“Must have been down at the post,” Bill said. “We heard it while the door was open. Something doing. Let’s lope along and see.” He set the pace, and in a few minutes we opened the door of the trading post to find it filled with muttering men, and it was plain to us that a miner’s meeting, irregular and hurried, perhaps, but nevertheless a miner’s meeting, was in session. Men in mackinaws, furs, and parkas were crowded into the place, and the dim lamps, with their tin reflectors, betrayed angry faces. Phil Mahoney was standing on the rough counter haranguing the men, and his face was black with excitement and temper. “And look what he did to me!” he shouted, just as we entered. “Skinned me out of all I had, then laughed in my face. And it only took him ten or fifteen minutes to do it. They ain’t no square game could do it. He’s a crook! That’s what this Jim is! Why, he says so himself, and laughs about it. This camp’s had too much of him. He’s busted too many men. I move we go down and get him and start him over the ice, to-night! Now!” Despite the small esteem in which I held Laughing Jim, a shudder rippled up my spine at the thought of such an execution; for it meant nothing less. To “start a man over the ice,” meant that he would be sent without blankets, or food, and that, with a full eighty miles to Taninaw, the nearest point of succor, meant nothing save condemnation to slow death by cold or exhaustion. “Hold on! Hold on, a minute, before that’s put to a vote,” I heard Shakespeare George demand. Men turned and craned their necks to look at him as he crowded toward the counter and into the little, open space reserved beneath it for courtesy. “Me and my pardners just got here,” said George, “and we’d like to know what Jim’s done this time.” “Done?” shouted Phil, rendered more angry by interference. “He’s skinned Missouri Jones out of all he had, and then won his pay dump from him. Ain’t that enough?” George eyed Phil steadily, and took his time to answer. “Why did Missouri go against him?” he demanded. “Ain’t he old enough, and wise enough, to know that he can’t beat a wheel?” “But the wheel’s crooked!” declared Phil, his very beard bristling with excitement. “Humph! You don’t know that, and I don’t,” retorted George. “Until it’s proved that it is, I’ll not vote to kill a man. That’s what it amounts to. You all know it.”