The men in the gulch had awakened. Most of them had finished the more imperative demands of location the day before, so now they were more at leisure to satisfy their curiosity and their love of comment by inspecting the original discovery to which all this stampede was due. As a consequence Peter found a great gathering on the _Jim Crow_. Some of the men were examining chunks of ore, others were preparing to descend the shafts, still others were engaged idly in reading the location-notice tacked against a stub pine. One of the latter, the same individual who had joked Peter in the saloon, caught sight of the prospector as he approached. "Hullo, Happy!" he called, pointing at the weather-beaten notice. "What do you call this?" He winked at the rest. The history of Peter's losses was well known. "What?" asked Peter, strangely. "You ain't got this readin' right. She says 'fifteen hundred feet'; the law says she ought t' read 'fifteen hundred _linear_ feet.' Your claim is n.g. I'm goin' t' jump her on you." The statement was ridiculous; everybody knew it, and prepared to laugh, loud-mouthed. Peter, without a word, shot the speaker through the heart. Men said at his trial that it was the most brutal and unprovoked murder they had ever known. VII THE GIRL IN RED "It isn't _that_ I object to," protested the Easterner, leaning forward from the rough log wall to give emphasis to his words, "for I believe in everyone having his fun his own way. If you're going in for orgies, why, have 'em _good_ orgies, and be done with it. But my kick's on letting these innocent young girls who are just out for the fun--it's awful!" "It's hell!" assented the Westerner, cheerfully. "Now, look at that pretty creature over there----" The young miner followed his companion's gaze through the garishly lit crowd. Then, as though in doubt as to whether he had seen correctly, he tried it again. "Which do you mean?" he asked, puzzled. "The one in red. Now, she----" The Westerner snorted irrepressibly. "What's the matter with you?" inquired the Easterner, looking on him with suspicious eyes. The other choked his laugh in the middle, and instantly assumed an expression of intense solemnity. It was as though a candle had blown out in the wind. "Beg pardon. Nothing," he asserted with brevity of enunciation. "Go on." The girl in red was standing tiptoe on a bench under one of the big lanterns. She was holding her little palm slantwise over the chimney, and by blowing against it was trying to put out the lamp. Her face was very serious and flushed. Occasionally the lamp would flare up a little, and she would snatch her hand away with a pretty gesture of dismay as the uprising flame would threaten to scorch it. A group of interested men surrounded and applauded her. Two on the outside stood off the proprietor of the dance-hall. The proprietor was objecting.