We want to see what you got in that shaft," he panted. "Yank them
boards off and show us."

"I guess not," said Gifford, fingering the lock of Barrett's shot-gun.
Then, suddenly taking the aggressive: "You fellers looking for a mine?
Well, by cripes, you get off of our ground and stay off, or you'll find
one startin' up inside of you in a holy minute! We mean business!"

The three men cursed us like pickpockets, but they backed away until
they stood on the other side of our boundary, where they were presently
joined by half a dozen others. We had one point in our favor. In such
a rush it is every man for himself, with a broad invitation to the
devil to take the hindmost. Somebody called the fellow who wanted to
break into our shaft for the needful evidence a much-emphasized
jackass, and pointed to the wagon-tracks leading straight to our shack.

"What more do you want than them tracks?" bellowed this caller of hard
names. And then: "Anybody in this crowd got a map?"

Nobody had, as it seemed; whereupon the bellower turned upon us.

"You fellers 've got one, it stands to reason. If you've got any
sportin' blood in you at all, you'll be sort o' half-way human and give
us a squint at it."

Again Gifford took the words out of my mouth. "Not to-day," he refused
coolly. "If you want to know right bad, I'll tell you straight that
there isn't anything like a whole claim left in this gulch. Now go
ahead and do your stakin' if you want to, but keep off of us. You can
see all our lines; they're as plain as the nose on your ugly face.
I've got only one thing to say, and that is, the man that stakes inside
of 'em is goin' to stop a handful of blue whistlers."

Following this there was a jangling confab which was almost a riot.
Two or three, and among them the man who wanted us to show our map,
openly counseled violence. We were but two, and there were by this
time a dozen against us, with more coming up the gulch. They could
have rushed us easily--at some little cost of life, maybe--but again
the every-man-for-himself idea broke the charm. Already a number of
stragglers were dropping out to skirt our boundaries, and in another
minute they were fighting among themselves, each man striving to be the
first to get his stakes down parallel with ours.

In such a struggle there was necessarily much reckless crisscrossing
and overlapping. Claims were stepped off on all sides of us and in
every conceivable direction.