t could be dreadful here--all in a minute!" she whispered.

"You've struck it exactly," he replied. "All Alder Creek needed to make
it hell was Kells and his gang."

"Thank Heaven I turned you back in time!... Jim, you'd have--have gone
the pace here."

He nodded grimly. Then Kells returned and led them back through the room
to another door where spectators were fewer. Joan saw perhaps a dozen
couples of rough, whirling, jigging dancers in a half-circle of watching
men. The hall was a wide platform of boards with posts holding a canvas
roof. The sides, were open; the lights were situated at each end-huge,
round, circus tent lamps. There were rude benches and tables where
reeling men surrounded a woman. Joan saw a young miner in dusty boots
and corduroys lying drunk or dead in the sawdust. Her eyes were drawn
back to the dancers, and to the dance that bore some semblance to a
waltz. In the din the music could scarcely be heard. As far as the
men were concerned this dance was a bold and violent expression of
excitement on the part of some, and for the rest a drunken, mad fling.
Sight of the women gave Joan's curiosity a blunt check. She felt queer.
She had not seen women like these, and their dancing, their actions,
their looks, were beyond her understanding. Nevertheless, they shocked
her, disgusted her, sickened her. And suddenly when it dawned upon her
in unbelievable vivid suggestion that they were the wildest and most
terrible element of this dark stream of humanity lured by gold, then she
was appalled.

"Take me out of here!" she besought Kells, and he led her out instantly.
They went through the gambling-hall and into the crowded street, back
toward camp.

"You saw enough," said Kells, "but nothing to what will break out by and
by. This camp is new. It's rich. Gold is the cheapest thing. It passes
from hand to hand. Ten dollars an ounce. Buyers don't look at the
scales. Only the gamblers are crooked. But all this will change."

Kells did not say what that change might be, but the click of his teeth
was expressive. Joan did not, however, gather from it, and the dark
meaning of his tone, that the Border Legion would cause this change.
That was in the nature of events. A great strike of gold might enrich
the world, but it was a catastrophe.

Long into the night Joan lay awake, and at times, stirring the silence,
there was wafted to her on a breeze the low, strange murmur of the
gold-camp's strife.

Joan slep