“Wal, ma soeur she’s come to you for help, queeck.”

Both old men became instantly alert.  “You in trouble?” Tom demanded of the girl.  “Who’s been hurting you, I’d like to know?”

Jerry, too, leaned forward, and into his widening eyes came a stormy look.  “Sure!  Has one of them crawlin’ worms got fresh with you, Letty?  Say—!” He reached up and removed his six-shooter from its nail over his bed.

Rouletta set them upon the right track.  Swiftly but earnestly she recited the nature and the circumstances of the misfortune that had overtaken Pierce Phillips, and of the fruitless efforts his friends were making in his behalf.  She concluded by asking her hearers to go his bail.

“Why, sure!” Linton exclaimed, with manifest relief.  “That’s easy.  I’ll go it, if they’ll take me.”

“There you are, hoggin’ the curtain, as usual,” Jerry protested.  “I’ll go his bail myself.  I got him in trouble at Sheep Camp.  I owe him—­”

“I’ve known the boy longer than you have.  Besides, I’m a family man; I know the anguish of a parent’s heart—­”

“Lay off that ‘family’ stuff,” howled Mr. Quirk.  “You know it riles me.  I could of had as much of a family as you had if I’d wanted to.  You’d think it give you some sort of privilege.  Why, ever since we set up with Letty you’ve assumed a fatherly air even to her, and you act like I was a plumb outsider.  You remind me of a hen—­settin’ on every loose door-knob you find.”

“If you’d lay off the ‘family’ subject we’d get along better.”

Once again the fray was on; it raged intermittently throughout the evening; it did not die out until bedtime put an end to it.

Rouletta and her three companions were late in reaching town on the following day, for they awakened to find a storm raging, and in consequence the trails were heavy.  Out of this white smother they plodded just as the lights of Dawson were beginning to gleam.  Leaving the men at the Barracks, the girl proceeded to her hotel.  She had changed out of her trail clothes and was upon the point of hurrying down-town to her work when she encountered Hilda Courteau.

“Where in the world have you been?” the latter inquired.

“Nowhere, in the world,” Rouletta smiled.  “I’ve been quite out of it.”  Then she told of her and ’Poleon’s trip to the mines and of their success.  “Pierce will be at liberty inside of an hour,” she declared.

“Well, I’ve—­learned the truth.”

Rouletta started; eagerly she clutched at the elder woman.  “What?  You mean—?”

“Yes.  I wrung it out of Courteau.  He confessed.”

“It was a frame-up—­a plot?  Oh, my dear—!”

“Exactly.  But don’t get hysterical.  I’m the one to do that.  What a night, what a day I’ve put in!” The speaker shuddered, and Rouletta noticed for the first time how pale, how ill she looked.

“Then Pierce is free already?  He’s out—?”