Helen questioned Struve at length, but gained nothing more than that secret-service men had been at work for weeks and had to-day unearthed the fact that Vigilantes had been formed.  They had heard enough to make them think the mines would be jumped again to-night, and so had given the alarm.

“Have you hired spies?” she asked, incredulously.

“Sure.  We had to.  The other people shadowed us, and it’s come to a point where it’s life or death to one side or the other.  I told McNamara we’d have bloodshed before we were through, when he first outlined the scheme—­I mean when the trouble began.”

She wrung her hands.  “That’s what uncle feared before we left Seattle.  That’s why I took the risks I did in bringing you those papers.  I thought you got them in time to avoid all this.”

Struve laughed a bit, eying her curiously.

“Does Uncle Arthur know about this?” she continued.

“No, we don’t let him know anything more than necessary; he’s not a strong man.”

“Yes, yes.  He’s not well.”  Again the lawyer smiled.  “Who is behind this Vigilante movement?”

“We think it is Glenister and his New Mexican bandit partner.  At least they got the crowd together.”  She was silent for a time.

“I suppose they really think they own those mines.”

“Undoubtedly.”

“But they don’t, do they?” Somehow this question had recurred to her insistently of late, for things were constantly happening which showed there was more back of this great, fierce struggle than she knew.  It was impossible that injustice had been done the mine-owners, and yet scattered talk reached her which was puzzling.  When she strove to follow it up, her acquaintances adroitly changed the subject.  She was baffled on every side.  The three local newspapers upheld the court.  She read them carefully, and was more at sea than ever.  There was a disturbing undercurrent of alarm and unrest that caused her to feel insecure, as though standing on hollow ground.

“Yes, this whole disturbance is caused by those two.  Only for them we’d be all right.”

“Who is Miss Malotte?”

He answered, promptly:  “The handsomest woman in the North, and the most dangerous.”

“In what way?  Who is she?”

“It’s hard to say who or what she is—­she’s different from other women.  She came to Dawson in the early days—­just came—­we didn’t know how, whence, or why, and we never found out.  We woke up one morning and there she was.  By night we were all jealous, and in a week we were most of us drivelling idiots.  It might have been the mystery or, perhaps, the competition.  That was the day when a dance-hall girl could make a homestake in a winter or marry a millionaire in a month, but she never bothered.  She toiled not, neither did she spin on the waxed floors, yet Solomon in all his glory would have looked like a tramp beside her.”

“You say she is dangerous?”