The carpenter was practically dead on his feet from the night of fierce toil, and in addition to his weariness was half-famished. He had come in while it was yet dark to get something to eat, and was planning to go back at once. I aroused Barrett promptly, and together we tramped out to the crest of the spur overlooking the Lawrenceburg workings and the mountain-side below. In the breaking dawn, with the help of Barrett's field-glass, we could make out the shape of the disabled wagon on the bare slope hundreds of feet below. Early as it was, there was already a number of moving figures encircling it; a group which presently strung itself out in Indian file on a diagonal course up to our gulch. The early-morning investigators were taking the plainly marked wagon trail in reverse, and Barrett turned to me with a brittle laugh. "That settles it, Jimmie. The secret is out, and in another half hour we'll be fighting like the devil to keep those fellows from relocating every foot of ground we've got. Let's go back and get ready for them." XVI In the Open Though there was between twenty and thirty thousand dollars' worth of high-grade ore lying unguarded in the broken-down wagon two miles below, we promptly forgot it. Losing no minute of the precious time, we hastened to restake our claim, marking the boundaries plainly and putting up "No Trespass" notices to let the coming invaders know that we were alive and on the job. We knew very well that our boundary lines would be disregarded; that in striving to cover every foot of the unclaimed fragments of the original triangle, the excited gold-seekers would overlap us in all directions. But we meant to have the law on our side. Our next move was a hurried covering of the shaft mouth with planks provided for just such an emergency; this and a barricading of the shack against a possible rush to loot it. By working fast we were ready by the time the vanguard of the rush appeared as a line of toiling climbers at the foot of the gulch. Barrett glanced at his watch. "The early trolley will be just about leaving Bennett Avenue with the day-shift for the Ohio," he announced. "One of us must catch that car back to town to start a string of freight teams up here with men and material. Minutes now are worth days next week. I'm the freshest one of the bunch, and I'll go, if you two fellows think you can hold your own against this mob that is coming. You won't have to do any fighting, unless it's to keep them out of our shaft. Let them drive their stakes wherever they like, only, if they get on our ground, make your legal protest--the two of you together, so you can swear straight when it comes into the courts."