voice:

"Yass'm. I'm the watchman."

She noted two other darkies at work below and was vaguely
surprised, not so much at their presence, as at the manner in
which they moved, for they seemed under stress of some great
haste, running hither and yon. She saw horses standing in the
trail and sensed something indefinably odd and alarming in the
air. Turning to the man, she opened her mouth to speak, when from
the rank grass under her feet came a noise which set her a-tingle,
and at which her suspicions leaped full to the solution. It was
the groan of a man. Again he gave voice to his pain, and she knew
that she stood face to face with something sinister. Tales of
sluice robbers had come to her, and rumors of the daring raids
into which men were lured by the yellow sheen--and yet this was
incredible. A hundred men lay within sound of her voice; she could
hear their laughter; one was whistling a popular refrain. A
quarter-mile away on every hand were other camps; a scream from
her would bring them all. Nonsense, this was no sluice robbery--
and then the man in the bushes below moaned for the third time.

"What is that?" she said.

Without reply the negro lowered the muzzle of his rifle till it
covered her breast and at the same time she heard the double click
of the hammer.

"Keep still and don't move," he warned. "We're desperate and we
can't take any chances, Miss."