now and leave
the claim, and leave a fortune! What a fool I'd be, when I can't see
anything or hear anything. To leave a fortune! No, I won't. No, by God!"
He drew Cribbens's Winchester toward him and slipped a cartridge into
the magazine.

"No," he growled. "Whatever happens, I'm going to stay. If anybody
comes--" He depressed the lever of the rifle, and sent the cartridge
clashing into the breech.

"I ain't going to sleep," he muttered under his mustache. "I can't
sleep; I'll watch." He rose a second time, clambered to the nearest
hilltop and sat down, drawing the blanket around him, and laying the
Winchester across his knees. The hours passed. The dentist sat on the
hilltop a motionless, crouching figure, inky black against the pale
blur of the sky. By and by the edge of the eastern horizon began to grow
blacker and more distinct in out-line. The dawn was coming. Once more
McTeague felt the mysterious intuition of approaching danger; an unseen
hand seemed reining his head eastward; a spur was in his flanks that
seemed to urge him to hurry, hurry, hurry. The influence grew stronger
with every moment. The dentist set his great jaws together and held his
ground.

"No," he growled between his set teeth. "No, I'll stay." He made a long
circuit around the camp, even going as far as the first stake of the new
claim, his Winchester cocked, his ears pricked, his eyes alert. There
was nothing; yet as plainly as though it were shouted at the very nape
of his neck he felt an enemy. It was not fear. McTeague was not afraid.

"If I could only SEE something--somebody," he muttered, as he held the
cocked rifle ready, "I--I'd show him."

He returned to camp. Cribbens was snoring. The burro had come down
to the stream for its morning drink. The mule was awake and browsing.
McTeague stood irresolutely by the cold ashes of the camp-fire, looking
from side to side with all the suspicion and wariness of a tracked stag.
Stronger and stronger grew the strange impulse. It seemed to him that on
the next instant he MUST perforce wheel sharply eastward and rush away
headlong in a clumsy, lumbering gallop. He fought against it with all
the ferocious obstinacy of his simple brute nature.

"Go, and leave the mine? Go and leave a million dollars? No, NO, I won't
go. No, I'll stay. Ah," he exclaimed, under his breath, with a shake
of his huge head, like an exasperated and harassed brute, "ah, show
yourself, will you?" He brought the rifle to