  We was here with Pitcairn yesterday.  Somebody’s took away our location-posts.”

“You take me for a cheechalko?” she screamed, and her blue eyes flashed like smitten steel.  She pulled up her sweater and felt in her belt.  “You—­take your stakes out!  Put mine back, unless you want——­” A murderous-looking revolver gleamed in her hand.

“Hold on!” said the spokesman hurriedly.  “Can’t you take a joke?”

“No; this ain’t my day for jokin’.  You want to put them stakes o’ mine back.”  She stood on guard till it was done.  “And now I’d advise you, like a mother, to back-track home.  You’ll find this climate very tryin’ to your health.”

They went farther up the slope and marked out a claim on the incline above the bench.

In a few hours the mountain-side was staked to the very top, and still the stream of people struggled out from Rampart to the scene of the new strike.  All day long, and all the night, the trail was alive with the coming or the going of the five hundred and odd souls that made up the population.  In the town itself the excitement grew rather than waned.  Men talked themselves into a fever, others took fire, and the epidemic spread like some obscure nervous disease.  Nobody slept, everybody drank and hurrahed, and said it was the greatest night in the history of Minook.  In the Gold Nugget saloon, crowded to suffocation, Pitcairn organized the new mining district, and named it the Idaho Bar.  French Charlie and Keith had gone out late in the day.  On their return, Keith sold his stake to a woman for twenty-five dollars, and Charlie advertised a half-interest in his for five thousand.  Between these two extremes you could hear Idaho Bar quoted at any figure you liked.