"Here's luck to the new claim, Happy," said the proprietor; "and here's hoping the sharps doesn't make all there is on her." The men laughed, but not ill-naturedly. They all knew Peter, as has been said. Peter turned again to the door. "You'll have a reg'lar cyclone up thar by to-morrow!" called a joker after him; "look out fer us! There'll be an unholy mob on hand, and they'll try to do you, sure!" Peter stopped short, looked at the speaker, and went out hurriedly. The next morning the men came into his gulch. He heard them even before he had left his bunk--the _clink_, creak, creak! of their wagons. By the time he had finished breakfast the side-hills were covered with them. From his window he could catch glimpses of them through the straight pines as patches of red, or flashes of light reflected from polished metal. In the canon was the gleam of fires; in the air the smell of wood-smoke and of bacon broiling; among the still bare bushes and saplings the shine of white lean-tops; horses fed eagerly on the young grasses and the browse of trees, raising their heads as the creak of wheels farther down the draw told of yet new-comers. The boom was under way. Peter knew that the tidings of the discovery would spread. To-morrow a new town would deserve a place on the map. Men would come to the town, men with money, men anxious to invest. With them Peter would treat. There was to be no chance of a careless bargain this time. He would take no chances. And yet he had thought that before. Peter began to forestall difficulties in his mind. The former experience suggested many, but he drew from the same source their remedies. It was the great unknown that terrified him. In spite of his years, in spite of his gray hairs, in spite of his memories of those former failures, he had to confess to himself that he knew nothing, absolutely nothing of sharpers and their methods. They could not fleece him again in precisely the way they had done so before; but how could he guess at the tricks they had in reserve? Eight years out of a man's life ought surely to teach him caution as thoroughly as twelve. Yet he walked into the Eagle Ridge trap as confidently as he had into the Antelope Gap. He had made it twelve years. What was to prevent his making it sixteen? There is no fear like that of the absolutely unknown. You cannot forestall that; you must depend upon your own self-confidence. Self-confidence was just what Peter did not possess.