Still feigning interest in the chunk of gold in his hand, he listened intently and he heard the breathing of the thing behind him.  His eyes searched the ground in front of him for a weapon, but they saw only the uprooted gold, worthless to him now in his extremity.  There was his pick, a handy weapon on occasion; but this was not such an occasion.  The man realized his predicament.  He was in a narrow hole that was seven feet deep.  His head did not come to the surface of the ground.  He was in a trap.

He remained squatting on his heels.  He was quite cool and collected; but his mind, considering every factor, showed him only his helplessness.  He continued rubbing the dirt from the quartz fragments and throwing the gold into the pan.  There was nothing else for him to do.  Yet he knew that he would have to rise up, sooner or later, and face the danger that breathed at his back.  The minutes passed, and with the passage of each minute he knew that by so much he was nearer the time when he must stand up, or else—­and his wet shirt went cold against his flesh again at the thought—­or else he might receive death as he stooped there over his treasure.

Still he squatted on his heels, rubbing dirt from gold and debating in just what manner he should rise up.  He might rise up with a rush and claw his way out of the hole to meet whatever threatened on the even footing above ground.  Or he might rise up slowly and carelessly, and feign casually to discover the thing that breathed at his back.  His instinct and every fighting fibre of his body favored the mad, clawing rush to the surface.  His intellect, and the craft thereof, favored the slow and cautious meeting with the thing that menaced and which he could not see.  And while he debated, a loud, crashing noise burst on his ear.  At the same instant he received a stunning blow on the left side of the back, and from the point of impact felt a rush of flame through his flesh.  He sprang up in the air, but halfway to his feet collapsed.  His body crumpled in like a leaf withered in sudden heat, and he came down, his chest across his pan of gold, his face in the dirt and rock, his legs tangled and twisted because of the restricted space at the bottom of the hole.  His legs twitched convulsively several times.  His body was shaken as with a mighty ague.  There was a slow expansion of the lungs, accompanied by a deep sigh.  Then the air was slowly, very slowly, exhaled, and his body as slowly flattened itself down into inertness.

Above, revolver in hand, a man was peering down over the edge of the hole.  He peered for a long time at the prone and motionless body beneath him.  After a while the stranger sat down on the edge of the hole so that he could see into it, and rested the revolver on his knee.  Reaching his hand into a pocket, he drew out a wisp of brown paper.  Into this he dropped a few crumbs of tobacco.  The combination became a cigarette, brown and squat, with the ends turned in.  Not once did he take his eyes from the body at the bottom of the hole.  He lighted the cigarette and drew its smoke into his lungs with a caressing intake of the breath.  He smoked slowly.  Once the cigarette went out and he relighted it.  And all the while he studied the body beneath him.