and it conveyed a sense of menace.
Everything was at stake. Everything watched him. He looked up at the
white face of The Lily above him, and in the moonlight saw that her
eyes were fixed, glowing, not on him or the scenes of the night, but
on the aroused giant at his side.

CHAPTER XI

BELLS' VALIANT FIGHT

"We'll get there as soon as we can," Dick said. "It may not do any
good; but we'll demand a word and give them an argument. I haven't
time to thank you now, Mrs. Meredith, but some day----"

"You owe me no thanks," was her rejoinder. "It is I who owe you. Turn
about, you know."

The big man said nothing, but took a step nearer to her horse, and
looked up into her face with his penetrating eyes. He reached up and
closed his hand over both of hers, and held them for an instant, and
then whirled back into the cabin to get his hat. The horse pivoted and
started away.

"If I see Bells before you do," a voice floated up from the shadows
below, where the moon had not yet penetrated, "I'll tell him you're
coming. So long."

As the partners dog-trotted down the trail, she was already a long way
in advance. Now and then, as they panted up the steep path leading
away behind the Rattler, whose lights glowed dimly, they heard faint
sounds telling them that she was hastening back to Goldpan. The
winding of the trail took them away from the immediate roar of the
stamp mill behind, and they were still in the gloom, when they saw the
horse and rider outlined for a moment high above them on the crest of
the divide and they thought she stopped for a moment and looked back.
Then the silhouette seemed to float down out of sight, and was gone.

At the top, wordless, and sweating with effort, they filled their
lungs, hitched their belts tighter, and plunged into the shadows
leading toward the straggling rows of lights far below. They ran now,
doggedly, hoping to arrive in the camp before the meeting came to an
end.

"All we want," Bill said jerkily, as his feet pounded on the last
decline, "is a chance to argue it out with the men themselves before
this Denver feller gets his work in. I'm entitled to talk to 'em. I've
got my own card, and am as good a union man as any of 'em. The boys'll
be reasonable if they stop to think."

They hastened up the roadway of the street, which was, as at any hour
of the night, filled with moving men and clamorous with sound. They
knew that the miners' hall was at its farthest end over