“That’s just my notion, Wat; and d—­n ’em, if the boys are only true to the hub, we can row this guard up salt river in no time and less.  Look you now—­let’s put the thing on a good footing, and have no further disturbance.  Put all the boys on shares—­equal shares—­in the diggings, and we’ll club strength, and can easily manage these chaps.  There’s no reason, indeed, why we shouldn’t; for if we don’t fix them, we are done up, every man of us.  We have, as you see and have tried, a pretty strong fence round us, and, if our men stand to it, and I see not why they shouldn’t, Fullam can’t touch us with his squad of fifty, ay, and a hundred to the back of ’em.”

The plan was feasible enough in the eyes of men to whom ulterior consequences were as nothing in comparison with the excitement of the strife; and even the most scrupulous among them were satisfied, in a little time, and with few arguments, that they had nothing to gain and everything to lose by retiring from the possessions in which they had toiled so long.  There was nothing popular in the idea of a state expelling them from a soil of which it made no use itself; and few among the persons composing the array had ever given themselves much if any trouble, in ascertaining the nice, and with them entirely metaphysical distinction, between the mine and thine of the matter.  The proposition, therefore, startled none, and prudence having long since withdrawn from their counsels, not a dissenting voice was heard to the suggestion of a union between the two parties for the purpose of common defence.  The terms, recognising all of both sides, as upon an equal footing in the profits of the soil, were soon arranged and completed; and in the space of a few moments, and before the arrival of the new-comers, the hostile forces, side by side, stood up for the new contest as if there had never been any other than a community of interest and feeling between them.  A few words of encouragement and cheer, given to their several commands by Munro and Dexter, were scarcely necessary, for what risk had their adherents to run—­what to fear—­what to lose?  The courage of the desperado invariably increases in proportion to his irresponsibility.  In fortune, as utterly destitute as in character, they had, in most respects, already forfeited the shelter, as in numberless instances they had not merely gone beyond the sanction, but had violated and defied the express interdict, of the laws; and now, looking, as such men are apt most usually to do, only to the immediate issue, and to nothing beyond it, the banditti—­for such they were—­with due deliberation and such a calm of disposition as might well comport with a life of continued excitement, proceeded again, most desperately, to set them at defiance.