"I, for one, wouldn't stand for it." "Nor I," agreed Runnion.
"I don't see how you'd help yourself," the trader remarked.

"One man's got as good a right as another." "I guess I'd help myself, all right," Stark laughed, significantly, as did Runnion, who added: "Lee is entitled to put in anybody he wants on his own discovery, and if anybody tries to get ahead of us there's liable to be trouble." "I reckon if I don't know no short-cut, nobody else does," Lee remarked, whereupon Doret spoke up reassuringly: "Dere's no use gettin' scare' lak' dat, biccause nobody knows w'ere Lee's creek she's locate' but John an' me, an' dere's nobody w'at knows he mak' de strike but us four." "That's right," said Gale; "the only other way across is by Black Bear Creek, and there ain't a half-dozen men ever been up to the head of that stream, much less over the divide, so I don't allow there's any use to fret ourselves." They went on their way, travelling leisurely until late evening, when they camped at the mouth of the valley up which the miner's cabin lay.
They chose a long gravel bar, that curved like a scimitar, and made down upon its outer tip where the breeze tended to thin the plague of insects.

They were all old-stagers in the ways of camplife, so there was no lost motion or bickering as to their respective duties.

Their preparations were simple.

First they built a circle of smudges out of wet driftwood, and inside this Lee kindled a camp-fire of dry sticks, upon which he cooked, protected by the smoke of the others, while Gale went back to the edge of the forest and felled a dozen small firs, the branches of which he clipped.