Another thing troubled him.  He had reached the crest of the Gulch, where their old working ground was spread before him like a map.  They were not there; neither were they lying under the four pines on the ridge where they were wont to rest at midday.  He turned with some alarm to the new claim adjoining theirs, but there was no sign of them there either.  A sudden fear that they had, after parting from him, given up the claim in a fit of disgust and depression, and departed, now overcame him.  He clapped his hand on his head and ran in the direction of the cabin.

He had nearly reached it when the rough challenge of “Who’s there?” from the bushes halted him, and Demorest suddenly swung into the trail.  But the singular look of sternness and impatience which he was wearing vanished as he saw Barker, and with a loud shout of “All right, it’s only Barker!  Hooray!” he ran toward him.  In an instant he was joined by Stacy from the cabin, and the two men, catching hold of their returning partner, waltzed him joyfully and breathlessly into the cabin.  But the quick-eyed Demorest suddenly let go his hold and stared at Barker’s face.  “Why, Barker, old boy, what’s up?”

“Everything’s up,” gasped the breathless Barker.  “It’s all up about these stocks.  It’s all a mistake; all an infernal lie of that newspaper.  I never had the right kind of shares.  The ones I have are worthless rags”; and the next instant he had blurted out his whole interview with the bank manager.

The two partners looked at each other, and then, to Barker’s infinite perplexity, the same extraordinary convulsion that had seized Miss Kitty fell upon them.  They laughed, holding on each other’s shoulders; they laughed, clinging to Barker’s struggling figure; they went out and laughed with their backs against a tree.  They laughed separately and in different corners.  And then they came up to Barker with tears in their eyes, dropped their heads on his shoulder, and murmured exhaustedly: 

“You blessed ass!”

“But,” said Stacy suddenly, “how did you manage to buy the claim?”

“Ah! that’s the most awful thing, boys.  I’ve never paid for it,” groaned Barker.

“But Carter sent us the bill of sale,” persisted Demorest, “or we shouldn’t have taken it.”

“I gave my promissory note at thirty days,” said Barker desperately, “and where’s the money to come from now?  But,” he added wildly, as the men glanced at each other—­“you said ‘taken it.’  Good heavens! you don’t mean to say that I’m too late—­that you’ve—­you’ve touched it?”

“I reckon that’s pretty much what we have been doing,” drawled Demorest.

“It looks uncommonly like it,” drawled Stacy.

Barker glanced blankly from the one to the other.  “Shall we pass our young friend in to see the show?” said Demorest to Stacy.

“Yes, if he’ll be perfectly quiet and not breathe on the glasses,” returned Stacy.