Joe Mixer and his men sat up late counting the golden harvest they expected to reap; consequently next morning the sun was high in the sky before the fat man woke. The instant consciousness returned to him the thought of "Gold!" sprang up in his mind as if written in letters of the metal. He sat up knuckling the sleep from his eyes. Instead of the breakfast that usually awaited him, he saw Crusoe and Stack still slumbering beside him. He awakened them with no gentle urgency.

"What's the matter with you!" he bawled with his own picturesque expletives. "It's past six o'clock, and we were going to start at five!"

Crusoe, the cook, looked around him in a dazed way. "The breed said he'd wake me," he said; "I left it to him."

They saw Philippe's tumbled blanket on the ground beyond Stack. "He's gone off, damn him!" cried Joe. "Hunting a puny rabbit most like! They're all alike! Look sharp with the breakfast!"

While Crusoe cooked, Joe and Stack collected and packed the camp impedimenta. In his eagerness to get away, the fat man was as active as a stripling. When breakfast was ready, and the half-breed had not yet returned, his anger was boundless. The camp atmosphere was lurid. As yet he did not suspect any treachery, for as a result of his experience with the race he had withheld Philippe's pay, and even a breed does not run off with money owing him. Besides, he had left his good blanket behind him.

After breakfast they scattered to look for him, awaking the forest with their hails. Crusoe found tracks made that morning in the ravine. Joe and Stack joined him, and they followed the tracks toward the mouth of the cave.

"Maybe he got up early to get in ahead of us," said Stack, paling at his own suggestion.

"By Gad! if he has——" cried Joe.

But the tracks led them beyond the drift-pile.

"It's game he's after," said Joe, reassured.

Crusoe, who was a pace in advance, had stopped, and was examining the creek bed attentively. "There's another track here," he said suddenly; "a small foot—a woman's foot! That's his game!"

The three men looked at each other with growing suspicions. "Get along after them!" cried Joe harshly.

But none of them moved. They had become aware simultaneously of a curious rumbling sound high above them. It approached with terrific swiftness, ending with a mighty crash above, that caused each man instinctively to make himself small, and guard his head with his arms. A great boulder leaped across the ravine, high over their heads, and smashed into the forest on the other side.

Of one accord the three turned and fled down the ravine, little Stack in advance, leaping from stone to stone like an antelope. A shower of pebbles peppered their heads and shoulders harmlessly. Outside the danger zone they halted.

"By Gad! that was a close shave!" said Joe, wiping his face. "They say those stones just naturally work themselves loose on the mountain, and no man can tell when they'll fall!"

"Maybe somebody started it," suggested Stack. His teeth were chattering.

Panic seized them again. They did not stop running until they had climbed the bank of the ravine, and stood in their own camp. From this point nearly the whole of the mountain side was visible. They searched it excitedly.

"It's true!" cried Stack at last. "I see him! I see two of them up there!"

"My binoculars!" shouted Joe.

His hands shook, and it took him a long time to focus the glasses. Stack stood at his elbow instructing him shrilly where to look. Crusoe stood with hanging jaw, looking up like a clown.

Immediately above the entrance to the cave there was a precipitous cliff some seventy-five or a hundred feet high. On top of that was a flat ledge or terrace reaching back. The floor of this terrace was hidden from them, but behind it rose a long, steep bare slide of rubble fully two thousand feet in the air, ending in a ridge or hog-back of broken rock-masses, which extended up at right angles to the base of the final peak of naked rock, the thumb. It was upon the ridge, working among the rock-masses with pine poles for levers, that Stack's sharp eyes had spotted the two tiny figures.

Joe finally got them within the field of his glasses. A frightful rage took possession of him. His face turned purple. He frothed at the mouth and stamped on the ground like a madman. Stack slyly took the binoculars out of his hand or he would have dashed them to the ground. From his broken exclamations and curses the others gathered that he had recognized Philippe and Nahnya. Stack satisfied himself as to the identity of the figures.

