Meanwhile a bareheaded man rushed out of the store beneath, bumping into a pedestrian who had paused on the sidewalk, and together they scurried up the stairs.  The dory which Roy had seen at sea had shot the breakers, and now its three passengers were tracking through the wet sand towards Front Street, Bill Wheaton in the lead.  He was followed by two rawboned men who travelled without baggage.  The city was awakening with the sun which reared a copper rim out of the sea—­Judge Stillman and Voorhees came down from the hotel and paused to gaze through the mists at a caravan of mule teams which trotted into the other end of the street with jingle and clank.  The wagons were blue with soldiers, the early golden rays slanting from their Krags, and they were bound for the Midas.

Out of the fogs which clung so thickly to the tundra there came two other horses, distorted and unreal, on one a girl, on the other a figure of pain and tragedy, a grotesque creature that swayed stiffly to the motion of its steed, its face writhed into lines of suffering, its hands clutching cantle and horn.

It was as though Fate, with invisible touch, were setting her stage for the last act of this play, assembling the principals close to the Golden Sands where first they had made entrance.

The man and the girl came face to face with the Judge and marshal, who cried out upon seeing them, but as they reined in, out from the stairs beside them a man shot amid clatter and uproar.

“Give me a hand—­quick!” he shouted to them.

“What’s up?” inquired the marshal.

“It’s murder!  McNamara and Glenister!” He dashed back up the steps behind Voorhees, the Judge following, while muffled cries came from above.

The gambler turned towards the three men who were hurrying from the beach, and, recognizing Wheaton, called to him:  “Untie my feet!  Cut the ropes!  Quick!”

“What’s the trouble?” the lawyer asked, but on hearing Glenister’s name bounded after the Judge, leaving one of his companions to free the rider.  They could hear the fight now, and all crowded towards the door, Helen with her brother, in spite of his warning to stay behind.

She never remembered how she climbed those stairs, for she was borne along by that hypnotic power which drags one to behold a catastrophe in spite of his will.  Reaching the room, she stood appalled; for the group she had joined watched two raging things that rushed at each other with inhuman cries, ragged, bleeding, fighting on a carpet of debris.  Every loose and breakable thing had been ground to splinters as though by iron slugs in a whirling cylinder.