For an instant he was dazed and bewildered by the sudden change.  But the next moment he saw a dodging, doubling figure running before him, and threw himself upon it.  In the shock both men fell, but even in that contact Demorest felt the tangled beard and alcoholic fumes of Whiskey Dick, and felt also that the hands which were thrown up against his breast, the palms turned outward with the instinctive movement of a timid, defenseless man, were unstained with soil or blood.  With an oath he threw the drunkard from him and dashed to the rear of the cabin.  But too late!  There, indeed, was the scattered earth, there the widened burrow as it had been excavated apparently by that mutilated hand—­but nothing else!

He turned back to Whiskey Dick.  But the miserable man, although still retaining a look of dazed terror in his eyes, had recovered his feet in a kind of angry confidence and a forced sense of injury.  What did Demorest mean by attacking “innoshent” gentlemen on the trail outside his cabin?  Yes!  Outside his cabin, he would swear it!

“What were you doing here at midnight?” demanded Demorest.

What was he doing?  What was any gentleman doing?  He wasn’t any molly-coddle to go to bed at ten o’clock!  What was he doing?  Well—­he’d been with men who didn’t shut their doors and turn the boys out just in the shank of the evening.  He wasn’t any Barker to be wet-nursed by Demorest.

“Some one else was here!” said Demorest sternly, with his eyes fixed on Whiskey Dick.  The dull glaze which seemed to veil the outer world from the drunkard’s pupils shifted suddenly with such a look of direct horror that Demorest was fain to turn away his own.  But the veil mercifully returned, and with it Dick’s worked-up sense of injury.  Nobody was there—­not “a shole.”  Did Demorest think if there had been any of his friends there they would have stood by like “dogsh” and seen him insulted?

Demorest turned away and re-entered the cabin as Dick lurched heavily forward, still muttering, down the trail.  The excitement over, a sickening repugnance to the whole incident took the place of Demorest’s resentment and indignation.  There had been a cowardly attempt to rob them of their miserable treasure.  He had met it and frustrated it in almost as brutal a fashion:  the gold was already tarnished with blood.  To his surprise, yet relief, he found his partners unconscious of the outrage, still sleeping with the physical immobility of over-excited and tired men.  Should he awaken them?  No!  He should have to awaken also their suspicions and desire for revenge.  There was no danger of a further attack; there was no fear that the culprit would disclose himself, and to-morrow they would be far away.  Let oblivion rest upon that night’s stain on the honor of Heavy Tree Hill.