Another great stone started to roll down the gigantic slide. They saw it coming before they heard the noise of its passage. They gazed fascinated. As it gathered its terrific way it started to leap higher and higher in the air like a mad elf. It struck the rock ledge with a deafening crash, and like its predecessor bounded high over the ravine and shattered the trees on the other side. The force suggested by the soaring of these tons of matter lightly through the air struck awe into the souls of the beholders. The silence following the final crash of the projectile was broken by a long, dull rumble of the smaller stones displaced in its course. A long cloud of yellow dust arose behind it.

Other rocks, small and large, followed. Stack, through the binoculars, watched the two on the height working desperately with their levers. Joe Mixer had exhausted himself in his transports. He now looked up dumb and suffering with rage, his thick lips snarling and his nails pressed into his palms. Suddenly a light broke on his face, and he cried out:

"There's no danger! The cliff makes a screen. Look, how all the rocks jump clear of the gulch. Come on back!"

Stack had seen this before, but had kept it to himself. Both Stack and Crusoe turned white with terror at the thought of venturing up the ravine beneath that bombardment.

"You white-livered cowards!" cried Joe; "you skulkers! you shivering curs! I'll go alone! And I'll keep what I find!"

No one denied Joe Mixer brute courage. Paying no more attention to the descent of the rocks, he methodically separated a portion of their food for himself, and rolling it within his blanket, strapped the pack on his back. Fastening a belt of ammunition around his waist, he picked up his rifle, and went doggedly down the bank and up the bed of the ravine. All the gold in the world would not have tempted the others to follow.

While he was in the ravine the two on the mountain succeeded in wresting loose a bigger mass of rock than any before. It came down with a frightful impetus. The noise of its coming leaped out of nothingness and stunned the ears. When it struck the ledge of rock they felt the shock below. Joe crouched under a boulder. The mass made a gaping wound in the forest where it earthed itself.

The succeeding rumble from above did not subside, but slowly deepened and increased in volume. Stack, looking up, saw an incredible, an insupportable sight, as in some hideous nightmare. The whole face of the mountain was in motion. He screamed, and cast himself on his face, covering his head with his thin arms. Crusoe followed his example. Joe, hearing the ominous sounds above his head, wavered. The shrill sound of terror decided him. He started to run back down the ravine, but too late. A cataract of broken rocks came pouring over the lip of the cliff.


When Jim Sholto found Ralph that morning he saw at a glance that he had a desperately sick man to deal with. The exertion and the terrible excitement following too soon upon his fever had brought about a relapse. Jim carried him into camp, and Kitty did what little she could for his comfort. Humanity forbade Jim's leaving her alone with the patient, though he chafed to be away with the other men after the gold. To this he owed his life.

They were attending to Ralph when they heard the fall of the first stone. It was a sound they were not unfamiliar with in their own camp, and caused them no perturbation. When several others followed in close succession, Jim looked up.

"That's funny!" he said. "I never knew so many to fall together."

A minute later they heard Stack's scream. Jim jumped up.

"Somebody's caught!" he said grimly.

"Don't go!" cried Kitty sharply.

She had no need to speak. Jim was rooted to the spot. "A whole landslide!" he murmured.

During the next few seconds chaos succeeded. There was a rushing sound as of millions of great wings beating the air, and a shock under which the earth rocked nauseatingly. The uproar was such that human ear could not encompass it. It was like mountainous seas breaking over their heads. Kitty and her father clutched the earth. It shook under their bodies like a jelly. Ralph knew nothing of what was happening. A tremendous silence succeeded, broken only by the detached tapping of falling rocks here and there. Then a brief, terrible wind swept screaming through the forest and was gone. A strange, thick, yellow fog stole among the tree trunks; it left an acrid taste in the nostrils.

As soon as the uproar subsided Jim was for going to see what had happened. Kitty clung to him hysterically. Not until half an hour had passed would she let him leave her, and then only upon his repeated assurances that no further disturbance was lik............