The Chinese waiter was bringing their order, and Bromley left the subjunctive hanging in air. Philip sat back while the smiling Celestial was arranging the table. As he did so, the street door opened and closed and he had a prickling shock. The latest incomer was a tall man with sunken eyes and a curly brown beard masking his face; the man who had been leaning against the bar in the Harrison Avenue hotel, and who had been named as Hank Neighbors. “What is it--a ghost?” queried Bromley, after the Chinaman had removed himself. “It is either a raw coincidence--or trouble,” Philip returned. “A fellow who was in the bar-room of the hotel as we passed through has just come in. He is sitting at a table out there by the door and looking the room over ... and trying to give the impression that he isn’t.” “Do you think he has followed us?” “It is either that or a coincidence; and I guess we needn’t look very hard for coincidences at this stage of the game.” “Don’t know who he is, do you?” “No, but I know his name. It’s Neighbors. Just as we were leaving the hotel, one of the bar-room crowd named him; pointed him out to his fellow gossips as a man who probably knew who had made the new gold strike, and where it is located.” “Well,” Bromley began, “if there is only one of him----” “If there is one, there will be more,” Philip predicted. Then, at a sudden prompting of the primitive underman: “I wish to goodness we had something more deadly than that old navy revolver we’ve been lugging around all summer.” Bromley’s smile was cherubic. “As it happens, we are perfectly well prepared to back our judgment--at Mr. Drew’s suggestion. Our arsenal now sports a couple of late model Winchesters, with the ammunition and saddle holsters therefor. I bought ’em and sneaked ’em down to the stable this afternoon.” Philip looked up with narrowed eyes. “Would you fight for this chance of ours if we’re pushed to it, Harry?” Bromley laughed. “I’ll shoot any man’s sheep that’ll try to bite me. Have you ever doubted it?” “I didn’t know.” “How about you?” “I have never fired a rifle in my life; not at anything--much less at a man. But if I had to----” “I know,” said Bromley with a grin. “You’re a chip off the old Puritan block. If the occasion should arise, you’d tell your New England conscience to look the other way, take cold-blooded aim, pull trigger and let the natural law of expanding gases take its course. But we mustn’t be too blood-thirsty. If we are followed to-night it needn’t be a foregone conclusion that the trailers are going to try to take our mine away from us. It is much more likely they’ll be tagging along to do a little hurry stake-driving of their own, after we’ve shown them the place.”