e were playing poker. One was bearded and seemed the
old-time miner. All boasted stubble on their chins, two wore mustaches.
One was bald. Their clothes varied, from the miner's faded blue
overalls, high boots and flannel shirt, to soiled khaki and laced
prospector's footwear. One thing they all had in common, cartridge
belts and guns, in plain view. Taken together they were not a
prepossessing lot, playing their game in silence, looking up with a
scowl and movements toward gun butts at the visitors. Two burros cropped
at the scanty herbage above the tent. A demijohn stood between two of
the box seats.

"I've seen that tent afore," whispered Sam to Sandy. The latter nodded.

"Campin' out, gents?" he asked amiably.

"No, we ain't. These claims are preempted. Trespassers ain't welcome.
You're invited to move on."

"That's a new name fo' it," said Sandy pleasantly. "New to me.
Preempted."

"What in hell are you driving at?" asked the other. "This is private
property."

"Property of Jim Plimsoll?"

"None of yore damned business."

There was a movement in the tent. One of the men got up from his cot and
stood yawning in the entrance, one hand on the pole. The other snored
on. Sandy, with Mormon and Sam, stood just above the group on the narrow
bench that furnished the floor for the tent. They had little doubt that
the jumpers knew who they were, though they recognized none of them by
sight. There was a hesitancy toward action that might have been born out
of respect to Sandy's two guns or a foreknowledge of his reputation in
handling them, aside from the armament of his partners. Sandy's hands
rested lightly on his hips, his thumbs hooked in his belt, fingers
grazing the butts of his guns. There was a smile on his lips but none in
his eyes. His tone and manner were easy.

"Saw his stencil on the tent," he said. "J. P. in a diamond. Same brand
he uses fo' his hawsses. Or mebbe you found it."

His drawling voice held a taunt that brought angry flushes of color to
the faces of the men opposing him, yet they made no definite movement
toward attack. It seemed patent that Sandy Bourke was testing them.
Trouble was in the air, two kinds of it: on the one side hesitant
belligerency; on the other--cool nonchalance. Sandy, with his smiling
lips and unsmiling eyes, stood lightly poised as a dancing master.
Mormon and Sam were tenser, crouched a little from the hips, elbows away
from their sides, hands with fingers apart, r