"The other men strongly approved of that course of justice, however, and Mike had all he could do to keep them from following their inclination to wash the guilty men down the flume and out into Bear Forks River at the foot of the mountain. "The next day Mike and his men drove the raiders down the steep trail and left them in the hands of the constable of Oak Creek, to await trial in the County Court. But the captured rascals had boon companions in Oak Creek, and when they learned that four of their group were in prison they started a regular riot. "They tarred and feathered poor little Jeb the next time he drove in to Oak Creek for mail and supplies, and a few days before we got back home, they made a well-planned raid on the lava mines at Rainbow Cliffs. Not a piece of machinery was left intact, and the great bags of jewels we had waiting for shipment were scattered far and wide by the vandals. "But the sheriff heard of the proposed visit to Pebbly Pit, and took a posse of men to follow the drunken miners to the Cliffs. Such a battle as ensued, beggars my weak description. The sheriff told us about it when we got home, but his language is not very graphic, nor is it thrilling, so we only heard the bare facts of the fight. "But, Polly, you must supply with your own vivid imagination, the details that may be missing from my account. When I tell you that the vandals were slowly backed away from the Cliffs and were, eventually, driven to the gully back of the Devil's Causeway where those two men were engulfed in the slide, the day they came to cajole your father into signing papers for the Cliffs, you can picture their horror when the edge of the great cliff began to crumble in. They could not turn to right or left, as they were hemmed in by the pursuers, and they dared not remain where they were for fear of being swallowed in the quicksand that was already sliding downwards. So they gave up to the sheriff and surrendered their guns. "That was a bad case, as one of the sheriff's men had been dangerously wounded and it was feared he would die. All our valuable machinery was ruined and all orders for the delivery of the lava jewels had to be cancelled, or postponed for a year. So the culprits each got twenty years and Oak Creek is quieter, by far, because more than a score of its worst citizens are safely housed in jail." As Tom ended his story, Polly unclasped her hands which she had nervously clenched during the recital of the raids on her precious property. "Oh, Tom! I never dreamed of all the trouble everyone would have because of those precious mines, the day Nolla and I filed our papers at Oak Creek," gasped Polly. "No one does dream of these things--they only see the future in rosy hues," retorted Tom. "And to think of the work and worry John and you have had in establishing this great undertaking, while I was in Europe taking life easy, and spending money without a thought of how it was being produced at home!" sighed Polly.