“Quick! the dust!” ordered the Colonel.  Out of a left hip-pocket a long, tight-packed buckskin bag.  Another from a side-pocket, half the size and a quarter as full.

“That’s mine,” said Jack, and made a motion to recover.

“Let it alone.  Turn out everything.  Nuggets!”

A miner’s chamois belt unbuckled and flung heavily down.  The scales jingled and rocked; every pocket in the belt was stuffed.

“Where’s the rest?”

“There ain’t any rest.  That’s every damned pennyweight.”

“Maybe we ought to weigh it, and see if he’s lying?”

“’Fore God it’s all!  Let me go!” He had kept looking through the crack of the door.

“Reckon it’s about right,” said Keith.

“’Tain’t right!  There’s more there’n I took.  My stuff’s there too.  For Christ’s sake, let me go!”

“Look here, Jack, is the little bag yours?”

Jack wet his dry lips and nodded “Yes.”

The Colonel snatched up the smaller bag and thrust it into the man’s hands.  Jack made for the door.  The Colonel stopped him.

“Better take to the woods,” he said, with a motion back towards the window.  The Colonel opened the half-closed door and looked out, as Jack pushed aside the table, tore away the red curtain, hammered at the sash, then, desperate, set his shoulder at it and forced the whole thing out.  He put his maimed hand on the sill and vaulted after the shattered glass.

They could see him going like the wind up towards his own shack at the edge of the wood, looking back once or twice, doubling and tacking to keep himself screened by the haphazard, hillside cabins, out of sight of the lynchers down at the river.

“Will you stay with this?” the Colonel had asked Keith hurriedly, nodding at the treasure-covered table, and catching up the finger-marked block before Jack was a yard from the window.

“Yes,” Keith had said, revolver still in hand and eyes on the man Minook was to see no more.  The Colonel met the Boy running breathless up the bank.

“Can’t hold ’em any longer,” he shouted; “you’re takin’ it pretty easy while a man’s gettin’ killed down here.”

“Stop!  Wait!” The Colonel floundered madly through the slush and mud, calling and gesticulating, “I’ve got the thief!”

Presto all the backs of heads became faces.

“Got the money?” screamed Maudie, uncovering her eyes.  She had gone to the execution, but after the rope was brought, her nerve failed her, and she was sobbing hysterically into her two palms held right over her eyes.

“Oh, you had it, did you?” called out McGinty with easy insolence.

“Look here!” The Colonel held up the bit of flooring with rapid explanation.

“Where is he?”

“Got him locked up?”

Everybody talked at once.  The Colonel managed to keep them going for some moments before he admitted.

“Reckon he’s lit out.”  And then the Colonel got it hot and strong for his clumsiness.