It seemed that the Boss of North Dakota was no sluggard.  He discarded coat and waistcoat and tackled the documents which Struve laid before him, going through them like a whirlwind.  Gradually he infected the others with his energy, and soon behind the locked doors of Dunham & Struve there were only haste and fever and plot and intrigue.

As Helen Chester led the Judge towards the flamboyant, three-storied hotel she prattled to him light-heartedly.  The fascination of a new land already held her fast, and now she felt, in addition, security and relief.  Glenister saw them from a distance and strode forward to greet them.

He beheld a man of perhaps threescore years, benign of aspect save for the eyes, which were neither clear nor steady, but had the trick of looking past one.  Glenister thought the mouth, too, rather weak and vacillating; but the clean-shaven face was dignified by learning a acumen and was wrinkled in pleasant fashion.

“My niece has just told me of your service to her,” the old gentleman began.  “I am happy to know you, sir.”

“Besides being a brave knight and assisting ladies in distress, Mr. Glenister is a very great and wonderful man,” Helen explained, lightly.  “He owns the Midas.”

“Indeed!” said the old man, his shifting eyes now resting full on the other with a flash of unmistakable interest.  “I hear that is a wonderful mine.  Have you begun work yet?”

“No.  We’ll commence sluicing day after to-morrow.  It has been a late spring.  The snow in the gulch was deep and the ground thaws slowly.  We’ve been building houses and doing dead work, but we’ve got our men on the ground, waiting.”

“I am greatly interested.  Won’t you walk with us to the hotel?  I want to hear more about these wonderful placers.”

“Well, they are great placers,” said the miner, as the three walked on together; “nobody knows how great because we’ve only scratched at them yet.  In the first place the ground is so shallow and the gold is so easy to get, that if nature didn’t safeguard us in the winter we’d never dare leave our claims for fear of ‘snipers.’  They’d run in and rob us.”

“How much will the Anvil Creek mines produce this summer?” asked the Judge.

“It’s hard to tell, sir; but we expect to average five thousand a day from the Midas alone, and there are other claims just as good.”

“Your title is all clear, I dare say, eh?”

“Absolutely, except for one jumper, and we don’t take him seriously.  A fellow named Galloway relocated us one night last month, but he didn’t allege any grounds for doing so, and we could never find trace of him.  If we had, our title would be as clean as snow again.”  He said the last with a peculiar inflection.

“You wouldn’t use violence, I trust?”

“Sure!  Why not?  It has worked all right heretofore.”

“But, my dear sir, those days are gone.  The law is here and it is the duty of every one to abide by it.”