“Minook doesn’t mind arbitrating,” says Keith low to the Colonel, “but there isn’t a man in camp that would give five cents for the interest of the heirs of Lawrence in that fifteen hundred dollars.”

A hammering on the clerk’s little table announced that it was seven p.m.

The Court then called for the complaint filed by McGinty v.  Bonsor, the first case on the docket.  The clerk had just risen when the door was flung open, and hatless, coatless, face aflame, Maudie stood among the miners.

“Boys!” said she, on the top of a scream, “I been robbed.”

“Hey?”

“Robbed?”

“Golly!”

“Maudie robbed?” They spoke all together.  Everybody had jumped up.

“While we was on that stampede yesterday, somebody found my—­all my——­” She choked, and her eyes filled.  “Boys! my nuggets, my dust, my dollars—­they’re gone!”

“Where did you have ’em?”

“In a little place under—­in a hole.”  Her face twitched, and she put her hand up to hide it.

“Mean shame.”

“Dirt mean.”

“We’ll find him, Maudie.”

“An’ when we do, we’ll hang him on the cottonwood.”

“Did anybody know where you kept your——­”

“I didn’t think so, unless it was——­No!” she screamed hysterically, and then fell into weak crying.  “Can’t think who could have been such a skunk.”

“But who do you suspect?” persisted the Judge.

“How do I know?” she retorted angrily.  “I suspect everybody till—­till I know.”  She clenched her hands.

That a thief should be “operating” in Minook on somebody who wasn’t dead yet, was a matter that came home to the business and the bosoms of all the men in the camp.  In the midst of the babel of speculation and excitement, Maudie, still crying and talking incoherently about skunks, opened the door.  The men crowded after her.  Nobody suggested it, but the entire Miners’ Meeting with one accord adjourned to the scene of the crime.  Only a portion could be accommodated under Maudie’s roof, but the rest crowded in front of her door or went and examined the window.  Maudie’s log-cabin was a cheerful place, its one room, neatly kept, lined throughout with red and white drill, hung with marten and fox, carpeted with wolf and caribou.  The single sign of disorder was that the bed was pulled out a little from its place in the angle of the wall above the patent condenser stove.  Behind the oil-tank, where the patent condensation of oil into gas went on, tiers of shelves, enamelled pots and pans ranged below, dishes and glasses above.  On the very top, like a frieze, gaily labelled ranks of “tinned goods.”  On the table under the window a pair of gold scales.  A fire burned in the stove.  The long-lingering sunlight poured through the “turkey-red” that she had tacked up for a half-curtain, and over this, one saw the slouch-hats and fur caps of the outside crowd.

Clutching Judge Corey by the arm, Maudie pulled him after her into the narrow space behind the head-board and the wall.