"You'll give him a pill, Doctor," interrupted Randall, with a little chuckle. "But look here," he said to Johnny, "after all, this sort of a mess isn't required of you. You say the word and I'll take on this Scar-face Charley and run him out of town. He's a good deal of a pest." "Thank you," said Johnny stiffly; "I intend to paddle my own canoe." Randall nodded. "I don't know as we can help you any more," said he. "I just thought you ought to be on to the way it's done." "I'm obliged to you," said Johnny warmly. "The only doubt in my mind was when I was privileged to open." "I'd pot him through the window with a shotgun first chance I got," stated the doctor; "that sort of a ruffian is just like a mad dog." "Of course you would, Doctor," said Randall with just the faintest suspicion of sarcasm in his voice. "Well, I guess we'll be toddling." But I wanted some information, and I meant to have it. "Who is this Scar-face Charley," I asked. "Got me," replied Randall; "you fellows seemed to recognize him. Only he's one of the gang, undoubtedly." "The gang?" "Oh, the general run of hangers-on. Nobody knows how they live, but every one suspects. Some of them work, but not many. There are a heap of disappearances that no one knows anything about; and every once in a while a man is found drowned and floating; _floating_ mind you!" "What of that?" I asked; "drowned bodies usually float." "There's no miner in these diggings but has gold enough in his belt to sink him. If a man floats, he's been robbed, and you can tie to that reasoning. And the fellows are all well mounted, and given to mysterious disappearances." "In other words," broke in the doctor, "they are an organized band of cut-throats and highway robbers making this honest camp a headquarters." "Pshaw, Doctor," said Randall, "that's by no means certain." "It's certain enough," insisted the doctor. "I should think the miners would drive them out," I said. "Drive them out!" cried the doctor bitterly; "they're too busy, and their own toes haven't been trodden on, and they're too willing to let well enough alone so as not to be interrupted in their confounded digging for gold." "They're not organized and they are quite justly unwilling to get in a row with that gang when they know they'd be killed," stated Randall quietly. "They're getting on 'well enough,' and they'll continue to be run by this lot of desperadoes until something desperate happens. They want to be let alone." The doctor recovered his equanimity with an effort. "They present the curious spectacle," said he thoughtfully, "of the individual man in a new untrammelled liberty trying to escape his moral obligations to society. He escapes them for a while, but they are there; and in the end he must pay in violence." Randall laughed and arose. "If the doctor is going to begin that sort of thing, I'm going," said he. Our visitors took their departure.