“What did I tell ye?” he cried, his voice pitched high with excitement, “What did I tell ye right here in this room? Crowd up here ye malamutes an’ look at gold!” As he spoke his mittened hand brought the sack down upon the bar with a thud, “Weigh her up! Weigh her up an’ tell me I ain’t dreamin’! Thirty-two ounces, my scales says--five hundred an’ twelve dollars! Every grain of it out of one pan, an’ I ain’t only six foot down!” Chairs overturned as the players of poker leaped from their seats. The music stopped and men and women surged in from the dance room, and from the roulette wheel, to crowd excitedly about the bar. McCarty, himself, weighed the gold. “Thirty-two ounces is right,” he announced, in a voice that despite himself, trembled slightly. Silence greeted McCarty’s words, a silence that the heavy breathing only seemed to accentuate, as three and four deep, the men and women crowded the bar, their eyes on the yellow gold. Of all the people in the room, only Camillo Bill remained in his chair at a poker table, a grim smile upon his face as his fingers idly riffled a deck of cards. The voice of Horse Face Joe broke thickly upon the silence: “What in hell y’all gawpin’ at? I got more dust’n that. Here, Mac, weigh mine up. An’ I’ll spend ’er too. Ol’ Man Gordon, he wouldn’t never set ’em up to the house.” The silence broken, a perfect babble of voices burst forth. Everyone was talking at once, and above the din rose the strident voice of Gordon: “An’ only last night I offered to risk the claim agin ten thousan’ dollars! Where’s MacShane?” “How’d you happen to be workin’ today, anyhow,” inquired Ace-In-The-Hole Brent, “Was it a hunch?” “A hunch! A hunch, d’ye say? Aye, it was a hunch! A hunch that said I was broke, an’ if I wanted maybe a wee bit tipple, or a bite to eat for the woman an’ the little lass, I’d better be gougin’ gravel.” “Hell, man, you could have got all you wanted in dust or liquor right here!” exclaimed McCarty. “Aye, Mac, I know,” retorted the canny Scot, “But, ’twould have to be paid back. ’Twould be burnin’ the candle at both ends, as the Gude Book says. If I was here borrowin’, I’d be loafin’ an’ spendin’, an’ if I was out there in the gravel I wouldn’t be spendin’ an’ what I got would be mine, an’ nothin’ to pay back later. As it is, I owe no man.” “Go on! Go on!” came from a dozen throats, “It ain’t a sermon we want, it’s facts!”