He sat by her and told her.  His heart was still filled with his bitterness and his voice told the fact.  Presently she withdrew her gaze from the gulch and turned it upon him; she had never seen him so relentlessly stern.  Almost he frightened her.  Then she noticed again the stain upon his shoulder and this time insisted upon helping him make a bandage.  With his knife she slit the shirt sleeve; together they got a handkerchief bound about the wound.  It was not deep nor was it in any way dangerous, but Helen winced and paled before the job was done.  Then their eyes met and clung together and for a little while they were silent, and gradually the colour came back into the girl’s cheeks.

‘Are you tired?’ he asked presently.  ’Or hungry?  If not, and you care to sit here with me for an hour or two, maybe a little more, I can promise to show you a sight you will never forget.’

‘What is it?’ she asked curiously, wondering if he meant a moonrise over the far desert mountains.

’It is the birth of a mining camp.  For there will be one here before morning.’

‘Surely not so soon?  Who will know?’

‘Who?’ he grunted disgustedly.  ’Everybody!  Down in San Ramon Pony Lee knows; at the court-house it is known.  Men give tips to their friends.  Courtot’s crowd knows.  Out here my men know; Carr and Barbee know.  Already there are a hundred men, maybe several times a hundred, who know.  And you may be sure that already they are coming like a train of ants.  Once gold has been uncovered the secret is out.  Pony Lee swears the desert winds carry the news.’

Howard was entirely correct in his surmise, saving in the time he judged they must wait.  Less than an hour had passed and the grass fire was still spreading with a fierce crackling sound and myriad sparks, when the vanguard of the gold-seekers came.  Helen and Howard heard horses’ hoofs, rattling stones, impatient voices, and withdrew a hundred yards from the gulch and into the shadows of a ring of boulders.

With the first came Bettins.  His voice was the loudest, coming now and then distinctly; he employed the name of Howard and cursed it; he said something about his ‘pals’ Devine and True.  A man to whom he was talking laughed at him.  Thereafter half a dozen forms swarmed down into the gulch; the fire on either side of them was dying out along the gulch’s edge; they cursed its heat when it offended them, took advantage of its light at all times, and more like ants than ever appeared to be running back and forth foolishly and aimlessly.  But, apparently, Bettins got his stakes and his friends’ back and the men with whom he had returned hastily staked out their own claims, all feverishly and by crude guesswork.  There was perhaps not a man among them who knew the first thing about mining.  Helen watched them in sheer fascination.  Down there half in light, half in shadow, darting this way and that, they were like little gnomes playing some wild game of their own.