“Yes,” said the miner, disregarding the alarm of the lawyer, “you can wear this court in your vest-pocket like a Waterbury, if you want to, but if you don’t let me alone, I’ll uncoil its main-spring.  That’s all.”

He replaced his weapon and, turning, walked out the door.

CHAPTER IX

SLUICE ROBBERS

“We must have money,” said Glenister a few days later.  “When McNamara jumped our safe he put us down and out.  There’s no use fighting in this court any longer, for the Judge won’t let us work the ground ourselves, even if we give bond, and he won’t grant an appeal.  He says his orders aren’t appealable.  We ought to send Wheaton out to ’Frisco and have him take the case to the higher courts.  Maybe he can get a writ of supersedeas.”

“I don’t rec’nize the name, but if it’s as bad as it sounds it’s sure horrible.  Ain’t there no cure for it?”

“It simply means that the upper court would take the case away from this one.”

“Well, let’s send him out quick.  Every day means ten thousand dollars to us.  It ’ll take him a month to make the round trip, so I s’pose he ought to leave tomorrow on the Roanoke.”

“Yes, but where’s the money to do it with?  McNamara has ours.  My God!  What a mess we’re in!  What fools we’ve been, Dex!  There’s a conspiracy here.  I’m beginning to see it now that it’s too late.  This man is looting our country under color of law, and figures on gutting all the mines before we can throw him off.  That’s his game.  He’ll work them as hard and as long as he can, and Heaven only knows what will become of the money.  He must have big men behind him in order to fix a United States judge this way.  Maybe he has the ’Frisco courts corrupted, too.”

“If he has, I’m goin’ to kill him,” said Dextry.  “I’ve worked like a dog all my life, and now that I’ve struck pay I don’t aim to lose it.  If Bill Wheaton can’t win out accordin’ to law, I’m goin’ to proceed accordin’ to justice.”

During the past two days the partners had haunted the court-room where their lawyer, together with the counsel for the Scandinavians, had argued and pleaded, trying every possible professional and unprofessional artifice in search of relief from the arbitrary rulings of the court, while hourly they had become more strongly suspicious of some sinister plot—­some hidden, powerful understanding back of the Judge and the entire mechanism of justice.  They had fought with the fury of men who battle for life, and had grown to hate the lines of Stillman’s vacillating face, the bluster of the district-attorney, and the smirking confidence of the clerks, for it seemed that they all worked mechanically, like toys, at the dictates of Alec McNamara.  At last, when they had ceased, beaten and exhausted, they were too confused with technical phrases to grasp anything except the fact that relief was denied them; that their claims were to be worked by the receiver; and, as a crowning defeat, they learned that the Judge would move his court to St. Michael’s and hear no cases until he returned, a month later.