mob, and in a body it took up the chase.  Down the stumpy, muddy trail went the pursuit, and every command to halt spurred the fleeing man to swifter flight.  Cabin doors opened; people came running from their tents; some tried to fling themselves in the way of the escaping criminal; packers toiling up the trail heard the approaching clamor, shook off their burdens and endeavored to seize the figure that came bounding ahead of it.  But Jim dodged them all.  Failing in their attempt to intercept him, these newcomers joined the chase, and the fugitive, once the first frenzy of excitement had died in him, heard their footsteps gaining on him.  He was stark mad by now; black terror throttled him.  Then some one fired a shot; that shot was followed by others; there came a scattered fusillade, and with a mighty leap Jim McCaskey fell.  He collapsed in midair; he was dead when his pursuers reached him.

Mob spirit is a peculiar thing; its vagaries are difficult to explain or to analyze.  Some trivial occurrence may completely destroy its temper, or again merely serve to harden it and give it edge.  In this instance the escape, the flight, the short, swift pursuit and its tragic ending, had the effect, not of sobering the assembled citizens of Sheep Camp, not of satisfying their long-slumbering rage, but of inflaming it, of intoxicating them to a state of insane triumph.  Like the Paris mobs that followed shouting, in the wake of the tumbrels bound for the guillotine, these men came trooping back to the scene of execution, and as they came they bellowed hoarsely and they waved their arms.

Men react powerfully to environment; they put on rough ways with rough clothes.  Smooth pavements, soap and hot water, safety-razors, are strong civilizing agents, but a man begins to revert in the time it takes his beard to grow.  These fellows had left the world they knew behind them; they were in a world they knew not.  Old standards had fallen, new standards had been reared, new values had attached to crime, therefore they demanded that the business in hand go on.  Such was the spirit of the Chilkoot trail.

At the first stroke of the descending whip a howl went up—­a merciless howl, a howl of fierce exultation.  Joe McCaskey rocked forward upon the balls of his feet; his frame was racked by a spasm of agony; he strained at his thongs until his shoulder muscles swelled.  The flesh of his back knotted and writhed; livid streaks leaped out upon it, then turned crimson and began to trickle blood.

“One!” roared the mob.

The wielder of the scourge swung his weapon again; again the leather strips wrapped around the victim’s ribs and laid open their defenseless covering.

“Two!”

McCaskey lunged forward, then strained, backward; the tent-frame creaked as he pulled at it.  His head was drawn far back between his shoulders, his face was convulsed, and his gums were bared in a skyward grin.  If he uttered any sound it was lost in the uproar.