“There’s no sense scrappin’,” muttered Benny.  “An’ we’re all satisfied, I’d say.  But there’s no call to start wavin’ a red flag.”

“We’re going down to the lower cave,” said Brodie.  “Everything we can pry loose is going down with us.  We’ll pitch the loose chunks of gold over the cliff and we’ll stow ’em away somewhere else—­where King, if things break some way we don’t look for, won’t find ’em!  We start right now, while there’s daylight.  What’s more, we move our camp from down the canon to the cave below.  Steve Jarrold, you and Tony are elected to that job, and you’d better get a move on.  Bring up what grub’s left, and the blankets and stuff.  The rest of us will start in firing gold overboard and putting it somewhere more safe—­all that’s loose.  And at that, think of the great, big, wide, yellow, rotten-soft seam of it down below!”

“Where are you goin’ to put it?” demanded Jarrold.

“Not hiding it from you and Tony, Steve,” cried Brodie sharply.  “Put your suspicious ways in your pocket.  And, if you’re on the jump, you’ll have our camp truck moved before we’re done.  Look alive, will you?  A man never knows what’s going to happen.”

“Why not leave it here until we know——?”

“For one thing, because Mark King knows this place.  Now, move!  Come ahead, you other fellows.  You, too, Gratton; we ain’t forgot you.”  An uglier note crept into the harsh voice.  “You can help.  And so can you,” whirling on Gloria.  “Woman or no woman, you got hands and feet.”

* * * * *

Night, pitch-black, had come when they had done.  Gloria, scarcely able to stand from exhaustion, her body bruised, her hands and arms wounded from many a jagged rock as she had gone back and forth carrying heavy loads, went with the others into the lowest cave in which already the gold had been stowed away.  She sank down wearily; she closed her eyes rather than watch the men about their fire, eating noisily, drinking noisily from the bottles which Steve and Tony had brought from their other camp.  Trying to remain unnoticed in the shadows was Gratton.  Brodie, having commanded that a rude rock wall like King’s be built across the mouth of the cave to shut out the cold, and having laboured with the others at the task, came back to the fire.  He took a long pull at a bottle, emptying it and smashing it to tinkling fragments as he hurled it behind him.  He caught up a big piece of dried beef and gnawed at it like a dog; though Gloria kept her eyes away from him she could hear the tearing and grinding of the monstrous teeth.

“It’s been a day’s work, at that,” he said with a full mouth.  “But we ain’t done.  I noticed how no man has said a word about how we split what we found.”

“There’s five of us,” said Benny quickly.  “We split it five ways, even, like pardners.”

Brodie turned on him slowly, still rending at his meat, still clutching his rifle and holding it so that no man might forget that he held it.