“We're here to stake claims,” he opened. “We know what you've did--filed a string of five quartz claims on end, and there they are over there running across the town-site on the line of the slide and the canyon. Only you misplayed. Two of them entries is fake. Who is Seth Bierce? No one ever heard of him. You filed a claim this mornin' in his name. An' you filed a claim in the name of Harry Maxwell. Now Harry Maxwell ain't in the country. He's down in Seattle. Went out last fall. Them two claims is open to relocation.” “Suppose I have his power of attorney?” Smoke queried. “You ain't,” Saltman answered. “An' if you have you got to show it. Anyway, here's where we relocate. Come on, fellows.” Saltman, stepping across the dead-line, had turned to encourage a following, when the police lieutenant's voice rang out and stopped the forward surge of the great mass. “Hold on there! You can't do that, you know!” “Can't, eh?” said Bill Saltman. “The law says a fake location can be relocated, don't it?” “Thet's right, Bill! Stay with it!” the crowd cheered from the safe side of the line. “It's the law, ain't it?” Saltman demanded truculently of the lieutenant. “It may be the law,” came the steady answer. “But I can't and won't allow a mob of five thousand men to attempt to jump two claims. It would be a dangerous riot, and we're here to see there is no riot. Here, now, on this spot, the Northwest police constitute the law. The next man who crosses that line will be shot. You, Bill Saltman, step back across it.” Saltman obeyed reluctantly. But an ominous restlessness became apparent in the mass of men, irregularly packed and scattered as it was over a landscape that was mostly up-and-down. “Heavens,” the lieutenant whispered to Smoke. “Look at them like flies on the edge of the cliff there. Any disorder in that mass would force hundreds of them over.” Smoke shuddered and got up. “I'm willing to play fair, fellows. If you insist on town lots, I'll sell them to you, one hundred apiece, and you can raffle locations when the survey is made.” With raised hand he stilled the movement of disgust. “Don't move, anybody. If you do, there'll be hundreds of you shoved over the bluff. The situation is dangerous.” “Just the same, you can't hog it,” a voice went up. “We don't want lots. We want to relocate.” “But there are only two disputed claims,” Smoke argued. “When they're relocated where will the rest of you be?” He mopped his forehead with his shirt-sleeve, and another voice cried out: “Let us all in, share and share alike!” Nor did those who roared their approbation dream that the suggestion had been made by a man primed to make it when he saw Smoke mop his forehead. “Take your feet out of the trough an' pool the town-site,” the man went on. “Pool the mineral rights with the town-site, too.” “But there isn't anything in the mineral rights, I tell you,” Smoke objected. “Then pool them with the rest. We'll take our chances on it.”