McCoppet knew the creature was afraid to meet his man--that Trimmer's attack on Van Buren, once before, had been planned with much deliberation, had amounted to an ambush, in point of fact, resulting in disaster to the bully. "I counted on you to help me, Larry," he said, drumming on the table with his fingers. "You're the only man of your kind with brains in all the camp." Trimmer had smoked his cigar to within an inch of his mouth. He extinguished the fire and chewed up the stump voraciously. "Say!" he suddenly ejaculated, leaping to his feet and coming around the table, "I can fix him all right," and he lowered his voice to a whisper. "Barger would give up a leg to git a show at Van Buren!" "Barger?" echoed McCoppet. "Matt? But they got him! Got 'em all." "Got nuthin'," the lumberman ejaculated. "What's the good of all these lyin' papers when I seen Matt myself, readin' the piece about him goin' back to the pen?" McCoppet rose, went to the window, and returned again. "Larry, you're all right," he said. "Where's Barger now?" Trimmer winked. "That's his business, and mine." "All right--that's all right," agreed the gambler. "Wouldn't he take it as a favor if you passed him some money and the word about Van Buren's hike to Starlight?" Trimmer got out a new cigar, lit up, and began to smoke as before. "I was goin' to pass him some of mine," he confessed. "Yours will suit me just as good." "Five hundred ought to help him some," said the gambler. "Come out to the bar." At dark the lumberman left the camp on foot, heading for the mountains. Bostwick departed in the borrowed car at eight. The whole town was ablaze with light, and tumultuous with sound. Glare and disturbance together, however, only faintly symbolized the excitement and fever in the camp. A thousand men were making final preparations for the rush so soon to come--the mad stampede upon the reservation ground, barely more than a day removed. Miners with outfits, gamblers with their paraphernalia, saloon men with case on case of liquors, assayers, lawyers, teamsters, cooks--even a half dozen women--comprised the heterogeneous army making ready for the charge. The streets were filled with horses, men, and mules. The saloons were jammed to suffocation. Musical discord filled the air. Only the land, the silent old hills, the ancient, burned-out furnace of gold, was absolutely calm. Overhead a few clouds blurred the sky. Beyond them the eternal march of the stars proceeded in the majesty of space, with billions of years in which to fulfil the cosmic cycle of existence. CHAPTER XXXII THE HARDSHIPS OF THE TRAIL In the night, far out to the northward, a storm descended like a cataclysm. Torrential rains were poured upon the hills from a cloudburst exceptionally savage. Only the scattered outposts, as it were, of the storm were blown as far as Goldite. A sprinkle of rain that dried at once was the most those mountains received.