But the emotion, like a vertigo, passed as swiftly as it had come.  For he knew within himself that never had that twisted travesty of love stirred within him; that though he had travelled on many a golden trail it was clean-heartedly; that it was the game itself that counted ever with him and no such poisonous emotions as grew within the wretched breast of Loony Honeycutt.  And these golden trails, though inevitably they brought him trail fellows like Honeycutt, like Swen Brodie, were none the less paths in which a man’s feet might tread without shame and in which the mire might be left to one side.

He turned back to the room.  Honeycutt was near the bunk, groping for his shotgun.  He started guiltily, veiled his eyes, and returned empty-handed to the table.

“If it was all in gold, now,” said Honeycutt hurriedly.

King made no reference to Honeycutt’s murderous intent.

“That paper is the same thing as gold,” he said.  “The government backs it up.”

“I know, I know.  But what’s a gove’ment?  They go busted, don’t they, sometimes?  Same as folks?  Gold don’t go busted.  There ain’t nothin’ else like gold.  You can tie to it.  It won’t burn on you an’ it won’t rust.”  He shook his head stubbornly.  “There ain’t nothin’ like gold.  If that was all in twenty-dollar gold pieces, now——­”

“I’ll get a car here,” said King.  “We’ll drive down to Auburn and take a train to San Francisco.  And there I’ll undertake to get you the whole thing in gold.  Three thousand dollars.  That is one hundred and fifty twenty-dollar pieces.”

But old Honeycutt, sucking and mouthing, shook his head.

“I couldn’t leave here, an’ you know it.  I—­I got things here,” he said with a look of great cunning, “I wouldn’t go away from.  Not if horses was pullin’ me.”

“You can bring those things along——­”

Honeycutt cried out sharply at that.

“You know I wouldn’t durst!  With the world full of robbers that would be after me like hounds runnin’ down a rabbit.  I won’t go; you cain’t make me.  No man cain’t.”

King’s patience deserted him.

“I am not going to make you do anything.  Further, I am not going to put in any more time on you.  I have offered to pay you three thousand dollars for what you know—­and there is the very strong likelihood that you don’t know a bit more than I do——­”

“Don’t know!” shrieked Honeycutt.  “Wasn’t I a boy grown when the dyin’, delerious man stumbled in on the camp?  Didn’t I hear him talk an’ didn’t I see what he had in his fist?  Wasn’t I settin’ right side by side with Gus Ingle when that happened?  Wouldn’t I of been one to go, if it hadn’t of been that I had a big knife-cut in my side you could of shoved a cat in—­give to me by a slant-eyed cuss name of Baldy Winch.  Didn’t I watch ’em go, the whole seven of ’em, Baldy Winch, rot him, jeerin’ at me an’ me swearin’ I’d get him yet, him an’ Gus Ingle an’ Preacher Ellson an’ the first Brodie an’ Jimmy Kelp an’ Manny Howard an’ the Italian?  Wasn’t I there?” He was almost incoherent.