sweet, steady! It's all right. Hutton's gone by
now. Anyhow, Macartney and I'll take care of you!"

"Oh, my heavens," said Paulette: it sounded half as if she were sick
with despair, and half as if I were hopelessly stupid. "Take care of
me--you can't take care of me! You should have let me go. It's too late
now." She pushed my arm from her as if she hated me and was gone down
the passage to her room before I could speak.

I shut the office window, with the inside sash down this time, and took
a scout around outside. But Macartney was right; if any one had been
waiting about he was gone. I could not find hide or hoof of him
anywhere, and the moon went down, and I went in and went to bed. In two
minutes I must have been asleep like a log,--and the first way I knew it
was that I found myself out of bed, dragging on my clothes and grabbing
up my gun.

Whatever the row was about it was in the assay office. I heard Macartney
yell my name through a volley of shots and knew we had both been made
fools of. I had stopped Paulette meeting Hutton, and Hutton had dropped
on Macartney and the assay office gold! I shook Dudley till he sat up,
sober as I never could have been in his shoes, saw him light out in his
pyjamas to keep guard in his own office that Paulette and I had only
just left, and legged it for the assay office and Macartney.

I didn't see a soul on the way, except the men who were piling out of
the bunk house at the sound of a row, as I had piled out of bed; and I
thought Macartney had raised a false alarm. But inside his office door I
knew better. The four mill men who slept in the shack just off it were
all on the office floor, dead, or next door to it. Their guns were on
the floor too, and Macartney stood towering over the mess.

"Get those staring bunk-house fools out of here," he howled, as the men
crowded in after me. "I haven't lost any gold, only somebody tried to
raid me. Why didn't you come and cut them off when I yelled for you?
They--they got away!"

And suddenly, before I even saw he was swaying, he keeled over on the
floor.

CHAPTER XII

THOMPSON'S CARDS: AND SKUNK'S MISERY

For that second I thought Macartney was dead. But as I jumped to him I
saw he had only fainted, and that nothing ailed him but a bullet that
had glanced off his upper arm and left more of a gouge than a wound. Why
it made him faint I couldn't see, but it had. I left him where he had
dropped and turned to the four m