Pierce Phillips realized that it was useless to argue, for his words would not be listened to, therefore he followed the McCaskeys out into the open air.  The odium of this accusation was hard to bear; he bitterly resented his situation and something told him he would have to fight to clear himself; nevertheless, he was not seriously concerned over the outcome.  Public feeling was high, to be sure; the men of Sheep Camp were in a dangerous frame of mind and their actions were liable to be hasty, ill-considered--their verdict was apt to be fantastic—­but, secure in the knowledge of his innocence, Pierce felt no apprehension.  Rather he experienced a thrill of excitement at the contretemps and at the ordeal which he knew was forthcoming.

The Countess Courteau had called him a boy.  This wasn’t a boy’s business; this was a real man-sized adventure.

“Gee!  What a day this has been!” he said to himself.

CHAPTER IV

The story of the first trial at Sheep Camp is an old one, but it differs with every telling.  In the hectic hurry of that gold-rush many incidents were soon forgotten and such salient facts as did survive were deeply colored, for those were colorful days.  That trial marked an epoch in early Yukon history, for, although its true significance was unsensed at the time, it really signalized the dawn of common honesty on the Chilkoot and the Chilkat trails, and it was the first move taken toward the disruption of organized outlawry—­a bitter fight, by the way, which ended only in the tragic death of Soapy Smith and the flight of his notorious henchmen.  Although the circumstances of the Sheep Camp demonstration now seem shocking, they did not seem so at the time, and they served a larger purpose than was at first apparent; not only did theft become an unprofitable and an uninteresting occupation thereafter, but also the men who shaped a code and drew first blood in defense of it experienced a beneficial reaction and learned to fit the punishment to the crime—­no easy lesson to learn where life runs hot and where might is right.

The meeting was in session and it had been harangued into a dangerous frame of mind when Pierce Phillips and the two McCaskeys were led before it.  A statement by the leader of the posse, corroborated by the owner of the missing sack of rice, roused the audience to a fury.  Even while these stories were being told there came other men who had identified property of theirs among the provision piles inside the McCaskey tent, and when they, too, had made their reports the crowd began to mill; there were demands for a speedy trial and a swift vengeance.

These demands found loudest echo among the outlaw element for which Lucky Broad had acted as mouthpiece.  Although the members of that band were unknown—­as a matter of fact, no man knew his neighbor—­nevertheless it was plain that there was an organization of crooks and that a strong bond of understanding existed between them.  Now, inasmuch as the eye of suspicion had been turned away from them, now that a herring had been dragged across the trail, their obstructive tactics ended and they, too, became noisy in their clamor that justice be done.