and by. This camp is new. It's rich. Gold is the cheapest thing. It
passes from hand to hand. Ten dollars an ounce. Buyers don't look at
the scales. Only the gamblers are crooked. But all this will
change."

Kells did not say what that change might be, but the click of his
teeth was expressive. Joan did not, however, gather from it, and the
dark meaning of his tone, that the Border Legion would cause this
change. That was in the nature of events. A great strike of gold
might enrich the world, but it was a catastrophe.

Long into the night Joan lay awake, and at times, stirring the
silence, there was wafted to her on a breeze the low, strange murmur
of the gold-camp's strife.

Joan slept late next morning, and was awakened by the unloading of
lumber. Teams were drawing planks from the sawmill. Already a
skeleton framework for Kells's cabin had been erected. Jim Cleve was
working with the others, and they were sacrificing thoroughness to
haste. Joan had to cook her own breakfast, which task was welcome,
and after it had been finished she wished for something more to
occupy her mind. But nothing offered. Finding a comfortable seat
among some rocks where she would be inconspicuous, she looked on at
the building of Kells's cabin. It seemed strange, and somehow
comforting, to watch Jim Cleve work. He had never been a great
worker. Would this experience on the border make a man of him? She
felt assured of that.

If ever a cabin sprang up like a mushroom, that bandit rendezvous
was the one. Kells worked himself, and appeared no mean hand. By