her than waned.
Men talked themselves into a fever, others took fire, and the epidemic
spread like some obscure nervous disease. Nobody slept, everybody drank
and hurrahed, and said it was the greatest night in the history of
Minook. In the Gold Nugget saloon, crowded to suffocation, Pitcairn
organized the new mining district, and named it the Idaho Bar. French
Charlie and Keith had gone out late in the day. On their return, Keith
sold his stake to a woman for twenty-five dollars, and Charlie
advertised a half-interest in his for five thousand. Between these two
extremes you could hear Idaho Bar quoted at any figure you liked.

Maudie was in towering spirits. She drank several cocktails, and in her
knee-length "stampedin' skirt" and her scarlet sweater she danced the
most audacious jig even Maudie had ever presented to the Gold Nugget
patrons. The miners yelled with delight. One of them caught her up and
put her on the counter of the bar, where, no whit at a loss, she
curveted and spun among the bottles and the glasses as lightly as a
dragonfly dips and whirls along a summer brook. The enthusiasm grew
delirious. The men began to throw nuggets at her, and Maudie, never
pausing in the dance, caught them on the fly.

Suddenly she saw the Big Chap turn away, and, with his back to her,
pretend to read the notice on the wall, written in charcoal on a great
sheet of brown wrapping-paper:

"MINOOK, April 30.

"To who it may concern:

"Know all men by these presents that I, James McGinty, now of Minook
(or Rampart City), Alaska, do hereby give notice of my intention to
hold and claim a lien by virtue of the statue in such case----"

He had read so far when Maudie, having jumped down off the bar with her
fists full of nuggets, and dodging her admirers, wormed her way to the
Colonel. She thrust her small person in between the notice and the
reader, and scrutinised the tanned face, on which the Rochester burners
shed a flood of light. "You lookin' mighty serious," she said.

"Am I?"

"M-hm! Thinkin' 'bout home sweet home?"

"N-no--not just then."

"Say, I told you 'bout--a--'bout me. You ain't never told me nothin'."

He seemed not to know the answer to that, and pulled at his ragged
beard. She leaned back against McGinty's notice, and blurred still more
the smudged intention "by virtue of the statue."

"Married, o' course," she said.

"No."

"Widder?"

"No."

"Never hitched up yet?"

He shook his head.

"