uproar and the stamp of many boots. All in
another instant pandemonium broke out. The huge crowd split in every
direction. Joan felt Cleve's strong arm around her--felt herself borne
on a resistless tide of yelling, stamping, wrestling men. She had a
glimpse of Kells's dark face drawing away from her; another of Gulden's
giant form in Herculean action, tossing men aside like ninepins; another
of weapons aloft. Savage, wild-eyed men fought to get into the circle
whence that shot had come. They broke into it, but did not know then
whom to attack or what to do. And the rushing of the frenzied miners all
around soon disintegrated Kells's band and bore its several groups in
every direction. There was not another shot fired.

Joan was dragged and crushed in the melee. Not for rods did her feet
touch the ground. But in the clouds of dust and confusion of struggling
forms she knew Jim still held her, and she clasped him with all her
strength. Presently her feet touched the earth; she was not jostled
and pressed; then she felt free to walk; and with Jim urging her they
climbed a rock-strewn slope till a cabin impeded further progress. But
they had escaped the stream.

Below was a strange sight. A scaffold shrouded in dust-clouds; a band
of bewildered vigilantes with weapons drawn, waiting for they knew not
what; three swinging, ghastly forms and a dead man on the platform; and
all below, a horde of men trying to escape from one another. That shot
of Kells's had precipitated a rush. No miner knew who the vigilantes
were nor the members of the Border Legion. Every man there expected
a bloody battle--distrusted the man next to him--and had given way to
panic. The vigilantes had tried to crowd together for defense and
all the others had tried to escape. It was a wild scene, born of wild
justice and blood at fever-heat, the climax of a disordered time where
gold and violence reigned supreme. It could only happen once, but it
was terrible while it lasted. It showed the craven in men; it proved the
baneful influence of gold; it brought, in its fruition, the destiny of
Alder Creek Camp. For it must have been that the really brave and
honest men in vast majority retraced their steps while the vicious kept
running. So it seemed to Joan.

She huddled against Jim there in the shadow of the cabin wall, and not
for long did either speak. They watched and listened. The streams
of miners turned back toward the space around the scaffold where