They arose and followed her out of the box, and down the flimsy stairs that led to the floor below. She paused on the bottom step, and clutched the casing with both hands, then tried to get a closer look at the ex-watchman, who had turned away until but a small part of his face was exposed. She walked onward, still looking angrily preoccupied, to the end of the bar, and the partners were on the point of bidding her good-night, when she abruptly started, seemed to tense herself, and exclaimed: "Now I know him!" The partners wondered when she made a swift clutch under the end of the bar and slipped something into the bosom of her jacket. She took five or six determined steps toward the ex-watchman and tapped him on the shoulder. He whirled sharply as if his mind had guilty fears, and faced her defiantly. Those immediately around, suspecting something unusual, stopped to watch them, and listened. "So you are here in Goldpan, are you, Wolff?" she demanded, with a cold sneer in her voice. He gave her a fierce, defiant stare, and brazenly growled: "You're off. My name's not Wolff. My name's Brown." "You lie!" she flared back, with a hard anger in her voice. "Your name is Gus Wolff! You get out of this place, and don't you ever come in again! If you do, I'll have you thrown out like a dog." He glowered at the crowd that was forming around him, as crowds invariably form in any controversy, and then started toward the door, but he made a grave mistake. He called back a vile epithet as he went. "Stop!" she commanded him, with an imperious, compelling tone. He half-turned, and then shrugged his shoulders, and made as if to move on. "Stop, I said!" He turned again to face a pistol which she had snatched from her jacket, and now the partners, amazed, understood what that swift motion had meant. He halted irresolutely. "You used a name toward me that I permit no man to use," she said fiercely. "So I shall explain to these men of Goldpan who you are, Gus Wolff! You were in Butte five years ago. You induced a poor, silly little fool named Rose Trevor to leave the dance hall where she worked, and go with you. You were one of those who believe that women are made to be brutalized. But good as most of them are, and bad as some of them are, there is none, living or dead, that you are or were fit to consort with. You murdered her. Don't you dare to deny it! They found her dead outside of your cabin. They arrested you, and tried you, and should have hanged you, but they couldn't get the proof of what everybody believed, that you--you brute--had killed, then thrown her over the rocks to claim that she had fallen there in the darkness." She paused as if the tempest of her words had left her breathless, and men glared at him savagely. It seemed as if every one had crowded forward to hear her denunciation.