He knelt motionless at last, beside the stream, singularly unperturbed, despite the importance of his find.  Briggs had slipped up, absolutely, on the biggest thing in many miles around, by salting and selling a quartz claim here to a man with a modest sum of money.

The cove was a placer claim, rich as mud in gold, and with everything needed at hand.

Then and there the name of the property was changed from the “See Saw” to the “Laughing Water” claim.

CHAPTER XI

ALGY STIRS UP TROUBLE

Bostwick arrived in Goldite at three in the afternoon, dressed in prison clothes.  He came on a freight wagon, the deliberate locomotion of which had provided ample time for his wrath to accumulate and simmer.  His car was forty miles away, empty of gasolene, stripped of all useful accessories, and abandoned where the convicts had compelled him to drive them in their flight.

A blacker face than his appeared, with anger and a stubble of beard upon it, could not have been readily discovered.  His story had easily outstripped him, and duly amused the camp, so that now, as he rode along the busy street, in a stream of lesser vehicles, autos, and dusty horsemen, arriving by two confluent roads, he was angered more and more by the grins and ribald pleasantries bestowed by the throngs in the road.

To complicate matters already sufficiently aggravating, Gettysburg, Napoleon C. Blink, and Algy, the Chinese cook, from the Monte Cristo mine, now swung into line from the northwest road, riding on horses and burros.  They were leading three small pack animals, loaded with all their earthly plunder.

The freight team halted and a crowd began to congregate.  Bostwick was descending just as the pack-train was passing through the narrow way left by the crowd.  His foot struck one of the loaded burros in the eye.  The animal staggered over against the wall of men, trampling on somebody’s feet.  Somebody yelled and cursed vehemently, stepping on somebody else.  A small-sized panic and melee ensued forthwith.  More of the animals took alarm, and Algy was frightened half to death.  His pony, a wall-eyed, half-witted brute, stampeded in the crowd.  Then Algy was presently in trouble.

There had been no Chinese in Goldite camp, largely on account of race prejudice engendered and fostered by the working men, who still maintained the old Californian hatred against the industrious Celestials.  In the mob, unfortunately near the center of confusion, was a half-drunken miner, rancorous as poison.  He was somewhat roughly jostled by the press escaping Algy’s pony.

“Ye blank, blank chink—­I’ll fix ye fer that!” he bawled at the top of his voice, and heaving his fellow white men right and left he laid vicious hands on the helpless cook and, dragging him down, went at him in savage brutality.

“Belay there, you son of a shellfish!” yelled Napoleon, dismounting and madly attempting to push real men away.  “I’ll smash in your pilot-house!  I’ll——­ Leave me git in there to Algy!”