They had been sold.

McGinty was quick to gather that someone must have given him away. It
had only been a question of time, after all. He had lined his pockets,
and could take the new turn in his affairs with equanimity.

"Wait till the steamers begin to run," Maudie said; "McGinty'll play
that game with every new boat-load. Oh, McGinty'll make another
fortune. Then he'll go to Dawson and blow it in. Well, Colonel, sorry
you ain't cultivatin' rheumatism in a damp hole up at Glory
Hallelujah?"

"I--I am very much obliged to you for saving me from--"

She cut him short. "You see you've got time now to look about you for
something really good, if there _is_ anything outside of Little
Minook."

"It was very kind of you to--"

"No it wasn't," she said shortly.

The Colonel took out a roll of bank bills and selected one, folded it
small, and passed it towards her under the ledge of the table. She
glanced down.

"Oh, I don't want that."

"Yes, please."

"Tell you I don't."

"You've done me a very good turn; saved me a lot of time and expense."

Slowly she took the money, as one thinking out something.

"Where do you come from?" he asked suddenly.

"'Frisco. I was in the chorus at the Alcazar."

"What made you go into the chorus?"

"Got tired o' life on a sheep-ranch. All work and no play. Never saw a
soul. Seen plenty since."

"Got any people belonging to you?"

"Got a kind of a husband."

"A kind of a husband?"

"Yes--the kind you'd give away with a pound o' tea."

The little face, full of humourous contempt and shrewd scorn, sobered;
she flung a black look round the saloon, and her eyes came back to the
Colonel's face.

"I've got a girl," she said, and a sudden light flashed across her
frowning as swiftly as a meteor cuts down along a darkened sky. "Four
years old in June. _She_ ain't goin' into no chorus, bet your life!
_She's_ going to have money, and scads o' things I ain't never had."

That night the Colonel and the Boy agreed that, although they had
wasted some valuable time and five hundred and twenty-five dollars on
McGinty, they still had a chance of making their fortunes before the
spring rush.

The next day they went eight miles out in slush and in alternate rain
and sunshine, to Little Minook Creek, where the biggest paying claims
were universally agreed to be. They found a place even more ragged and
desolate than McGinty's, where smoke was rising sullenly from
underground fires