‘Jim Courtot, Al?’ asked Carr, for Monte Devine’s face was in shadow.

Howard shook his head.

‘No such luck, John,’ he said briefly.  ’Just Monte Devine and Ed True.  Bettins is over yonder; he didn’t mix in.’

‘I hope,’ said Longstreet nervously, ’that you haven’t started any trouble on my account.’

‘No trouble at all,’ said Howard dryly.  Yellow Barbee laughed and went to look at Devine.  Ed True was still cursing where he had propped himself up with his back to a rock.

‘This is apt to be bad business, Al.’  It was John Carr speaking heavily, his voice unusually blunt and harsh.  ’I saw Pony Lee, and he told me that Longstreet here hasn’t a leg to stand on.  Devine filed on the claim; he and his men got here ahead of us; neither Miss Helen nor I nor any one but you can go into court and swear that Longstreet ever so much as said that he had made a find.  I was hoping we would get here before you started anything.’

Howard looked at his friend in amazement.  He knew that the discovery was Longstreet’s by right; to his way of thinking the simplest thing in the world was to hold and to fight for the property of his friends.  He would have said that John Carr would have done the same thing were Carr in his boots.  He had taken another man’s quarrel upon his own shoulders to-night, and asked no questions; he had plunged into a fight against odds and had gotten away with it and no help asked; the fighting heat was still in his blood, and it seemed to him that his old friend John Carr was finding fault with him.

They had all dismounted by now.  Longstreet had slid to the ground, let go his horse’s reins and was fidgeting up and down, back and forth, in an access of nervous excitement.  Now he began talking quickly, failing to understand in the least what effect his rushing words would have on the man who had taken up his fight.

’The thing is of no consequence, not the least in the world.  Come, let them have it.  It is only a gold mine, and haven’t I told you all the time that for me there is no difficulty in locating gold?  I am sorry all of this has happened.  They’re here first; they have filed on it; let them have it.’

Howard’s face no longer showed amazement.  In the flickering light his mouth was hard and bitter, set in the implacable lines of stern resentment.  Between Carr and Longstreet they made it seem that he had merely made a fool of himself.  Well, maybe he had.  He shrugged his shoulders and turned away.

‘I know you did it for me,’ Longstreet began, having a glimpse of the bitterness in Alan’s heart.

‘And you mustn’t think——­’

Howard wheeled on him.

‘I didn’t do it for you.’ he snapped irritably.  ’I tried the only way I knew to help save the mine for Helen.  We’d do it yet if you weren’t a pack of damned rabbits.’

He pushed by and laid his hand on the mane of the horse Dave Terril rode.