“Humph!  I can beat up these two prospectors and ship ’em in to the hospital until things cool down.”

“That won’t do, either.  I’ll talk with them, and if their story is right—­well, I’ll throw open the commissary and outfit every one.”

Eliza gasped; Gray stammered.

“You’re crazy!” exclaimed the doctor.

“If it’s a real stampede they’ll go anyhow, so we may as well take our medicine with a good grace.  The loss of even a hundred men would cripple us.”

“The camp is seething.  It’s all Mellen can do to keep the day shift at work.  If you talk to ’em maybe they’ll listen to you.”

“Argument won’t sway them.  This isn’t a strike; it’s a gold rush.”  He turned toward the town.

Eliza was speechless with dismay as she hurried along beside him; Gray was scowling darkly and muttering anathemas; O’Neil himself was lost in thought.  The gravity of this final catastrophe left nothing to be said.

Stanley lost little time in bringing the two miners to the office, and there, for a half-hour, Murray talked with them.  When they perceived that he was disposed to treat them courteously they told their story in detail and answered his questions with apparent honesty.  They willingly showed him their quartz samples and retailed the hardships they had suffered.

Gray listened impatiently and once or twice undertook to interpolate some question, but at a glance from his chief he desisted.  Nevertheless, his long fingers itched to lay hold of the strangers and put an end to this tale which threatened ruin.  His anger grew when Murray dismissed them with every evidence of a full belief in their words.

“Now that the news is out and my men are determined to quit, I want everybody to have an equal chance,” O’Neil announced, as they rose to go.  “There’s bound to be a great rush and a lot of suffering—­maybe some deaths—­so I’m going to call the boys together and have you talk to them.”

Thorn and Baker agreed and departed.  As the door closed behind them Gray exploded, but Murray checked him quickly, saying with an abrupt change of manner:  “Wait!  Those fellows are lying!”

Seizing the telephone, he rang up Dan Appleton and swiftly made known the situation.  Stanley could hear the engineer’s startled exclamation.

“Get the cable to Cortez as quickly as you can,” O’Neil was saying.  “You have friends there, haven’t you?  Good!  He’s just the man, for he’ll have Gordon’s pay-roll.  Find out if Joe Thorn and Henry Baker are known, and, if so, who they are and what they’ve been doing lately.  Get it quick, understand?  Then ’phone me.”  He slammed the receiver upon its hook.  “That’s not Alaskan quartz,” he said, shortly; “it came from Nevada, or I’m greatly mistaken.  Every hard-rock miner carries specimens like those in his kit.”

“You think Gordon—­”

“I don’t know.  But we’ve got rock-men on this job who’ll recognize ore out of any mine they ever worked in.  Go find them, then come back here and hold the line open for Dan.”